“After dark.”
How long have we been here?I think.Hours?Wasn’t it daylight when we ran from the wall of dust, when Cricket led us to this house? Have I slept, passed out?We’ve been here too long, wasted too much time.We need to leave.
But the man starts a fire near us in a woodstove—I can hear the metal hinges of the iron door, the rustle of kindling, of a fire crackling and warming our faces. “Thank you,” I say to him, the words like dirt under my tongue.
He makes a sound, an acknowledgment, and then his footsteps fade.
I hope this house we’re in, this man, is truly helping us. That he isn’t a man of another sort.
I try to push myself up while my eyes remain closed—too painful to open—but my head swims, ears throbbing, so I sink back down to the couch. I touch my hair, keeping it draped along my neck.
Whatever happens, I need to keep the tattoo covered. If he doesn’t see it, then he won’t have reason to question who I am.
“Vega.” Noah’s voice is in my dreams, in my skull. “Wake up.”
I peel my eyelids back, the motion throbbing and painful, the grit not fully gone. “What’s wrong?” I croak, dragging myself upright on the small, dusty couch.I fell asleep again.
Noah’s standing over me, tall and broad, eyes flashing around the house. “We need to go,” he hisses quietly.
I nod. Too many hours have passed—time we won’t get back. “Where’s the man who helped us?” I ask.
“Don’t know.” He shakes his head, eyes still scanning the dark interior of the house. “But I’d like to get out of here before he realizes we’re awake.” He walks to a chair beside the front door, where Cricket is slumped back, still asleep. I watch—my head still clotted and drowsy—as he touches Cricket’s shoulder and her eyes bolt wide. She coughs, then buckles over, hands on her knees, eyes watering, tears hitting the wood floor beneath her—her eyes still caked in dust.
I struggle to push myself up from the couch, lungs wheezing with each breath, and I survey the tiny, single-story house: the kitchen is to our left, where a small porcelain vase of withered, dead flowers sits on the windowsill; the front door is to the right, framed by two windows; and at the back is a short hallway that must lead to a bedroom.
“He helped us,” I whisper to Noah.
“And let’s leave it at that, not give him reason to do anything else.” Noah moves silently to one of the windows beside the front door, pulls back the cornflower-blue curtain—also coated in dust—and looks out.
“Morning,” a voice says behind me.
I startle at the man’s voice, the air sinking to my stomach. Noah drops the curtain and jerks around.
The man appears from the short hallway, a mug in his hand, steam rising up around his face. He’s tall, slight, with an angled face and a flattened nose, like he was crushed at some point in his life. Most of the bones in his face broken.
“Didn’t want to wake you all,” he says, moving into the kitchen, swinging his hip awkwardly, gingerly—perhaps the same accident that flattened his features also injured the joints in his leg. “Got some coffee brewing, if you’re interested.”
Noah steps back into the living room, positioning himself between the man and me. “Think we’d better get going; we’ve burdened you long enough.”
The man’s gaze flutters a moment, like he understands the true meaning behind Noah’s words:We don’t trust him, even after he helped us.
“Dust storms have been getting worse lately,” the man says, turning to the cast-iron pot of coffee and pouring more of the dark liquid into his mug. His eyes are sloped, soft, and there is a gentleness in them. But also something else—a twinge of nervousness. Like there’s something he’s hiding.
“It’s been a while since I’ve been up this way,” Noah replies, and I can hear the tightness in his words, like he’s trying not to give anything away.
“Seems they come almost every week now. It rains less too.” The man brings the mug to his mouth and takes a drink, the creases of his weatherworn face pulling together, nose like a bent piece of old wood.
I think of the rain that fell the night we arrived at the barn, the steady downpour. That was only a couple days’ walk from here, and yet the storm never made it this far. The land has a way of changingquickly—moisture gets trapped against mountain peaks and never reaches the dusty territory beyond.
“Rarely see anyone crossing the plains this time of year, especially on foot.” The man’s face turns toward the front windows, but his eyes seem unable to focus, like he’s just staring at the wall. “Gets pretty hot out there during the day.”
Noah is quiet, and I wonder if he’s considering how much he should say, how much to reveal to this man we don’t know. “We’re headed to Mill City,” he says truthfully.
The man raises a quick eyebrow. “You don’t want to be going that way.” He sets his mug back on the counter, a seriousness in the line of his bent mouth.
“Why’s that?” Cricket asks. She’s seated upright in the chair now, but there’s a pained look between her eyebrows, teeth mashed together—like her head is pounding again, ears ringing, and she’s trying not to pass out or vomit. I touch the bottle of aspirin still in the pocket of my coat. Once we leave, I’ll give her two more, enough to get her through the day. But I need to be careful, ration what I have left.
“Whole place is boarded up. Nothing left there anymore,” the man says, eyes focused just beyond his coffee mug.
