I glanced at the barricaded door, then at Elizaveta, who sat in front of me, hands held together on her lap, head bowed. She could have been meditating had her posture not been slumped. “Hey?” I said quietly.

Her eyes blinked open. “What happened?” she whispered.

“You were sleeping.”

Her shoulders sagged. Her fingers massaged her face, making small circles.

“And you snore,” I said.

“I do not.”

“How would you know if you were sleeping?”

She grimaced. I glanced at my watch. It was 3:41 a.m.

I’d only been asleep for twenty minutes or so. Still, that was twenty minutes too long. Solano could have sneaked into the cabin during that time, slit my throat, slit all our throats…

Dismayed by my lack of vigilance, I sat straighter. “Where’s Jesus?” I asked.

Elizaveta gestured to Pepper’s bedroom. “He said smell bothered him.”

I sniffed. The room reeked of blood, cloying and sickly sweet. It made me think of a cookie factory my parents had taken me to while we’d been RVing around the country, a visit that turned me off cookies for the rest of my life. The smell of molasses and dough and butter hadn’t necessarily been bad; it had simply been too omnipresent, too overpowering. I’d ended up disgorging the contents of my stomach on the floor in front of everyone.

“I brought you this,” Elizaveta said, indicating an enamelware bucket next to her which was filled with rainwater. She slid it to me.

I dunked my hands into the cold water and scrubbed them. The water turned red.

“Let me help.” Elizaveta picked up a rag she’d fetched. She dampened it in the water and proceeded to clean my face. Her touch was delicate yet firm at the same time, maternal. “There,” she said when she finished.

I looked around for my daypack. It was by the junk heap that included the car seat. I stood and stretched, retrieved the bottle of vodka from the pack, then sat back down. I twisted off the cap and offered the bottle to Elizaveta. She took an impressive sip and passed it back. I took an even bigger sip, swishing the vodka around inside my mouth to kill the lingering taste of blood. I didn’t have anywhere to spit it out, so I swallowed.

Elizaveta produced her cigarettes, offered the pack to me.

“You only have four left,” I said.

“I’m trying to cut down. You have one, you help me.”