She must have been waiting for their return or heard the men coming down the hill, because Evajean was standing there, where the slope leveled out and the grass was packed by the daily life of the town. She waved as he drew near enough to see in the moon’s faint light, and then he was next to her and hugging her and asking how she was, was she okay, had she been hurt? And she told him she was fine, just fine, and wanted to know the same about him.

“It must have been horrible,” she said, after they’d broken their warm–but still only friendly–embrace. “They said you were captured and they were going after you, to rescue you.”

Elliot nodded.

“It was the crazies?” she asked, wanting the answer to be no but knowing it wouldn’t.

“A lot of them. And not like the ones on the road or at Wal-mart. These talked. They communicated. They weren’t,” he said, hating to admit it out loud, “actually crazy.”

She looked at him like he was, though, and then said, “There are beds in this wonderful little house they’ve set aside for us. You should go to sleep now, Elliot, and, really, I want to do the same. I couldn’t until now because I couldn’t sleep not knowing if you were okay, but I’m completely wiped. We’ll talk about the crazies in the morning, okay?”

“Sure,” he said, “sure, okay.”

“That dog’s already figured out how to climb between the covers,” she said. “It’s been there, sometimes even snoring, since I got here. If it’s still doing that when I get back there, it’s going to be staying in your room.” And she smiled at him and Elliot felt like things would be okay, at least for the night and that this night was all that really mattered anyhow.

She led him through town–only a dozen houses and what he took to be a meeting hall or church, but the night was too dark to make much out–and then along a short path by a backyard sized field high with corn. Beyond was a little ranch house, cozy with light flickering from two of the front windows. “They said the woman who lived here died,” Evajean told him. “Of old age, not the plague. Nobody’s moved in, so it’s ours until we decide to leave.”

There was a tone in her voice, one Elliot hoped he was only imagining, that made it sound as if she intended their leaving to be put off for some time. He felt a dull fear then that she’d given up on the search for the Hole and that she wanted only to stay with these people. But that was just his mind not thinking straight after the night’s events. This place, like the men who resided in it, gave him a numbing sense of the creeps. Nahom felt bad and wrong, dirty with a slick of unseen crude, its residents contaminated–and contaminating.

Enough, he thought. That house looks so wonderfully rustic and homey and the beds inside are likely just as congenial. Sleep and don’t worry about anything beyond that.

That was a plan he could manage, even in his less than perfect state. Evajean pushed the rough wooden front door open and the dog barked at him from the ragged couch pushed against the opposite wall of the tiny living room. He walked over to it, the need for sleep hitting even harder now, and scratched between its ears. They still hadn’t come up with a name, but that too would wait for morning.

“I’m this way,” Evajean said, pointing to the left. “You’re over there,” and she directed him to the right, through another door that appeared handmade. That would mean the kitchen was through the opening in the back wall next to the couch and that those four rooms were the house in its entirety. He stumbled through where she’d sent him and the dog followed. Inside was a bed that took up nearly all the space and an armoire with the same locally crafted appearance. It was into the former that he let himself fall, not worrying about his clothes, asleep within moments of settling into the terrifically lush comforter. The puppy hopped up next to him, sniffed around, and burrowed under the blankets beside his head. They both slept–and Elliot dreamed.