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And the birds in the branches directly above them are now cooing.

She thinks of the house. The last night she spent with the housemates, all of them together. The wind was loud against the windows. There was a coming storm. A big one. Maybe the birds in the trees know it. Or maybe they know something else.

“I can’t hear, ” the Girl suddenly says. “The birds, Mommy. They’re too loud! ”

Malorie stops rowing. She thinks of Victor.

“What do they sound like to you? ” she asks both children.

“Scared! ” the Girl says.

“Mad! ” says the Boy.

The closer Malorie listens to the trees, the worse it sounds.

How many are up there? It sounds like infinity.

Will the children hear the recording beneath the cacophony above?

Victor went mad. Animals go mad.

The birds do not sound sane.

Slowly, blindly, she looks over her shoulder toward what follows them.

Your eyes are closed, she thinks. Just like your eyes were closed every time you got water from the well. Every time you attempted to drive to fetch the amplifiers. Your eyes were closed when Victor’s weren’t. What are you worried about? Haven’t you been in close proximity before? Haven’t you been so close to one that you believed you could smell it?

She has.

You add the details, she thinks. It’s your idea of what they look like, and details are added to a body and a shape that you have no concept of. To a face that might have no face at all.

The creatures of her mind walk horizonless, open fields. They stand outside the windows of former homes and gaze curiously at the glass. They study. They examine. They observe. They do the one thing Malorie isn’t allowed to do.

They look.

Do they recognize the flowers in the garden as pretty? Do they understand which direction the river flows? Do they?

“Mommy, ” the Boy says.

“What? ”

“That noise, Mommy. It sounds like someone talking. ”

She thinks of the man in the boat. She thinks of Gary. Even now, so far from the house, she thinks of Gary.

She tries to ask the Boy what he means, but the voices of the birds rise in a grotesque wave, nearly symphonic, shrieking.

It sounds like there are too many for the trees to hold.

Like they make up the entire sky.

They sound mad. They sound mad. Oh my God they sound mad.

Malorie turns her head over her shoulder again, though she cannot see. The Boy heard a voice. The birds are mad. Who follows them?

But it no longer feels like something is following them. It feels like that something has caught up.

“It’s a voice! ” the Boy yells, as if from a dream, his voice penetrating the impossible noise from above.

Malorie is sure of it. The birds have seen something below.

The communal birdsong swells and peaks before it flattens, twists, and the boundaries explode. Malorie hears it like she’s inside of it. Like she’s trapped in an aviary with a thousand madcap birds. It feels like a cage was lowered over them all. A cardboard box. A bird box. Blocking out the sun forever.

What is it? What is it? What is it?

Infinity.

Where did it come from? Where did it come from? Where did it come from?

Infinity.

The birds scream. And the noise they make is not a song.

The Girl shrieks.

“Something hit me, Mommy! Something fell! ”

Malorie feels it, too. She thinks it’s raining.

Impossibly, the sound of the birds gets louder. They are deafening, screeching. Malorie has to cover her ears. She calls to the children, begging them to do the same.

Something lands hard against her bad shoulder and she yelps, wincing in pain.

Wildly, her hand grasping her blindfold, she searches the boat for what struck her.

The Girl shrieks again.

“Mommy! ”

But Malorie’s found it. Between her forefinger and thumb is not a drop of rain but the broken body of a tiny bird. She feels its delicate wing.

Malorie knows now.

In the sky above, where she is forbidden to look, the birds are warring. The birds are killing one another.

“Cover your heads! Hold on to your blindfolds! ”

Then, like a wave, they hit. Feathered bodies hail from above. The river erupts with the weight of thousands of birds splashing into the water. They hit the boat. They plummet. Malorie is struck. They hit her head, her arm. She’s struck again. Again.

As bird blood courses down her cheeks, she can taste them.

You can smell it, too. Death. Dying. Decay. The sky is falling, the sky is dying, the sky is dead.

Malorie calls to the children, but the Boy is already speaking, trying to tell her something.

“Riverbridge, ” he is saying. “Two seventy-three Shillingham. . . my name is. . . ”

“What? ”

Crouched, Malorie leans forward. She presses the Boy’s lips hard to her ear.

“Riverbridge, ” he says. “Two seventy-three Shillingham. My name is Tom. ”

Malorie sits up, wounded, clutching her blindfold.

My name is Tom.

Birds strike her body. They thud against the boat.

But she is not thinking of them.

She is thinking of Tom.

Hello! I’m calling you from Riverbridge. Two seventy-three Shillingham. My name is Tom. I’m sure you understand the relief I feel at getting your answering machine. It means you still have power. So do we. . .

Malorie starts shaking her head.

no no no no no no no no no no no “NO! ”

The Boy heard it first. Tom’s voice. Recorded and played on a loop. Motion activated. For her. For Malorie. If ever she decided to take the river. Whenever that day would come. Tom, sweet Tom, speaking out here all these years. Trying to make contact. Trying to reach someone. Trying to build a bridge between their life in the house and a better one, somewhere else.

They used his voice because they knew you’d recognize it. This is it, Malorie.

This is the moment you’re supposed to open your eyes.

How green is the grass? How colorful are the leaves? How red is the blood of the birds that spreads through the river beneath her?

“Mommy! ” the Boy calls.

Mommy has to open her eyes, she wants to say. Mommy has to look.

But the birds have gone mad.

“Mommy! ” the Boy says again.

She answers. She hardly recognizes her own voice.

“What is it, Boy? ”

“Something is here with us, Mommy. Something is right here. ”

The rowboat stops.

Something has stopped it.

She can hear it move in the water beside them.

It’s not an animal, she thinks. It’s not Gary. It’s the thing you’ve been hiding from for four and a half years. It’s the thing that won’t let you look outside.

Malorie readies herself.

There is something in the water to her left. Inches from her arm.

The birds above are growing distant. As if rising, rising, in a lunatic rush toward the ends of the sky.

She can feel the presence of something beside her.

The birds are growing quieter. Quieting. They fade. Rising. Gone.

Tom’s voice continues. The river flows around the rowboat.

Malorie screams when she feels her blindfold being pulled from her face.

She does not move.

The blindfold stops an inch from her closed eyes.

Can she hear it? Breathing? Is that what she hears? Is that it?

Tom, she thinks, Tom is leaving a message.

His voice echoes across the river. He sounds so hopeful. Alive.

Tom. I’m going to have to open my eyes. Talk to me. Please. Tell me what to do. Tom, I’m going to have to open my eyes.

His voice comes from ahead. He sounds like the sun, the only light in all this darkness.

The blindfold is pulled an inch farther from her face. The knot presses against the back of her head.

Tom, I’m going to have to open my eyes.

And, so. . .

forty-two

. . . she does.

Malorie sits up in bed and grips her belly before she understands that she has been howling for some time already. The bed is soaking wet.

Two men rush into the room. It is all so dreamy

(Am I really having a baby? A baby? I was pregnant this whole time? ) and so frightening

(Where’s Shannon? Where is Mother? )

that, at first, she does not recognize them as Felix and Jules.

“Holy shit, ” Felix says. “Olympia is already up there. Olympia started maybe two hours ago. ”

Up where? Malorie thinks. Up where?

The men are careful with her and help her ease to the edge of the bed.

“Are you ready to do this? ” Jules asks anxiously.

Malorie just looks at him, her brow furrowed, her face pink and pale at once.

“I was sleeping, ” she says. “I was just. . . up where, Felix? ”

“She’s ready, ” Jules says, forcing a smile, trying to comfort her. “You look wonderful, Malorie. You look ready. ”

She starts to ask, “Up—”

But Felix tells her before she finishes.

“We’re going to do this in the attic. Tom says it’s the safest place in the house. In case something were to happen. But nothing’s going to happen. Olympia’s up there already. She’s been going for two hours. Tom and Cheryl are up there with her. Don’t worry, Malorie. We’ll do everything we can. ”

Malorie doesn’t answer. The feeling of something inside her that must get out is the most horrifying and incredible feeling she’s ever known. The men have her, one under each arm, and they walk her out of the room, over the threshold, and down the hall toward the rear of the house. The attic stairs are already pulled down and as they steady her, Malorie sees the blankets covering the window at the end of the hall. She wonders what time of day it is. If it’s the next night. If it’s a week later.

Am I really having my baby? Now?

Felix and Jules help her up the old wooden steps. She can hear Olympia upstairs. And Tom’s gentle voice, saying things like breathe, you’ll be fine, you’re okay.

“Maybe it won’t be so different after all, ” she says (the men, thank God, helping her up the creaking steps). “Maybe it won’t be so different from how I hoped it would go. ”

There is more room up here than she pictured. A single candle lights the space. Olympia is on a towel on the ground. Cheryl is beside her. Olympia’s knees are lifted and a thin bedsheet covers her from the waist down. Jules helps her onto her own towel facing Olympia. Tom approaches Malorie.

“Oh, Malorie! ” Olympia says. She is out of breath and only part of her exclaims while the rest buckles and contorts. “I’m so glad you’re here! ”

Malorie, dazed, can’t help but feel like she’s still sleeping when she looks over her covered knees and sees Olympia set up like a reflection.

“How long have you been here, Olympia? ”

“I don’t know. Forever, I think! ”

Felix is talking quietly to Olympia, asking her what she needs. Then he heads downstairs to get it. Tom reminds Cheryl to keep things clean. They’re going to be okay, he says, as long as they’re clean. They’re using clean sheets and towels. Hand sanitizer from Tom’s house. Two buckets of well water.

Tom appears calm, but Malorie knows he’s not.

“Malorie? ” Tom asks.

“Yes? ”

“What do you need? ”

“How about some water? And some music, too, Tom. ”

“Music? ”

“Yes. Something sweet and soft, you know, something to maybe”—Something to cover up the sound of my body on the wood floor of an attic—“the flute music. That one tape. ”

“Okay, ” Tom says. “I’ll get it. ”

He does, stepping by her to the stairs that descend directly behind her back. She turns her attention to Olympia. She’s still having trouble shaking the fog of sleep. She sees a small steak knife beside her on a paper towel, less than a foot away. Cheryl just dunked it into the water.

“Jesus! ” Olympia suddenly hollers, and Felix kneels and takes her hand.

Malorie watches.

These people, she thinks, the kind of person that would answer an ad like that in the paper. These people are survivors.

She experiences a momentary surge of peace. She knows it won’t last long. The housemates wisp through her mind, their faces, one by one. With each she feels something like love.

My God, she thinks, we’ve been so brave.

“God! ” Olympia suddenly screams. Cheryl is quickly beside her.

Once, when Tom was up here looking for tape, Malorie watched from the foot of the ladder stairs. But she’s never been up here herself. Now, breathing heavily, she looks to the curtain covering the lone window and she feels a chill. Even the attic has been protected. A room hardly ever used still needs a blanket. Her eyes travel along the wooden window frame, then along the paneled walls, the pointed ceiling, the boxes of things George left behind. Her eyes continue to a stack of blankets piled high. Another box of plastic parts. Old books. Old clothes.

Someone is standing by the old clothes.

It’s Don.

Malorie feels a contraction.

Tom returns with a glass of water and the little radio they play cassettes on.

“Here, Malorie, ” he says. “I found it. ”

The sound of crackling violins escapes the small speakers. Malorie thinks it’s perfect.

“Thank you, ” she says.

Tom’s face looks very tired. His eyes are only half open and puffy. Like he slept for an hour or less.

Malorie feels a cramping so incredible that at first she thinks it isn’t real. It feels like a bear trap has clamped down on her waist.

Voices come from behind her. Down the attic stairs. It’s Cheryl. Jules. She’s hardly aware of who’s up here and who isn’t.

“Oh God! ” Olympia calls out.

Tom is with her. Felix is by Malorie’s side again.

“You’re going to make it, ” Malorie calls to Olympia.

As she does, thunder booms outside. Rain falls hard against the roof. Somehow the rain is the exact sound she was looking for. The world outside sounds like how she feels inside. Stormy. Menacing. Foul. The housemates emerge from the shadows, then vanish. Tom looks worried. Olympia is breathing hard, panting. The stairs creak. Someone new is here. It’s Jules, again. Tom is telling him Olympia is farther along than Malorie is. Thunder cracks outside. As lightning strikes, she sees Don in relief, his features sullen, his eyes set deep above dark circles.

There is an unbearable pressing tightness at Malorie’s waist. Her body, it seems, is acting on its own, refuting her mind’s desire for peace. She screams and Cheryl leaves Olympia’s side and comes to her. Malorie didn’t even know Cheryl was still up here.

“This is awful, ” Olympia hisses.

Malorie thinks of women sharing cycles, women in tune with one another’s bodies. For all their talk about who would go first, neither she nor Olympia ever even joked that both of them might be in labor at the same time.

Oh, how Malorie longed for a traditional birth!

More thunder.

It is darker up here now. Tom brings a second candle, lights it, and sets it on the floor to Malorie’s left. In the flickering flame she sees Felix and Cheryl but Olympia is difficult to make out. Her torso and face are obscured by flickering shadows.

Someone descends the stairs behind her. Is it Don? She doesn’t want to crane her neck. Tom steps through the candlelight and then out of its range. Then Felix, she thinks, then Cheryl. Silhouettes are moving from her to Olympia like phantoms.

The rain comes down harder against the roof.

There is a loud, abrupt commotion downstairs. Malorie can’t be sure but she thinks someone is yelling. Is her tired mind mistaking sounds? Who’s arguing?

It does sound like an argument below.

She can’t think about this right now. She won’t.

“Malorie? ” Malorie screams as Cheryl’s face suddenly appears beside her. “Squeeze my hand. Break it if you need to. ”

Malorie wants to say, Get some light in here. Get me a doctor. Deliver this thing for me.

Instead she responds with a grunt.

She is having her baby. There is no longer when.

Will I see things differently now? I’ve seen everything through the prism of this baby. It’s how I saw the house. The housemates. The world. It’s how I saw the news when it first started and how I saw the news when it ended. I’ve been horrified, paranoid, angry, more. When my body returns to the shape it was when I walked the streets freely, will I see things differently again?

What will Tom look like? How will his ideas sound?

“Malorie! ” Olympia calls in the darkness. “I don’t think I can do it! ”

Cheryl is telling Olympia she can, she’s almost there.

“What’s going on downstairs? ” Malorie suddenly asks.

Don is below. She can hear him arguing. Jules, too. Yes, Don and Jules are arguing in the hall beneath the attic. Is Tom with them? Is Felix? No. Felix emerges from the dark and takes her hand.

“Are you okay, Malorie? ”

“No, ” she says. “What’s going on downstairs? ”

He pauses, then says, “I’m not sure. But you have bigger things to worry about than people getting in each other’s faces. ”

“Is it Don? ” she asks.

“Don’t worry about it, Malorie. ”

It rains harder. It’s as if each drop has its own audible weight.

Malorie lifts her head to see Olympia’s eyes in the shadows, staring at her.

Beyond the rain, the arguing, the commotion downstairs, Malorie hears something. Sweeter than violins.

What is it?

“Oh fuck! ” Olympia screams. “Make it stop! ”

It’s becoming harder for Malorie to breathe. It feels like the baby is cutting off her air supply. Like it’s crawling up her throat instead.

Tom is here. He is at her side.

“I’m sorry, Malorie. ”

She turns to him. The face she sees, the look on his face, is something she will remember years after this morning.

“Sorry for what, Tom? Sorry this is how it’s happened? ”

Tom’s eyes look sad. He nods yes. They both know he has no reason to apologize but they both know no woman should have to endure her delivery in the stuffy attic of a house she calls home only because she cannot leave.

“You know what I think? ” he says softly, reaching down to grab her hand. “I think you’re going to be a wonderful mother. I think you’re going to raise this child so well it won’t matter if the world continues this way or not. ”

To Malorie, it feels like a rusty steel clamp is trying to pull the baby from her now. A tow truck chain from the shadows ahead.

“Tom, ” she manages to say. “What’s wrong down there? ”

“Don’s upset. That’s all. ”

She wants to talk more about it. She’s not angry at Don anymore. She’s worried about him. Of all the housemates, he’s stricken worst by the new world. He’s lost in it. There is something emptier than hopelessness in his eyes. Malorie wants to tell Tom that she loves Don, that they all do, that he just needs help. But the pain is absolutely all she can process. And words are momentarily impossible. The argument below now sounds like a joke. Like someone’s kidding her. Like the house is telling her, You see? Have a sense of humor despite the unholy pain going on in my attic.

Malorie has known exhaustion and hunger. Physical pain and severe mental fatigue. But she has never known the state she is in now. She not only has the right to be unbothered by a squabble among housemates, but she also very nearly deserves that they all leave the house entirely and stand out in the yard with their eyes closed for as long as it takes her and Olympia to do what their bodies need to do.

Tom stands up.

“I’ll be right back, ” he says. “Do you need some more water? ”

Malorie shakes her head no and returns her eyes to the shadows and sheet that is Olympia’s struggle before her.

“We’re doing it! ” Olympia says, suddenly, maniacally. “It’s happening! ”

So many sounds. The voices below, the voices in the attic (coming from the shadows and coming from faces emerging from those shadows), the ladder stairs, creaking every time a housemate ascends or descends, assessing the situation up here and then the one (she knows there is a problem downstairs, she just can’t care right now) going on a floor below. The rain falls but there is something else. Another sound. An instrument maybe. The highest keys of the dining room’s piano.

Suddenly, strangely, Malorie feels another wave of peace. Despite the thousand blades that pierce her lungs, neck, and chest, she understands that no matter what she does, no matter what happens, the baby is coming out. What does it matter what kind of world she is bringing this baby into now? Olympia is right. It’s happening. The child is coming, the child is almost out. And he has always been a part of the new world.

He knows anxiety, fear, paranoia. He was worried when Tom and Jules went to find dogs. He was painfully relieved when they returned. He was frightened of the change in Don. The change in the house. As it went from a hopeful haven to a bitter, anxious place. His heart was heavy when I read the ad that led me here, just like it was when I read the notebook in the cellar.

At the word “cellar” Malorie actually hears Don’s voice from below.

He’s yelling.

Yet, something beyond his voice worries her more.

“Do you hear that sound, Olympia? ”

“What? ” Olympia grumbles. It sounds like she has staples in her throat.

“That sound. It sounds like. . . ”

“It’s the rain, ” Olympia says.

“No, not that. There’s something else. It sounds like we’ve already had our babies. ”

“What? ”

To Malorie it does sound like a baby. Something like it, past the housemates at the foot of the ladder stairs. Maybe even on the first floor, the living room, maybe even— Maybe even outside.

But what does that mean? What is happening? Is someone crying on the front porch?

Impossible. It’s something else.

But it’s alive.

Lightning explodes. The attic is fully visible, nightmarishly, for a flash. The blanket covering the window remains fixed in Malorie’s mind long after the light passes and the thunder rolls. Olympia screams when it happens and Malorie, her eyes closed, sees her friend’s expression of fear frozen in her mind.

But her attention is drawn back to the impossible pressure at her waist. It seems Olympia could be howling for her. Every time Malorie feels the awful knife stabbing in her side, Olympia laments.

Do I howl for her, too?

The cassette tape comes to a stop. Then so does the commotion from below.

Even the rain abates.

The smaller sounds in the attic are more audible now. Malorie listens to herself breathing. The footsteps of the housemates who help them are defined.

Figures emerge. Then vanish.

There’s Tom (she’s sure).

There’s Felix (she thinks).

There’s Jules now at Olympia’s side.

Is the world receding? Or am I sailing farther into this pain?

She hears that noise again. Like an infant on the doorstep. Something young and alive coming from downstairs. Only now it is more pronounced. Only now it doesn’t have to fight through the argument and the music and the rain.

Yes, it is more pronounced now, more defined. As Tom crosses the attic, she can hear the sound between his footsteps. His boot connecting with the wood, then lifting, exposing the youthful notes from below.

Then, very clearly, Malorie recognizes what it is.

It’s the birds. Oh my God. It’s the birds.

The cardboard box beating against the house’s outer wall and the soft sweet cooing of the birds.

“There is something outside the house, ” she says.

Quietly at first.

Cheryl is a few feet from her.

“There is something outside the house! ” she yells.

Jules looks up from behind Olympia’s shoulder.

There’s a loud crash from below. Felix yells. Jules rushes past Malorie. His boots are loud and quick on the ladder stairs behind her.

Malorie frantically looks around the attic for Tom. He’s not up here. He’s downstairs.

“Olympia, ” Malorie says, more to herself. “We’re alone up here! ”

Olympia does not respond.

Malorie tries not to listen but she can’t stop herself. It sounds like they’re all in the living room now. The first floor for sure. Everybody is yelling. Did Jules just say “don’t”?

As the commotion builds, so does the pain at Malorie’s waist.

Malorie, her back to the stairs, cranes her neck. She wants to know what is happening. She wants to tell them to stop. There are two pregnant women in the attic who need your help. Please stop.

Delirious, Malorie lets her chin fall to her chest. Her eyes close. She feels like, if she were to lose focus, she could pass out. Or worse.

The rain returns. Malorie opens her eyes. She sees Olympia, her head bent toward the ceiling. The veins in her neck are showing. Slowly, Malorie scans the attic. Beside Olympia are boxes. Then the window. Then more boxes. Old books. The old clothes.

A flash of lightning from outside illuminates the attic space. Malorie closes her eyes. In her darkness, she sees a frozen image of the attic’s walls.

The window. The boxes.

And a man, standing where Don was standing when she came up here.

It’s not possible, she thinks.

But it is.

And, before her eyes are fully open, she understands who is standing there, who is in the attic with her.

“Gary, ” Malorie says, a hundred thoughts accosting her. “You’ve been hiding in the cellar. ”

She thinks of Victor growling at the cellar door.

She thinks of Don, sleeping down there.

As Malorie looks Gary in the eye, the argument downstairs escalates. Jules is hoarse. Don is livid. It sounds like they are exchanging blows.

Gary emerges from the shadows. He is approaching her.

When we closed our eyes and Tom opened the front door, she thinks, knowing it is true, Don snuck him farther into the house.

“What are you doing here?! ” Olympia suddenly yells. Gary does not look at her. He only comes to Malorie.

“Stay away from me! ” Malorie screams.

He kneels beside her.

“You, ” he says. “So vulnerable in your present state. I’d have thought you would have had more sympathy than to send someone out into a world like this one. ”

Lightning flashes again.

“Tom! Jules! ”

Her baby is not out yet. But he must be close.

“Don’t yell, ” Gary says. “I’m not angry. ”

“Please leave me alone. Please leave us. ”

Gary laughs.

“You keep saying that! You keep wanting me to leave! ”

Thunder rolls outside. The housemates are getting louder.

“You never left, ” Malorie says, each word like removing a small rock from her chest.

“That’s right, I never did. ”

Tears pool in Malorie’s eyes.

“Don had the heart to lend me a hand, and the foresight to predict I might be voted out. ”

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