It occurred to him to wonder why he was so little afraid of the people who were following him—because he was sure now that there were people following him, at least two, maybe more. As a corollary, it occurred to him to wonder why he had felt so good all day long, as if some black poison had leaked out of his system during his long sleep the previous afternoon. Was it just that he had needed rest? That, and nothing more? It seemed too simple.

He supposed, looking at it logically, that if the followers had meant to do him harm, they would have already tried to do it. They would have shot at him from ambush or at least covered him with their weapons and forced him to surrender his. They would have taken what they wanted… but again thinking logically (it was good to think logically, too, because for the last few days all the thinking he had done had been etched in a corrosive acid-bath of terror), what could he possibly have that anybody would want? As far as worldly goods went, there was now plenty for everybody, because there were precious few everybodies left. Why go to the trouble of stealing and killing and risking your life when everything you’d ever dreamed of having as you sat in the shithouse with the Sears catalogue in your lap was now available behind every shop window in America? Just break the glass, walk in, and take it.

Everything, that was, except the companionship of your fellows. That was at a premium, as Larry knew very well. And the real reason he didn’t feel afraid was because he thought that was what these people must want. Sooner or later their desire would overcome their fear. He would wait until it did. He wasn’t going to flush them out like a covey of quail; that would only make things worse. Two days ago, he would probably have done a fade himself if he had seen someone. Just too freaked to do anything else. So he could wait. But, man, he really wanted to see somebody again. He really did.

He walked back to the stream and rinsed out his messkit. He fished the six-pack out of the water and went back to his swing. He snapped the top on the first one and held the can up in the direction of the restaurant where he had seen the shadows.

“Your very good health,” Larry said, and drank half the can at a draught. Talk about going down smooth!

By the time he had finished the six-pack it was after seven o’clock and the sun was getting ready to go down. He kicked the last few embers of the campfire apart and gathered his stuff together. Then, half-drunk and feeling pleasant, he rode up Route 9 a quarter of a mile and found a house with a screened-in porch. He parked the bike on the lawn, took his sleeping bag, and forced the porch door with a screwdriver.

He looked around once more, hoping to see him or her or them—they were still keeping up with him, he felt it—but the street was quiet and empty. He went inside with a shrug.

It was still early and he expected to lie restless for a while at least, but apparently he still had some sleep to catch up on. Fifteen minutes after lying down he was out, breathing slowly and evenly, his rifle close by his right hand.

Nadine was tired. This now seemed like the longest day of her life. Twice she felt sure they had been spotted, once near Strafford, and again at the Maine–New Hampshire state line, when he had looked back over his shoulder and called out. For herself, she didn’t care if they were spotted or not. This man wasn’t crazy, like the man who had passed by the big white house ten days ago. That man had been a soldier loaded down with guns and grenades and bandoliers of ammunition. He had been laughing and crying and threatening to blow the balls off someone named Lieutenant Morton. Lieutenant Morton had been nowhere in sight, which was probably a good thing for him, if he was still alive. Joe had been frightened of the soldier, too, and in that case it was probably a very good thing.

“Joe?”

She looked around.

Joe was gone.

And she had been on the edge of sleep and slipping over. She pushed the single blanket back and stood up, wincing at a hundred different aches. How long had it been since she had spent so much time on a bicycle? Never, probably. And then there was the constant, nerve-wracking effort to find the golden mean. If they got too close, he would see them and that would upset Joe. If they dropped back too far, he might leave Route 9 for another road and they would lose him. That would upset her. It had never occurred to her that Larry might circle back and get behind them. Luckily (for Joe, at least), it had never occurred to Larry, either.

She kept telling herself that Joe would get used to the idea that they needed him… and not just him. They could not be alone. If they stayed alone, they would die alone. Joe would get used to the idea; he had not lived his previous life in a vacuum any more than she had. Other people got to be a habit.

“Joe,” she called again, softly.

He could be as quiet as a Viet Cong guerrilla creeping through the bush, but her ears had gotten attuned to him over the last three weeks, and tonight, as a bonus, there was a moon. She heard a faint scrape and clatter of gravel, and she knew where he was going. Ignoring her aches, she followed. It was quarter after ten.

They had made camp (if you wanted to call two blankets in the grass “camp”) behind the North Berwick Grille across from the general store, storing the bikes in a shed behind the restaurant. The man they were following had eaten in the school playground across the street (“If we went over there, I’ll bet he would give us some of his supper, Joe,” she had said tactfully. “It’s hot… and doesn’t it smell nice? I’ll bet it’s lots nicer than this bologna.” Joe’s eyes had gone wide, showing a lot of the white, and he shook his knife balefully in Larry’s direction) and then he had gone up the road to a house with a screened-in porch. She thought from the way he was steering his bike that he was maybe a little drunk. He was now asleep on the porch of the house he had chosen.

She went faster, wincing as random pebbles bit into the balls of her feet. There were houses on the left and she crossed to their lawns, which were now growing into fields. The grass, heavy with dew and smelling sweet, came all the way to her bare shins. It made her think of a time she had run with a boy through grass like this, under a moon that had been full, instead of waning like this one was. There had been a hot sweet ball of excitement in her lower belly, and she had been very conscious of her breasts as sexual things, full and ripe and standing out from her chest. The moon had made her feel drunk, and so had the grass, wetting her legs with its night moisture. She had known that if the boy caught her she would let the boy have her maidenhead. She had run like an Indian through the corn. Had he caught her? What did it matter now?

She ran faster, leaping a cement driveway that glimmered like ice in the darkness.

And there was Joe, standing at the edge of the screened porch where the man slept. His white underpants were the brightest thing in the darkness; in fact, the boy’s skin was so dark that at first glance you almost thought the underpants were there alone, suspended in space, or else worn by H.G. Wells’s invisible man.

Joe was from Epsom, she knew that, because that was where she had found him. Nadine was from South Barnstead, a town fifteen miles northeast of Epsom. She had been searching methodically for other healthy people, reluctant to leave her own house in her own hometown. She worked in concentric circles which grew larger and larger. She had found only Joe, delirious and fevered from some sort of animal bite… rat or squirrel, from the size of it. He had been sitting on the lawn of a house in Epsom naked except for his underpants, butcher knife clutched in his hand like an old Stone Age savage or a dying but still vicious pygmy. She had had experience with infections before. She had carried him into the house. Had it been his own? She thought it likely, but would never be sure unless Joe told her. There had been dead people in the house, a lot of them: mother, father, three other children, the oldest about fifteen. She had found a doctor’s office where there was disinfectant and antibiotics and bandages. She was not sure which antibiotics would be right, and she knew she might kill him if she chose wrongly, but if she did nothing he would die anyway. The bite was on the ankle, which had puffed to the size of an innertube. Fortune was with her. In three days the ankle was down to normal size and the fever was gone. The boy trusted her. No one else, apparently, but her. She would wake up mornings and he would be clinging to her. They had gone to the big white house. She called him Joe. It wasn’t his name, but in her life as a teacher, any little girl whose name she hadn’t known had always been a Jane, any little boy a Joe. The soldier had come by, laughing and crying and cursing Lieutenant Morton. Joe had wanted to rush out and kill him with the knife. Now this man. She was afraid to take the knife away from him, because it was Joe’s talisman. Attempting to do that might be the one thing that could make him turn on her. He slept with it clutched in his hand, and the one night she had attempted to pull it free, more to see if it could actually be done than to actually remove it for good, he had been awake instantly, with no movement. One moment fast asleep. The next, those unsettling blue-gray eyes with their Chinese shape had been staring at her with mild savagery. He had pulled the knife back with a low growl. He didn’t talk.