“Well, we come here every week, about this time. If you hear of any chickens.” The woman turned away a bit, closing the conversation. Dune felt like she had missed something, some brief window flashed open with sun beyond it that she only clocked as it swung shut. She peeked at the trio when she could. One of the women was tall and thick through the chest and midsection, lighter skinned. The third was actually quite glamorous upon closer reflection. Her nails were short, but bright red, and her eyebrows were so perfect that Dune wondered if they were drawn on.

Dune was left with a yawning loneliness. She wanted a we, some company, peers, comrades. She wanted a squad to survive the apocalypse with.

By the time Dune got to the front of the line it had been five hours of waiting, inching around the atrium. The line concluded at several wooden tables on metal legs in front of an open door to a room full of bags and supplies. There was a row of people behind the tables, with volunteers in matching orange shirts running back and forth from the table to the back room.

Dune stepped forward to the blonde woman behind the table, who was wearing a white face mask over the bottom of her face under green eyes that were tiny, dull and never rested on anything for longer than a second. She introduced herself with a name Dune immediately forgot. She was automatically handing Dune a grocery bag full of what appeared to be spaghetti noodles, cans of tomato sauce and tuna fish.

When Dune didn’t move, the lady said with light annoyance, “What else can I do for you?” Dune decided to call her Jen. Dune could tell that maybe Jen had been a perky helper type once, but upon cursory inspection, Jen looked absolutely exhausted, shadows carved down the visible surface of her face, hair limp and pulled back, and just a flat glaze in those small busy eyes.

“I was wondering if you have any updated information on taking care of the sick.”

Jen didn’t say anything for a moment, just stared at Dune. When she finally spoke, her tone held no curiosity. “Sorry, what do you mean? You got bodies?”

Dune shook her head. “No. Yeah, I just mean … the sick people. They’re everywhere.”

“Are these people members of your family?” Jen looked marginally incredulous.

“No. Most of my family is dead.”

Jen nodded, normalizing the sentence without offering any pity. Dune expected nothing more. Even before H-8 no one knew what to do about death. “These are other people that I have found around. I’m not asking about curing them, I understand that that isn’t possible at this time, or we would have heard about it.”