The Unit Read Online Free Page B

but the kids are steady on their feet. There’s a lake filled with cattails and tule and thick, exotic-looking grasses. I imagine its mirrored surface was once ruffled by white birds perched on stick legs, feeding. Then we’re briefly in oak country. Squirrels’ nests decorate bare branches, and bunches of an oily plant stand against the dark sky. It takes me a few seconds to recognize it, but then I do. The plant is mistletoe. I try to resist it, but an image of a long-ago party rises from memory, Jerry as a young man, giving me whiskey kisses as if kissing were an improved way of talking, and me kissing him back, yes, yes, and yes to all his kiss-sent questions, a holiday fireplace warming our backs and all the world in our arms.
    I shake my head until my vision blurs. I walk until my vision grows sharp again. Only idiots can sustain that wild kind of love, and even then, after a few years it’s false. I miss it sometimes, but what comes up must come down.
    I glance at the yellow sky again. It makes me dizzy to look up while I’m walking. Jerry is ahead, just to my right, and I wonder if my position behind him resembles some paternal code of female subservience from another time or place. I can tell he needs to cough, but he hunches over and fights it. That’s Jerry, always fighting something. He’s fighting for us now, and I wouldn’t want to be the fool who stands in his way. I’ll back him with my last breath, for the time being, but I might as well admit that my plans for the future don’t necessarily include him.

Melanie

    Just before dark, we walk around a long highway curve. The litter here tells the local story—crushed Budweiser cans, empty Marlboro packs, Quarter Pounder with Cheese wrappers, and loaded disposable diapers. The highway curve is banked and it takes forever for us to unwind it and then we’re standing at the base of a hill that’s six lanes wide and disappears into the dirty clouds. It’s like one of those “stairways to nowhere” in the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose.
    As the road gets steeper, we lean forward and put more muscle into our pace. Every step takes us closer to the clouds. Dad and Mom give each other a look, but they keep walking. They don’t stop to talk about what might happen if we breathe the crap in those nasty clouds. They just keep walking, and so do Scott and I, but Scott is shaking his head and muttering to himself, and I think we might have to part ways with Mom and Dad soon.
    We climb until dark. I’m an athlete and I’m tired, so I know the others must be just about wiped out. Mom gives us an MRE pouch of fruit cocktail. Scott and I take turns slurping it down. We spend the night shivering in a roadside ditch, then we walk uphill again. It’s getting colder and there’s more snow. The last gravel spread by the last Caltrans crew crunches under our boots. Lots of cars and trucks died here. The ones that had been going uphill couldn’t coast to the side of the road when they died, so they’re all over the place, some of them backed into ditches, but most of them stopped right where they lost momentum.
    We don’t bother to search the cars and trucks because their doors are all open and they’ve already been picked clean. Dad and Mom and Scott keep their guns at the ready, but there isn’t anyone else here. We climb until the cloud ceiling is just above our heads. When we can’t smell anything but smoke and toxic chemicals and burned meat, Dad stops. He turns and looks as if he wants to apologize. Mom is crying. Scott turns and walks downhill, but Dad tells him to wait.
    “What for?” Scott says. But he turns and walks back to us.
    Dad takes Mom’s hand and they bow their heads. If other people were here I’d be embarrassed as hell, but since we’re alone it just looks sad and pathetic. They pray and nothing happens, of course. We stand in the freezing air and wait for the big head in the sky to pucker up his lips and blow away the clouds. I