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traffic. My steps were lighter as we passed the old construction site Caleb and I had seen the day we’d first arrived. “That’s it!” I cried, as the road curved up, hugging the ocean. The giant building was just ahead, its blue plaster falling down in clumps. IK A was spelled out in yellow letters, with only a faint shadow where the E had once been.
    All that separated me from Caleb was an empty parking lot and a concrete wall. I started running, ignoring the ache in my knee from where I had fallen, and Arden’s voice calling out behind me. “You shouldn’t go alone,” she tried.
    I had thought about this moment so many times. In those weeks after I arrived in Califia, I’d stare up at the sky, reminding myself that Caleb and I were both underneath it. That wherever he was, whatever he was doing (Hunting? Sleeping? Preparing dinner over a fire?), we would always share something. Sometimes I’d pick a specific building in the city and imagine him inside, reading a water-stained book as he rested there, waiting for his leg to heal. I was convinced we would return to one another—it was only the how and when that had yet to be decided.
    When I reached the glass doors, they were locked, their metal handles threaded with a heavy chain. But two of the bottom panes had been kicked out, and I crawled through, careful not to cut myself on the shards of glass. Inside, the massive store was dark and silent. The morning light coming in through the doors cast a faint glow on the concrete floor. I felt for the flashlight in my pack and turned it on, making my way farther in.
    The beam flitted around the room, settling on a crate of moldy pillows, then on an old bed frame and a dresser, a lamp and books sitting on top of it as though it were someone’s home. A kitchen was nestled in one corner, the refrigerator and stove still in place, and a sitting room down the hall with a long blue sofa. I had passed stores before, seen their long, narrow interiors, but this felt like a giant maze, with each room spilling into the next.
    I heard a rustling and jumped back, the beam of the flashlight hitting the floor just in time to reveal a rat scurrying by. In the dining room beyond, a few of the chairs were turned on their sides. I didn’t want to risk calling out into the darkness. Instead I kept silent, walking as lightly as I could over litter and broken glass.
    I wound through the rooms, shining the flashlight in corners to be certain I hadn’t missed anything. I moved past beds and tables and chairs, my eyes slowly adjusting to the dark. I was looking in one of the fake shower stalls when I heard it: a faint coughing. It was coming from my right, a few rooms away. “Here,” a voice called weakly. “Eve? I’m here.”
    I covered my mouth, too shaken to reply. Instead I ran, weaving through the rooms, my heart light. Caleb was alive. He was here. He had survived.
    As I got closer I spotted three candles on the floor. A man’s silhouette was visible on the bed. I started toward him, but when I reached the bedroom, he wasn’t alone. There were more of them—three men altogether. One sat in an armchair in the corner, his skin ghostly pale. Another stood by the room’s other entrance, blocking the path through. His face was scarred, and he wore dirt-caked pants and the same boots Missy had described in Califia. The others were in uniform, the New American crest pasted on their shirtsleeves.
    “Hello, Eve,” the man on the bed offered. “We’ve been waiting for you.” He sat up slowly and studied me, his face half in shadow. The thin hairs on the back of my neck bristled. I knew him. I knew this man.
    His eyes looked out from behind thick black lashes. He was young—no older than seventeen—but his face seemed more mature than it did when we’d encountered him at the base of the mountain that day. The day I had shot and killed the two soldiers. After he had stitched up Caleb’s leg, I had released him. I had let him go