Strangelets by Michelle Gagnon Page A

wishing she’d taken the chance—she’d give anything to be able to call home. Or better yet, to be able to sneak a glance at her photos of Hazim.
    Without warning, they emerged on a road. Two lanes separated by a faded yellow dividing line, in markedly better shape than the parking lots.
    “Which way?” Declan asked.
    Nico looked relieved as he pointed left. “West. This is Upton Road. It should lead us straight there.”
    Despite having to skirt a few giant potholes, the road was much less challenging than picking their way through the forest. Anat sighed with relief as their pace picked up. Maybe they’d make it to town by lunchtime after all.
    Cars were scattered about in odd clusters, as if the drivers had pulled up to each others’ windows for a chat. They appeared long abandoned: uniformly rusty, with flat tires and a thick film of dust coating the windows. Anat peered inside each as they passed. All empty: no bodies inside, which was a relief. There also wasn’t any evidence of a mass evacuation; the cars weren’t packed with suitcases and camping equipment. Just discarded food wrappers, a gym bag, a stuffed dog gazing forlornly out the rear window. But why had the cars been left here? In the aftermath of any natural disaster, clearing the roads was a priority.
    Of course, this was America and not Israel; maybe emergency policies were different here. The American girl might know, and Anat had almost asked her a few times. But Sophie wore a tight, drawn look, as if just putting one foot in front of the other required enormous concentration. So Anat kept pace silently, puzzling it over as she fought a growing sense of apprehension. All of this was very wrong. The cars shouldn’t look so decrepit—they made the worstjunkyard salvage in Tel Aviv look like a Rolls-Royce, and that was saying something. Everything they encountered exuded an air of disuse and abandonment, from the buildings to the cars to the roads. Could a hurricane or earthquake do that? And so quickly?
    Worse yet was the silence. They were on Long Island, close to the greatest concentration of population in the United States. Yet there wasn’t so much as the sound of a car radio in the distance, or far-off construction.
    Declan touched her elbow, shaking her out of the reverie. “I’m going to check on something with Nico,” he said in a low voice. Indicating Sophie with a tilt of his head, he said, “Keep an eye on her?”
    “Of course,” Anat said stiffly. “Tell Nico we need to pick up the pace.”
    “Not sure that’s possible.” Declan glanced at Sophie, who was slumped against one of the cars, her head bowed, arms crossed in front of her chest. They’d found a thin pair of scrubs back at the infirmary, which she’d immediately changed into. She was still barefoot, though, and rested gingerly on the outsides of her feet. “I was actually going to ask about stopping for lunch. She’s really suffering over there.”
    Anat grunted. “She’ll suffer less once we get there.”
    “Says the girl all kitted out for this stroll,” he said, looking pointedly at her boots. “Sophie’s feet are shredded to hell, and she hasn’t walked in weeks. Have a little heart.”
    “So we find her some shoes.”
    “I’ve checked every car we’ve passed,” he said. “None yet.”
    Anat scowled. “Fine.”
    She marched to Sophie and perched on the car’s bumper. Bending over, she started untying her laces.
    “What are you doing?” Sophie asked.
    “Giving you my boots.”
    “But—”
    “They’ll be too large,” Anat said. “But they are better than nothing. I will keep the socks to protect my feet.”
    “You’re sure?” Sophie asked dubiously.
    “I have tough feet,” Anat said.
    “Tough everything, more like,” Declan said, but he was grinning.
    Sophie sat down beside her and pulled the boots on. Standing, she sighed heavily and said, “God, that’s so much better.”
    “Now, please—move faster.”
    “Yes, sir,”