She passed her barber shop, which had no boards, just a chain on the security gate. Part of her queer life had been coming here to have the shaved sides of her head lined up. She appreciated getting to be a quiet witness to the conversations men had while they waited to be clipped and shaved—it was different from the salons. The men spoke in sentences that didn’t necessarily build off each other’s content, but off the disgruntled feelings about the content, the prices of things, gas, mechanics, games at the big stadiums. They raged against change and told awestruck stories of their powerful and manipulative wives.

Taking in the empty chairs, unused tools, the dark face of the television, Dune missed the narrative life of that little room. She hoped everyone had made it out.

Soon she was walking under the railway tracks by the Amtrak station. Since the Guard had arrived a couple days ago, trains had been whistling in, pallets of food landing, unloaded systematically, distributed in open bed camouflage trucks heading out to the suburbs and border, places that still had people lining up for help. A train sat on the tracks now.

Dune looked up—the tree-line looked like blown glass, gold and rouge. And there, the wounded sky was visible between the two bridges that carried life east and west. She saw several people in the windows of the train’s cabin. They wore what looked like a pale green uniform, structured. They seemed to be watching her, but they all had on gas masks, so she couldn’t tell for sure. They never left the train.

The soldiers crawling on and over the train wore white face masks and gloves, every other inch of skin covered in a dark forest pattern. Their warrior layers looked claustrophobic to Dune. The invisible enemy, the unknown foe, was it floating in the air? Was it on saliva or etched onto the buildings themselves in a code that rewrote the body’s desires?

Dune wondered if she looked as ridiculous to them as they did to her, her face exposed, her hands bare in her pockets, available to the sickness in ways they thought they were not.

Go go go, she thought at them. Life is not here.

The two men fit the exact same description.

Dune was going through her basement records, wanting everything current before she showed Elouise.

One sick man had been on Woodward, the other on Mack just around the corner. They both wore jeans and black shirts with small company logos on them, sneakers. One of them had words—“rig, dollop, sansa?” The other had none. She’d made little cards for them and printed images, but the quality of photo between her crappy phone and the ancient printer wouldn’t help loved ones make the distinction. Her system wasn’t good enough.