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Chapter SEVENTEEN

Summer ended, and fall came, and the world left them alone

The first snows fell in the last week of October Wolgast was chopping wood in the yard when he saw, fro, fat feathers light as dust He’d stripped to his shirtsleeves to work, and when he paused to lift his face and felt the cold on his da, that winter had arrived

He sunk his axe into a log and returned to the house and called up the stairs "Amy!"

She appeared on the top step Her skin saw so little sunlight that it was a rich, porcelain white

"Have you ever seen snow?"

"I don’t know I think so?"

"Well, it’s snowing now" He laughed, and heard the pleasure in his voice "You don’t want to ot her dressed-in her coat and boots but also the glasses and cap, and a thick layer of sunscreen over every exposed inch of her skin-the snow had begun to fall in earnest She stepped out into the whirling whiteness, herfoot on some new planet

"What do you think?"

She tipped her face and stuck out her tongue, an instinctive gesture, to catch and taste the snow

"I like it," she declared

They had shelter, food, heat He’d made twothat once winter came the road would be impassable, and had taken all the food that was left there Rationing the canned goods, the powdered ast believed he couldThe lake was full of fish, and in one of the cabins he’d found an auger A si lines The propane tank was still half full So, the winter He welcomed it, felt his mind relax into its rhythotten the a foot of snow had piled around the cabin The sun burst through the clouds, glaringly bright Wolgast spent the afternoon digging out the woodpile, cutting a trail to connect it to the lodge, and then a second trail to the small cabin he planned to use as an icehouse, now that the cold weather had arrived By noas living an existence that was almost entirely nocturnal-it was easiest siht on the snow see to him, like an explosion he was forced to stare directly into Probably, he thought, that was how even ordinary light felt to her, all the time When darkness fell, the two of theels," he said He lay down on his back Above hient with stars From Milton’s he’d recovered a jar of powdered cocoa, which he hadn’t told Aht they’d dry their wet clothes on the woodstove and sit in its glow and drink hot cocoa "Move your arot down in the snow beside hiymnast’s She el?"

Wolgast thought aof the sort had ever cohost Like Jacob Marley" They had read A Christht in summer when he’d learned she could read-not just read but read expertly, with feeling and expression-Wolgast had uess, yes But not as scary as Jacob Marley" They were still lying side by side in the snow "Angels arewell, I guess they’re like good ghosts Ghosts atch over us, from heaven Or at least soast was taken aback He’d never gotten completely accustomed to Amy’s directness Her lack of inhibition struck him on the one hand as quite childlike, but it was often true that the things she said and the questions she asked him possessed a bluntness that felt somehoise

"I don’t know My ious, very devout My father, probably not He was a good ineer He didn’t think that way"

For a moment, they were silent

"She’s dead," Aht Amy’s eyes were closed

"Who’s dead, Amy?" But as soon as he asked this, he knehom Amy meant: My mother My mother is dead

"I don’t remember her," A hi he must surely know already "But I know she’s dead"

"How do you know?"

"I could feel it" Aast’s in the dark "I feel all of them"

Sometiast could hear her soft cries cos of her cot as she moved restlessly about Not cries exactly but h her in sleep Soo downstairs to the e, the one with the s that looked out over the lake; Wolgast would watch her from the stairs Always she would stand quietly for just a few ht and warmth of the woodstove, her face turned toward the s She was obviously still asleep, and Wolgast knew better than to wake her Then she would turn and cliet back into bed

How do you feel them, Amy? he asked her What do you feel?-I don’t know, she’d say, I don’t know They’re sad They’re so otten who they were Who were they, Aast slept, now, on the first floor of the lodge, in a chair facing the door They et one shot What were they, these things in the trees? Were they people, as Carter had once been a person? What had they becoroho seemed rarely to sleep-for it was true, he’d realized she was only pretending-or to eat; who could read and swi lives and experiences other than her oas she part of them, too? The virus was inert, Fortes had said What if it wasn’t? Wouldn’t he, Wolgast, be sick? But he wasn’t; he felt just as he’d always felt, which was, he realized, simply bewildered, like a ns; the world had soht in March he heard an engine The snoas heavy and deep The moon was full He had fallen asleep in the chair He realized he’d been hearing, as he’d slept, the sound of an engine cohtmare-this sound had beco up the h the woods, the smoke and fire all around, and lost her