I heaved out one of the bleach bottles, hoping Melanie was right. My arms felt weak and noodley, barely able to lift it. This concerned us both. How much had our condition deteriorated already? How much farther would we be able to go?

The bottle’s cap was so tight, I wondered if it had melted into place. Finally, though, I was able to twist it off with my teeth. I sniffed at the opening carefully, not especially wanting to pass out from bleach fumes. The chemical scent was very faint. I sniffed deeper. It was water, definitely. Stagnant, musty water, but water all the same. I took a small mouthful. Not a fresh mountain stream, but wet. I started guzzling.

Easy there, Melanie warned me, and I had to agree. We’d lucked into this cache, but it made no sense to squander it. Besides, I wanted something solid now that the salt burn had eased. I turned to the box of Twinkies and licked three of the smooshed-up cakes from the inside of the wrappers.

The last cupboard was empty.

As soon as the hunger pangs had eased slightly, Melanie’s impatience began to leak into my thoughts. Feeling no resistance this time, I quickly loaded my spoils into my pack, pitching the empty water bottles into the sink to make room. The bleach jugs were heavy, but theirs was a comforting weight. It meant I wouldn’t stretch out to sleep on the desert floor thirsty and hungry again tonight. With the sugar energy beginning to buzz through my veins, I loped back out into the bright afternoon.

CHAPTER 12.Failed

It’s impossible! You’ve got it wrong! Out of order! That can’t be it!”

I stared into the distance, sick with disbelief that was turning quickly to horror.

Yesterday morning I’d eaten the last mangled Twinkie for breakfast. Yesterday afternoon I’d found the double peak and turned east again. Melanie had given me what she promised was the last formation to find. The news had made me nearly hysterical with joy. Last night, I’d drunk the last of the water. That was day four.

This morning was a hazy memory of blinding sun and desperate hope. Time was running out, and I’d searched the skyline for the last milestone with a growing sense of panic. I couldn’t see any place where it could fit; the long, flat line of a mesa flanked by blunt peaks on either end, like sentinels. Such a thing would take space, and the mountains to the east and north were thick with toothy points. I couldn’t see where the flat mesa could be hiding between them.

Midmorning-the sun was still in the east, in my eyes-I’d stopped to rest. I’d felt so weak that it frightened me. Every muscle in my body had begun to ache, but it was not from all the walking. I could feel the ache of exertion and also the ache from sleeping on the ground, and these were different from the new ache. My body was drying out, and this ache was my muscles protesting the torture of it. I knew that I couldn’t keep going much longer.

I’d turned my back on the east to get the sun off my face for a moment.

That’s when I’d seen it. The long, flat line of the mesa, unmistakable with the bordering peaks. There it was, so far away in the distant west that it seemed to shimmer above a mirage, floating, hovering over the desert like a dark cloud. Every step we’d walked had been in the wrong direction. The last marker was farther to the west than we’d come in all our journeying.

“Impossible,” I whispered again.

Melanie was frozen in my head, unthinking, blank, trying desperately to reject this new comprehension. I waited for her, my eyes tracing the undeniably familiar shapes, until the sudden weight of her acceptance and grief knocked me to my knees. Her silent keen of defeat echoed in my head and added one more layer to the pain. My breathing turned ragged-a soundless, tearless sobbing. The sun crept up my back; its heat soaked deep into the darkness of my hair.

My shadow was a small circle beneath me when I regained control. Painstakingly, I got back on my feet. Tiny sharp rocks were embedded in the skin on my legs. I didn’t bother to brush these off. I stared at the floating mesa mocking me from the west for a long, hot time.

And finally, not really sure why I did it, I started walking forward. I knew only this: that it was me who moved and no one else. Melanie was so small in my brain-a tiny capsule of pain wrapped tightly in on her herself. There was no help from her.

My footsteps were a slow crunch, crunch across the brittle ground.

“He was just a deluded old lunatic, after all,” I murmured to myself. A strange shudder rocked my chest, and a hoarse coughing ripped its way up my throat. The stream of gravelly coughs rattled on, but it wasn’t until I felt my eyes pricking for tears that couldn’t come that I realized I was laughing.

“There was… never… ever… anything out here!” I gasped between spasms of hysteria. I staggered forward as though I were drunk, my footprints trailing unevenly behind me.

No. Melanie uncurled from her misery to defend the faith she still clung to. I got it wrong or something. My fault.

I laughed at her now. The sound was sucked away by the scorching wind.

Wait, wait, she thought, trying to pull my attention from the joke of it all. You don’t think… I mean, do you think that maybe they tried this?

Her unexpected fear caught me midlaugh. I choked on the hot air, my chest throbbing from my fit of morbid hysteria. By the time I could breathe again, all trace of my black humor was gone. Instinctively, my eyes swept the desert void, looking for some evidence that I was not the first to waste my life this way. The plain was impossibly vast, but I couldn’t halt my frantic search for… remains.

No, of course not. Melanie was already comforting herself. Jared’s too smart. He would never come out here unprepared like we did. He’d never put Jamie in danger.

I’m sure you’re right, I told her, wanting to believe it as much as she did. I’m sure no one else in the whole universe could be this stupid. Besides, he probably never came to look. He probably never figured it out. Wish you hadn’t.

My feet kept moving. I was barely aware of the action. It meant so little in the face of the distance ahead. And even if we were magically transported to the very base of the mesa, what then? I was absolutely positive there was nothing there. No one waited at the mesa to save us.

“We’re going to die,” I said. I was surprised that there was no fear in my rasping voice. This was just a fact like any other. The sun is hot. The desert is dry. We are going to die.

Yes. She was calm, too. This, death, was easier to accept than that our efforts had been guided by insanity.

“That doesn’t bother you?”

She thought for a moment before answering.

At least I died trying. And I won. I never gave them away. I never hurt them. I did my best to find them. I tried to keep my promise… I die for them.

I counted nineteen steps before I could respond. Nineteen sluggish, futile crunches across the sand.

“Then what am I dying for?” I wondered, the pricking feeling returning in my desiccated tear ducts. “I guess it’s because I lost, then, right? Is that why?”

I counted thirty-four crunches before she had an answer to my question.

No, she thought slowly. It doesn’t feel that way to me. I think… Well, I think that maybe… you’re dying to be human. There was almost a smile in her thought as she heard the silly double meaning to the phrase. After all the planets and all the hosts you’ve left behind, you’ve finally found the place and the body you’d die for. I think you’ve found your home, Wanderer.

Ten crunches.

I didn’t have the energy to open my lips anymore. Too bad I didn’t get to stay here longer, then.