Eve couldn't answer their questions that night. Or the next.

It was like her brain was buffering.

Donnie rescued her. He wrapped her arm around his and walked her away from the fire, to the comfort of her bedroom.

"We're done," he abruptly told the group.

Hannah, Lilah, and Corona greeted her with surprising restraint, wanting only to tell her how grateful they were that she was back, how desperately they missed her, but somehow sensing she was fragile.

He sat her on the edge of her bed, dropped to the floor, and gently tugged off her worn hiking boots as tears silently slipped from her exhausted eyes.

"Bath?" he asked.

She shook her head. She might drown, if not in the water, then in her thoughts.

Donnie nodded.

He went to her dresser, pulled out a flannel nightshirt and a pair of pink fuzzy socks, and sat them beside her.

"Change," he said and went to the kitchen.

She obeyed, and when he returned with two mugs of hot cocoa, she was under the covers. He sat them on the nightstand and shooed her over, before kicking off his shoes, sitting on top of the comforter, and leaning back against the headboard, a massive blue tufted velvet monstrosity that she adored.

They sat that way — his eyes closed, hers wide and tormented — sipping their cocoas in silence until their cups were empty. He took hers and set it next to his on the nightstand, and she fell into the space under his arm, where she knew her head fit perfectly.

"It's all ending, Donnie," she whispered meekly.

'I know," he replied, and she thought that maybe he did. "We got this."

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He raised his pinky and she drifted off to sleep clinging to it with hers.

***

When morning pushed its way through her drapes, Donnie was in the kitchen.

She listened intently to the sounds of the refrigerator opening and closing, the whisk against the Pyrex bowl, the clacking sound her coffee maker made when the lid pierced the little plastic cup...

Normal sounds, she thought, knowing that when she inevitably shared with him all she now knew, nothing would be normal again.

Donnie entered the room with two cups of coffee and a plate piled high with scrambled eggs, sausage, and melted cheese. He sat the plate on the bed between them, reclaimed his spot from the night before, and handed her a fork.

"We need potatoes," he said.

She took a bite. It was delicious.

"Luka's pregnant, and she's going to give birth to the last human soul in the place where God stashes them, and then He's going to wipe out almost everyone on the planet, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it," she said.

She meant to tell him the fucking eggs were good.

"Do you want ketchup?" he asked.

"No, thank you," she replied, reaching for her coffee.

"So... like that Demi Moore movie?" he asked.

She'd asked that question, too.

"No. The guff is real. The rest, not so much," she said, stabbing a hunk of sausage with her fork. "Demi sacrificed herself and the guff was refilled."

"So, Luka's gotta..."

"No. It wouldn't matter," she said. "Apparently it doesn't work that way."

"There's no Hail Mary martyrdom pass here," Eve added. "Nothing is going to stop this."

"When?"

"I have no idea. Gabriel doesn't even know, exactly."

"Gabriel?" Donnie chuckled. "Awesome."

"Yup."

"But about nine months, give or take?"

"It won't be before her baby is born," she said. "Beyond that... hard to say. A lot of fucked-up humans are trying to hurry the whole thing along, so according to Gabriel, this is unchartered territory."

"How?"

"He doesn't know," Eve replied. "There will be enough of us left to repopulate. That's it."

Just like last time.

"Who?" Donnie asked.

"No way of knowing," she answered. "Whoever's left. After the last ice age, after the flood, there were less than 2,000 humans wandering around, but he thinks the plan is for about 500,000 this time."

"God's plan?"

"No. That's the problem."

"Well that... sucks." Donnie moved the empty plate to the nightstand and replaced it with an ashtray. He lit a cigarette and passed it to her, then lit his own.

"Why?" he asked.

She knew why, but she didn't know how to explain it yet. She hadn't found the words, and she told him so.

He nodded, pulled the cribbage board and a deck of cards from the nightstand, and started shuffling. "And we're supposed to...?"

"Survive," she said, picking up the cards he dealt to her. "We are supposed to survive."