Station Eleven

“We should keep moving,” Kirsten said after a moment. August’s gaze had fallen to the bed. She left the room first so he could say one of his prayers, although she wasn’t actually sure if prayer was the right word for it. When he murmured over the dead, he seemed to be talking only to them. “I hope it was peaceful at the end,” she’d heard him say. Or, “You have a really nice house. I’m sorry for taking your boots.” Or, “Wherever you are, I hope your family’s there too.” To the child in the bed, he spoke so quietly that Kirsten couldn’t hear. The only words she caught were “up in the stars,” and she moved quickly on to the master bedroom so that he wouldn’t catch her eavesdropping, but she saw that August had been there already—the boy’s parents had died in their bed, and a cloud of dust hung in the air above them from when August had pulled up the blankets to cover their faces.

In the en suite bathroom, Kirsten closed her eyes for just a second as she flipped the light switch. Naturally nothing happened, but as always in these moments she found herself straining to remember what it had been like when this motion had worked: walk into a room, flip a switch and the room floods with light. The trouble was she wasn’t sure if she remembered or only imagined remembering this. She ran her fingertips over a blue-and-white china box on the bathroom counter, admired the rows of Q-tips inside before she pocketed them. They looked useful for cleaning ears and musical instruments. Kirsten looked up and met her own gaze in the mirror. She needed a haircut. She smiled, then adjusted her smile to lessen the obviousness of her most recently missing tooth. She opened a cabinet and stared at a stack of clean towels. The one on top was blue with yellow ducks on it and had a hood sewn into a corner. Why hadn’t the parents taken the boy into their bed, if they’d all been sick together? Perhaps the parents had died first. She didn’t want to think about it.

The door to the spare bedroom had been closed, the window open a crack, so the carpet was ruined but the clothes in the closet had escaped the smell of death. She found a dress she liked, soft blue silk with pockets, and changed into it while August was still in the boy’s bedroom. There was also a wedding gown and a black suit. She took these for costumes. What the Symphony was doing, what they were always doing, was trying to cast a spell, and costuming helped; the lives they brushed up against were work-worn and difficult, people who spent all their time engaged in the tasks of survival. A few of the actors thought Shakespeare would be more relatable if they dressed in the same patched and faded clothing their audience wore, but Kirsten thought it meant something to see Titania in a gown, Hamlet in a shirt and tie. The tuba agreed with her.

“The thing with the new world,” the tuba had said once, “is it’s just horrifically short on elegance.” He knew something about elegance. He had played in a military orchestra with the conductor before the collapse. He talked sometimes about the military balls. Where was he? Don’t think of the Symphony. Don’t think of the Symphony. There is only here, she told herself, there is only this house.

“Nice dress,” August said, when she found him downstairs in the living room.

“The old one smelled like smoke and fish guts.”

“I found a couple suitcases in the basement,” he said.

They left with a suitcase each, towels and clothing and a stack of magazines that Kirsten wanted to go through later, an unopened box of salt from the kitchen and various other items that they thought they might use, but first Kirsten lingered for a few minutes in the living room, scanning the bookshelves while August searched for a TV Guide or poetry.

“You looking for something in particular?” he asked after he’d given up the search. She could see he was thinking of taking the remote. He’d been holding it and idly pressing all the buttons.

“Dr. Eleven, obviously. But I’d settle for Dear V.”

The latter was a book she’d somehow misplaced on the road two or three years ago, and she’d been trying ever since to find a replacement. The book had belonged to her mother, purchased just before the end of everything. Dear V.: An Unauthorized Portrait of Arthur Leander. White text across the top proclaimed the book’s status as a number-one best seller. The cover photo was black-and-white, Arthur looking over his shoulder as he got into a car. The look on his face could have meant anything; a little haunted, perhaps, but it was equally possible that someone had just called his name and he was turning to look at him or her. The book was comprised entirely of letters written to a friend, the anonymous V.