“A GOOD PLACE TO TAKE A BREAK,” said Gage. “We really should get some sleep. We’re not doing ourselves a favor sitting up all night, believe me.”

They stood and stretched. Gage cracked his knuckles. First Dinah, then Zeke went to have a pee. Having already taken care of her pee while she cuddled in blankets, Rebecca Ruth slept on.

The man and the two older children gathered in the breezeway to study the weather. Dinah wondered if the storm was losing some strength. The air seemed to move with a more stately progress than before — didn’t it? Or was that wishful thinking on her part?

In a kind of slow-motion anguish, the trees tossed their heads. The sound of ten million leaves palming against each other. The sound of deep night.

“Sounds like a laugh track playing very far away,” said Gage.

“We don’t do laugh tracks, not in this house,” Dinah reminded her cousin. “No TV. Besides, who could be laughing at a time like this?”

“Choirs of angels might,” suggested Zeke. “They know it will come out all right.”

“Even if they knew the future, why should they laugh?” Dinah shot back. “Laugh at our misery now?”

“Oh, answer your own question, if my answer doesn’t suit you,” said Zeke. “I suppose you think the wind sounds more like — like some sort of campfire songfest, with crowds of Juliettes and Brittneys swaying back and forth, going ‘The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out,’ and on and on.”

“Ezekiel Hiram Jehosophat Ormsby,” began Dinah in a murderous tone.

“I was going to go try the generator again,” said Gage, “but I hate to leave you here squabbling.”

“I’ll come help,” said Dinah, wanting to get away from her brother for a spell. “Zeke can mind the baby.”

“I’m the boy. I’ll help Gage,” said Zeke. “Mind Rebecca Ruth yourself.”

Gage had had enough. He left them both behind. “Chew each other up all you want,” he told them. “Just give us a break here, will you? Don’t wake your sister. Please? It took long enough for her to settle.”

Zeke promised nothing, so Dinah wouldn’t either. Seething silently, they cupped their hands to peer through the window, watching Gage with a lackluster flashlight. He flipped switches; he fiddled with wires. He peered at directions printed on the side of the housing, running his hands to sluice off the rain-smear so he could decipher the engineering language. But the secrets of a gas-powered generator remained beyond him.

Dinah sympathized. There was so much of the world that she, too, couldn’t figure out. Or even imagine. Like where her friends Brittney and Juliette might be tonight. Where in the whole world. Or why they, wherever the blazes they were, should have the comfort of their parents, and Dinah only had —

“I like Gage,” she heard herself say, in the wrong tone, brutally.

“Useless,” agreed Zeke.

“He’s not useless.”

“He wouldn’t be useless if only he’d be right once in a while. I should have gone scavenging for supplies today, and you know it.”

“You didn’t, though,” she snapped. “At least when I had a plan, I carried it out. I went downslope to give blessings and hugs to Juliette and Brittney. I didn’t just talk about it.”

“Yeah, and you’d have gotten in a heap of trouble if everything hadn’t gotten so out of control —” said Zeke, but this brought the subject of their parents too close. The sudden panic, the medical questions, their mother’s tears, the quick prayer consultation in the driveway, the departure, as the echoes of distant thunder shuddered down the hills again… .

Remembering this, Dinah wanted to reach out and hold Zeke’s hand, just for a moment, but he was a jerk, so she didn’t.

When he returned, Gage looked so dejected that Dinah said, not as convincingly as she would have liked, “Don’t worry, Gage. It’s probably for the best. If you’d gotten the contraption working, the lights would’ve all gone on and woken up Rebecca Ruth. Maybe tomorrow someone will come along and fix it for us. That’s time enough.”

“Huh,” said Zeke, noncommittally.

“Besides,” said Dinah, “whatever food was left in the fridge has rotted already. So we don’t really need a working fridge.”

“We have to get some milk for the birthday girl sooner or later,” said Gage, “and we’re going to need to refrigerate it.”

“Maybe tomorrow will be the time to leave,” said Zeke, as they returned to the front room on tiptoe. His expression said, We all know that yesterday was the time to leave.

Dinah looked at Gage, to see if he would say, No, the time is past; we can’t get out anymore. But he said nothing for a long time.

“Are you going to sleep?” asked Dinah in a softer voice.

Again, quiet, for so long that the children were sure the answer must be yes. But then Gage opened his eyes and winked. “Just tricking you to see if you’d nod off a little. I mean if I did.”

“You can sleep,” said Zeke. “Be my guest. I’m on duty. I’ll keep watch. It’s our house, anyway.”

“Oh no, he can’t sleep,” protested Dinah. “I want to know about What-the-Dickens.”

“He can tell us tomorrow. His …”— Zeke edited his opinions midsentence —“… little story will keep.”

“Tomorrow,” said Dinah, “we’ll have fresh worries to bother us, Zeke.”

“Is there anyone else out there?” asked Zeke. “I mean, if the time has come to leave, who will we find out there?”

Dinah clutched her knees. That’s what she worried about, too. That even the looters might have moved on. Moved out. Gotten out while they could.

Gotten out if they could.

She jabbed Gage under the ribs. “Where are we?” she said in a chattery whisper, to keep herself from flying apart.

Gage pulled himself upright again and rubbed both his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I’d rather talk than sleep,” said Gage. That remark is a fiction, thought Dinah. By the hooded look in her brother’s eyes, she guessed that Zeke thought Gage’s remark an out-and-out lie.

Neither of them spoke, though. They just waited, expectantly, in the dark, for the engine of storytelling to turn over and start up again — to do the thing that the blasted generator refused to do — to keep them warm throughout the night.