‘Is everything alright over there?’ I call out as I approach the edge of the property, careful not to startle him.

Helen stands motionless on the porch as if caught in the middle of some grave indiscretion. Their son Josh emerges from the darkness of the house and stands in front of her defensively.

‘Everything’s fine,’ Phil says, turning awkwardly to position himself in front of the RV, to create a physical barrier. When he shifts his weight I catch a glimpse of the vehicle’s rear compartment and realise it is packed floor to ceiling with pallets of canned goods and bottled water.

‘Did you take that stuff from the store?’ I ask.

‘It’s my store,’ Phil says defensively.

‘The deliveries are getting scarcer. You know that.’

I step over the threshold of the property but before my other foot can touch the ground Phil raises his rifle and levels it at my chest. ‘Stay back!’ he shouts. ‘Helen, Josh, get in the car.’

My heart begins a strange sort of dance.

‘Calm down,’ I say. ‘This is ridiculous.’

‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he says, feeling the weight of the weapon in his hands.

I study the gun as if I am looking at an alien artefact, something far from where it belongs. I regard it in the same way Phil and Helen came to regard us after the accident. To them we became displaced and destitute people. Though they offered their condolences, though Helen cooked meals and delivered them to our doorstep, they treated us with an almost superstitious aloofness. As if our sadness, our loss, was somehow infectious. We were marked by his death and they avoided us with deft hands, careful to maintain appearances but never to offer intimacy for fear that they themselves might become tainted.

‘You’re hoarding food. What about the rest of us? What will we do?’

‘It’s different for you,’ he says, and casts a watchful eye towards his son. I take a long look at him. His eyes wide, his mouth contorted. I realise I have never met this man before me. He is panicked, ashamed. He is not the Phil that I once knew. He studies his son’s face and I see his grip on the firearm loosen somewhat. He takes a pack of bottled water from the vehicle and throws it onto the ground between us.

‘That won’t last the two of us a week,’ I say. ‘This is ridiculous. You’re abandoning your home. To go where? Where will you go?’

‘As far east as we can get,’ he says, slamming the RV doors shut.

I think of the East Coast. I think of all the possible roads that lead there. I think of the homes along the way. I think of a great migration of people, unsettled and disenfranchised. Driven from their homes and drawn eastward, like animals, by the gradual erosion of their natural habitat.

I see women and children and men of all ages clambering up a steep cliff face, barely navigating the rocky terrain, the ground trampled and slick beneath them. And one by one they reach the apex only to tumble down to the sea beyond. Their ruined bodies collecting in the surf, stacking up to create entirely new geographies. Mountains upon endless mountains of the sick, the dead and the dying.