Elizabeth did not bother to knock. She did not have the energy to have another argument about a new person being a potential demon. With a welcoming gesture, she ushered Saleem in and decided that if she died, she died.

The walk downward was lonely. The trio were not welcomed to any fanfare. There were no rushed footsteps or buzzing chatter about what they saw or what they brought back. Everyone remained where they had been upon the doors thumping open.

Donovan watched over Matthew like a hawk. Emilio and Amy were curled up in a corner. Victor sat alone.

Elizabeth scanned the shadows for a sign of Masina. A blanket covered a human-sized shape against a wall. She walked over to remove the blanket but all it revealed were the scrunched up bedding that Masina and Violet once used.

Amy and Emilio looked up towards the movement, realising what Elizabeth was looking for.

Amy shook her head. "The smoke got her too."

"What do you mean?" Elizabeth asked.

Emilio could not look her in the eyes. "I couldn't make it in time." He softly pounded the ground beside him. It wasn't his usual anger. It was a disappointment. One he had lived through before. One that, at this point, he had come to expect, even when he'd let himself get hopeful.

"Oh" was all Elizabeth could muster.

Gowan put his arm around her shoulders and guided her back to their corner of blankets. He used his head to gesture Saleem to follow them.

Saleem looked to the cups tacked to the wall, and the paper beside it with 38 tally marks. He took the time to look around at his new home. Foil packets were like a glitter on the ground from various meals. His eyes wanted to take in everything they could. The light was a gift, even if it was warm and ambient, casting shadows across the walls. He wasn't used to the somber atmosphere, but he was willing to embrace it over the high intensity that came with being trapped in the dark with the former group he had found.

Gowan pointed to the paper on the wall. "We're trying to count the hours until this should all be over."

Saleem was confused. "You know how long it will take?"

"Sort of. We think it was a day before Donovan over there rigged up a water clock. Who knows if the timing is accurate, but it's better than nothing. It's hope. Ten more hours and we can only pray the lights come back on."

The group sat in silence for a while, underscored only by Donovan whispering into Matthew's ear.

After a while, Elizabeth looked to Amy. "What colour was the smoke?"

"What?" she asked back.

"What colour was the smoke?" Elizabeth's voice was pensive.

"Same as Violet's. A light kinda purple-ish."

Elizabeth thought for a moment. "Did anyone come and get her?"

Amy's voice was a little softer now. "No." Amy took a breath, as if to ask another question. She leaned forward, to look past Emilio. Her brow furrowed. "Wait, are you covered in blood?"

Elizabeth looked down at herself. "Yeah." Maybe it was shock, but she was feeling far less than she thought she would.

"Would you like to fill us in?" Amy prompted.

Gowan felt Elizabeth tense up, but he understood the need for answers. "She saved us."

Saleem nodded along. "She did what she had to do." He looked around the room at Victor and Donovan who were also facing him now. "Hi, I'm Saleem," he said awkwardly, "I promise I'm just here to survive like you guys." He waved the trolley bar in his hand. "I was collecting trolleys on night shift and then, you know. I grabbed the closest thing in the shed I could use as a weapon. Just glad I ran inside the shops instead of trying to get to my car."

There was a long pause.

"Cool hair," Donovan remarked.

"Thanks."

Elizabeth felt the words come out of her mouth before she could really think about them. "We saw other smoke."

Victor leaned forward. "Other smoke?"

"When I ..." she began to take stock of her word choices, "When the incident happened, afterwards, there was smoke. It wasn't the one Violet had."

"What do you mean?" Victor prompted.

"It was dark. It smelled unpleasant."

Both Amy and Victor were approaching Elizabeth now. From different sides of the room, they drew closer and found space amongst Saleem and Gowan.

For once, Emilio walked over to where Donovan was. He didn't say anything, he just gave a slight nod to Donovan and sat nearby, looking at Matthew.

Amy found herself talking slowly to really ponder her words. "I assume you acted in self defense. You know, when the smoke happened."

Elizabeth nodded.

Saleem spoke up. "We'd spent so long in the dark. There were three of them and myself at first. Evan's wife got killed by something before I'd met them, but they were shaken up by it. He was the one who ... Evan was trying to kill us."

"How did the other one in your group ..." Gowan trailed off. "Sorry, you know. When we met you it was just you, Evan, and Kellie."

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"Kellie's wife, or partner, or whatever ... Dana. Her name was Dana. Kellie and Dana went to find food. From what Kellie told me, someone else found them first. There was a fight and whoever it was got Dana, and then Kellie got them in retaliation. I think Kellie was Evan's wife's sister or something. We didn't really go into anyone's details." He looked up to the chart of tally marks. "We thought it would last forever and that it's a game of last person standing so it's easier in the long run to just, you know, not get attached. Finding people walking around with light was a welcome distraction."

"They kidnapped us from the pharmacy." Gowan filled in.

"We just figured you were dead," Victor said, somewhat dispassionately.

Gowan put his thumb and pointer finger close together. "About this far from it."

"So, the woman," Amy interrupted, "Kellie? Did you also ..." She made a gesture across her throat.

Saleem shook his head. "Evan did that. He was coming for us after."

"Her smoke?" Victor asked.

"Dark smoke too." Saleem answered.

"Maybe it's got to do with different areas?" Amy suggested.

Gowan looked to Saleem. "Maybe you were rolling with demons this whole time."

"I don't think a demon would be paranoid that everyone around him was evil." Saleem rebuffed.

The familiar silence took over the circle as each member sat calculating. Eventually, Amy stood up and added the 39th tally to the board. Donovan took the white lighter from his pocket and flicked it with just a shred of hope that his timing was off by virtue of being too slow.

The remaining hours crawled by at a snail's pace. There wasn't much left to be said as the 40th hour passed. Nor the 41st or 42nd. Hope had become a dangerous thing, except seemingly for Victor who was still clinging to the bible that Donovan had liberated for him many hours, and deaths, ago.

It was hour 43 and no one had eaten for a while. Amy had taken over clock duties in between hugging Emilio tightly. Without Masina or Violet watching over Matthew anymore, Donovan had shifted his focus to his boyfriend on the floor who was becoming less and less animated as each tally was added. Amy tried to help, but there wasn't much that could be done besides stroke his hair and lie to the boy that everything would be alright.

As hour 44 rolled by, Donovan had given him what had remained of the pain medication. The search in the pharmacy had not been fruitful, and with Elizabeth and Donovan coming back empty handed he'd tried his best to conserve it. However, it was worse to listen to Matthew in pain. Every now and then Matthew would doze off for a few moments. Sometimes a few seconds, sometimes what felt like 20 minutes.

When Matthew was asleep, Donovan could finally feel his shoulders drop. He kept his eye on Matthew's chest like a hawk to ensure he remained breathing. When Matthew was asleep, Donovan could finally let out the tears as surreptitiously as he could. He didn't want Emilio to see.

The small reprieve would get disturbed by the familiar gasp of air as Matthew would ultimately jolt, or try and roll on his side mid-slumber causing the pain to shock through his body. His wounds were getting more inflamed and infected. The heat was not contained to his wounds anymore. He was hot and cold, but could only have blankets on his legs and chest, leaving the areas with the wounds exposed to the cold, even though he was sweating and burning up.

As hour 45 was ushered in, Matthew was back to screaming.

Every bone in Elizabeth's body begged her to help the boy. She wanted to fix him, but when there's nothing but darkness around, the only thing she really had time to look at was deep within herself. It pained her to finally admit that she couldn't fix everyone. If she could, Evan wouldn't have been sprawled and bloody across fallen department store shelving.

She had a moment of anger. Her entire life was spent using words to try and make people feel better. From the moment she lost a fight in primary school, where the other girl was twice her size, she realised the only weapon she really had was to talk her way out of bad situations because she would never win physically.

For a moment, she reflected morbidly that her win rate was now 50%. She felt sick and disappointed in her own brain and tried to erase it from her mind. All she could do was question how she would move on from here. She thought about what would happen if the world did go back to normal. She thought back to her conversation with Violet. When the light does come back, would she ever be able to be happy with Gowan or would she just feel pain about what could have been if things had gone differently?

Hour 46 had Emilio hugging his wife tightly when she was not trying to help keep Matthew ready for the light to come back. He was not ready to walk out into the light. From deployment to a cinema, he just wanted to walk out of one traumatic event without being a fuck up. In the plane coming back from deployment, he'd felt so light. He had felt like he was lifting up and out of the worst part of his life. Maybe, he thought, maybe it would just always be like this. Maybe there would just always be death. Maybe it would always be his fault.

By hour 47, everyone was simply remaining in place. It was like the launch of a rocket ship with no one willing to jeopardize the mission. Saleem and Gowan made small talk. Even after everything that had happened, Gowan still loved people. He still wanted to connect with them and make them feel like no matter what they went through, the world was better with them in it.

He didn't just reserve that attitude for the people who came to his church, or to his youth ministry events. He tried his best to live his life with John 15:12-13 written on his heart. Waiting for the end of the world to be over was no different... Where possible. His attitude was not one of naiveté, nor was he forgetting the horrors that had loomed before this waiting game.

His mother had always told him to look for the gaps. "Whenever there is trouble," she would say, "Look for the gaps."

What she meant by that was to look for what had to be done. Usually it was a way for her to berate him into doing housework without making her perform the emotional labour of formulating a chore chart for a teenager who was more than capable of figuring it out himself. In this case, there was a room full of people looking down at the floor, staying silent, and looking inward to reflect on what this would mean for them in the moment.

The gap that he was trying to fill was to help them get into the future where the light was. He wanted to help, gently, guide them to what lay beyond the walls of the center that had trapped them. He knew there wasn't much time left, even if the hours were crawling by at a snail's pace due to the anticipation.

He didn't want to demand the time or attention of anyone though, so he simply turned to Saleem and began conversation to try and help him feel more at ease in the space. In another life, where things were different, Gowan thought that he and Saleem would have gotten on splendidly. Perhaps not hundreds of years ago when Christians were going to war with Muslims, but like, if they were born in the same year and were neighbours or something.

He could see their mothers intensely-but-politely competing with each other to see who could bring around the most food to potlucks. He could see their dad's trying to out-polite each other when a boundary fence needed to be patched up. Mostly, he had the same look in his eye a decade earlier: A look that said he still found a bit of fun in the feelings of danger.

Gowan felt a slight pain in his heart as he considered that this would be the event that caused that look to evolve. This would be the event to give him the realisation that the danger would always be imminent, but as you aged, your body could no longer promise that everything would be ok. You become less sure that you are invincible

The 48th hour was the hardest. Even the drops of water dripping from cup to cup seemed to slow themselves down. The group huddled together around Matthew to be together for what they hoped would be a celebration. It was a faint hope. It was a hope smothered in cynicism lest they fall folly to one more disappointment.

"Just a little longer," voices from the group would whisper to Matthew.

No one had the energy to give grand speeches. There was no clear path forward. They didn't know what would remain outside after the screams die down and the air turned crisp and clean again.

Elizabeth was squeezing Gowan's hand. He bumped his shoulder into hers and smiled comfortingly. They watched as the water made it's way down the chain of cups that had miraculously stayed tacked up for almost 48 hours.

Finally, the last drop fell into the bottom cup.

Donovan looked to Amy and took the white lighter in his hand.

"Click"...