Chapter 4 of an unfinished book based on The Odyssey, presented inside the This Day in Deaths broadcast. This episode opens with the series' musical introduction and universal cold open, then follows a single story — the next chapter after Episode 6 — out of the private hillside and into a Los Angeles morning of ash, roadblocks, and concrete water.

Tonight, just after midnight, arrangements break on wet streets under ash rain, at a roadblock under a dead traffic light, in a half-open window where an acolyte offered coffee, in a dead raft sedan under a Vegas sign, and in a concrete river washing smoke from a mouth.

For three blocks the car works — not well, but sufficiently. Virgil drives with both hands; fax paper presses his ribs; island smoke will not leave his hair. Beside him, Dante sits as if occupying a ...