Before her lay endless barren hills.
According to the map, this place should originally have been wooded mountains, but now it had turned entirely into desert. Perhaps it was because of the
drought?
After leaving the San Francisco area, the girl headed straight southeast, holding a compass and pushing a little
cart, stumbling across the barren
hills.
According to the map, southeast of San Francisco stood a fairly prosperous city in the state of Nevada,
though she had no idea what
it was called. After all, she did not understand English.
What she did not know, however, was that this city was the world-famous gambling capital, Las Vegas.
If anywhere still had a sizable population, that world-famous inland city surely had survivors,
but she did not realize that even
in a straight line, Las Vegas was over six hundred and fifty kilometers from San Francisco.
Even driving along the highway at seventy kilometers per hour would take at least ten hours.
At her walking pace of twenty kilometers a day, the trip would take at least a month. The supplies in her little cart
would not even feed her for three days.
If she kept going like this, never mind whether she could last a month—what she would eat after three days was already a problem.
But she could hardly be blamed. She did not understand English and could only make out where the cities were.
And so the girl walked on, checking her surroundings against the map as she stumbled forward.
The highway was littered with abandoned cars. Even if she could repair one, there was no fuel left.
Her starting point was called Hayward. Heading straight southeast, the next city was Modesto, which Chinese people translated as "Peony
City."
For three whole days, the girl did little besides