While Laura slept, he tried to imagine the directions to her parents’ house again, but his memory of the directions had begun to blur. Every turn led back to the sidewalk in front of the abandoned house. He needed to get outside to regain his bearings and see how the streets connected to one another. He looked out the window; Mike Sr. must have gone inside.

Eddie opened the door.

When he walked to the end of the block, he saw that his street intersected with Eisner, and that Eisner connected to Kerwin—and was relieved that the world possessed more dimensions than what his imagination had reduced it to. He could see the park in his mind again, how they would walk down the hill to get there.

They would be gone by the time Bill Peters’s body was discovered. Eddie wasn’t sure if Mike Sr. would corroborate his story, but they would think of something if he didn’t. It was best to be far away. Bill Peters and the Davises were already casualties of this place, and there was no telling who else would be.

But Eddie needed to check one final time before they left.

He walked down the block and into the backyard of the abandoned house. All the leaves were off the hedge, making it a bouquet of tall sticks stuck in the ground.

From where he stood, he could see that something was wrong with Bill Peters’s body.

There was something else on top of it.

Eddie was very still. The backyard was silent except for the sound of shallow breathing. Behind him was the outline of a flowerbed made up with paving stones. He gathered his strength and lifted one. It was a jagged rectangle the size of a quart of milk. He held it in both hands and walked across the grass.

The sound came again. It was the noise at the back of a throat. Eddie looked around; there was nothing to stand behind, nowhere to run but back to his door, through the open street. He listened, but the sound had stopped.

On top of Bill Peters was a man.

Eddie held the stone out in front of him. There was only the faintest whiff of putrescence in the air. He leaned in close to the man, and the branches of the hedge ran up along his chest and shoulders.

He was lying there, facedown. He wore a white shirt, stained dark brown at the shoulder. His hair was flat and matted, his ear as gray-green as mold.

Eddie bent down to take his pulse, but stopped before he was close enough. The shoulder rose and fell a little.

“Hello?” Eddie whispered.

The man turned his head to look up at him.

It was Steve McCarthy.

The branches had cut his nose and left scabs like raisins on his cheek.

“I’m all right,” he said.

Eddie’s heart pumped great jolts of blood into his ears. “What are you doing here?” he whispered.

Steve McCarthy moved his lips. “I found this man,” he said. Eddie watched his eyes close and listened to his breathing.

When Steve McCarthy bolstered his strength, he said, “I was trying to help, but then I fell. I think this man is dead. He’s not moving. I’m having trouble discerning how long I’ve been here.” He rolled and lifted his hand. In it was the steak knife. “Look,” he gasped. “He’s been stabbed.” Beneath him, Bill Peters’s face bulged unrecognizably. Eddie saw where the collar of his shirt had turned his neck a dark blue from the pressure of the swelling.

“I need to report this,” Steve McCarthy said. He was still for a moment. Then he said, “This used to be a good neighborhood.”

Eddie’s palms hurt. He looked down and saw he was still squeezing the stone.

“Violence,” Steve McCarthy said, “all of it.”

Eddie looked at his face. There was a clean spot at his temple—a stretch of skin between his hair and the stubble of a beard. The hard corners of the stone pressed into his hands. He still had the strength to do it, to lift it up over his head and bring it down. It would all be over quick.

“God gave me a gift late in life. That water …” Steve McCarthy began. He’d closed his eyes again. “But it’s not too late. I can still use it. He’s asking me to use it.”

Eddie lifted the stone. He stepped forward to get his weight moving in the right direction.

“He gave me a supply to take to you people,” Steve McCarthy continued. “His people.”

Eddie held his breath. He looked at the spot of skin at Steve McCarthy’s temple, and then lowered the stone to his belly. “A supply of what?” he asked.

Steve McCarthy opened his bloodshot eyes. “Water,” he said. “There’s more of it. I just need to get my strength.”

Eddie put the stone down and knelt beside him. “Tell me where it is,” he said. “I’ll get it.”

“No,” he said. “I have to do it.”

“I’ll bring it back for you.”

Eddie touched the shoulder of Steve McCarthy’s shirt where the blood had dried. Beneath it the skin was as crisp as cellophane.

“I need to get my strength,” he said.

“You’re sick. Let me do it,” Eddie said, but Steve McCarthy didn’t respond. “Tell me where,” Eddie said.

He got his arm between the two of them—between Steve McCarthy’s belly and Bill Peters’s chest. Steve McCarthy winced as he was lifted off the dead man’s body. But Eddie got him to his knees. Then he laid him down in the yard.

“Can you stand?” Eddie asked. “Can you feel your legs?”

He bent again, pulling at the sides of Steve McCarthy’s waist and raising him like a bag of heavy dirt. They staggered together, but once he was up, his legs straightened and held him. Eddie took him by the shoulders and guided him down the walk. The blood on his shirt was powdery. It brushed on Eddie’s arm and cheek.

At the house, the door was locked. Laura must have gotten up. She must have been afraid that something had happened.

He knocked, and when she opened the door, he leaned Steve McCarthy against the brick wall beside it. He kept his hand pressed into the man’s chest to keep him from pitching forward.

“He’s alive,” Eddie said.

Laura looked with horrified eyes.

“It’s the guy who helped us,” he said. “The guy with the water.”

“We can’t give it back to him, Eddie. We can’t.”

“Help me get him inside.”

She got a sheet out of the closet and laid it out on the floor. She folded up a towel for his head.

“Put him here,” she said.

“I think we have some gauze.”

Eddie stepped back out onto the porch and surveyed the street. It was empty the way he’d come. When he looked in the other direction, Mike Sr. was standing in his driveway. Eddie nodded, but Mike Sr. only stared.

“Who you got in there?” Mike Sr. asked. His voice was hoarse.

Eddie stepped back inside and closed the door.

Laura was perched next to Steve McCarthy, wrapping gauze around his shoulder.

“Is it bad?” Eddie said.

“I don’t know. We need some tape.”

He got her the duct tape, and she filled the room with its wretched tearing sound as she pulled it from the roll. Then she wrapped it around the gauze on Steve McCarthy’s shoulder.

“I don’t know what this will do,” she said.

“Is he breathing?”

She turned her face and put it down close to Steve McCarthy’s mouth.

“A little,” she said. “It smells really bad.”

“We have to keep him alive.”

Laura stood up fully and rested her hand on her hip as if examining Eddie’s motives had returned her to a normal life.

“Why,” she asked, a shrewdness in her eyes, “do we have to save him?”

“He was shot,” Eddie said, “helping us.”

He looked at Steve McCarthy’s shoulder and his face full of scabs. His hair was too thin to cover the liver spots on his forehead. He was an old man, Eddie saw.

In the kitchen, he poured some of the water into a mug. Then he stood in the hallway holding it, looking at the two of them: Laura, and Steve McCarthy on the carpet.

“Eddie …” Laura said, looking at the mug.

He bent down and tipped it to Steve McCarthy’s lips. At first, it bubbled back and poured out over his cheeks and onto the sheet beneath his neck, but when he tried again, he got it down. Eddie watched his Adam’s apple move.

“Be careful,” Laura said. “You’re wasting it.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “Maybe he can talk.”

“Don’t give him too much,” she said. She stood above them, holding her hands together—one cupped beneath the other.

Then she said, “What are you doing?”

“Letting him drink.”

“With your fingers.”

Eddie hadn’t noticed. He was touching Steve McCarthy’s hair.

Laura stood there for a long time, frowning, as Eddie sat next to Steve McCarthy.

“Not too much,” she said. Eddie tipped the cup up hard against Steve McCarthy’s lips, and the water spilled out over his mouth again.

“Come on,” Eddie whispered hotly. “Tell me where.”

Laura went back into the kitchen. Eddie could hear the chair move when she sat down at the table.

After a while, Steve McCarthy’s breathing came more steadily, and he opened his eyes. They were still red, but he was lucid.

“You’re okay,” Eddie said. “You can tell me where it is now.”

“Don’t let me die,” Steve McCarthy whispered.

“You’re better than you were.”

“My throat hurts. It’s dry.”

“We’ll help you. But you have to tell me where it is. The water,” he whispered. “Just tell me.”

“I need more,” he said. “A little. Or I won’t make it.”

“You’re okay.”

“God gave it to me,” he said.

“Laura,” Eddie called.

When she came in, her eyes were pink and swollen.

“Pour me a little more,” he said.

“We don’t have much left.”

“Just enough to wet his throat.”

She went to the table and came back with the jug. “Look how much you used already,” she said.

“It’s important.”

“We need enough for us. We’re leaving. That’s what you said.”

“You wanted to help people. Let’s help him.”

He gave her the mug, and when she came back with it, he held it and looked inside. There was a thin layer of water at the bottom. He tipped it to Steve McCarthy’s mouth, and Steve McCarthy closed his eyes as it went in.

“Go on,” Steve McCarthy said. “Give me some.”

“I just did.”

Steve McCarthy looked at him. “There was nothing there.”

“There was,” Eddie said. “A little bit.”

“Please,” Steve McCarthy said. “I’m not your enemy. I helped you before. Didn’t I help you?”

Eddie put his hand on Steve McCarthy’s good shoulder and shook it against the floor of the living room. He said, “Tell me where it is, goddamn you.”

“I was kind to you,” Steve McCarthy said. He leaned his head back against the towel and parted his lips.

“Laura,” Eddie called again.

He got up and went to the kitchen. She was sitting on a chair. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t let him do this to us.”

“He’s not doing anything.”

“He’s going to take everything,” she said.

“He needs our help.”

“Until you need help. Then what happens?”

“He’s a Good Samaritan. This is the right thing to do.” He poured a little more into the mug and took it back into the living room. Laura followed him in. Steve McCarthy had opened his eyes back up, but when he saw Eddie, he closed them.

“Did you see that?” Laura said. She stood up close to Eddie and spoke directly in his ear. She was excited. Eddie could feel her heartbeat. “His eyes were open. Did you see? He closed them for our benefit.”

Steve McCarthy breathed through his nose in fits. “I have it,” he said. “My strength is coming back.”

“He’s faking,” Laura said. “He’s putting us on.”

“ ‘Whoever has the world’s goods,’ ” Steve McCarthy said, “ ‘and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him … how does the love of God abide in him?’ ”

Laura knelt beside him and stared into his face. “What is that?” she asked. “What are you saying?”

“The word of God.”

“Oh, Christ,” she said. “What do you want from us?”

He closed his eyes again, and when he opened them he said, “Just a little more. That’s all I need.” He reached out and touched the rim of the mug with his finger. “It’s helping me. I can feel it. I’m getting stronger.”

Eddie took the handle of the cup, but Laura pushed his hand down, pinning it where it was on the carpet.

“It isn’t right,” she said. She was speaking loudly. “He’s faking. Can’t you see that? He lied to you the first time and now he’s lying to you again. He threatened you.”

“He didn’t,” Eddie said.

“You had to throw him down the steps.”

Eddie sat up on his knees. “No,” he said. “That was a different man.”

“Eddie …” Laura said. “Please …” She stood with her hand clenched at her chin and walked back and forth between Eddie and the bedroom.

“I can get the rest,” Steve McCarthy said.

“Where do you live?” Eddie said. “You can trust me.”

“It’s not at home,” he said. “I can feel my legs. My legs are coming back.”

“What’s he saying?” Laura said.

“He’s saying he has more.”

Eddie took the mug into the kitchen, and Laura followed at his ear again.

“You can’t,” she whispered.

“You think that was all he had? One jug? For the whole neighborhood?”

“He’ll say anything, Eddie. He’s trying to live.”

“So are we.”

“He’s desperate.”

She held his shoulders and softened, so that for a moment he thought she might lean in and press her forehead against his.

“We need to save ourselves,” she said. Her eyes weren’t pink anymore. They were clear. “I was wrong. It’s just us now. You were right about that. We have to go.”

“He’s giving us a chance,” Eddie said. “If we get what he has, we have a chance.”

“You’re not thinking. Listen to me. He’s taking advantage of you.”

“I saved him out there. You didn’t see him. He would have died.”

In the living room, Steve McCarthy’s breath was steady and Eddie bent down to look at his lips. The skin had splintered like old fiberglass. There was a moldy fragrance coming from his insides, but it wasn’t as bad as Laura had said.

“We can get him better, at least,” he said. “Then we’ll see what he’s making up. When he’s better, it’ll be easier to tell.”

He pressed the mug to Steve McCarthy’s mouth again, and it pushed his lip up and exposed his overlapping teeth. The water welled at the corners of his mouth before it sunk in.

“Stop it,” Laura said. She was standing above him, her voice quaking. “Look what you’re doing.”

Eddie heard a boom outside, and Laura’s body tensed.

The noise struck again.

It was someone knocking at the door.

“Who you got in there?” came a voice.

It was Mike Sr.

“Just be quiet,” Eddie whispered to Laura. “Don’t say anything. Don’t move.”

Eddie stared at the rise and fall of Steve McCarthy’s chest.

“Who’s in there?” Mike Sr. bellowed.

“It’s just us, Mike,” Laura called.

“Shhh …”

“Go back home,” Laura called.

Mike Sr. knocked some more. Then he yelled, “I saw your husband take him. I’ll kill him for it. I’ll kill them both.”

They could hear his footfalls down the steps.

“There are three of us and one of him,” Eddie said.

“I know,” she said.

They took little sips of water and stopped talking to save their strength. Steve McCarthy kept his eyes closed. The sun had dipped outside and made the lawn look fiery.

Eddie put his head between his knees and regarded the floor, watching its patterns shift. Laura’s hand was on the back of his head, but it felt hot and he shook it off.

Something hit the kitchen window behind him and he sat up straight again. It sounded like the thump of a bird, but then he saw knuckles at the end of an arm.

A fist.

Mike Sr. was reaching up from the driveway.

They watched it. He pressed his fingers against the windowpane and the tips flattened and turned white. They sat very still, though the window was too high for him to see them. The hand retracted, but then came back and knocked again.

“God,” Laura said. “Just give him to him.”

“No,” Eddie said. “Not until he tells us.”

“Tells us what?” Laura cried.

He went into the living room and touched Steve McCarthy on the shoulder. His eyes didn’t open, but Eddie could see he was awake.

“Tell me,” he said. “I’ll leave my wife here with you. She thinks you’re lying. If you’re lying, there’s no point giving you any more.”

Steve McCarthy whispered something.

“What?”

“In the woods.”

Eddie looked over at Laura. She was staring out the window and hadn’t heard.

“Where?” Eddie whispered.

Steve McCarthy smiled. “I hid it.”

Eddie took hold of his wounded shoulder.

“Was it yours, or did you find it?” he said.

“What?” Steve McCarthy said.

Eddie squeezed his shoulder, and a light puff of powdered blood released above it.

“Did you find it there? Was it a jug? Like from a cooler?”

Steve McCarthy breathed in and out. If there was pain, his face showed no sign of it.

“A jug,” he said.

Eddie banged the shoulder up and down on the carpet.

“Where? Where did you hide it?”

Steve McCarthy breathed out and moaned. “A little more,” he said. He opened his mouth and touched his wrecked lips with his fingers. “I need a little more water to talk.”

“Goddammit!” Laura yelled. She bent over Steve McCarthy and pointed a finger in his face. “You’re lying! You don’t have any more!”

Steve McCarthy put his hand back at his side. He was silent. The knocking on the window had stopped.

“Just give him a little more,” Eddie said. “Then I’ll make him tell us.”

“Eddie.” She held up her hands. “There’s nothing for him to tell.”

He went to the kitchen and poured more water into the mug.

“He’s killing us!” Laura shouted.

“He knows where it is,” Eddie insisted. “He’ll tell me and then I’ll go and find it.”

He put the mug to Steve McCarthy’s lips and he gulped the liquid greedily.

“Look,” Eddie said, nodding toward the window. “It’s dark already.”

Laura slumped against the wall.

There was a shot outside and the kitchen window shattered. Glass sprinkled on the floor.

“Stay where you are,” Eddie yelled to Laura.

He pressed his back into the wall and climbed over her to get to the kitchen, standing up slowly beside the window.

“Eddie …” Laura called.

“He can’t get in here.”

He turned and saw Laura with her hand at Steve McCarthy’s hip. She was going through his pockets.

“He’s got a knife!” she called.

“Hold on,” Eddie said. “Just hold him there.”

He could see Mike Sr. standing on his porch in the dusk. His arms were resting on the railing and the gun was in both fists, pointing at their window, but his head was hanging down. His belly sagged beneath him.

Eddie heard a thumping on the floor and turned to see Laura pressing the towel down on Steve McCarthy’s face. The man’s feet pulled frantically against the carpet. His hands grabbed at the air and flopped open on the floor.

“Laura!”

“Stay away!” she screamed. She pointed the knife at Eddie. It was the knife from between Bill Peters’s ribs.

“Let him up!” he cried, circling around behind her. He took her shoulders and pulled back. When she was off him, he flung the towel away. Steve McCarthy’s eyes were open, staring blankly at the ceiling. He didn’t move. Eddie put his cheek to his mouth and felt nothing, smelled only the faintest trace of breath.

Laura sat with her back hunched and scratched at her palms, staring into them.

“It wasn’t an accident,” she said. “Nothing is.”

“Oh, God,” Eddie said.

“I saved you from him. I had to.”

Eddie sat on the floor and watched her. Her hair was in her face. She was breathing hard.

“We can give him to Mike Sr. now,” she said. “He’ll have what he wants, and we can leave.”

Eddie stared up at her. “He knew where it was,” he said. “I can’t get it for you now.”

“I wasn’t doing it for me.”