It's difficult to know just how seriously to take Ludd's nightmarish "on-the-crumbling-road" fable. Some of the material is clearly tongue in cheek, while other sections are unrelievedly grim. Colorado is reeling from the reign of a more-than-right-wing "Pastor Governor" who, while imposing societal fundamentalism, had conducted hideous experiments undreamt of since Hitler's heyday. Now, in the wake of his escape, various factions vie for power, none of them giving a damn about the average Joe or Jill. The book's chapter headings are made up of the names of cocktail music artists – "Ferrante and Teicher", "Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66", "Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass" – without any connection between the names and the action. It's almost as if Ludd is saying if you grew up listening to this sanitized muzak, compare your affluence to what you might have endured if history had turned just a degree or two. (My father had these albums – in some cases, these eight-tracks. I grew up listening to them. I don't know about you.) The landscape is made even more horrifying because it's not post-apocalyptic, but rather post-capitalistic.

The only goal the teens have in mind is to locate a home Gus once knew. Before the civil war, Gus, then a hustler, participated in gay tryst with a suburban father while the family was away. Once the pilgrims find the neighborhood, their attempts to set up housekeeping are both humorous and harrowing. They are the nuclear family turned on its head and crucified like St. Peter.

It's impossible to ignore the undercurrent of religion, although Ludd refuses to make anything explicit. During the exposition, Walter, a teen even younger than Gus, is brought to a hospital. Walter is slightly wounded and protected by an unnamed guardian who refers to Walter as the "Messiah" (and then commits suicide). Later in the book, the threesome find Walter and take him under their dubious care. If Walter is the reborn Christ, his ascendancy must come after the book's close. He performs no miracles, and if he redeems anyone, it's only Gladys – and even then, it doesn't give anything away to tell you he leads all of them to tragedy by the end of the book. (Walter also has the unsettling habit of wearing girls' clothing.)

A recurring detail is the graffiti slogan "666KING", spray-painted wherever the wanderers roam. Is this rebellion on the part of Coloradans against their former Pastor Governor (named, interestingly enough, Kingson)? Will Walter become the future Antichrist? Or is this a world already in the Dark Times, civilization fraying under Satan's thumb?

The teens' journey is interesting enough in its own right, if only as a blueprint for survival in the event of world-wide collapse in the wake of Y2K. But as a reader, I still long for plot, direction, theme... all of which Ludd deliberately refuses to provide. No Aloha... no hellos, no goodbyes. Merely a slice of life and death in a world no one would care to inhabit very long. Perhaps Ludd wants us to see we're living there already, and we just haven't realized it yet.

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