How It All Goes Down
Section 221
- They drink some Coca-Cola.
- The Man goes and gets their jeans. The Boy wants to know how long they can stay. The Man says they can't stay for long because it's dangerous.
Section 222
- Once The Boy falls asleep, The Man drags some furniture from the house to put around the hatch. He covers it with a mattress. ("It wasn't much of a ruse but it was better than nothing" (222.1).)
- The Man whittles some fake bullets, stains them, and puts them in his gun.
Section 223
- The Man thinks that if only he'd saved the cartridge casings from his revolver he could reload them.
- He kisses The Boy and goes to sleep.
Section 224
- They walk into town and pick up a new shopping cart at a grocery store. The Boy suggests they take two carts, but The Man reminds him that someone has to be on the lookout.
- They talk about how they never see any "good guys" on the road and how they always need to be on the lookout for trouble.
Section 225
- The Man cuts The Boy's hair, then he cuts his own and trims his beard. This is actually a really touching passage in the book – you should read it.
Section 226
- They eat dinner by candlelight. The Man tries some whiskey he found in the bunker but it makes him dizzy.
Section 227
- The Man hears rain on the mattress above them. He opens the hatch. The yard is flooded "but the bunker itself seemed pretty watertight" (227.1).
Section 228
- When he wakes up, the rain has stopped. He had a weird dream with "creatures of a kind he'd never seen before" (228.1).
- The Man realizes he must seem strange to The Boy because the world he's from doesn't exist anymore. A part of him wishes they'd never found the bunker.
Section 229
- The Man takes apart the stove, then reassembles it with just the tank and burner so it's lighter. He opens the hatch. It's drizzling. He closes it, then "set[s] about making breakfast" (229.1).
Section 230
- They eat and sleep all day and sort through the stores in the bunker. It's still raining.
- Once it's dark they start loading the cart (which they'd hid in the tool shed) with their supplies. They eat dinner and sleep.
- The next morning they bathe, eat breakfast, and head out.