She thumps it onto the table beside Captain Wade’s badge. “Armando Gomez,” she says. “He got us to Sandusky. Before that, he spent years planning for our survival. He wrote pages and pages of notes. Everything he could think of, he wrote it down—for us. Did you know there’s a section in here about edible wild plants? He literally devoted his life to helping us live. Right up until he saved me.”

Tears pour from her eyes now, tinged black with eyeliner. “He died to save me. He deserves to be remembered.”

We’re silent a long time, collectively staring at the evidence that up until a few weeks ago, this planet had been covered with humans. Precious lives.

Trey says, “I want someone to remember Teena. And my mom.”

Wyatt says, “My sister Willa was awesome. Maybe I can put a page about her in Manny’s book.”

“You see it now, right?” Tanq says. “We have to live. We have to. I wasn’t sure before, but now . . .” She swallows hard, and suddenly the old Tanq is back. “I mean, people are probably still shit. But some of you assholes are worth saving.”

“I want that on a T-shirt,” Trey says. “‘Asshole Worth Saving.’”

“AWS,” I say. “We’ve just found our band name.”

“Am . . . I . . . in your band?” Wyatt asks, his voice tentative.

Tanq reaches over the coffee table and punches him in the shoulder. “How are you such a moron?” she asks.

He grins.

Trey is fiddling with the piping on the couch cushion. Without looking up, he says, “It’s just one tower. It saves humanity temporarily.”

“There’s always another Death Star,” Wyatt says.

“But that’s life,” Tanq says. “At least, that’s always been my life. You fight one battle so you can fight another.”

Trey gets that faraway look I’m starting to recognize as his deep thought face. “I guess life is just a series of battles fought,” he says.

“I’m going to keep fighting,” I say. “Even if I have to do it alone. I’m driving that barge to the tower, and I’m going to blow it up. And I’m going to try really, really hard to live through it to fight again.”

Trey shakes his head, and at first I think he’s going to try to stop me but what he says is, “You’re not going alone.”

“We’re with you, Paige,” says Wyatt.

We all turn to Tanq.

She says, “Ethel Betts would never agree to this. But Tanq would.” Then she grins. “Besides, I have to see this through because I have not yet consumed all the world’s Red Vines.”

Not even an alien shroud of greenish clouds can keep daffodils from blooming in Ohio. They’re everywhere now.