OOM: Back in America

America had become an endless sea of quarantine zones and checkpoints. So many dead that funerals were impossible, the only blessing was that the virus was dormant after death.

Every tenth person was immune - the news she caught yesterday talked about how people were slowly trying to get back to normal. Kim can still remember hearing the stories, listening to people sobbing about how they had to watch their father/mother/brother/sister/lover/best friend... die.

A day or so after he was captured, someone tried to break into Guatanamo Bay and kill Saunders. He had been moved to an undisclosed location but he had yet to give up any useful information. Kim understands the meaning of those words and although she doesn't like the idea of torture or murder, she privately thinks that no amount of torment could ever make up for all the dead.

It is a changed America that Kim drives through. She entered a month or so ago, going over the border much the same way she got into Canada.

She's driving back to LA, because she has to see if anything is left. She doesn't know where she got all this money, but it's certainly helped her travels.

The authorities are still looking for her dad and for the Salazars.

'I remember them dying,' she thinks, but she isn't sure if that's a real memory anymore. She has vague thoughts about a different life, and there's missing time in this one that she can't reconcile. At night she dreams about a bar. But the things that happen in her dreams...those can't be real. Magic doesn't exist.

After they captured Saunders, they turned their attention to finding her dad. She's seen his picture on the news and in papers and each time it hurts. She goes around America but feels responsible for what happened. When people are nice she wants to yell at them: don't you know who I am? But of course they don't, not with her red hair and colored contacts.

All hotels require proof of being virus free - a clean bill of health more important than any ID.

Kim's in a hotel room somewhere near the California border. She turns on the television, although the only thing to watch now is news and shows from other countries.

She's in the middle of watching a French soap when her cell phone rings. It's Andrew.

"Andrew?"

"Kim, Chloe wanted me to call you, someone may have spotted your dad down in Mexico."

"Where in Mexico?"

"Near Guaymas. Needless to say, pretty much every available government agent is on their way down there."

"I know. Thank you for calling me, Andrew."

"Kim, even if he didn't do these things...why do you want to find him?"

She sniffles and tries not to cry, even though she though she thought she was beyond tears. "Because I need to see him and I need to know what happened."

If he's responsible she wants to hear that from him, not from the news, because she knows it's the only way she'll ever believe it. But she isn't sure what will happen after that and she doesn't know how she'll live hating him so deeply. She can't imagine what would make her dad turn, how he could live with killing so many innocent people. A few years ago he had been willing to die to save them and now...

'Is this how Jane felt?' she thinks and for a moment those other memories seep through and she doesn't understand them, who's Jane?

"I can understand that," he whispers and she knows that his mom was killed by the virus and feels guilty all over again.

"Thank you again, Andrew." She hangs up and stands to leave the room.

No time to sleep, she has to get to Mexico.