She arose so abruptly the rat took alarm and disappeared. She would have to get out, she told herself. She would return to the marsh, take the little path and go back to the highway. Once there, she would be relatively safe.
But she soon found that she was hopelessly lost. The cattail marsh had vanished. She trudged on with growing apprehension, encountering bigger mounds and deeper gullies. The blazing sun seemed reflected back from every inch of the scorched sour earth. Her head began to ache; she developed a raging, tormenting thirst.
Rats watched her warily. Once a sea gull swung down, surveyed her with its cruel eyes and flapped off silently.
Finally her legs simply gave out. She collapsed weeping. Ralph had gone; they had all gone. She was now convinced that she was alone in the dump. Surely, by now, someone would have seen her, heard her. They had all left; perhaps the State had driven them out.
Shadows were beginning to slant across the gullies by the time she got up. She was dry-eyed, but her legs ached, her eyes smarted and her throat was so parched she could scarcely swallow. When she tried to call out, her voice was only a whisper. Her first terror had passed. Now she felt a kind of calm despair.
Rounding a huge bank of calcified waste, she stopped, frozen. She was feverish, she concluded, dying maybe, for there scant yards away was a group of people, a shack of some sort, a cleared area which was like a little island of orderliness in an ocean of congealed chaos. She stared, unbelieving.
Someone saw her, exclaimed, and the whole group turned to stare at her.
"Lucy!"
It was Ralph. He broke from the group, bolted toward her. "Lucy! Lucy! How did you—What on earth—" She was in his arms then and he was laughing and she was crying. She was too exhausted and too thirsty to talk. She simply fell into his arms and he carried her toward the shack. The others crowded around, murmuring sympathetically.
Ralph settled her into a big broken-down armchair under the tin roof. Someone else held out a dipper of cool water, the sweetest water she had ever tasted in her life. Mrs. Morgee appeared with a wet cloth and began bathing her forehead and face. Someone took off her shoes.