Love in the Time of Global Warming Read Online Free Page B

that I lurch and swerve along; there’s no traffic. Maybe I’m going in circles; I don’t know. The air outside the van is dark with soot and smoke, from the scattered fires, and beneath the burn is the sick-sweet smell of rot. There are no people to be seen. Live ones, anyway. I avoid the sight of the dead like I used to avoid the bad news on television. Back Then I read the Encyclopaedia Britannica or art history books, novels, or poetry but I have no books now when I really need them.
    What I know is this: I have been sent on a journey. I was too afraid before, too afraid for over two months to venture out in the ruined spaces, even if it meant finding my family. But now I am on my way. Merk said he knew my parents, that I might be able to find them.
    I’ve looked through the van for some kind of map but I can’t find even that. Maybe Merk was crazy, but somehow I believe him, or at least I want to. He gave me the van, after all. And what if my family is somewhere out there? I let myself imagine it for a moment, let myself see their faces, see myself falling into their arms, safe in the house we make with our huddled bodies. We’ll have one another. We can set up a camp, live out of the van, forage for food. It’s all I want now. But I have no idea how much the world has changed, not only from the Earth Shaker but in the weeks after, no idea how I’ll ever be brave enough to even find food and water, let alone fight whatever dangers exist.
    *   *   *
    We used to shop at this store a lot. Venice thought it was a big deal to go buy baseball cards and video games and plastic action figures when he was smaller. I always got mad at him for spending his money on overpriced stuff he’d grow tired of soon but he never listened to me. But I was just as free with my allowance, buying underwear and socks, camisoles, slips, and pajama tops I’d wear with jeans during the day. My mom got rolls of toilet paper and cleaning supplies, bags of tea lights and the Christmas lights we strung up all year round. Strange, how exotic and dreamy that sounds now—a trip to the store for toilet paper with my once annoying, now wildly precious family.
    *   *   *
    The big red bull’s-eye sign looms above the building. It’s one of the few things still standing. There are huge cracks in the asphalt of the parking lot. I park the van and get out.
    A gust of cold gray air bites at my neck, chest, and belly like a wild animal that knows where I am most vulnerable. Beads of moisture cling clammily to my skin. My legs shake from driving and from the cold.
    Although the van is well stocked, I still have to find more vegetable oil fuel and more food and water, as well as personal supplies. I walk toward the glass doors where a thirty-foot fiberglass man in a sombrero stands guard. It looks like the burrito-stand man from Pacific Coast Highway. But how did he get here?
    Something is piled in front of the store and I think at first it’s more trash. But then I see these are bones—a heap of them. And there’s no avoiding them now; I’m too close, without the protection of the van. I get that dizzy out-of-body sensation like I did when I was ten and we saw a dog hit by a car. Like it wasn’t real. Though it heaved and bled black blood in the middle of the street, and my dad got out, wrapped it in a blanket, and took it to the vet where it died. I kept my eyes closed the whole way. And that was just one dog. There must be hundreds of bones here. Human bones. Gnawed raw. Just the hair left on the heads like string.
    Through the smashed glass doors I see the aisles filled with things. Just things. But things matter now. They are all I am sure of. They will help me survive, drive, get toward something, anything. Get me away from this. So I keep my eyes open, still pretending the bones aren’t real, go past them, and go inside.
    The aisles are littered with dirt, the floors streaked dark in a way that almost seems obscene. Especially