Page 16 of One Adult, Please

"Thank you. That's literally all I ask."

He's quiet for a second. "I've been thinking," he says. "We should leave."

The words hit my chest and knock over all the tiny emotional furniture I had arranged overnight.

"Leave," I repeat.

"The park. The emergency broadcasts were directing people to county checkpoints before the radio went down. If one is still operating and we can find a vehicle with keys, we could reach a checkpoint by…"

"No. Hard no. Cement-dry no. No that has been laminated and framed and hung on the wall no."

He shifts on the bench. His wrench rotates in his hands, a slow quarter-turn. "When the generators die, circulation and life support stop. The animals start dying. The emergency valves and sump pumps go offline. If the damaged intake line gives way after that, Celestial Bay floods. I can't keep…"

"Then we stop powering things we don't need. Rides. Lights. Music. Whatever's still draining the system."

"That buys time. It doesn't make this place permanent."

"Time is what we need first. You know the systems. We ration power, clear the park, inventory everything, and figure out permanent after we survive today."

He looks at me the way he did last night when I said I didn't want to be alone.

"I didn't jump the hip gate, skin both knees, steal emergency churros, and become the subject of Craig's fruit-purse incident report just to go back out there." I gesture toward the ceiling, toward the surface, toward the enormous, ruined outside. "Out there is highway and wrong people and towns that don't have a Target. And you want us to just... drive through that? In what? My Kia Soul? With a wrench and a stabby fork and good intentions?"

"The stabby fork is foam."

"I know it's foam, Joel. That's my point."

He blinks.

I realize I'm standing. I don't remember standing up.

"This place has walls that go all the way around. It has fences. The whole point of a theme park is crowd control with snacks. Lines, gates, ropes, signs, funnel cakes. You make people shuffle through a maze and then charge them nine dollars for lemonade. That's infrastructure. Evil infrastructure, but infrastructure."

He's watching me and his face is doing something I haven't seen before.

"The food courts," I continue, because stopping now would imply I have doubts. "Every zone has restaurants. Kitchens with walk-in freezers. Industrial refrigerators. Canned goods, dry goods. Enough napkins to survive a winter. The gift shops have water, ponchos, batteries, overpriced socks, and the kind of plush inventory that could become insulation if we stop respecting it. The band-aid houses have supplies. The maintenance rooms have tools. You said you keep the whole building alive. So keep it alive for us."

"Band-aid houses," he says.

"You know what I mean."

"The first-aid stations. I do."

"Of course you do." It comes out soft, which is rude of my mouth. My mouth has been unsupervised for twelve hours and apparently it's making tone choices now.

Joel is quiet for a long moment. "The park has four zones," he says slowly. "Celestial Bay, Mythic Frontier, Wonder Garden, Solar Plaza."

I nod for him to keep going.

"Solar Plaza is the main hub. Open. Exposed. No defensible position."

"Then we skip it. Or we clear it last."

"Mythic Frontier is the largest zone. Roller coasters, themed buildings, a lot of open-air exhibits. Multiple entry points."

"So we close the entry points. You know where the gates are. You know which ones lock."

"Wonder Garden is partially outdoor. Animal enclosures, botanical areas. Harder to secure."