“Do you have any threes?” Mara asked Bullfrog. Then, in the same thought, “Why did you come here?”

At one time it would have felt rude to ask. Now it felt like nothing. His was the only story she didn’t know.

“I thought my daughter might see the show,” Bullfrog said. “And then maybe she would talk to me again.”

But he didn’t have any threes.

THEY TOOK TURNS WATCHING KYLE. IT WAS HARD TO DO FOR LONG ALONE. WATCHING him suffer. Sometimes he sank into delirium, mumbling and once screaming, and sometimes he’d be clear for minutes or even hours. Streaks of red traced up his leg and past his thigh. “If it gets worse, kill me,” he told Mara, and made her promise that if he died, they would leave and find safety. Two hours later, he gripped her wrist with both hands and made her promise to keep him alive.

Mara came back after Bullfrog’s turn and found Kyle alone, asleep, with the gun resting beside him. There was no way he could have reached it himself from the shelf. Bullfrog must have left it there.

She caught Bullfrog by the lake. She was livid. People knew where they were. People were coming. People didn’t abandon people to die in the woods.

It was the first time she saw Bullfrog angry. “I didn’t leave the gun there so he would kill himself,” he said. “Jesus, Mara. I left it there so he could make his own damn decision to live.”

“You gave him a gun so he wouldn’t shoot himself?”

“Yes,” said Bullfrog. “So he could choose not to.”

“That’s not a thing.”

“Imagine being him,” said Bullfrog. “If that was you, you’d want the same choice. Give the man power over one damn thing in his life right now.”

As much as Mara hated to admit it, Bullfrog was right. She would want the same. From then on, when they left the shelter, they left the gun at Kyle’s side.

AT NIGHT, WHEN THEY WERE TOO TIRED TO DO ANYTHING ELSE, WHEN THEY WERE too tired to deny the obvious, they talked again and again through what might have happened to the crew. Every scenario they could imagine. Sometimes they guessed big: nuclear war, apocalypse. Something that wiped out everyone in the world but them. It was comforting to imagine the outrageous; it made things less real. But mostly they went small. A plane crash, Bullfrog insisted. It had to be. It was simple. Float plane down, everyone dies.

“There’d be search parties,” said Ashley.

“Somebody’d really be looking for you right now?” He shook his head. “Bet you told your folks you’d be gone for months. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have anyone counting the days.”

They looked at Kyle. He was shivering.

“He does,” said Mara. “He has family.”

“And you?” said Bullfrog.

Ashley tossed a stick into the fire. “Yes. And the crew has family, too.”

“You think those camera guys are calling home?” said Bullfrog. “They said, ‘Hey, Mom, don’t worry about me for a while, I’m going off grid.’”