Chapter 5 The Emerald Moon:The End Approaches

Evelyn’s POV

It was six-forty in the morning and still dark outside. I sat on the edge of the bed with the phone wedged between my ear and my shoulder, watching the last files crawl across the laptop screen — a field surgery manual, a water treatment guide, six maps saved in triplicate

Aunt Marianne answered on the fourth ring, her voice still soft with sleep. "Evelyn? Honey, it isn't even seven. Is something wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. I just wanted to hear the house."

She let it slide, like she’d done with so much that week. Behind her, Uncle Greg yelled about starting the truck. There was movement and laughter, then Tyler picked up, a saw screaming in the background.

"Before you ask — the mesh is up on the last two windows, the wire's live all the way around, and the basement has officially stopped being a basement. Two hundred twelve boxes. Mom's been signing for deliveries like she runs a hotel."

"Good. Now listen to me. Doors stay locked, all of them, all night. If somebody knocks, you don't answer it — not a neighbor, not the sheriff, not a woman standing there with a baby in her arms. And nothing comes out of that basement, no matter who asks you for it."

The saw stopped. "You keep saying it like it's happening tomorrow."

"It's happening." My voice started to lean, so I flattened it. "Tyler. The scary part won't be the monsters. It'll be people. Remember that when it counts."

He was quiet for a second. "Okay," he said, and then, softer: "Look after yourself."

I hung up at six fifty-three and sat there with the phone in my lap. Whatever had been tight in my throat finally let go, and it wasn't fear, or it wasn't only fear. In the other life I had spent five years not calling that house, and by the time I did, there was nobody left to pick up.

The door banged open at nine-twenty, and Hannah came in backwards, still arguing with Zoe about whether a bag of oranges counted as a vegetable. They were pink-cheeked from the cold and carrying enough groceries to feed the whole floor, and Zoe dumped a bag on my bed without ceremony and announced that I was going to eat something whether I liked it or not.

"Look at you," Hannah said, and touched my collarbone with one finger. "You're a sheet of paper. Eat the apple."

I bit into my apple and listened. They were giddy, hyped over a free weekend, and joked three times that the world was ending — unaware they spoke the truth. Zoe mimicked a news anchor, and Hannah laughed until she sank to the floor. For ninety seconds, the room felt like it used to.

Then I reached behind the curtain, pulled out the three packs, and set them on the rug.

They stopped talking. I unzipped one and turned it so they could see: tourniquet looped where a hand could find it without light, knife, headlamp, water tablets, three days of food. Everything a person needed to leave this building and keep walking for a week, and light enough that they would still be able to move.

"Whatever doesn't fit stays here," I said. "Weight you can't carry is weight that kills you."

Hannah looked at me for a long moment with her head tilted, the way she did when she was reading past the surface of a person. "Evelyn," she said, quietly. "Do you know something we don't?"

My hand rested on the last zipper. "At noon, don't leave this building. That's all I'm asking."

Neither of them answered. The silence had a shape to it, and then Zoe said something about me watching too many documentaries, and Hannah laughed a beat too late, and the moment closed over like water.

At ten-forty I gathered my hair at the back of my head, took the scissors off the desk, and cut it off above my fist. Hannah made a small sound. Zoe put her hand over her mouth.

Then the door opened and Grace came in with her carry-on already packed and the pink embroidered purse hanging off her shoulder. She stopped in the middle of the room, looked at the hair on the floor and then at me, and her face did what it always did — went looking for the kindest available explanation.

"Oh," she said. "Let me walk you down to the place on the corner. They'd even it out for twenty bucks. Short hair's actually kind of hot on you."

Hannah laughed, surprised into it, and Zoe followed, and for a second the room warmed back up like a stove clicking on.

I didn't laugh. "Where are you going?"

"Kyle's." She said it lightly, already checking her phone. "His building has a generator and a doorman, and he has actual food in his fridge. It's three blocks, Evelyn. I'll be back Monday."

I picked up the fourth pack, set it on her mattress, and pulled the zipper open so she could see inside.

She looked at it, nodded, and said she'd think about it, which in Grace's language meant no. So I caught her in the doorway at ten fifty-five, before she could get past me, and pushed the pack against her chest until she had to take it or drop it.

"Take it," I said, low and level. "And Grace — when it starts, don't wait for anyone to come get you. Not Kyle, not his roommate, not me. Get to the water and go north, and remember that the only person you can count on is you."

Her chin came up. I watched her hear it wrong, watched it land as pity, as the thin strange roommate looking down on her for having a boyfriend and somewhere warm to sleep.

"Thanks," she said, bright and flat and precise. "Really. Thanks for the bag."

She brushed past me into the hallway. Hannah stood frozen by her bed, about to speak, while Zoe’s lips parted without a sound. Right before the door clicked shut, I spotted Grace’s nails digging into her palm, the pink purse swinging against her hip. I did not chase her. I’d chased her once before, and returned empty-handed, haunted by a single color. I closed my eyes briefly, then headed to the bathroom to finish cutting my hair.

Kyle waited at 11:20, leaning against his car hood, tall and neat in a nice jacket. He stood up when he saw Grace, took her suitcase and stowed it in the trunk, then brushed the wind-tousled hair from her cheek, his hand lingering a little too long. He mentioned the Japanese restaurant on the Ave, saying fresh big-eye tuna had arrived that morning — the best all season.

She laughed and took his arm, and they walked to the car like any other Saturday. From the third-floor window I watched him open her door, and I watched his jaw work once, hard, and his throat move as he swallowed, and then walk around the front of the car with his eyes on the pavement instead of on her.

The clock on my desk said eleven forty-seven. Low in the clouds over the water, something was turning a color that had no name in any language I knew. I looked at it with my pack already on my shoulders, and then I went to find Hannah.