FIFTEEN

Thomas was standing in front of the safe room, having just closed its door, when Skylar approached.

“Still hungry?” she asked.

“No. I wasn’t sure if …”

He trailed off. Skylar Stover, the actress, was looking at him plaintively, and for a moment he thought he could see through her, as if she weren’t standing there at all. As if he were imagining her.

“I wasn’t sure if I should lock this door,” he finished.

“Who are you trying to keep out of there? Us?”

“Not you. Anyone desperate enough to break in and steal.”

“And you think that might happen tonight.”

“Probably not, but at some point the threat will be real. Starvation will change people. It will turn them into monsters.”

“Then don’t let them starve. When your neighbors run out of food, help them.”

“We can’t help them all.”

“You keep saying that. Like you don’t care who dies.”

Driving all day had left him shattered, and he was worried sick over whatever Hell loomed ahead. But somehow Thomas still noticed Skylar’s profile in the flickering candlelight, like the jutting curve of her chin that was somehow both strong and feminine, or the faint presence of her upper lip, a feature that strengthened the character of her mouth in the opposite way of collagen injections and plastic surgery. Skylar was surely exhausted and emotionally spent, but when she smiled, he could see she was a person who smiled easily, and when she spoke, her words always carried meaning. After dinner, when she volunteered to clean the dishes, the candle beside the sink threw her into such flattering light that she finally caught him staring.

“If we try to save everyone,” he explained, “we’ll all die. There’s no way to sustain the current population without technology.”

“You sound like a documentary.”

“I’m being realistic.”

“What are you hoping for?” she asked. “What if the six of us outlast everyone else? What then?”

“I don’t know.”

“In your film, the whole country is gone except angry little towns that guard their farms with machine guns.”

“Maybe it won’t be like that,” he said. “Maybe the damage isn’t as widespread as it seems. Or there’s an easier way to fix the broken things.” “I thought you were being realistic.”

“I don’t have answers, Skylar. But I don’t want to die, either. I don’t want you to die or Natalie and her family to die. Isn’t that enough? Why not focus on us instead of whatever is going on out there?”

“Because selfishness is why this even happened. Enough people knew the risk. We could have prepared. Instead we fought with each other over stupid things and now everything we ever cared about is gone.”

Skylar’s bottom lip quivered. Her eyes glistened through tears.

“I did it, too. I made more money than I could ever spend, and what did I do with it? Invested it. Put it in the bank. Gave some to charity but compared to how much I made? I could have done more. You could have done more. The fucking capital class could have done more. And you know why we didn’t?”

Thomas didn’t think he wanted her to answer.

“Because we are selfish. Greedy little animals.”

She stepped forward and pressed her index finger into his chest. “But I won’t be an animal anymore.”