Monday, August 8, 6:15 AM. Brewer.

Nightmares last night.

I woke up, and though there was light in the room it was pitch black outside. Amy wasn’t in bed. I got up. It was very cold. I went to the living room. No one was there. No one in the kitchen. I went back to the kids’ bedrooms and I was calling for them, calling out for Amy, and I threw open their doors but their rooms were dark, too dark, and there was no one there. I felt horribly alone; it was like a mountain of isolation pressing down on me. All alone, no one to be found anywhere. They were all gone. I started to cry.

Then I woke up, and I really was weeping, sobbing in my throat. There was light through the windows. I grabbed hold of Amy. She saw what was happening and grabbed hold of me.

We talked about our friends, our family. My mom. Bryan and Kelci. Amy’s parents in Florida and her sisters. Her friend Kelli. People from work. Charlie. Deborah. J. T. and Casey.

Neither of us talked about Alan.

Maybe Amy’s folks are still out there. Maybe they’re still trying to reach us on the phone, waiting for the army to make its way here and rescue us from all this. Or maybe they think everyone is gone from Texas and they don’t know we’re still left.

Maybe there was some kind of weapon that went off in New Mexico in one of those secret laboratories, and the whole Southwest is a no-man’s land.

I don’t feel any radiation. But would you?

Or maybe it wasn’t nuclear. Who knows what kind of technology they’re cooking up these days, quantum entanglement and cold fusion and who knows what all. Maybe the whole human race suddenly jumped five hundred miles to the right, and somehow our family was left out of it.

We’ve seen no planes since Colorado. If the army is on its way, I don’t think they’re in a hurry.