For Holly, it had only been six weeks. It was morning and her feet hurt, but she was used to it by now. Downtown Los Angeles loomed a few miles to the north, which meant she’d walked almost a hundred and forty miles so far. She was glad she’d dumped her sneakers for a pair of solid hiking boots. She walked up the middle of the road. It made her more visible, but also gave her a clear line of sight to everything else. She’d tried skulking in alleys and between cars for the first few days, the way an outsider would, and it just hadn’t worked. Besides, with no cars running, it was amazing how quiet things were. Holly looked back and forth, listened for a moment, then looked around again. She carefully set her baseball bat down. It was an aluminum one—a cheater’s bat, her husband had joked back when he was just her boyfriend—with cloth tape around the handle and a dull blue practice weight fitted around the end. She’d cleaned it off half an hour ago, right after using it, but the weighted donut had some sticky spots on it that looked black against the blue.
