The utilities had been off since the day after the packages had disappeared, and both Doug and Trish smelled from not bathing. For meals they had sandwiches and barbecues, drank warm beer and Cokes. During the interminable days, they waited on the porch, trying to read but not reading, or went to the hospital to sit with Billy. The hospital had its own self-powered emergency generators, and while they were not allowed to use the rationed water or spend the night in semi-air-conditioned comfort due to the new overcrowded conditions, at least they had the satisfaction of knowing that Billy was being taken care of.

The psychiatrist who had come up from Phoenix told them after an afternoon-long meeting with Billy that he was a healthy and extremely well-adjusted young man and that with the proper counseling he should be able to recover nicely.

At night Doug’s fitful sleep was disturbed by dreams. Dreams in which Willis was a ghost town and all of the buildings were made from mail. Dreams in which Tritia lay naked and beckoning on the bed, covered head to toe with canceled stamps. Dreams in which Billy wore a Postal Service uniform and grinningly accompanied the mailman on his hellishly appointed rounds.

The gas in the Bronco was getting low, but Doug couldn’t help driving into town to check with the police. Each night the mailman came, delivering mail, depositing it now in the mailbox, and Doug kept thinking that with no visible progress someone was going to crack, was going to accept a letter or, worse, send one. But Mike and Tegarden said each time that as far as they could tell, the dam was holding.

The sixth day passed.

The air-conditioning was shut off in the hospital to save the generator fuel, but the windows were open and a slight breeze cooled Billy’s room. The two of them played Monopoly while Tritia watched, then Tritia and Billy played Parcheesi while he watched.

How thin was the veneer of civilization, Doug thought. How little it took to send them scurrying back to the caves. It was not laws that separated man from beast. It was not reason. It was not culture or government. It was communication. Communication made possible the niceties of modern life, ensured the continuation of society. A breakdown in communication, particularly in this global age when so much depended on the proper relay of correct information, left people feeling lost and helpless, resulting in an arrest of the normal rules of behavior, paving the road for chaos.

But he was waxing pretentious again. He found himself doing that often, even aloud, which annoyed the hell out of Tritia. He should have learned by now to save those sorts of ruminations for the classroom and not to inject them into real conversations.

The classroom.