The first thing Jenny learned was that silence had weight.

Not the quiet of a house after everyone had gone to bed. Not the desert quiet she remembered from camping trips, when you could still hear an airplane somewhere above you or tires moving along a highway miles away.

This was different.

Nothing hummed anymore.

She stood in the middle of the road and listened anyway.

Cars sat wherever people had left them—doors open, windows broken, some pointed in directions that made no sense. A child's sneaker lay near the center divider. Just one. Jenny had stopped wondering about things like that.

She adjusted the pack on her shoulder and kept walking.

Somewhere behind her was Las Vegas.

Somewhere ahead was California.

At least that was the plan.

Plans had become funny things.

Three weeks ago she had been a caseworker. She had carried a phone that never stopped ringing, complained about paperwork, and spent most of her days trying to convince people not to ruin their lives.

Now she carried water, a knife she didn't particularly know how to use, and exactly fourteen crackers.

She had counted them twice.

Not because she was hungry.

Because fourteen was something she could still control.

Jenny looked toward the mountains.

“Well,” she said to nobody.

“This is going great.”

And she started walking again.