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Her voice is raspy when she wakes up. She blames Nick for stealing the blankets and complains that they haven't had coffee for months. John says she's faking to get out of helping break camp but there's none of the cruelty that laced his voice the first few months. They're moving west — they have a goal. In the remnants of Des Moines they heard rumors about the desert, about scientists, about a lunatic who still thought he could save the world to atone for his sins. They follow the rumors.
She's laughing at Nick. The two of them are walking ahead of Peter and John's trailing behind him. The laugh turns into a cough and she stops walking, stands there in the middle of the old mining road they're following coughing hard enough that her whole body shakes. Nick carries on a few steps before he turns back to her. When Peter catches up she's staring at her hand. The blood's a fine mist, more pink than red but it's shot though with little black flecks all the same.
Her forehead wrinkles. "Well, fuck."
After a while Nick offers quietly, "There was a clearing a little ways back. We can camp there," and Peter hears in his mind, "until you die," and he's not sure if Nick's really thinking that and it's spilling over or if it's just that obvious. Peter swallows against the tightness in his throat and the nausea that's creeping over him.
She tries to help set up camp and they try to make her sit down and rest. She looses her temper with them and screams at John but that makes her start coughing again. Peter sits down with her and wraps an arm around her shoulders. She's shivering now.
John has a fire going and Nick is heating water, making tea out of pine needles or something and Peter feels like he should say something to her. He's not really sure what he wants to say. "Sorry you're dying," seems kind of pointless. He kisses her forehead, notes how hot her skin is and pulls her closer to him. Her breath rattles in her chest.
By mid afternoon she's slipping in and out of consciousness, delirious from fever, struggling to breathe. Nick's leaning back against a tree, holding her against his chest. He's murmuring something to her that Peter can't hear. Peter and John are digging around in the stash of drugs they've accumulated. They come up with two Vicodin and a Valium. The next time she's awake they crush the pills in some tea. She doesn't say anything but he thinks she knows. She drinks the tea.
Her breathing slows and it's still rattley and labored but it slows and she sleeps. They crowd close to Nick, to her and John's holding her hand and Peter's resting his head on her back when she goes quiet and still.
Nick wipes her face clean, wipes the dried blood from her lips. He wraps a blanket around her and Peter notes that it's the warmest one they have and part of him wants to say it's stupid to give her that one but the rest of him is too numb to do anything and he doesn't want her to be cold. Nick leans close to her and whispers something, drops his forehead against hers. His tears fall on her eyelids.
John's standing in a flat part of the clearing staring at the rocky ground. "Here," and Nick carries her there and they start carrying rocks to her. It's dark and they're stumbling by the time the cairn is big enough that they're willing to stop.
Peter searches her backpack because he knows she kept it and finds it at the very bottom wrapped in a small yellow shirt that he thinks was Ella's. They rest her badge on top of the rocks and in the morning they head west to look for a madman in the desert.