Severance

The narrative switches back to the Beginning. The group of survivors spends most days driving toward Bob’s mysterious Facility, but sometimes they pause to go “stalking,” looting the homes of the fevered for supplies to take to the Facility. It is mid-December in Ohio, and they are about to stalk the home of the Gower family. They enter the home to discover that this will be a “live stalk,” meaning that the occupants of the home are still alive but fevered. The fevered family—a mother, father, and son—are reenacting a family dinner over and over. Their actions remind Candace of watching her mother’s elaborate skincare routine as a child. Later, as her mother’s Alzheimer’s worsened, the routine became a point of fixation, and she would regularly call Candace to tell her she was sending packages of Clinique skincare products which would never arrive.

Inside the Gowers’s home, Candace immerses herself in the stalk, enjoying the way the repetitive tasks “[snuff] out any worries and anxieties” (65). In an empty bedroom, she finds a Daily Grace Bible, one of the first books whose production she oversaw at Spectra. Noticing a rustling sound by a window, Candace draws back the curtains and finds a fevered 12-year-old girl, Paige Marie Gower.