Still it’s snowing, and they have coffee. They put on their pants and shirts and do things to their faces. She craves a cigarette—quit months ago, but there’s a pack hidden in her underwear drawer next to the Bible. She has one, and the taste of ash and smoke in her mouth is almost too much. She says out loud: Who am I to deserve this? What have I done? What will I do?

The snow stops. Through the house’s one small window, in the distance, they see something coming over the hills—some altitudinous beast that hadn’t been there the last time they looked. Except they knew that it had.