Peter and Demi reached the meadow first. Davila stayed back with Delbert as he plodded down the road. The container sat in the middle of the meadow, the white parachute draped over it like a tablecloth. A thin layer of snow had already accumulated on top.

Beneath the parachute was a drab-green container the size and shape of a mini refrigerator, all wrapped in cargo netting. Demi and Peter gathered up the parachute and cords, bundled them on top, and together they lugged the container across the meadow to the house.

Once they had extracted the container from its netting, they shed their outer clothes and carried it inside. Demi fed the wood stove, while Peter set the container on the coffee table. A moment later, boots stomped on the porch. In came Davila, stepping out of her coveralls. She unraveled her bushel of scarves and draped them one by one over the back of Delbert's chair. Then she unzipped her forest-green ski suit and rolled it down to her hips, her black T-shirt steaming.

Delbert shuffled in still wearing his wool pants, coat, and red hunting cap. Falling into his chair, he removed his cap and ran his fingers through his sweaty hair. He nodded at the container sitting on his coffee table. "Well, is anyone going to open it?"

Peter stood over the container, his hands on the latches, eyes on Delbert.

"Go on now."

Demi and Davila gathered close as Peter undid the latches and lifted the lid. Beneath was a layer of dark gray foam rubber. On top of it, someone had left a sheet of paper in a clear plastic sleeve. It was a letter, printed on official US Department of Health and Human Services stationary.

"It's from Dr. Brisling," said Peter. He began to read aloud, imagining the doctor's insipid Midwestern accent.

To My Friends on the Mountain,

I trust you are well.

I'm sorry I can't deliver this in person, but I'm busier than a one-armed wallpaper hanger, as my dad used to say. Be thankful you're up on that mountain, cut off from the outside world. It's a real shit show down here. But I'm sure you already knew that.

Inside the container, you'll each find an early Christmas (or Hanukkah) present, maybe two. Not you, Delbert. You're too old for presents. A man gets to be a certain age when he should feel grateful just to wake up in the morning, have a good shit, and feel the sun on his face. I know.

Delbert unbuttoned his coat, smiling.

For you, Peter, and for you, Miss Davila, I offer hope in the form of an experimental therapy. It was developed using information encoded in your DNA, Peter. I don't have time to explain in detail (you can ask Demi later—see below). All I'll say is that the secret to eternal youth was there all along. Well, maybe that's a bit dramatic, but it turns out that human cells have the capacity to rebuild the telomeres that cap each chromosome, to turn back the molecular clock of aging—the same molecular clock JCAV uses like a fuse. This treatment activates that regenerative capacity in your cells. It won't get rid of JCAV. It'll only reset its fuse to a hundred years or so. What the treatment will do to the rest of you, we're not so sure.

Genevieve and I took it two days ago, and she thinks I'm already growing new hair. Mind you, it's on my back, but I do feel younger. (I've also stopped taking sedatives, if you couldn't tell.) In the container you'll find three auto-injector syringes, one for each of you and a third in case you fuck up. Don't. People would kill for what I've just given you. Save the third dose for someone else. You never know who might come along.

Demi peeled away the top layer of foam rubber and withdrew a small white plastic case. Inside the case, packed in more foam rubber, were the three auto-injector syringes. She handed the case to Davila and reached down into the container for something else.

"What's this stuff?" she said. In one hand she held a CD-ROM in its jewel case; a USB drive had been taped to the outside. In the other hand, she held up a large manila envelope with something bulky inside.

Peter read on:

The CD-ROM and USB drives are for you, Demi. They're bootlegged copies of all those formulas and equations from Peter's DNA. If the NSA ever finds out I sent this to you, they'll have an absolute conniption. They're worried it might fall into the "wrong" hands. Screw them. Like it's going to matter. Anyways, take a look. It'll blow your mind. And who knows? Maybe you and whoever survives this mess can actually make use of it.

Peter, the things in the envelope are for you. I don't know if you even want them, but I thought I'd send them anyways.

I'm sorry.

Well, time's up.

Think of us down here, and take care.

Your friend,

R.K. Brisling, M.D.

The snow had stopped, and a light breeze whispered at the windows. None of them had any appetite for dinner, so they all agreed to call it a day. Demi took the CD-ROM and USB drive to her bedroom. Delbert settled in by the stove with his reading glasses and a stack of old magazines.

Davila and Peter put the syringes in a cooler and walked through the gray light of dusk to their tack shed in the aspens. Brushing the snow from their clothes and boots, they hurried inside, fumbled for the lights, and turned on the space heater. The place was freezing.

Davila sat on the edge of the steel-spring bed, still wearing her forest-green ski suit, the space heater humming cheerfully at her feet. Peter set the cooler next to the old boom box on the table. He had retrieved all of his mother's cassette tapes from the car, but he listened only to one, Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite, and then just "Solveig's Song."

He rewound the tape, pressed the play button, joined Davila on the bed, and laid the big envelope from Brisling on his lap.

"Do you want to be alone? I can go for a walk," said Davila.

Peter shook his head.

"Solveig's Song" began to play.

The violins chanted in somber unison, an antiphon.

Inside the envelope were three items, each in its own clear plastic bag. First was a pair of dainty glasses fixed with white medical tape.

"They're Anna's," said Peter, sliding them into his palm. They were nearly weightless, like a butterfly.

"Why would he send you her glasses?"

She had been wearing them the day Brisling tore into her, there in Carl Lundquist's hospital room. I'm sorry, Brisling had written. "I think this must be his way of apologizing."

The violas answered the violins.

The second item was a man's ring, the tungsten band his father was wearing the night of the fire. It was still flecked with soot and ash.

The cellos answered the violas an octave down.

The third item was a lump of cold steel. It was the melted remains of the watch Peter had bought one Father's Day eons ago. The thought of it swelled at the back of his throat. More memories glommed on, the umber scent of cigarettes on a brisk autumn day, Mom smiling, Dad too, the sound of their laughter. Peter imagined his father's face, not as he last remembered it, red with shame, but as it truly was, bearded in penitence, ruddy with love.

He tried to swallow it all down, but Davila's lips touched his cheek.

A sudden major chord, high and shimmering.

At last, the tears came.

Peter could not remember how long he cried. He simply found himself lying on the bed with Davila, their arms around each other, the tips of their noses almost touching.

"Are you ready?" he sniffled.

"If you are."

Brisling's experimental therapy came with specific instructions. The medicine was to be injected directly into the recipient's thigh muscle. No exceptions.

Peter began unzipping Davila's ski suit. He had gotten all the way down to her waist when she stopped him.

"What?"

Her lips curled into a mischievous smile. "Why should I let you inject me? We're not even on a first name basis yet."

"That's because I can't pronounce your first name." No matter how hard he tried, no matter how many times he practiced, he just could not make that back-of-the-throat noise required to say Nechama, at least not to her satisfaction. "Why don't you just tell me your real name? It has to be easier to pronounce."

She drew a sharp breath, and the lovely lines of her lips and eyes went taught. "No," she exhaled. "That person is dead." She slipped her hands free and placed them on either side of Peter's face. "To you I am Nechama."

Then she sprang from the bed and stripped to her underwear. "Did you really think I was going to let you inject me?" Taking one of the auto-injector pens from the cooler, she primed it, set one end against her thigh, and pushed the button. It made a loud pop. "There," she said, rubbing her smooth olive skin. "That was easy."

Peter held out his hand. "My turn."

She grabbed a second pen, limped over to the bed, hopped on, and straddled Peter. She leaned over him, her black hair free. "I'm not letting you inject yourself. You're bound to flinch. You heard what the doctor said."

"Don't fuck up?"

"Right." She unbuttoned his pants, tugged them off, and tossed them onto the floor. Then she forced his arms over his head and yanked his shirt up over his face. "I don't want you to see." There was a long silence, the space heater humming. "OK," she said with an odd quaver to her voice. "I'm going to count to—"

The needle jabbed deep into Peter's thigh. Pop. He ripped the shirt from his face, the searing pain in his thigh registering an instant later. "Shit! Why the hell did you do that?"

Tears dripped from her cheeks onto Peter's bare stomach.

He reached up and took her face in his hands, wiping away the tears with his thumbs. "We're going to live. You and me. We're going to survive. Here, on this mountain, with Delbert and Demi."

She took his wrists, squeezing tight. "We're going to live."

If Brisling's treatment worked.

He pulled her down, their warm skin welding together. Then he kissed her.

***

In the weeks that followed, neither Peter nor Davila noted any of the telltale signs of JCAV infection. Indeed, Brisling's experimental therapy had left them feeling healthier and stronger than ever before. The wounds they had suffered healed with astonishing speed. Davila's scar began to fade, and she walked with less of a limp every day. To busy herself, she patrolled the roads around Delbert's house.

Peter and Delbert tended the wind turbines, the solar panels, and the hydrogen fuel cells, while Demi stayed in her room studying the CD-ROMs Brisling had sent her. Once in a while, she would grab a rifle or a shotgun and head up the mountain alone. Sometimes she returned with game—a deer, a hare, a grouse. Other times she returned empty-handed, her eyes busy with calculations and formulas, ideas no one else could see, or understand.

In the evenings, the four of them would gather around the radio, scanning the AM bands for any news. Beyond the refuge of their mountain, millions were dying. In every country, cities fell into violence and chaos, abandoned by their governments.

As autumn hardened into winter, the radio reports grew infrequent, and eventually they ceased altogether, fading into static.

The world was ending, just as Brisling feared.

Fires burned in all directions, ravens flocking at the end of day. And when the sun had slipped beneath its smoky pall, the fires burned on, flickering at the edge of dreams.

***

One morning in mid-February, Demi took her rifle and walked the road down to the ford in the river. It was a bright and brilliant day, the golden sun warm on her back, the air so cold it could crack. A fine dusting of snow covered the ground and squeaked beneath her feet. But the river still ran free.

She made her way along the base of the cliff to a leafless tree that stooped over the water—the same tree where she had met Peter Barshman months before. Scrambling up a narrow side ravine, she knelt in a sheltered alcove that gathered the morning sun like a bowl. There grew a tletl weed, the same weed her grandfather had asked her to dispose of. Its stems were now bare. Bits of dried leaves and flowers formed a halo in the brown moss. In their place, slender seedpods had formed. Already they were brown and dry. Demi took a pod, crushed it in her palm, and blew away the chaff. The tiny brown seeds gathered in the creases of her skin. She took another pod and did the same, and more still until her hand was full of seeds. Pleased, she slung her rifle over her shoulder and walked the road home.