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He struck a bargain with her: he would count to three; she would open her eyes and keep thean "Two Three!"

She opened her eyes, every ain, running the flashlight’s bealass, no trace of visible injury: her eyes were clear

"Three!"

She closed her eyes again, shaking and fiercely weeping

He dressed Amy’s skin with burn creae, and carried her upstairs to bed "Your eyes are going to be fine," he assured her, though he didn’t know if this was so "I think it’s just te at the flash" For a while he sat with her, until her breathing quieted and he knew she was asleep They should try to get away, he thought, to put some distance between theo? First the fires and then the rain, and the road off the mountain had all but washed away They could try it on foot, but how far could he hope to get, barely able to walk hih the woods? The best he could hope for was that the blast was sht it was, or that the ould push the radiation in the other direction

In the first aid kit he found a s needle and a ball of black thread It was just an hour before dahen he descended the stairs to the kitchen At the table, by la and his blood-soaked pants The cut was deep but remarkably clean, the skin like torn butcher’s paper over a blood-red slab of steak He’d sewed on buttons, once hemmed a pair of his pants How hard could it be? From the cabinet over the sink he retrieved the bottle of Scotch he’d found at Milton’s, all those lass He sat and took the Scotch, quickly, tipping his face back to drink without tasting, poured a second, and drank that, too Then he rose, washed his hands at the kitchen sink, taking his ti, and put it in his mouth; he took the bottle of Scotch in one hand and the threaded needle in the other He wished he hadbreath and held it Then he poured Scotch over the cut

This, it turned out, was the worst part After that, sewing the wound closed was al

He awoke to find he’d slept with his head on the table; the rooe cheray snoas falling On his bandaged leg, throbbing with pain, Wolgast hobbled froe onto the porch Not snow, he realized: ashes He descended the steps Ashes fell onto his face, into his hair Strangely, he felt no fear, not for himself or even for A the ash of souls

· · ·

He could have moved them to the basement, but there seemed no point The radiation would be everywhere, in the air they breathed, in the food they ate, in the water that ran from the lake to the pump in the kitchen They kept to the second floor, where at least the boarded-up s offered some protection Three days later, the day he rees-she could see after all, just as he’d proan to vo after the only thing left to co was infected, or else the radiation had done so the bandages It gave off a foul smell, a smell that was in his mouth too, in his eyes and nose It seemed to be in every part of him

"I’ll be fine," he told A that had happened, the sa, beneath it, a new layer, white as ht as rain"

He took to his cot under the eaves in the roo around hi cells of his body-the lining of his throat and sto killed off first, because wasn’t that what radiation did? And now it had found the core of hireat, lethal hand, black and bird-boned He felt hi, like a pill in water, the process irrevocable He should have tried to get the passed At the periphery of his consciousness, he are 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 , even more, to please her, to offer so would stay down

"I’h perhaps he was drea 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 rooht"

She was a child What would becoirl 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, Aht I did h 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’ht he awoke and he was alone He sensed this right away: a feeling in the air around hi 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, ahis mind could scarcely contain And yet it was still his-the sae 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 e live, to die

"Amy," he said, and heard his voice, the palest croak A weak and useless sound, without fored his way down the stairs to the kitchen and lit the la appeared just as it had been, though soed-the saether a year, yet someplace completely new He could not have said what hour it hat day, what e, down the porch, into the dark forest A lidded eye ofover the tree line, like a child’s toy suspended on a wire, a sht 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 h the broken white dust without direction, calling, calling her nae some nameless distance behind him He doubted he could find his way back, but this didn’twas beyond his power In the end, he thought, it ca a place If you were lucky, that’s what you got to do

He was above the river, under thethe nad, leafless trees He sank to his knees and sat with his back against one and closed his weary eyes So above hi of bodies in the trees So so in the trees at night But to recall the er possessed; the thought left hih 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 hian to fall, everywhere and all around; and he tried to fill his hter’s name, to help him from his life

Amy, Amy, Amy

III

THE

LAST CITY

2 AV

Music, when soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory;

Odors, when sweet violets sicken,

Live within the sense they quicken

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,

Are heaped for the beloved’s bed;

And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,

Love itself shall slumber on