Maybe the man is old. Like Dad must be now. She recalls the first time she saw her father had aged. It was during a soccer game of Shannon’s. Malorie was in the stands with Mom and Dad, and Shannon’s team was up by five goals, and another man asked Dad if he wanted to shoot baskets on the small court beside the soccer field. Dad said sure and joined him, and Malorie watched as the two started to play one-on-one. Then the other soccer team scored, and Malorie got swept up in Shannon’s game again. When she looked back to the half-court, she saw Dad, the strongest man in the world, lean and fit, a full head of dark hair like her own, she saw Sam Walsh on the ground, one hand on his shoulder, grimacing.

She went to tell Mom, but by then Dad was already getting up. And when the other man tossed Dad the ball again, Dad made to shoot, then stopped himself. He passed the ball back and made his way to the bleachers. When he sat down beside Malorie, he said, Guess I can’t do that anymore.

Now, Malorie reaches out, and the tips of her gloved fingers touch the body before her.

“Please,” she says. But she says no more. What is this man doing? And what is she doing? Has she forgotten that, just because she’s taken every precaution to avoid the creatures, actual people have always been and will always be just as bad?

“Move,” she says.

But the man doesn’t move.

Malorie breathes in, she holds it, she breathes out. She thinks of redheaded Annette going mad, because how can she not? A blind woman gone mad. And maybe it wasn’t from the touch of a creature after all but the touch of a man.

“Please, if you would,” she says. “Move.”

Maybe the man is old. Maybe the man is asleep. Maybe his back is to her and she’s got it all wrong. Maybe he’s blindfolded, too. Maybe he’s deaf.

Maybe.

She hears no movement. She doesn’t know what else to say. She could knock on the nearest door. Call out for assistance. She could stand still until someone else enters the hall and asks the man to move for her.

The train shakes. It makes her think how feeble this all is, how everybody in the world is only on somebody else’s train, somebody else’s big idea, and how safe that person thinks is how safe it is for all.

Tom and Olympia are on the other side of this man. This man who will not move.

“Please,” she says.