In the light, he saw a man coming from the Mathiases’ across the street.

He had a suitcase on wheels with the handle extended so that he didn’t have to bend as he bumped it down the steps. He wore long pants that looked like suit pants and a shirt that wasn’t tucked in.

Eddie lifted his face from the ground and felt where the grass had stuck into his cheek.

The man was coming up the driveway. Laura wasn’t near the steps, and Eddie felt the panic of having left the knives inside. He sat up. The inside of his mouth was rough against his tongue and his tongue was fatter than it should have been. It felt more like a piece of meat. He didn’t know if he could speak. He couldn’t get to his feet.

“Hush, now,” the man said as he approached. “I’m just a neighbor.”

Eddie dropped to his side and used his elbow to drag himself along the ground, but didn’t make it far. The man stood next to him. Eddie could feel the weight of the suitcase—its black rectangle blotting out the sun.

“I’m here to help,” the man said. He unzipped the suitcase and took out a clear gallon jug. Eddie looked up beneath it and saw where the liquid in the bottom made a section of the sky dance like a swimming pool. The man tilted it over a coffee mug.

“Here,” he said. “Drink.”

The man got Eddie sitting against the base of the house, and put the cup to his lips. He couldn’t swallow, but felt it going down. Whatever skin and muscle was in his throat was swollen and almost numb. He let his head drop and took deep breaths. Then he felt his head get lighter.

“Easy,” the man said.

“Who are you?” Eddie managed.

“My name is Steve McCarthy.” He knelt down next to Eddie and kept his eyes pressed closed. It was as if he were trying to keep them from floating off his face. There was stubble on his chin and his teeth were yellow. His shirt was stained coffee brown beneath the armpits. Eddie couldn’t smell him, though. He couldn’t smell anything. His nose was full.

“I have a wife,” Eddie said.

The man nodded, but continued to hold his severe expression.

Eddie pointed at the Davises’ porch. “She was up there.”

He looked at Eddie and then dropped his chin to his chest. When he lifted his face, his eyes were red-rimmed. “This is going to end. God sends everyone everywhere, so I guess he sent me here. I really believe that.” He paused as if to double-check. “Do you?”

Eddie examined Steve McCarthy’s face. “Yeah,” he said.

“Your wife? She’s living?”

“On the porch.”

“That’s good. Just rest now. Let the water do its work.”

“How many have died?”

“I only minister to the live ones.”

“Where did you get the water?”

“I have a supply.”

Eddie tried to ask him How? and Where?, but his voice was stuck again.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Steve McCarthy said.

Eddie collected himself. He swallowed.

“My wife was on the porch,” he said. “I could see her there last night.”

He left Eddie sitting there and walked up the Davises’ steps with the jug of water swinging in his hand. The sunlight played inside of it like golden ropes. On the porch, he bent down in the corner. Eddie couldn’t see him from where he was.

“Is she there?” he said.

“Yes,” Steve McCarthy called.

Eddie waited. “Is she okay?” he said.

“She’s taking water.”

He tried to stand but his legs still didn’t work. He held on to the fence behind himself and used his arms to push himself up, but that, too, required strength he didn’t have.

“It takes a little while,” Steve McCarthy called. He was still bent down next to Laura; Eddie could see only the top of his head, the graying hair, the little curls at the base of his neck. “You’ll get some strength, but you have to wait,” he said.

“There are more in the house.”

“How many?”

“Maybe two or three.”

“You sit tight now,” Steve McCarthy said, but he said it gently, only to Laura. He knocked at the Davises’ door. While he waited, he stood with rigid arms, like a man uprighted in a coffin.

“They’re in there,” Eddie said.

“I can wait. For a while, at least.”

“Eddie?” It was Laura’s voice.

“I’m down here. Do what he says.” He slumped back against the fence. He was feeling better, though. The blood was coming back into his legs.

Steve McCarthy knocked again. In the silence that followed, he took the slow deep breaths of a sickly fish.

“We’re going to get out of here,” Eddie said to him. “Then we’ll come back and help. We’ll do what you’re doing.”

“The roads are all blocked,” Steve McCarthy said.

“Then we’ll walk.”

“Not in this heat. Your systems will shut down. And there are people who would rob you.”

“Then how are you doing it?”

“I’m not going far. This is just my neighborhood. I move slow. See this? I breathe deeply. It helps.”

“We’ll take it slow, then.”

“If you want to make it, take it slow.”

“We need to get out of here,” Eddie said.

“My advice? Stay where you are. Wait for it to end.”

When the door opened, Mike Sr. leaned against the jamb. He twisted his face at Steve McCarthy. One arm was hidden behind the door, and when he raised it, it held a gun. Steve McCarthy backed away.

“He’s got water!” Eddie cried.

“Water?” Mike Sr. asked. He was a full head taller than Steve McCarthy and had to point the gun down to level it at his face. “Where were you yesterday?” he shouted. His neck was wide with veins. His fury made him naked-looking.

Steve McCarthy held up his hands. It was as if Mike Sr. had said Stick ’em up. “I wasn’t here yet,” Steve McCarthy said. His voice had the calm of someone not afraid of death by bullets. “I was doing something else.”

The gun shook in Mike Sr.’s hand, and he lowered his arm to his side. He closed his eyes, breathed, and held it up again.

“My son is gone. My son.”

“Shooting me won’t bring him back,” Steve McCarthy said. He’d planted his feet at the end of the porch. “It won’t answer any of your questions.”

“You will, though. Tell me. Tell me why my son is dead.”

“It’s okay, Mike,” Eddie soothed. Mike Sr. jerked his arm toward Eddie. He fired, and a moment later, the air was filled with the absence of the bang.

Eddie opened his mouth and exercised his jaw. He waited for pain, but the bullet had missed him by a mile. Mike Sr. slumped from the door to the railing of the porch. Laura was standing, steadying herself. Her mouth opened, but Eddie couldn’t hear the words.

The water traveled up the sides of the jug as Steve McCarthy backed off the porch. Mike Sr. leaned forward on the top step but couldn’t get his legs to follow. His big chest was a weight held too far out, and he pitched and fell, stumbling down to lie flat on his stomach in the driveway. The gun was still in his hand. When he looked up at Eddie, his nose leaked blood.

“Don’t,” Eddie said. The word was muffled, as if spoken underwater. He stood, but he couldn’t walk yet. He looked down at the back of Mike Sr.’s head. “He’s helping you.”

“Helping me?” Mike Sr. said. “Why doesn’t he help me bury my son? You bastard.”

The door opened wider, and Laura had a hand under Patty’s armpit to keep her standing up. Patty leaned her weight to one side and lifted up a foot. When it was down, she lifted up the other. In this way, she went forward, rocking back and forth.

“Mike,” she croaked. “Drop it.”

Mike Sr. was still splayed out on the asphalt, but he loosened his fingers off the grip.

Laura steadied herself against Patty and got her to the steps. They teetered on the edge. Laura’s knees were shaking and then jutting forward, bending her in half. Patty reached out and caught the railing as Laura sat beside her in a heap.

“Sorry, Patty,” she said.

“You’re fine, hon.” Patty set her jaw and stepped. Then she stepped again, her whole body rocking. She was like a piano being lowered.

“Come here,” she said to Steve McCarthy, who backed over into Eddie and Laura’s driveway.

“Ma’am,” he said. “I don’t mean any harm. I’m sorry that you’ve lost someone. I’ve lost somebody, too.”

“I didn’t lose someone.” Patty stepped finally onto the flat asphalt. Her face pinched as she bent her knees and retrieved the gun from Mike Sr.’s hand. “I lost the only thing I had.”

Eddie tried to take a step forward, and this time his legs held him up. “Patty,” he said. “He has water. He’s helping.”

“When you lose your family, nothing else matters,” she told Steve McCarthy.

They were standing as if in a duel: Patty with the gun at her side, and Steve McCarthy with the jug of water.

“You have your husband,” he said.

“We’re not a family. We’re just two people. The family part’s gone.”

Steve McCarthy looked at the ground and closed his eyes again. “Not if you have them in your heart.”

“Bullshit!” Patty croaked.

“There are people all over suffering,” he said. “Some have lost everything.”

“Put the gun down, Patty,” Eddie said.

“I lost everything.”

“Put the gun down.” This time when Eddie said it, it served only to remind her she was holding something deadly. She raised it and pointed for the second time at Steve McCarthy.

“Drop it,” she said.

He placed the jug of water by his shoe. “If I give it to you, you might as well just shoot me in the head.”

“Step away. Go on. Get outta here.”

“I’ll die,” he pleaded. “I was helping you.”

“You say another word, another fucking word, and I’ll pull the trigger. Answer my husband. I heard you. I heard what you said. Bullshit! Where were you yesterday? Where were you?”

Steve McCarthy bent down and touched the top of the jug; Patty took a step closer and stood at the edge of Eddie and Laura’s driveway.

“Can you do what I’m doing with this?” he said. He picked up the jug and hugged it to his chest. “Can you keep this from happening at every house? Do you believe you can?”

Patty fired into the air. “Run,” she said, but Steve McCarthy froze. She fired again and his shoulder burst open. A flap of bloody fabric hung down. His hand went limp and the jug thumped onto the driveway. Eddie took two steps and fell on it like a fumble. He looked up to see Steve McCarthy running. It was freakish, the speed of his awkward stride; Eddie couldn’t imagine ever running like that again.

Patty put the gun against the side of her head and fired, collapsing to the ground as though her bones had disappeared.

“No!” Mike Sr. shouted. He lifted his forehead from the ground and bashed it against the pavement. “Baby!” he cried, bashing. “Baby, baby, baby.”

Eddie called for Laura. She pushed on the rail and stood, coming down the steps. Mike Sr. was bashing his head just below her, and she had to time her steps to make it over him.

She bent down and lifted Eddie by the arm. Eddie held on to the water.

“Oh, God,” she said.

They went inside their house and fell onto the carpet.

“I have it,” Eddie was saying. He was triumphant, stroking the plastic jug. “I have it, Laur. I got it for us.”