Jack could hear nothing, and they were freezing. He rubbed Matty’s arms and legs. He took off his coat and covered Matty with it. No windows. There was nowhere to go but up. He could not hear Ava—he could not hear her. “We’ve got to go up,” he said. “Okay?”

He carried Matty, stumbling across the floor. The phone went dark. He pushed the button again and tipped the light out into the darkness and started up the steps. Matty stayed huddled with eyes closed. When Jack reached the hatch, he put the phone down and pushed up on the wood. It groaned but didn’t give. He shoved harder, sending a ripple of spasms down his side. But the door would not move.

From the other side of the hatch came not a sound.

He could not hear Ava.

He looked down at Matty. Slumped in the coats. Jack bent and kissed his filthy brow. “It’s all right,” he said. “We’re all right.”

XI

Here, at last, is the truth.

When she wakes the heat is roaring. The tops of the pine trees are there in the orange light and the dark of the woods and the moon. She is lying on a tarp. The snowmobile near. The briefcase. The man standing over her carries a rifle slung on his shoulder, and his arms are folded across his chest. He watches her.

“I’m tired of this life,” Bardem says.

Dreams dissolve in this waking world. The heat is a fire. Built on the petrified snow in a stacked ring of deadfall limbs. The carbon edges. The flames lick the air, glinting strangely. Sparks of unknown futures carried slowly away in the night. She sits up, and her head throbs.

“Let’s go somewhere,” Bardem says.

He hasn’t taken his eyes from her. She touches her head and watches the sparks rise and vanish. The world losing shape and focusing again. The woods and the dark branches. She can’t see the cabin. She falls back on the tarp. Slow turn of the stars above. He has dragged her to this place. The right side of her forehead is wet. Get up, she thinks. Get up.

Bardem does not move. “We could start over.”

The fire flares. Everything so still. Not even a breeze. Maybe they are watching, she thinks. They are watching to see if you understand, here at the end. What it all means.

She makes her way to her feet and stands before him. “Are they dead?”

“Probably they are. Now, or soon.”

A wave of blackness comes over her, and she waits for it to pass.

“Try not to worry about it,” he says.

Her gut twists. Don’t you do it. Don’t you cry.

In the air, something flutters. The butterfly lands on her hand. The quiver of wings, paper-thin. The butterfly flits away.

The sentry trees. The vast frozen sky.