Chapter 13
I PULLED the police cruiser into the Winchester Mall parking lot on top of South Hill. The lot had begged for new pavement before the human race noticed Absolute, and nobody’d had asphalt to spare up until the day it had digested them. Someone had dragged the abandoned cars scattered around the lot into a ragged row, but a minivan and the girls’ tiny white plastic electric two-seater sat in the handicapped spots near the east entrance.
Ceren must have driven today. Alice parked next to the handicapped spaces.
Other than a few scattered oaks and maples, rolling fields with distant pines and elms along the far side filled in the highlands up around the mall. Absolute hadn’t restored the final corn crop, leaving the fields as furrowed black earth filling the air with the smells
