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“I know you’re mad about this, and maybe you got more guns stashed somewhere. But this is your one warning: Don’t come looking for your food. If we see you coming, any of you, we’ll shoot. This is a matter of life and death, and I’ll do whatever I need to protect my family.”

Thomas had said nothing.

“You don’t even know where I live, do you?”

Thomas hadn’t answered, but Matt had correctly interpreted his silence.

“Just take your people and leave,” he said. “Get on the road and out of the city like everyone else. Don’t come looking for me.”

What kind of a man stood idly by while thieves walked away with his very existence? Why the hell had he brought Natalie and her family here? He’d doomed them. He’d doomed himself. The only way to survive something like this was to stay away from everyone, to be lethally selfish. But Skylar was right: Who wanted to live in a world full of selfish survivors?

He didn’t know what to do. He felt like a helpless child. He couldn’t bear to lie there suffering alone.

“Skylar.”

She twitched at the sound of his voice, but only a little.

“Skylar!”

Now she shook awake and sat quickly upright, as if he’d given her a bump with imaginary shock paddles.

“Oh my God, Daddy!”

Thomas reached for her hand. It was soft and warm. He didn’t deserve to touch her.

“I was dreaming about my parents. Their building was on fire. The whole city was.”

Thomas felt like he would burst if he didn’t spill the truth.

“I wish I could bring them here. I wish they were safe.”

“Skylar, I have something to tell you.”

“What is it? Did help come?”

“Someone stole our supplies last night.”

“They what?”

Thomas opened his mouth to answer, but Skylar pressed on.

“Is this a joke? Are you making fun because I want you to share your food?”

“It’s not a joke.”

“But how?” She sat up in bed and looked at him carefully, searching his face for the truth. “How could that happen? How do you know this?”

“I woke up while they were here.”

“Someone seriously broke into your house? How did they—”

“A window in the study. And I didn’t lock the safe room last night.”

“But you woke up and still—”

He briefly explained his encounter with Matt and the other men.

“Oh my God.”

“We don’t have anything left. It’s gone. All of it.”

She climbed out of bed, completely naked and unconcerned.

“How could you have let this happen? What the hell are we going to do?”

He wanted to hold her. He wanted her to understand that no matter what happened, everything would be okay.

But he couldn’t. No matter how hard he tried, Thomas would never be able to make everything okay. He had failed again. The way he would always fail.

“I can’t believe this. What are we going to do?”

“I still have the water well,” he muttered. “And maybe we can catch enough fish to feed ourselves.”

“Catch fish. You think we can catch fish.”

“If that doesn’t work, we’ll have to leave. We’ll have to get out of the city and look for food.”

“Where, Thomas? Where will we go?”

“I don’t know. Maybe—”

“Maybe? You know there’s nowhere to go. Too many people, remember? Not enough game. We’re fucked. All of us. Fucked.”

This exchange made Thomas think of his mother, the hate in her eyes, the sarcasm that dripped from her voice like candlewax that burned the sensitive skin of his ego and left scars.

“I should have left when I had the chance,” Skylar said cryptically. “This is what I get for expecting a man to take care of me.”

It was only hours since Thomas had made love to her and already Skylar loathed him.

“This whole time you pretended to be in charge, like you were the only one who could save us. But you can’t even take care of yourself.”

THIRTY-TWO

Now Skylar was sitting on the back porch, watching the sun gradually illuminate smoke clouds above the lake. She didn’t want to be in the house. She couldn’t risk the chance of Thomas walking by wearing that miserable expression, the hapless look of guilty resignation.

It was a strange thing to suspect death was coming but not be able to see it or feel it. In the present moment Skylar wasn’t even hungry. She felt a little grimy, and could have used a shower, but she wasn’t overly concerned about it. Which was a far cry from her old routine. On days when she was expected to make a public appearance, preparing hair and skin and nails could consume most of a morning.

As frustrated as she was with Thomas, as hopeless as she felt about the general state of the world, one (slim) prospect for liberation remained: that all this was a dream… or perhaps a fictional scenario that could be ended or changed.

Before Thomas World, which she had seen mere days after Roark’s phone call from Iceland, Skylar had never questioned the reality of the world. The idea seemed so implausible, especially because in pictures like The Matrix or Inception, farfetched and complicated reasons were given to explain their artificial worlds. But the protagonist in Thomas’ film had built a simulation to satisfy unrequited love. Which was, if you were going to ordain your own reality, the only good reason to do it.

Afterward, when Skylar read the story behind Thomas World and how it mirrored the author’s real life, she also learned he’d written a new screenplay. And once she became attached to the project, Skylar amused herself by wondering if her involvement in the film had somehow been preordained.

She’d been in New York at the time, leaning on her parents for support. And when she was ready to fly to Los Angeles, Skylar decided to assert her free will by engineering outcomes that defied reason. Instead of going straight home, she requested the meeting with Thomas. Instead of a perfunctory and professional lunch with him, she suggested a weekend of conversation and brainstorming. And she wouldn’t play coy. She would flirt unreservedly. She would flaunt her free will to whoever might be watching and in the process unburden herself from the shameful farce of her marriage.

Then she landed in Dallas, and planes began to fall out of the sky, and Skylar wondered if the universe had called her bluff. Because her “spontaneous” decision to discuss a post-apocalyptic screenplay turned out to be the very thing that saved her from a real-life apocalypse.

In a film, when you pushed a protagonist’s life out of balance, her task was to make things right again. But every time she took a step to find peace, her actions generated a new complication. Could Skylar identify a similar pattern in the events since the pulse? Did the appearance of the supernova signal the beginning of her story? Had the various incidents since then moved from positive to negative to positive again, like a swinging pendulum that powered the narrative engine of any film?

Last night she had given herself to Thomas, had finally lowered her guard and forgotten her fears, and the world had responded by stealing their food supply. What Hollywood cliché was more celebrated than a young woman in a horror film being killed as soon as she dared indulge her sexual self? If there was a better metaphor for the essence of the patriarchy, Skylar didn’t know what it was.

Probably none of it was true. But how else was she meant to pass the time except hope it was all a big joke? Yesterday she had been ready to pack her bags and leave, but now, as the rising sun cast clouds of smoke in violent colors, Skylar understood that idea was suicide. And suicide would be an awful, pointless end to her story.