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from his body. Sometimes he wrapped me up, really right, so I couldn’t get out. I used to hate that. And sometimes, I really didn’t mind. But ever since Sioux Falls, I can’t stay far from him in the tent for more than a minute. The second we set it up, he goes right to sleep. No conversation. And I get right on him, right away. But now he doesn’t feel like he used to. It’s like he’s taking all the heat from me instead of giving it. And I’m happy to give it to him, as long as he doesn’t get sick on me. I tell him he’s not allowed to get sick. He agrees.
               
    Sometimes, when we talked about the veneer of humanity, and he still seemed to enjoy indulging in the idea of it, he would bring up love. He’d mention a girl he used to know. She had been his girlfriend. He said they wanted to get married, but they could never get the money up. He said he regretted that they’d never just settled for a cheap wedding. I didn’t really know what a wedding was, and he told me it used to be a giant waste of money. But it was part of the veneer, and so he had tried to save up for it. She died before they could get married though. They had a kid too. He doesn’t talk about that at all. A picture fell out of his jacket once in Pittsburg, and he wouldn’t even tell me who it was. After the Sea Queen Marie went down, and we survived by the hand of god, as he put it, he admitted that it was his daughter. He’d wanted to get married most for her. But more than just for her. He said he really loved his lady. We were soul mates, he had said. That one took a lot of explaining. I got out of it that two people pretended like they’d be together forever. He said forever was one of the veneer ideas, easy to embrace when you don’t have to struggle through the rain for food, higher ground, warmth, a dry place to lay down.
                It sounded really silly to me. But part of me is jealous. It sounds like something I am sure I will never have. Love. Soul mate. Wedding. A baby. And then I start to feel the attraction to him. I start to take all those things he has said and place them on him and me. But he won’t talk about any of it with me. Just Leadville.
     
    She didn’t drown, his daughter. It was that there were no hospitals around to take her. They’d all been abandoned. There were militia hospitals. But they couldn’t do anything. Bad antibiotics. Now he won’t touch them. Says the rain’s gotten to them all. I don’t think that’s the real reason he doesn’t take them.
     
    I push into him, begging in my mind that the warmth return, that his warmth come into me, like it was always there before. Too hot. But it doesn’t. And I lie awake thinking, watching the drab nothing above the tent, noticing that it is darkening by degrees outside. At first I think it’s getting dark too fast, and I remember the charcoal black sky of the hurricane that sank us. But it’s not, it’s getting dark at normal speed. And the rain is on medium. I calm myself back down.
                I know that if the face eaters left ten minutes after we did, and guess right about which mudslide we crawled up onto, they’ll be arriving any minute now. We’ll be easy prey inside the tent. We won’t even hear their footsteps. But our normal guard duty where we take turns on watch is out—it has been for the past few nights. And I don’t have the energy to watch the water right now. I can’t leave Russell. I hope they miss us, find the wrong island. I try to recall how many other islands are around this one, how many they’ll have to choose from. Two, three? Really only one though. One that’s big enough to set up a tent on. Maybe they’re dead. Drowned now for real this time, the last two. I don’t remember the bandits ever being this persistent, not even in South Dakota. Something’s different here in Wyoming.
     
    Just to be safe, I take out my knife, and I accidentally hit Russell with it as I