Summary

The narrator ran down the hill to investigate the bus. It was filled with dead men. Because the air conditioning had remained on in the bunkers, all those bodies “had mummified; these had become skeletons” (154). Because they wore uniforms, she assumed they were guards. To calm herself, she counted the bodies. None of them seemed to have died in distress. Because they wore gas masks, they could not have died from gas. She could make no sense of the scene.

On the bus, she found odd dried food, paper, jars of alcohol, numerous copies of “the same book: A Condensed Gardening Handbook,” and guns (160). Her discoveries only afforded her more confusion. Some governing entity must have orchestrated these deaths, too. She could not tell if she was “the only one” left alive (160). Finally, she decided to bury the corpses.

The narrator “read and...