“I’ll be fine,” he told Amy, who was, after everything that had happened, the same. Her scalded skin had peeled away, exposing, beneath it, a new layer, white as moonlit milk. “Just a few days off my feet and I’ll be right as rain.”

He took to his cot under the eaves in the room next to Amy’s. He felt the days passing around him, through him. He was dying, he knew. The fast-dividing cells of his body-the lining of his throat and stomach, his hair, the gums that held his teeth-were being killed off first, because wasn’t that what radiation did? And now it had found the core of him, reaching into him like a great, lethal hand, black and bird-boned. He felt himself dissolving, like a pill in water, the process irrevocable. He should have tried to get them off the mountain, but that moment was long passed. At the periphery of his consciousness, he was aware of Amy’s presence, her movements in the room, her watchful, too-wise eyes upon him. She held cups of water to his broken lips; he did his best to drink, wanting the moisture but wanting, even more, to please her, to offer some assurance that he would become well. But nothing would stay down.

“I’m all right,” she told him, again and again, though perhaps he was dreaming this. Her voice was quiet, close to his ear. She stroked his forehead with a cloth. He felt her soft breath on his face in the darkened room. “I’m all right.”

She was a child. What would become of her, after he was gone? This girl who barely slept or ate, whose body knew nothing of illness or pain?

No, she wouldn’t die. That was the worst of it, the terrible thing they’d done. Time parted around her, like waves around a pier. It moved past her while Amy stayed the same. And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years. However they had done it, Amy would not, could not die.

I’m sorry, he thought. I did my best and it wasn’t enough. I was too afraid from the start. If there was a plan, I couldn’t see it. Amy, Eva, Lila, Lacey. I was just a man. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

Then one night he awoke and he was alone. He sensed this right away: a feeling in the air around him of departure, of absence and flight. Just lifting the blanket required all the strength he could muster; the feel of its weave in his hand was like sandpaper, like spikes of fire to the touch. He rose to a sitting position, a monumental effort. His body was an immense, dying thing his mind could scarcely contain. And yet it was still his-the same body he’d lived in all the days of his life. How strange it was to die, to feel it leaving him. Yet another part of him had always known. To die, his body told him. To die. That is why we live, to die.

“Amy,” he said, and heard his voice, the palest croak. A weak and useless sound, without form, speaking a name to no one in a dark room. “Amy.”

He managed his way down the stairs to the kitchen and lit the lamp. Under its flickering glow, everything appeared just as it had been, though somehow the place seemed changed-the same room where he and Amy had lived together a year, yet someplace completely new. He could not have said what hour it was, what day, what month. Amy was gone.

He stumbled from the lodge, down the porch, into the dark forest. A lidded eye of moon was hanging over the tree line, like a child’s toy suspended on a wire, a smiling moon face dangling above a baby’s crib. Its light spilled over a landscape of ashes, everything dying, the world’s living surface peeled away to reveal the rocky core of all. Like a stage set, Wolgast thought, a stage set for the end of all things, all memories of things. He moved through the broken white dust without direction, calling, calling her name.

He was in the trees now, in the woods, the lodge some nameless distance behind him. He doubted he could find his way back, but this didn’t matter. It was over; he was over. Even weeping was beyond his power. In the end, he thought, it came down to choosing a place. If you were lucky, that’s what you got to do.

He was above the river, under the moon, among the naked, leafless trees. He sank to his knees and sat with his back against one and closed his weary eyes. Something was moving above him in the branches, but he sensed this only vaguely. A rustling of bodies in the trees. Something someone had told him once, many lifetimes past, about moving in the trees at night. But to recall the meaning of these words required a force of will he no longer possessed; the thought left him, alone.

A new feeling moved through him then, cold and final, like a draft from an open door onto the deepest hour of winter, onto the stilled space between stars. When daybreak found him he would be no more. Amy, he thought as the stars began to fall, everywhere and all around; and he tried to fill his mind with just her name, his daughter’s name, to help him from his life.

Amy, Amy, Amy.

III. THE LASTCITY

******** NOTICE OF EVACUATION ********

U.S. Military Forces Command

Eastern Quarantine Zone, Philadelphia, PA

By order of Gen. Travis Cullen, Acting General of the Army and Supreme Commander of the Eastern Quarantine Zone, and His Honor George Wilcox, Mayor of the City of Philadelphia:

All minor children between four (4) and thirteen (13) years of age and residing in the uninfected areas MARKED IN GREEN (“Safe Zones”) within the City of Philadelphia and the three counties west of the Delaware River (Montgomery, Delaware, Bucks) are ordered to report to AMTRAK 30th STREET STATION for immediate embarkation.

Each child MUST bring:

· A birth certificate, Social Security card, or valid United States passport.

· Proof of residency, such as a utility bill in the name of parent or legal guardian, or a valid refugee card.

· Current immunization record.

· A responsible adult to assist with evacuation processing.

Each child MAY bring:

· ONE container for personal effects, measuring no larger than 22″ × 14″ × 9″. DO NOT BRING PERISHABLES. Food and water will be provided on the train.

· A bedroll or sleeping bag.

The following items will NOT be permitted on the trains or within the EVACUEE PROCESSING AREA:

· Firearms

· Any knife or penetrating weapon longer than 3 inches

· Pets

· No parents or guardians will be allowed to enter Amtrak 30th Street Station.

· Any person or persons interfering with the evacuation will be SHOT.

· Any unauthorized person attempting to board the trains will be SHOT.

God Save the People of the United States and the City of Philadelphia