He went into the cabinet one more time and found the brush. He looked at it a moment like it was some alien artifact. In relearning these simple acts-shaving, brushing his hair-he was really learning to be human again. He planned to go down the mountain, and he was getting himself ready.

Mortimer brushed his hair and looked at his new sleek reflection and considered what he’d take. He would take the police special and the lever-action rifle. He wanted to protect himself but didn’t want to appear hostile and thought the Uzi might be a bit much. He’d need food and a medical kit, but he’d also need to travel light. When first outfitting his refuge, he’d flirted with the idea of a horse, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep it alive. He’d sold insurance in a previous life and knew little of animal husbandry.

So he’d start down the mountain on foot. He’d go in the morning at first light with all his gear. He also decided to take three bottles of booze from the stock he’d kept unopened. Trade goods, if there was still such a thing as trade.

Trade goods. Weapons. He would not be able to get quickly back up the mountain if he needed something. He decided to pack the sled, extra weapons and the two cases of Johnnie Walker Blue, a third case of Maker’s Mark. He could hide the sled at the bottom of the mountain, retrieve whatever he needed.

He realized there would be no McDonald’s, no Holiday Inn, no Exxon station. Traveling would not be a lark. He did not know what it would be like except that it wouldn’t be the same. He could not guess what awaited him down the mountain, but it was time to find out.

He dabbed at the blood on his chin.

Among Mortimer’s books were science fiction novels, some of which supposed the details of the apocalypse. Mortimer had selected these with wry irony. Popular methods whereby the world would snuff it: aliens, collisions with comets or meteors, plague, nuclear holocaust, robots rising against their masters, various natural disasters and so on and so on. Mortimer’s favorite: space bureaucrats demolishing Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass.

No single thing had doomed Mortimer’s planet. Rather, it had been a confluence of disasters. Some dramatic and sudden, others a slow, silent decay.

The worldwide flu epidemic had come and gone with fewer deaths than predicted. Humanity emerged from that long winter and smiled nervously at one another. A sigh of relief, a bullet dodged.

That April the big one hit.

So long feared, it finally happened. The earth awoke, humped up its spine along the San Andreas. The destruction from L.A. to San Francisco defied comprehension. The earthquake sent rumbles across the Pacific, tsunamis pounding Asia. F.E.M.A. immediately declared its inadequacy and turned over operations to the military. The death toll numbered in the millions, and nothing-not food nor fuel-made it through West Coast seaports. The shortages were rapidly felt across the Midwest. Supermarkets emptied, and no trucks arrived to resupply them.

Wall Street panicked.

Nine days later a Saudi terrorist detonated a nuclear bomb in a large tote bag on the steps of the Capitol building. Both houses of Congress were in session. The president and vice president and most of the cabinet were obliterated.

The secretary of the interior was found and sworn in. This didn’t sit well with a four-star general who had other ideas. Civil war.

Economic spasms reached the European and Asian markets.

Israel dropped nukes on Cairo, Tehran and targets in Syria.

Pakistan and India went at it.

China and Russia went at it.

The world went at it.

It was pretty much all downhill from there.

Mortimer Tate started down the mountain, a rope over each shoulder as he pulled the sled behind him, another army surplus tote over his shoulder, police special in the pocket of his parka like usual. He carried the lever-action Winchester across his body. His pace was steady, and he puffed steam and his naked face went pink in the cold.

The base of the mountain sprawled across a high pocket wilderness that had been a state refuge. If he kept going down, Mortimer anticipated crossing one of the old hiking trails. If they hadn’t all grown over.

The slope eased, the descent becoming more gradual by midday. Mortimer paused, leaned against a tree and took water, ate jerky. He turned his head slowly, listening to the forest. Not a bird nor a whisper of wind. He was still within the limits of what he considered his own territory, but the simple knowledge he’d be going farther made the forest appear alien to him.

He rested five more minutes, then began hiking again.

By nightfall he had still not crossed one of the hiking trails. He spun in the waning light, tried to get his bearings. Had he veered in the wrong direction, or was the distance simply farther than he remembered? In the morning, he’d look again with better light.

He considered a small fire but was afraid it would be seen. He pitched a low, sleek one-man tent made of light synthetic material, crawled inside and wrapped himself in a blanket. He fell asleep almost instantly.

He dreamt he was trapped in the tent, flickering light casting hellish shadows on the thin material, the sounds of stomping feet all around. He tried to stand and run, still wrapped in the tent like a burial shroud, faceless assailants circling him. Tangled in the tent material, unable to reach the police special, hands grabbing him, lifting and twisting and bearing him away.

Mortimer awoke with a gasp, freezing, hair sweat-soaked. He crawled out of the tent, stiff, aches in every joint. He had not slept on the ground in a long time, the thin blanket under him offering little comfort.

He squinted, looked around. Color had been bleached from the world, the sky a uniform gray. Even the evergreens were stark black against the white snow in the weak morning light, making the land appear like a two-dimensional charcoal sketch. He packed up the tent and built a fire, didn’t care if anyone saw the smoke. He needed to thaw the ache from his bones. He heated water and made a cup of tea.

When the light grew strong enough to distinguish individual pine needles, he began the day’s hike.

An hour later he crossed the first hiking trail and followed its winding path to the entrance of the refuge. There was still a brown sign with yellow lettering guarding the entrance: NATIONAL POCKET WILDERNESS.

He parked the sled behind a stand of trees, covered it with pine branches. He put a whiskey bottle in his knapsack. He’d put it in bubble wrap to keep it safe.

A hundred more steps and he stood on paved road.

He stood there awhile. An unfortunate sentimental streak rose up in Mortimer and he considered the road with misty eyes. Here was the asphalt thread that wound its way down the mountain to civilization. Or, at least, where civilization had stood once upon a time.

Mortimer rubbed his hands together, stamped his feet in the cold and considered his options. If he recalled correctly, the road ran down one side of the mountain to Evansville and the other way to Spring City. His first urge was toward Spring City, where he’d lived before with his wife, where he’d sold insurance and gone to the Methodist church every third or fourth Sunday. He couldn’t decide if he was afraid to find his wife or if he’d be disappointed if he failed to find her.

He’d left her. Abandoned her. His wife. Whatever their problems might have been, Anne was still Mortimer Tate’s wife. And a man doesn’t shirk that kind of responsibility and not feel it in his gut.

He turned and headed toward Evansville.

He felt strangely happy and expectant. He longed to see buildings, a town, and most of all people. But his heart sank at the thought of the three hunters he’d killed. Mortimer put his head down and hiked into the wind.