They walked in silence through the green trees, leaving the stench of the crowd of zoms behind. A few small white butterflies fluttered past. A black-tailed jackrabbit sat shoulder-deep in the grass, munching on a stem, and paused to watch them with a nervous eye, but soon went back to its foraging. All around them the desert birds flitted and sang. Benny loved birds and pointed out some of his favorites to Nix.

“That one there’s a sage grouse,” he said. “And see, on that branch? That’s a horned lark. And I think I saw a meadowlark earlier and . . .”

His voice trailed off as he realized that she wasn’t listening. She wasn’t even giving him the usual courtesy nods and grunts people give when they’re pretending to listen. Nix was deep inside her own thoughts, and Benny was on the other side of that wall. He lapsed into silence, and they walked without talking for ten minutes.

“I asked Eve about where she came from,” Nix said eventually.

“Oh?”

“A lot of it is confusing. She’s little, and she doesn’t understand most of what’s happened, and I think she’s a bit out of it, you know? Like, in shock? Some of the things she says don’t make much sense. I think she’s confusing stuff from dreams, or maybe nightmares, with things that are actually happening.”

Benny nodded toward the zoms on the other side of the long ravine. “That’s not too hard to understand. Sometimes I can’t believe it myself. Sometimes I think I’m going to wake up and smell Tom’s cooking, and then I’ll go down to breakfast. Scrambled eggs with peppers and mushrooms. Your mom’s corn muffins. Fresh-pressed apple juice and a big glass of milk.” He sighed.

Nix nodded but didn’t comment on that. “Eve said she used to live in a house up in a town called Treetops. I don’t know if that’s real or something she made up.”

“That’s actually not a bad idea. Zoms can’t climb.”

“She said that one night the trees all caught fire and everyone ran. And here’s the really strange part: She said that it was angels who came and set fire to the trees.”

“She mentioned angels before. Is that another name for zoms?”

“I don’t think so. She said the angels came riding in on what she called ‘growly horses.’ Isn’t that strange?”

“Yeah.”

“According to her, the angels had wings on their chests.”

“On their chests?” Benny grinned at the thought. “Wouldn’t that make them fly upside down?”

“It’s not funny,” said Nix. “Eve was really scared of them.”

They stopped and picked some tart early-season elderberries.