After they’d finished eating and had cleaned up, Elliot and Evajean talked about nothing until the sun dipped low and dark came. She asked if she could stay–”I can’t stay in that house,” she’d said. “I just can’t.”–and he offered her his bed while he took the couch.

In the morning, Elliot woke to find her in the kitchen again, her glass half full of whiskey, her head on the table, asleep. He took the liquor away without waking her and poured it down the sink. He hoped she wasn’t going to do this for long. A drunk–a sad, lonely, defeated drunk–wasn’t the kind of girl he pictured making a life in a devastated environment with. You’re husband’s dead, Evajean, he wanted to say. And if you keep at it like this, you’re going to end up right there with him.

“Henry?” she said behind him, her voice confused.

“No, Evajean. It’s me, Elliot.” He waited a moment while she stared without comprehension at him. Then he said, “Henry’s dead.”

She put her head back down, started to cry, and then began coughing. He got her some water and she drank it.

“I’m sorry,” she said, when she had herself back under some control.

“No–”

“No, I’m sorry. For being like this.”

Elliot shook his head and put his hand on her arm. “We’re both like this,” he said. “We’re both left with everyone… With them all dead.”

She nodded and looked around the kitchen like she was searching for something.

“What’s the Hole?” she asked.

Elliot was startled by the question. “It’s where they take the bodies,” he said. “Where they burn them, I guess.”

“How do you know?”

Elliot shrugged. “It’s what I’ve heard. People say–”

“But you don’t know,” she said quickly, even angrily.

He sat down in the chair across from her, puzzled. No, he didn’t know that. He’d heard it, catching it again and again in rumors from neighbors before they’d died, from a teacher at Callie’s school on the day they’d called the assembly to announce the indefinite end of classes. He guessed he’d even assumed it himself because that was what made the most sense. But he didn’t know.

“I want to see it,” Evajean said.

“You–”

“I want to know. If things were still running, that’s where they’d take Henry. They’d take him to the Hole.”

“And you want to take him there now?”

“No,” she said. “No, I can’t… He’s dead but I can’t carry him around like he’s–I don’t know–like he’s something I got to return to the goddamn store.”

“Then why–”

“Because I want to know. What is it? Why do they take the bodies there?”

“Quarantine,” Elliot said. “So it doesn’t spread.”

“All to the same place? Why don’t they just burn them?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe so scientists, doctors can study them? Far as I know, nobody knows what this is and so maybe they get all the bodies in one place and can try to figure it out from there.”

Evajean looked at him and lifted the corner of her mouth with biting condescension. “I’m sure that’s what they do, Mr. Bishop. Get all the victims together in one big, fucking pile, and study them to come up with a cure.”

“Eva–”

“But if that’s what they’re doing, why haven’t they found anything? Why hasn’t there been any news? All we got for months is the same ’stay in your homes, don’t panic, and put your goddamn loved ones at the curb.’ I want to know, Mr. Bishop.”

“It’s Ell–”

“I want to know,” she said again. Then she stood up and walked into the living room to pour herself another glass of whiskey.