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"In the bunker? I don’t know I’ve never seen it"

"But you knohere it is"

Theo sipped his shine "I see where you’re going with this, and you can stop right there Our father, well, he had ideas Peter, you know this as well as I do He just couldn’t accept the fact that we’re all that’s left, that there’s no one out there And if he could find others, and if they had guns" His voice trailed away

Alicia lifted in her chair "An ar over all of them "That’s it, isn’t it? He wanted to ht the smokes"

"Which is pointless," Theo said, and Peter heard the bitterness in his brother’s voice "Pointless and crazy The Aruns, and what happened to theuns and rockets and helicopters? No, they didn’t, and I’ll tell you why Because they’re all dead"

Alicia was undeterred "Well, I like it," she said "Hell, I think it’s a great idea"

Theo gave a bitter laugh "I knew you would"

"And I don’t think we’re alone, either," she pressed "There are others Out there, soht? What makes you so sure?"

Alicia appeared suddenly at a loss "Nothing," she said "I just a swirl "You can believe anything you want," he said quietly, "but that doesn’t make it true"

"Our father believed it," Peter said

"Yes, he did, brother And it got hi we talk about, but those are the facts You stand the Mercy and you figure soo out there to let it go Whoever thinks so doesn’t understand the first thing about him He went out there because he just couldn’t stand not knowing, not for one more ot his answer"

"He saw a Walker At Milagro"

"Maybe he did If you ask me, he sahat he wanted to see And it doesn’t matter either way What difference would one Walker make?"

Peter felt badly shaken by Theo’s hopelessness; it seemed not just defeated but disloyal

"Where there’s one, there are others," Peter said

"What there are, brother, are se that"

For a moment no one spoke The idea was in the air, unspoken but palpable How long did they have before the lights went out? Before no one remembered how to fix them?

"I don’t believe that," Arlo said "And I can’t believe you do either If that’s all there is, what’s the point of anything?"

"The point?" Theo peered into his cup again "I wish I knew I suppose the point is just staying alive Keeping the lights on as long as we can" He tipped the shine to his lips and drained it in one hard s "On that note, it’ll be daybreak soon, everyone Let Caleb sleep, but wake the others We’ve got bodies to take care of"

There were four They found three in the yard and one, Zander, on the roof, lying face-up on the concrete by the hatch, his nad li X The bullet froh the top of his head, shearing off the crown of his skull, which was hanging kitty-corner by a flap of skin Already the ray otten used to the virals’ appearance but still found it unnerving to see one close up The way the facial features seemed to have been buffed away, s expansion of the hands and feet, with their grasping digits and razor-sharp claws; the dense i the loves, wearing a rag around his face, Finn used a long pitchfork to lift the key by its cord and drop it in a metal bucket They doused the key with alcohol and set it aflame, then left it to dry in the sun; what the flames hadn’t killed, the sun’s rays would Then they rolled Zander, his body stiff as wood, onto a plastic tarp, which they folded over hie of the roof and dropped it to the yard below

By the tied all four past the fence line, the sun was high and hot Peter, leaning on a length of pipe, watched from the upwind side as Theo poured alcohol over the bodies He felt useless, but with his ankle the way it was, there wasn’tone of the rifles Caleb had finally awakened and had come outside to watch with the others Peter saw that he earing a pair of tall leather boots

"Zander’s," Caleb explained The boy shrugged, a little guiltily "His extra pair I didn’t think he’d mind"

Theo removed a tin of sulfur matches from his pouch and dren his e circles of sweat stained his shirt at the throat and armpits The shirt was an old one froone, the collar frayed to threads; on the breast pocket, e script, was the naht he should, but couldn’t find the words Seeing the body on the roof had done nothing to change the disquieting feeling that, at the end, Zander had made it easy for him-that Zander had still been Zander But all of the bodies in the pile had been somebody once Maybe one of them was Armando

"Okay, I’ll do it," Theo said, and cleared his throat "Zander, you were a good engineer, and a good friend You never had a bad word for anyone, and we thank you for that Sleep well" Then he struck the ht, and touched it to the pile

The skin went quickly, vaporizing like paper, followed by the rest, the bones caving in on the clouds of ash It was over in a minute When the last of the flames had died down, they shoveled the re a layer of earth on top

They were ta down the dirt when Caleb spoke "I just want to say, I think he fought it He could have killed me out there"

Theo put his shovel aside "Don’t take this the wrong way," he said, "but orries me is that he didn’t"

In the days that followed, Peter thought about the events of that night, replaying them in his mind Not only what had happened on the roof and Caleb’s strange story of the tower, but also his brother’s bitter tone when they’d spoken of the guns Because Alicia was right; the guns ht of the world of the Tione It was as if a blade had fallen onto ti it into halves, that which came before and that which cae; the war had been lost, the Arrave of a history no one even reht to what his father had actually been looking for, out there in the dark He supposed this was because it had see one of his father’s rifles-and even now, lying in the barracks while his anklemore, how the past and all its powers seemed to have flowed into hi, on the Long Rides He’d been trying to remember the world