“He’s been a good dog,” Rachel said. “Had him seven years, maybe longer. He went after the goats as soon as we got back from the camp. I had to put one of them down. Neck wound.” She took a long pull on her cigarette.

“I swear,” Mom said, “something’s in the air.”

“Radiation,” I said, and Mom shook her head.

“An army guy showed me his Geiger counter,” she said. “The levels are safe.”

Rachel dropped her cigarette butt and mashed it into the concrete with the tip of her shoe. “Then why won’t they let us out?”

“Aren’t we out now?” I asked.

“Not out of the camps,” she said. “Out of town. Head south, and Jefferson Bridge is out. They’ve been working on it since before the evacuation.”

“Well, yes,” Mom said, “but we can still go north up through Canville.”

“Closed off,” Rachel said. “Kent drove there just this last evening—he was headed up to the gun show—and he said they’ve got a tank on the road and a bunch of barricades. He was told we could get shipments in, and we won’t run out of food, but no one can go in or out for now.”

“How long is that going to go on?” Mom asked.

“Who knows? It’s not like we can check online or the TV for updates.”

“How about the Sentinel?” I asked. “That should be back, right?”

Mom waved a hand. “That’s hardly a paper. It’s Ronnie Stevenson’s two-page diary with ten pages of ads.”

Rachel lit up another cigarette. “So, they haven’t taken away freedom of the press, just access to the worthwhile press.”

“How is this not a big story?” I asked. “A whole town under lockdown, with no way to communicate with the outside world. You’d think Dateline or somebody would be out here with news vans and helicopters.”

“Right,” Mom said. “Send ’em an email.”

Mom wasn’t usually the sarcastic type. She seemed rattled.

“But, hey,” she said, stepping out from the door and onto the concrete, “they fixed our sign.”

I glanced up at it. The “u” had been burned out for years, so it had read “24-Ho r Emergency.”

“We never did get to experience a twenty-four-whore emergency,” Mom said.

Rachel laughed—a coarse, tobacco laugh. “If Mount Hope is going to be our lifelong prison, you two will be good cellmates.”

I smiled for the first time since waking up, but this nice moment was interrupted by a spasm of barking from inside. Rachel’s dog was waking up.

“Do you want the ashes?” Mom asked Rachel. “Some people do.”

“No,” Rachel said, tapping out her cigarette. “Dispose of him how you like. Tiger’s never been a pet; he’s a workin’ dog. Chasing the goats, rounding them up. We’ll get a new one. I heard Eugene out by the drive-in just had a litter of border collies. We’ll pick one up and get him to work.”

Mom nodded. “I delivered those pups. They’ll be good, not a runt in the bunch.”