Chapter 1

One

Miranda chewed her parched tongue, willing saliva to form, and only made her mouth taste like gritty sand. Her fingers trembled and her feet slid against the dry ground, toes skidding in shoes a size too big for her.

The sound echoed off the hillside, which was barren except for the haunting remains of crisp black trees. Their needles and branches were burned away, leaving nothing but jutting, pointed trunks that pierced threateningly at the cloudless sky. They surrounded her completely, looming ahead, flanking the road she was walking on until they swallowed it up in the distance.

Just days ago, this was a beautiful forest, with green pine trees and soft patches of moss and birds flying overhead. She loved driving this road to the coast, rolling down her windows to breathe in the scent of warm wood and ocean salt.

It was all gone. Everything was gone.

She squeezed her eyes shut, agony rippling through her chest. She took deep, burning breaths and turned the rising pain into determination. She wiped her dry hands on the workout shorts she'd stolen, a nervous tick, and dug the string straps of her bag into her almost bare shoulder. The sun beat down on her, relentless. Her mind was about as melted as the mile marker sign she was staring down, all warped and confused.

This was the third sign she'd passed this morning. They were becoming more frequent. The first day, when she'd started walking out of the rubble that had once been her hometown, she'd only passed five. She'd been so numb then. So lost and unfocused. She'd seen the milepost marker all lit up in the growing dim of sunset, "Pacific Ocean, 42 miles ahead," and she'd followed it blindly because someone must have gotten them working right? A survivor must have left them for others to find.

But she'd seen not a soul since. At least not a human soul.

Now, three days later she'd counted a total of twenty-seven during her trek across the blistering, barren landscape. A path she followed on pure instinct alone. Driven by nothing more than her own gut screaming that the ocean was the answer.

It is. Keep going.

Miranda squeezed her eyes shut and took a long deep breath into her burning lungs. She had to get out of here. She had to keep following the signs even if they didn't make any sense. Everything had been burnt to a crisp and yet these electronic milepost markers still worked. How was that possible? There was something strange about it. Something inconceivable that pricked the corners of her ragged senses.

Just keep going.

So, she did. She pushed forward past her own sanity. Even as her mind was shattering, and the sorrow was sucking her down and bone deep dread swelled so high she couldn't breathe. She pressed on. Following these strange, miraculous signs that blazed her trail.

Her feet kept a steady gait even as the crumbling highway under them grew steep. But steep was good. Steep meant she would get to the lookout soon.

One mile to the ocean.

One mile was nothing. She'd walked through utter destruction. New Seattle was completely leveled.

The highway was rubble and all the cars she passed were burned out except for a select few. A few that only showed up when she was at her lowest. When her muscles were cramping from fatigue and her mouth was so dry it felt like ash and her stomach was burning itself up in a pit of acid.

Those miraculous cars that shouldn't have been there always had food, and water. They gave her the will to keep going even as she considered they might be a mirage. A delusion conjured up by her own desperation.

She hadn't passed one since midday the day prior and her eyes scanned desperately. Dusty ground, cracked pavement, burnt trees. Not a single miracle car in sight.

She was starting to reach the edge of her endurance again.

But it was just one mile.

She squeezed her eyes shut so tight that light burst behind her eyelids, drowning out the horrible image of the city she'd lived in in utter ruin.

Forty-one miles she'd trudged with determination raging in her. Three blistering days and freezing nights. She'd worked her way across chaotic rubble, raided vehicles that were inexplicably untouched, and scraped together just enough supplies to stay alive.

She didn't want to die.

She was so dang close.

She wasn't going to die.

One mile.

She should be hurt. Bruised. Broken. Laying in the wastes.

But she wasn't. And she wouldn't. She would not give up.

God, she was thirsty.

Miranda gave into the urge to dig through her pack again even though she knew there was nothing left. She'd drank all the bottled water and eaten her last bite of granola bar the day before.

Still, she swung the pack to her front, not breaking her stride. She had to outrun the radiation. Fallout from By-Pass nuclear bombs would be spreading behind her. She had to keep moving. Stay ahead of it.

Miranda looked down at her arm. Fingered the little pricks where she'd given herself the radiation boosters. She'd found them tucked away under the front seat of the first car she'd raided with crisp clear instructions on how to use them printed along the side of the canister. Not that she didn't remember. Almost every American had these boosters tucked away in their homes and cars. She still remembered most of the "Fallout preparedness" videos they'd watched almost weekly in high school.

Humans had been preparing for this eventuality for her entire lifetime, but she never thought she would actually have to live through it. That she would be the lone survivor.

She wasn't the only survivor. She couldn't be. They would be at the ocean.

Miranda went back to searching her bag. The drawstring pack was flimsy. The kind that people gave out for free at fairs. It displayed the logo for a company in crisp white on the blue front, three lines with a stylized mountain in the background. Or maybe it was supposed to be a treadmill? She found it with the gym clothes she was wearing.

It didn't matter. She'd found it, and it was hers. Just like the workout clothes and the shoes and the water bottle and the granola bars. She had to leave everything behind, and now she wore a stranger's trim black gym shorts, sports bra, and tank top. Because it was clean, and it fit, and her own clothes were irradiated.

Her clothes had been at the epicenter of the bombs. She had been at the epicenter of the bombs.She'd heard them go off above her. Seen the charred remains of New Seattle. Nothing could have survived.

She shouldn't have either. She should be irradiated too. Might still be. The boosters might not be enough.

Miranda's fingers clenched around the empty water bottle. The cheap plastic crinkled under her fingers, giving way with little pops. Such an odd sound in the eerie silence.

Nothing made any sense. Everything else was destroyed. Everything.

Keep going.

Miranda shook her head, cleared her mind, listened for threats, the scampering of feet, the fluttering of birds taking flight. Her ears were ringing in the deadly silence. She wanted to say something aloud just to rid herself of the pain, but her throat throbbed, and her teeth were sticky.

And was it worth the risk that the dogs might find her again?

Those damn dogs. She'd only seen them once on that first day, but it had been more than enough.

They'd chased her for what felt like an eternity. Driving her to move even when all she wanted to do was collapse. Forcing her to forget everything she had lost. Making her put the city she'd been born and raised in behind her and look only forward. Toward the road signs.

The road signs that shouldn't be working.

Her head blazed with agony as she raked through her thoughts.

How had she survived the blast? How had she escaped the rubble? How had she made it this far?

How was any of this possible?

Don't think about it.

Miranda breathed deep as her heart raced, and her palms sweat, and her mind began to fracture under the weight of those horrific first moments after the bombs hit. When she was trapped underground. The crunching of metal. The horrible heat.

Stop. There's no time.

She didn't have time to fall apart here.

She had to get to the ocean.

There would be people at the ocean. Why would they bother lighting up the mile marker signs if they weren't gathering at the ocean? And a bunch of people would surely be there, right? There would be boats and planes and emergency services.

Right?

Someone was lighting up these signs.

No. Not just someone.

She would make it to the base camp and search the crowd for their faces, strain her ears over the symphony of voices. Their eyes would meet despite the chaos.

Taylor. Or Josephine. Or Robby. Or any one of the other toddlers she looked after during her shifts at Riverside Daycare.

Her babies.

They would be there, right? They had to be. Maybe their parents or her co-workers were the ones lighting up these signs.

No. Not maybe. Definitely.

Her babies and the people who saved them had definitely been the ones to get these road signs working. They were the ones guiding her this way. They were.

She hadn't gone back for them, but someone had. Someone must have saved them. Surely they had.

Miranda's stomach heaved, her eyes burned, and her body shook under the relentless weight crushing around her heart.

She should have been there. She should have been there that day to save them. She shouldn't have taken that job at the bank, no matter how good the pay was. No matter how nice her new boss was. No matter how badly she needed more stable hours so she could eventually get a promotion and quit the night shifts at the daycare and finally—finally!—be able to adopt children of her own.

She'd left them. All those little ones she loved so much. She'd been selfish and abandoned them, and now they were?—

Breathe. Calm.

Miranda forced a shaky breath.If she fell apart here, if she let herself succumb to the agony growing in her chest, she would not have the strength to get back up.

She would never see them again.

They hadn't been at the daycare when the bombs dropped. She knew it. Parents always had a sixth sense about these things. They would have woken up with an odd tingling in their stomach or a burning at the back of their mind. They would have squeezed their little ones tight and called the daycare and told them their babies would be absent that day and they would have gotten to a bomb shelter in time and now they were hiking across the desolation, like her. Just like Miranda was now.

They would meet at the ocean.

And then they would all get on the boat together. Traveling to their new home somewhere nuclear bombs couldn't reach. She'd hold those babies close, watch them so their parents could get some much-needed sleep. Warm little bodies all snuggled up. Soak up their life. They were alive.

So was she.

Her eyes prickled with tears as she slung her bag back over her shoulder, and turned her gaze upward, toward the endless blue sky.

"Five things I can see," Miranda mouthed, careful not to make a sound because the dogs. Her lips were cracking, her tongue was sticking, and she ignored it as she began her usual exercise for soothing anxiety.

Miranda doubted the inventor had thought it might be useful for someone who'd survived the apocalypse.

"Stumps," she exhaled slowly, eyes falling to the landscape once more as she picked up the pace again. "Five black stumps." There were well over five. There were hundreds. Thousands. She couldn't see anything else. She was supposed to be in the national park nestled between the city and the sea,but it was a burned black waste now.

Four things she could feel."The back of my shoe scraping my heel, the hard pavement, the scorching sun, and my sandy tongue." There was no wind. No movement of air other than what her own steady pace provided. It was like the bombs had wiped out the breeze along with everything else.

"Three things I can hear," she shivered, hugged herself, and pressed her hands together. "My breathing, my steps, and my heart." She didn't want to think about what she couldn't hear. The ocean was still too far away. The crashing waves and rumble of the survivors' voices wouldn't reach her until she was at the top.

Miranda sniffed quickly, cutting off the inhale as her nose burned. "Bleach. All I can smell is bleach."

Better than a lot of other things. She'd found the bleach citrus spray in the second car. Right after the one where she found her pilfered clothes. She knew the pungent scent of chlorine would hide her scent and throw the dogs off her trail. Those horrible mangy beasts who howled every night and haunted every scrap of her waking hours.

Just keep going.

"One to taste." She almost laughed at her folly. She didn't want to focus on her mouth's muddy grit. What would she do for a gulp of clean water? A bite of a cheeseburger? What wouldn't she do?

In desperation, Miranda pulled her bag forward and dug around. Her hand closed around the last item she had with any liquid in it.

A bingo dauber. The kind you used on actual paper.

She'd found it in the glove compartment of one of those really old electric vehicles. The ones that actually had a push button start instead of a fingerprint or retina scanner.

She tried to imagine what sort of back-alley biddy had used it. Someone with enough nerve to risk getting caught with illegal paper, which had been banned from production five years before—another desperate attempt to save their world's natural resources before it was too late.

Like it had mattered. Like paper had been what was killing Earth and not constant corporate pollution and countries sparking up new resource wars. Wars that dropped deadly bombs and turned once glorious national parks, like the one surrounding her now, into burned husks.

Stop. Keep going.

Miranda pushed herself onward. Sloshing the ink in the dauber's canister. Wondering if she should drink it.

As she thought, she let her mind wander back to a memory at the daycare, a day when Susan, the director, had scrounged up a bucket of blackberries. They'd mashed, strained, and diluted them with vinegar. Then they divided the makeshift ink out to all the kids. Letting them paint with it on a white tablecloth.

They'd splattered their little purple handprints all over it. The laughter sang in Miranda's mind and her chest loosened.

It made her smile even now. Despite everything.

A crack sounded behind her. The snap of a branch.

She knew before she looked.

The dogs.

Calling them dogs was a kindness. They were heaving, massive, black mangy beasts with endless teeth and drooling mouths. Their ears were slicked back, their fangs dripped with saliva, and their chests rumbled with menacing growls. Their stench, rotting flesh and sour vomit bubbling in the unending sun, punctuated Miranda's nostrils over the bleach.

Somehow, despite all she had done, they had tracked her.

And she hadn't seen them coming.

It should have brought her some comfort to see another living creature. Instead, as her eyes landed on the three monsters stalking her, she felt only the icy lump of dread.

The one in the front snapped, snarled, and stepped forward.

Fear exploded into action, and she whirled away. Feet scrambling on the dry ground as she burst into a sprint. She knew she shouldn't run. It would only make them chase her. But she was stupid and panicked.

Miranda bolted, realized she was so much closer to the viewpoint overlooking the ocean than she'd realized.

It was right up this hill. She could see the guard rail.

So close, almost there.

The precipice was right there.

A snap sliced at the back of her ankle. The cold strike of teeth grazed her skin. Electricity bolted up her spine. Snarling howls violently raged behind her, its spittle stinging the back of her leg.

Faster. Faster.

She wasn't fast enough. She wouldn't make it. She would have to jump over the rail, but she had no energy left.

Almost there.

Her lungs heaved, and her legs burned. Another snarl sounded, but it seemed more distant. They were hanging back?

Didn't matter. It gave her a half second to catch her breath, drag stinging air into her overtaxed lungs.

She leaped over the guardrail and staggered forward.

Then she froze in place.

The dogs would be on her at any moment.

But she could not move.

Her brain refused to process the view.

She had reached the top of the peak. The viewpoint. The sight she'd longed to see for three devastating days. She'd made it. She had won.

But the ocean was gone.

An endless blistering desert lay where crisp blue water should have lapped at the cliff side. The stench of baking salt and seaweed burned her nose. Her lungs constricted from a single heaving gulp of the acrid air.

Her babies weren't here.

They hadn't made it.

There were no people. No survivors. No base camp. No help.

No hope.

Her knees threatened to collapse under her. The need to cry without tears made her eyes blister like acid. She wanted to scream but had no more voice. She wanted to pull out her hair but was too weak to lift her arms. She could wake up from this nightmare, but she wasn't sleeping.

She was alive. She wanted to live.

Earth wanted her dead.

A snapping growl jarred her out of her stupor and she whirled around, backing away from the dogs as they advanced.

Her foot hit the precipice and skidded in the sand.

Slipped off.

Her stomach dropped and her weight plunged backward.

And she fell over the edge of the cliff.