“It’s the end.” She sat down on the crown of a hill in the Chankly Bore and hugged her knees. “It’s starting. We’re too late. The apocalypse has begun.”

CHAPTER 25

Alice slept. She slept for twenty hours give or take, in Quentin’s bed, flat on her back, mouth propped open, perfectly still under a thin sheet, not once stirring or rolling over. Quentin stayed awake as long as he could watching her, listening to her faint wheezing. Her hair was long and lank and matted. Her skin was pale. Her fingernails needed cutting, and she was bruised on one arm from when she’d fallen to the floor. But she was healthy and whole. She was her.

Quentin looked at her and looked at her: she was finally back. He felt like the rest of his life could begin now. He didn’t know if he was still in love with Alice, but he knew that being in the same room with her made him feel real and whole and alive in a way that he’d forgotten he could. When he couldn’t stay awake any longer the others took over.

He was downstairs eating breakfast at noon, getting ready for another shift, when she woke up.

“She said she was hungry,” Plum said.

Quentin looked up from his Cheerios to see her in the doorway, wrapped in Plum’s pale blue bathrobe, looking like the palest, most wan, most precious, most vulnerable creature he’d ever seen. There were purple shadows under her eyes.

He stood up, but he didn’t go to her. He didn’t want to crowd her. He wanted to take things at her pace. He’d had a lot of time to think about this moment, and his one resolution was that he wasn’t going to get too excited. Calm was what she needed. He was going to pretend he was greeting her at the arrivals gate after she’d been away on a long, disastrous journey.

It was easier than he thought. He was just happy to see her. There were no road maps for this, but they would figure it out. They had all the time in the world now.

“Alice,” he said. “You’re probably hungry. I’ll get you something to eat.”

Alice didn’t answer, just shuffled over to the table, then stared down at it as if she were uncertain as to how precisely this apparatus worked. He put out a hand, to guide her maybe, but she shied away. She didn’t want to be touched.

She lowered herself cautiously into a chair. He got her some Cheerios. Did she like those? He couldn’t remember. It was all they had. He placed the bowl in front of her, and Alice regarded it like it was a bowl of fresh vomit.