I was standing there looking at her pack when she came into the room. “Everything looks good,” she said. She was wearing the same outfit she had first arrived in. It occurred to me that all of her clothes were different shades of camo. They were baggy, as if they were a size too big. The sleeves of her shirts were always rolled up.

“Thank you so much for doing all this,” I said. I hesitated, then said, “I can pay you.” Immediately I wished I hadn’t said it.

But she only laughed. “Nah. I shot you. I owed you one. And anyway,” she added, “that’ll all probably be over with soon.” By “that” I think she meant the economic construct of money, but she also might have meant the world in general. “But, I gotta ask. What are you doing up here?”

I cocked my head in surprise. “What?”

She crossed her arms. “Look, you seem pretty uptight about stuff, and that’s cool. I’m not here to pry, and I’ve enjoyed the food and all . . .” Her eyes went to the floor and her voice trailed off, leg jiggling in agitation. I think it was the first time I had seen her not completely sure of herself. “I just see all those buildings and have wondered. Do you prep, too?”

For a moment I stared at her, honestly at a loss. Then I laughed. And again I realized how good it felt to laugh, a real unexpected pleasure.

Why yes, I wanted to say, I was prepping for the end. The end of my life, hopefully, which would take place right here, on this property. Inside my dream. Whether I’d be myself at that point was yet to be determined. I shook my head. “Not the way you mean.”

“Really? Then in what way?”

I didn’t say anything. She shrugged. “Oh well. It’s your business. I was just passing through, anyway.” I detected a hint of disappointment and—hurt?—in her voice. Something shifted inside me.

She picked up her pack and slung it over her shoulder. “Guess I’ll be heading out now.”

“Wait,” I said, surprising myself. “What if, instead of telling you, I just showed you?”

The furious arithmetic of my brain was happening just like it had with Geannie and Jim, just like it had back a million years ago before it all went wrong. I could feel Rita getting close, and I wanted her to be close. Oh, I tried to justify asking her to stay as purely practical—having someone around who could fix things would definitely be helpful. I still wasn’t sure of the extent of the damage on the rest of the property. But something else, deeper, tidal, pulled me toward her.

Since our conversation on the kitchen floor, Rita had not mentioned anything else about her past, and I had not asked. I wasn’t sure if the prison story was true or not, but I sensed that whatever her life had been before, she had abandoned it much like I had abandoned my own life. With Rita I had never felt, as I had felt with Krystal and pretty much every other human on earth before I left civilization, that I wanted to be rid of her. Instead of sucking the energy out of me the way most people did by merely existing, her presence gave me a second breath.