She’d been hiking for what felt like maybe an hour when ahead the sky through the trees began to gradually brighten, and then she stepped from the trees onto the rim of a stone outcropping. Far below the cliff, beyond a rough grassy slope embedded with craggy boulders, the forest extended across a vast valley surrounded by a range of rocky mountains with snowy peaks. She scanned the view, daring to hope, but wherever she looked she saw no fire, no smoke, no roads, no power lines, no utility poles, no cell towers, no flashes of daylight reflecting off glass, no electric glow of headlights or taillights or streetlights or lit-up windows. No synthetic colors. No artificial shapes. No signs of human civilization at all. She took out her phone to check if her phone had a signal. Her phone was dead. The fear had returned, a primal animal panic gripping her body. Her heart was suddenly pounding and her hands were suddenly trembling and her mouth had gone bone-dry. She could hear nothing except the howl of the wind. Doom in the air. She felt like maybe she was going to cry.
“Fuck,” Em said, looking out at the wilderness with a sense of helplessness, blinking back the tears.
The clouds had darkened in the sky. A ripple of mist blew across the cliff, the cliff shook at a crack of thunder, and she set her backpack down on the outcropping and took out the poncho and put on the poncho, tugging the hood over her head. She strapped on her backpack. She stood there for a moment, gazing down at the forest with the hem of the poncho snapping in the wind, and then she kept walking.