Walking through the Boardwalk's territory felt different from every other part of Atlantic City we'd moved through since the outbreak. The streets were swept. Actual swept, the kind of clean that took daily effort to maintain, not the accidental cleanliness of a place nobody used anymore. People moved along the paths between buildings with purpose and without urgency, talking to each other, carrying things, doing the ordinary work of keeping a community running. Kids cut between adults' legs and got called back. Someone was hanging laundry from a line strung between two lamp posts.
It was jarring in the best possible way.
"It barely looks like there was ever an apocalypse here," Cindy said, turning slowly as she walked, taking it all in. The impression on her face was genuine, not polite but actually impressed. "Like, at all."
