A/N: Thank you if you have read this far. There is one more chapter and an epilogue (which I will upload together) after this, and then it's finished. Comments and Discussions (and Votes) are welcome as always. Enjoy.

There were mittencrabs in the streams and in the old narrows and they seemed to whistle when you got close. Tiny little patterns of musculature and rude crescent appendages and on their furbacks the architecture of the epochs in their dawning. In the redpines the hummingbirds and the warblers made their songs and they sang of all hope. They called forth archaisms unheard of by man and they were in their own way some godly paradigm and to hear them was to know you were right, you were good. In the apertures of the black herringbone paths the daisies sprouted wirebent and lank in blooms of yellow and milkglass and the fat flowerheads pinwheeled together in little ivory networks and the sun hanging with a satellite’s cosmic grace all brash and malapert so that rimed on the walkways their shadows thinly adumbrate like blackchalk outlines etched into the surface of that gothic cellarworld where no door shall be and all respite will cease and that will be that. Dear wretched soul now in these illusory times where you find such mythic qualities in the greenwoods and the forests filled with mystery and where the foul blackdogs lurch from obscene cerberean darkness thin and deformed and the hummingbirds sing of times gone and times never will and the dace in the bloodred riverruns slick and broadbellied, eyes bulging in flared retreat, carmine declensions of a world in becoming, and the oaktops aflame all burn and all who walk here are erased from this hallowed ground save you is it you that weeps? Or will you? For what you give and what you still will give are uncountable and can you ever decide. Oh holy firebearer can you weep for what you had or will you carry the torch before you? It is time to make your choice, child. It is time to rise.

She awoke in bitter cold and her feet were in agony. They had walked until they could not and now they would do the same again. She woke Yeri and they moved. They were both crying. Yeri looked like some filthen girlchild in her bedsheet. They had not eaten and it was dark and they were not sure if it was night or evening or day. No sun and no light. Just a grim horizon. Irene perhaps three miles behind or five or twenty but they could not tell. Hours into days. Countless clockless hours of mourning. Their pace was slow. Seulgi’s feet were too bad to go any faster. They stopped roadside and she looked around and took the binoculars and scanned everything she could see. Nobody following. Darkness over an obsolete primordial earth. What was not dead was dying. She looked at her feet and then at Yeri and sighed. What was not dead was dying.

In the evening they stopped. It was still dark and they were exhausted. They kept away from the road. In the trees under a bleak sky. They stopped in a waterditch and drank the muddy water strained through a bedsheet and rested. Seulgi took the pocketknife and checked the satchel. A few tins of chicken and the corn. The CD player and Frank Sinatra and a tube of toothpaste and the bloodstiff hatchet. And the revolver. She took it and flipped open the cylinder and checked. Still four shells. She closed it with her thumb and put it back in the satchel and took the knife and the corn and pried open the tin and they shared it cold and disgusting. Yeri did not eat until she had to. She was not crying any longer but her face was still wet with tears and her eyes were swollen and puffy and she could barely speak.

‘Hey,’ Seulgi said. ‘Hey.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘What for?’

‘I’m just sorry.’

‘It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault.’

‘She’s dead. Joy’s dead.’

‘You couldn’t have done anything.’

‘Wendy and now Joy.’

‘Yeri.’

‘Am I next?’

‘Yeri.’

‘Are we going to die?’

‘Don’t you ever say that. Okay? Don’t you ever.’

‘It’s true.’

‘It isn’t and don’t you even think that.’

She took Yeri by the shoulders and pulled her in for a hug and held her tight. She was crying again. Seulgi sighed and looked about. Where to go and what to do. The coast, Irene said. Keep going east and you’ll find the coast. But she wasn’t sure there was a coast any longer. Just sand and bones and ash.

When Yeri had calmed down they took their things and stood and set off again. They kept away from the road. Seulgi led hobbling and with every step she winced. Get yourself going, Seulgi. Don’t you dare stop now. There was no moonlight but they did not use the flashlight. They kept walking. In darkness so total neither could see ahead of them and they stumbled about in mud and snow up to their shins and kept going. Seulgi did not let Yeri out of her sight. She kept the revolver in the satchel but there were times where she would look around and see almost nothing and be tempted to keep it close at hand. She thought often of Irene. Of the logcabin and Joy and the blood everywhere, so much blood, still stiff on her clothes and up her arms and on her chest. She wondered if Irene was still alive and decided it was better to not think too much on the unspoken truth she knew that question to hold.

They stopped and rested amidst fallen trees. All about it looked like some vast graveyard. Splintered redpines and oaklimbs pale as snow and ash and mud. Seulgi sat propped against one of the stumps and looked at her feet. They were black and she could not touch them. She rewrapped them with what remained of the filthy cotton and the trashbags and winced and fought back the tears in her eyes. When she looked at Yeri Yeri was watching her feet.

‘You’re hurt,’ she said.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Look at your feet.’

‘I’ll be alright.

‘No you won’t.’

‘Yeri.’

‘Can you not see them?’

‘I’ll be okay. Stop worrying.’

She set down the satchel and pushed the palms of her hands against her eyes and sighed. She pushed again and harder. When she removed them and looked around there were fractal shapes vague and indistinct dancing in her vision and she thought for a moment that one of them was Wendy. There in shadow and slender moonshine. Watching and waiting. When she blinked they were gone. Yeri sat studying Seulgi's face. Her unbearable pain. Her frustrating stoicism. The way her hands clenched and unclenched every time she moved her feet or shifted her weight or did much of anything at all. At the blood thick and stiff down her front like some steaming gravesnatcher.

‘You’re lying,’ she said.

Seulgi sighed. ‘What?’

‘You’re in pain. And you’re not going to be alright.’

‘Yeri, please. I’ll be fine.’

‘Why won’t you let me help you?’

‘Help me with what? What can you possibly do to help?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘No. You don’t.’

‘I just wanted to help.’

‘Start by not talking about this again.’

‘I can’t help it.’

‘Try.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Seulgi sighed. She stretched her legs out and grimaced and sighed. How much longer would they last. She looked around and back at her feet. We can’t go on like this. They rested there and slept a few hours and while Yeri was asleep Seulgi rose and stood and watched her. She had the revolver in her hand and she played with the cylinder and took out the shells and put them back and closed it and then again. Gripping it tight. She turned up to the sky and winced and bit her lip. Is this what you’ve given me? Is this it? Then so be it. She put the revolver back in the satchel and slept with Yeri in her arms.

When they woke it was dark. Neither day nor night. Time going on by. In the months and years they had grown accustomed to such sporadic mysteries of the universe. Maybe it was February now. Maybe still it was autumn. They picked up their things and moved on. In the trees they saw a vulture all black and highshouldered bare its bone and in its foul fleshy beak the pink wet gums slobbering like some homebound dog. It sat and cocked its head and studied them. Then it took off and flew away. Seulgi watched it go. Maybe we’re not worth it. Maybe we’re not right even for the vultures.

When they saw another house by the roadside they knew they were drawing close to some place but there were no indications of life anywhere. Just black trees and lightwire phonepoles and a pale sun to cast them up in smoking shadow. It was much too cold and they were shivering. They stopped by the house and watched it for some time. There was nothing moving and it looked empty. Seulgi turned back and looked westward. At the slowly dimming day. Ashen nightfall in its becoming. Somewhere back along the trail of civilisation Irene was there in a house just like this one. Almost the very same. She turned back. The windows were still intact and they bore a murky cloud of dust. ‘Come on,’ Seulgi said. She led Yeri on and they walked right past and kept on going.

The road was dark but it guided their path through the evening. There were no wolves any longer. It was snowing again. When they stopped to rest Yeri held out her hand. She let the white flakes fall into her palm and dissipate like fleeting embers. She stood there for a while. When the ash came it did not melt. ‘Is it all like this?’ she said.

‘Like what?’

‘Dead.’

Seulgi hung her head and sighed.

‘Let’s keep moving.’

They stayed on the road. It bent away and they c