The Eleventh Plague

Stephen hazily experiences being dragged back to the hotel and wrapped in several blankets. He feels relieved to be dying or at least descending into nothingness. Jenny eventually drags him to a different part of the casino, where she has built a fire to prevent them from freezing to death. She tells him that someone could still come to hunt them, and Stephen insists it doesn’t matter; everyone is either dead or will die, so life is pointless. Jenny embraces him, but he feels nothing.

Later, Jenny tries to convince him to move, insisting that they must leave the casino but that she won’t leave without him. Stephen, still overwhelmed with despair, refuses. When she begs him to think of himself and what he wants, he insists that he has. Jenny gives up and leaves but says she wants him to follow. Once alone, Stephen thinks about what he wants and sees Jenny’s sketchpad in the corner. He looks at it and realizes that the last thing she drew was him huddling under blankets in the barn; she drew him taller, as he jokingly asked her to do. Stephen realizes that he wants to feel that peaceful again and must find a way to make the world better than it is.