“That’s horrible. What did you call her?”

“Kuchi-sake-onna. ‘Slit-mouthed-woman.’”

“It’s like the Heath Ledger Joker,” Izabel said.

“I thought of her as soon as I saw the trailer!”

“But in a surgical suite, everyone’s in a mask. Does it scare you then?”

“A little,” Kaito said. “But that’s one room. This is the whole world now. A whole world of kuchi-sake-onna.”

Izabel climbed into bed with Cami. She kissed the side of her head, on her temple. She kissed her cheek. She kissed her on the lips like Cami was the sleeping princess she so resembled in Izabel’s mind. But Cami didn’t wake up. Izabel watched her chest move up and down.

She remembered the dreams that she used to have in quarantine. Sometimes she was a tree. Sometimes she was the pollen. She ran the back of her finger down Cami’s arm.

More times than she wanted to remember, Izabel was the kuchi-sake-onna in her dreams. But she went around saying, Why so serious? like she was the Joker, too. She was as confused about who she should be in her dreams as she was in her life.

She reached up and touched the corner of her own mouth. And Cami’s chest kept going, so steady and quick. And Izabel finally fell asleep.

On the third day of the quarantine, the local news stopped. The studio must have been decently airtight, but without the air scrubbers and the oxygen tanks and masks of their own, they didn’t last all that long.

After the signal dropped and the television played static, Izabel and Kaito kissed for the first time. Izabel felt like Ariel—like if she hadn’t kissed him by the time the sun set on the third day, she would’ve been turned back into one of the humans that died.

When the news came back on, it was from D.C. They had taken more precautions there. Many of the government buildings had filters, oxygen, masks, plastic sheeting, tape, food. They were taking in survivors. The halls were filled with sleeping bags, and every outlet had a power strip with a dozen smartphones plugged into it.

Over the next week, the officials who hadn’t died were holding meetings. They were a smaller version of the government everyone was familiar with. They talked about the budget. They had scientists video-conference in with updates.

And it became absurd. When they started discussing defense contracts. When they started talking about whether pollution was to blame, if China was to blame, and if actions should be made against them, a show of strength. Or if not strength, then remaining viability.