He starts laughing, or maybe laughing and crying at the sametime. You haven’t really seen him do either very much, so it’s hard to tell.
“We’ll make it,” says Troy.
And at first you have to make sure you heard him correctly. But he gets up and walks over to sit next to Will. You almost gasp when he puts an arm around him. But Will doesn’t shrug it off, and there it stays, around his broad shoulders.
“We’ll find Silas. Or we’ll find the drop point somehow. And when we’re there, and we finally head home, you can get some real help. Who cares about your dad and your coach. You can do what you need to do and figure it out.”
Will rubs his temples.
“I don’t want a dog,” he says. “I’m allergic.”
“That’s your loss,” says Troy. “Because Turbo is fucking awesome. But you don’t need a dog to feel better.”
Will sighs. Then, when it seems like maybe their interaction is over, Diana reaches down for the pills.
“This is actually perfect,” she says.
And you watch as she scoops them up gingerly, like she’s handling the delicate eggs of a rare animal. You watch as she takes them all in her hand and dumps them carefully into your sandwich bag. You watch as she makes sure that the bag is rolled up and fastened tightly.
“I’m not on anything either,” she says.
Everyone stares at her, a few mouths hanging open.
“I’m kind of new to all this,” she says. “And my family doesn’t have a great history with pills, so…”
“Then where did all these come from?” asks Troy, looking at the bag.
Fran raises her hand. “Three of them are mine.”
“My god, Fran!” says Troy. “Where were you hiding them?!”
“I’d rather not say,” says Fran.
Diana gets up and walks over to Will, and you watch her hold the bag out in front of him.
“You’re not on any meds, and you don’t have a family history of addiction, right?” she asks.
Will gives the slightest nod.
“Perfect. You can be the pharmacy.”
Will just blinks at the bag.
“If you need a pill, talk to Will,” says Diana. “Emergencies only.”
She claps him on the back.
Will looks baffled. But eventually, he takes the bag and puts it in his pocket, and each one of you, including Diana herself, watches it disappear, wondering if you’ll ever see it again. Once it’s gone, you’re left back where you started, in a trashed campsite surrounded by woods and lakes with very few prospects for survival. You all look around at the wrappers glinting in the sun, the evidence that it all really happened.
“I don’t want to be the one to ask,” you say. “But you said we’d make it to the drop point, Troy. How exactly are we going to stay alive until we get there?”
Troy takes his arm off Will and stands up. He picks up your whisk and slices it through the air. Then he looks out into the woods, and in the same tone of voice he used to present the lighter, he says:
“I know about plants.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Mushrooms. Berries. Burdock. Stinging nettle. Wild ramps. Troy rattles off names like an incantation. He sounds like a forager from simpler times. But, in reality, he only knows these because there’s a guy on YouTube called the “Anarchist Vagabond” who makes videos about postapocalyptic survival. The videos, Troy says, are calming to him because after he watches them, he feels like he could live in the midst of climate disaster. And while most of them are about constructing water tanks or building a bunker, one component of the videos is foraging for edible plants.
