The day’s dying sun was red and so was the bloody concrete beneath them and obscure masses and figures contorted into awkward, lifeless shapes scattered the carnival grounds. Even between the setting sun and the dull orange luminescence of quietly weakening flames of the dead city around them, it was impossible to make out the faces of these diseased bodies. They were just nameless corpses, like Henry and Angel would soon be.

Henry held Angel’s hand and Angel held his.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

The Ferris wheel dipped and Henry’s feet touched the earth for a moment, but Angel’s legs were too short, and then the Ferris wheel rose again and scooped them back into the crisp evening air.

“It’s quiet,” she observed.

“Yeah.”

“I kind of like it.”

“Me too.”

“I’ve never heard anything this quiet before.”

“Me neither,” he said.

“No birds.”

“Or cars.”

Only the wind and the occasional creak of the rusty old Ferris wheel.

“Are you okay?” he asked again.

“Yeah. Are you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“It’s going to happen though.”

“Yeah,” he said quietly.

Angel squeezed his hand and she nuzzled her small head into his weak shoulder and Henry coughed a magnificent cough that rocked the entire carriage. Angel laughed.

“You better not give that to me.”

Henry wiped blood from his lips, skin thin and cracking and weak and dying, and he laughed too. “Sorry. I think I got it from someone else.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

The sun, for the last time in their lives, dipped beneath the horizon and what remained of their world was bathed in twilight and twinkling stars. As if on cue, they turned their gaze to the sky.

“Remember when we were kids—”

“—And there was that meteor shower—”

“—And you had to sneak out—”

“—Because my mom wouldn’t let me go.”

Angel pulled away from him and she coughed and it was still bloody and Angel and Henry momentarily looked into each others’ eyes. “That was one of the best nights of my life.”

“I think that was when I realized I loved you.”

“We were nine, Henry.”

“So?”

“So you can’t be in love at nine.”

“Well I was.”

She squeezed his hand and he squeezed hers. “I love you,” he said.

“I love you too.”

“In a way it’s kind of a relief,” she whispered.

“This is?”

She nodded.

“I guess.”

“You want to keep living?”

“No, not particularly,” he said. “I just don’t want to die. If I could I’d just sleep forever.”

“Maybe that’s what happens.”

“I don’t think so.”

“What do you think happens?”

“Not that.”

She was quiet again, and they enjoyed the silence, their last minutes alive. It hadn’t been this calm and still on Earth in a very, very long time. The chaos had ceased long ago. “Do you want to know what I think?”

“Sure.”

“I think it’s whatever you want it to be. I think it’s anything and everything and nothing all at the same time. No coughing, no blood, no death. Endless persistence. Unimaginable peace.”

“I think we just go asleep.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

They looked back up, to the sky, endlessly blue, deep, dark blue, so blue they could fall right into the sky. They gazed at the almost oddly clear dome of universes and blue stars and old orange Venus was there, endlessly humming, and the wispy thin clouds like gray snakes accentuating all of this, the young night’s infant stars, the newborn specks of galaxies thousands of years away.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, refusing to take his eyes off the brilliant night, until the Ferris wheel fell back to the earth once again and the structure obstructed their view.

“You,” she answered quietly.

“Do you think we’ll see each other later? When it happens?”

“Maybe.”

“I think so.”

She coughed again, and this time no blood, and she sighed. “It’s going to happen.”

Henry let go of her hand and instead wrapped his emaciated arm around her weak shoulder. “It was always going to happen.”

“Oh God… I can…”

Henry held her, held her tight, and tried not to cry as Angel took her final labored gasps of empty air.

“I’m scared… Oh God…”

Henry held her.

“Oh God…”

And she became limp in his arms.

Henry held her and coughed, no blood, and nodded to himself as he looked back to the stars once more, one final look at the infinity beyond. He closed his eyes then, and he was tired and strangely warm and he knew that this was it, and then there was a calmness that swept over him, and all sensation faded into fuzz, all feeling into noise, and the Ferris wheel continued its cycle with the stars humming above.