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Carola Dibbell

The Only Ones

For my daughter, Nina

BEFORE I START, LET ME SAY REALLY FAST, DON’T worry. You’re not in trouble. I will not track you down or hurt you — nothing like that. I just got a few things to tell you that you really need to hear, and you need to hear them from me, not someone else. Ok. That’s it for ead>

1 THE LIFE

THE HYBROBUS STOPPED RIGHT BESIDE THE RIVER checkpoint, like Rauden said it will. The driver wore a mask.

They generally check your Pass real good when you go out of state, but this guy didn’t even look — just took my bus coupon and off we go. I guess whatever bad thing someone from where I’m from could have, they already got it in New Jersey. I recognized the smell. Hygiene spray and smoke. It even stinks inside the bus. Outside, the regular stuff — barricades, caution tape. I think I saw some person look out a window at us, but that’s it. No one is on the street. Me, the driver, a couple passengers all the way in back, it’s like we are the only ones even alive out here. At least I’m out of Queens.

Man! I am glad to be out of Queens.

We pass a bunch of houses burnt right to the ground. We got that in Queens too.

I am glad to be on a trip. I never even been to this side of the river. I been to Pennsylvania. Once. Well, I think I been in Connecticut. But the van they took me in did not have windows. Pennsylvania was in a Dome. I did not see a single Dome here. Maybe they keep them in some other part of New Jersey. Here is just burnt houses and smoke.

Then the smoke is gone. The houses are just empty. Then no houses. It is just a road, in Jersey, or I don’t know where. The road is in good shape. Snow is melting, and everything is wet.

I woke up in a Terminal in a checkpoint called End Of Line, and outside a fat guy with a beard is standing in snow, saying to his Mobile, “She’s here,” and when he reached out to take the Pak I brought him from Queens, I recognized the hands. I saw them when he hired me. It’s Rauden. The rest of him was in one of those stupid bubble suits clients wear when they come to do business where I work. We call it the Mound. If they come by boat, they could just wear a mask.

“The dropoff work as planned?” Rauden asked. “Nobody touched the Pak?”

“Just the guy who brought it and he got off the Mound real fast. ”

I am glad to be off the Mound myself. Cold out there. The girls all wear two coats because weatch out for the neckop got to stand right on the edge of Powell’s Cove, in case somebody wants to hire us from their stupid boat. They come in boats so they don’t have to go too far in Queens. Nobody wants to go too far in Queens.

There was a food stand at the Terminal shelter and after the guy put the Pak in his truck, he bought something which is called Chickn N Dumpling. I enjoy that.

I enjoy the truck! I never been in a truck. We head off on a big road through, like, snow, snow, snow. I been out in the sticks before — Pennsylvania was the sticks — but like I say, in a Dome. You don’t see much from a Dome. Here it’s mainly snow. They got a few burnt houses too.