“And after that? After all this crap between the two of you over the last few weeks, you’re just going to stay?”
No. Staying here was never my plan.
When it’s clear I still don’t have an answer, she speaks again. “If you do leave, I think I want to go with you. At least as far as Maryland.”
“Why?” I know Cara is from Maryland—a town called Easton—but everyone she knew there is dead.
“I honestly don’t know yet. But I’ve been thinking about it, too. My plan was to see how I felt when we went to get Henri and I was close to the Chesapeake. After my family was killed, I just walked. I wanted to get out of there, and any road that took me away was the right road. But now I wonder if I was running away. And maybe it’s time to go back.”
She’s never put it that way before—saying her family was “killed,” I mean. Andrew and I always assumed something happened in Maryland to make her leave, the same thing that was responsible for herPTSD panic attacks. We also assumed it was something bad, but we’d never wanted to pry.
“You never mentioned wanting to go home before,” I say.
“I’m mentioning it now.”
“Is this new or have you been thinking about it for a while?”
“A while.”
Before I can ask Cara for more information, I hear the low whir of electricity and turn to see Rocky Horror pulling up in a golf cart, wires running from the front up to solar panels mounted on the roof. One of the panels looks cracked, but the rest are fine.
Rocky Horror gives two quick, sad beeps of the horn. “Anyone want a ride?”
With the moment broken, Cara and I head down to the road while everyone else watches from the parking lot.
“Not sure you have room for all of us,” I say. The golf cart is big enough to fit about six people; maybe an extra kid could squeeze in the middle, but not the front seat or the bench facing backward on the back.
Rocky Horror shrugs. “No. But the other three I rigged up should carry us all to Key Largo. Long as Ames is cool Britney Spears-ing it and holding Henri-Two in her lap.” As if summoned by her name—or maybe it was the honks—Amy emerges from the room upstairs with Henri-Two and comes down.
Andrew joins us and climbs onto the side of the cart to see the solar panels on the roof. “You did all this in a day?”
“Yes, I’m a genius, I know. But I told you, them kids cramp my style. I am not a fan of camping, and if y’all are really planning onheading up to Key Largo with the rest to regroup and figure shit out, I’m not walking with you like I did from Marathon.” He puts one of his feet on the tiny dash. “And they don’t make these shoes anymore, so I’m not planning on wearing them down more than I already have.”
Amy joins us. “RH, if you weren’t a gay man I’d marry you.”
“If we’re both single in our fifties, you can make a semi-honest man of me. We’ll have a marriage of convenience.”
She laughs. “Love that for us.” Amy turns her attention back to Andrew and me. “Now get in the golf cart. I want to get the hell out of here. Cara, go with them.”
I get in the back with Cara and pick up a chain saw from the floor. “What’s with the chain saw?”
“Mosquitoes,” Rocky Horror says, as if that answers the question.
Andrew gives me a shrug as he hops in the front, and Rocky Horror pulls a three-point turn—dodging a downed tree—to take us back to a storage facility. There are three other golf carts parked next to a pile of broken solar panels, and four rusted batteries.
Rocky Horror hops off and nudges the batteries with his foot. “Salt water fucked up most of the electronics, but I managed to get these three working.”
“Where were they during the storm?”
Rocky Horror pulls open the storage garage behind the carts and points to a ramp going up to a wooden platform. There’s one small two-seater cart remaining on the platform. Beneath it are four more carts pushed against one another, covered in dirt and sand. Their batteries have been removed.
“All the ones down here were a wash. Which sucks, ’cause those two in the back are eight-seaters. But we have four running; should be good enough.”
After showing us how to drive the cart—I struggle a bit at first, since I never learned how to drive a car—we head back to the motel, where Amy, Daphne, and the kids are already packed up and ready. We tie bags to the roof supports and ask the older kids to hold some in their laps. Then we set off for Key Largo, where the rest of the Key Colony planned to regroup and repair.
Andrew
LEAVE IT TO THE STATE OF FLORIDAto have a public library in a strip mall. It’s the age-old question: What came first, the library or the Kmart it’s attached to?
