Summary

In Chapter 8, Candace recalls the shopping trips that she and Blythe would take in their downtown during business trips to China and Hong Kong. She remembers buying a stack of fake money meant to be ceremonially burned in order to send to people in the afterlife. For her parents, Candace burned spirit money as well as many other consumer commodities that she believed her parents would want in the afterlife.

In Chapter 9, the narrative returns to the post-apocalypse. Candace has begun to befriend three members of the group: Ashley, Evan, and Janelle. Candace and these three survivors all feel slightly uncomfortable under Bob’s leadership, but they feel that they have no other options for survival. One day, Bob gives Candace her iPhone, which she had thought she had lost. Bob has purposely broken the iPhone, and he says that they all must let...