“Half.” He wore a turquoise bracelet set in a wide, flat band of silver and a ring of turquoise and silver on his right hand.
“Why should I trust you?”
“I just shot that son of a bitch raping your friend, didn’t I?”
“Unless you wanted her for yourself.” The world since that red flash in the sky had no rules, or a set of rules Calliope didn’t understand. This man could have wanted anything.
“Nunca, mujer. Créeme. I would never.”
She did. Believe him. She wasn’t sure why, but his voice was calming; it echoed of Andres. Calliope lowered the gun. “Cómo te llamas?” She spoke the language of home, as if she’d found a member of her family.
“Chance Guardian,” he said, holding out his hand to shake hers.
She peeled one sweating palm off Susana’s gun and offered it to Chance.
Amy sputtered behind them, a snort. “You’re kidding, right?” Calliope turned around where her friend was leaning against the truck with the box of Camels in one hand, a lighter in the other. “That’s your name for real? You’re not messing with us? Chance Guardian?” Her voice was hard-edged, amused.
His grin intact, he motioned as if taking off an imaginary hat and bowed to the women. “Chance Guardian, mucho gusto.”
Amy pushed herself away from the truck with her boot, stepped over the dead man, her composure apparently regained in the time it took Chance to walk toward them. She lit a cigarette, inhaled, and as she exhaled, “All right then, Chance Guardian. What are you? An angel or something?”
Calliope smirked at her friend’s sass, relieved Amy wasn’t hurt.
“An angel? Afraid not, though that would be something. I’m A’shiwi, or as you Anglos might call us, Zuni. I’m also a grad student at the University of Texas in Dallas, a theoretical physics nerd.”
A scientist. And Zuni. One of the Puebloan peoples of New Mexico, like Bisabuela. Like Calliope. Then they were twice connected. A strange déjà vu, a vision of herself standing with Bisabuela at Chaco Canyon during a windstorm, but Chance Guardian was there. He was holding a figurine in his hand, a small wooden object.
Amy broke Calliope’s trance. “You don’t look like any nerd I’ve ever met … with that rifle. You hunting elk? Or just assholes with knives?”
Calliope stared at Chance. When she noticed she’d never let go of his handshake, her neck and cheeks flushed. She pulled her hand away, wiped it on her T-shirt. “I’m Calliope Santiago. This is Amy Denver.” Calliope nearly laughed aloud at the absurdity of the introductions, greeting each other politely as if society hadn’t collapsed, as if they weren’t standing over a rapist’s corpse. “I grew up in Texas.”
He smiled. “Where in Tejas, mujer?”
“El Paso.”
“I’ve passed through it.”
The twins kicked inside her.
“Have you seen anyone else?” Amy asked. “Which road are you coming from? My family’s in Cruces. Did you go through there?”
He adjusted the gun sling and stuck his hands in his jeans pockets. “Nah.” Chance didn’t seem scared or confused, but uncomfortable. “The main roads are blocked, empty cars everywhere. Fort Worth was a disaster.” He drew in a deep breath, let out a low whistle and shook his head. “I took the back roads, Abilene into Roswell.”
Calliope’s gut lurched again, more than babies kicking. The disaster wasn’t contained to New Mexico? “Was there no one?”
“I haven’t seen more than two or three people since I left the university, all of them like this guy, crazy.”
“Or in shock,” Calliope added, her pulse quickening. She felt ill.
“Why aren’t we in shock? We should be the ones shocked,” Amy said. She told Chance about the man at the gas station, who’d tried the same thing. “My clients treated me with more respect.”
“Clients?”
“I’m a dancer,” Amy said. “Exotic.” Calliope watched Chance’s face, noted no change in his expression, no bemusement or judgment. With a shrug, Amy added, “On the side. I’m in college too.” If his opinion changed one way or the other, he didn’t let on, his face set at a polite neutrality.
Calliope smiled at Amy’s exerted toughness, although she had a point. Why was her group normal, in whatever capacity anyone can be deemed normal, while other people, her dear Susana, were not? What differentiated them? Why were others irrational and violent, but Calliope and her companions immune? So far. Andres and Phoenix, at Tía’s hacienda, which camp did they fall into? She couldn’t imagine them singing pío, pío, pío in the dirt, hurting themselves or anyone else. She needed answers, and maybe Chance had some. “We’re searching for our families,” Calliope said. “Mine weren’t home … after that … red flash.” She hated saying it aloud.
“That small girl in the bushes too?” Chance asked. “She with you?”
“Eunjoo.” Calliope had forgotten in the chaos. “Come out, chica. He’s a friend.” Warning bells inside her. She didn’t know Chance. No better than she knew any of her traveling companions. How did she know he was a friend? Why had she let her guard down so easily?
Eunjoo crawled from the sagebrush, wiped the sand off her knees, and walked toward them. Before the girl got to the truck, Calliope realized all was not right. She couldn’t let Eunjoo see a dead man in a pool of blood. She rushed to the edge of the road and scooped Eunjoo into her arms, turning her toward the desert hills instead, the reddening sky.
“Do we leave the dead guy?” Amy asked.
“It’s not like there are police we can call. I haven’t seen the cops anywhere, have you?” Chance asked. No one answered. He continued, “Are you headed to El Paso then? You and your daughter?” He nodded to Eunjoo. “To your husband?”
“She’s not mine,” Calliope said quickly, then felt a pang like she’d betrayed the girl. Eunjoo was her responsibility—until she found her parents. “She’s my neighbor. We’re searching for her family too. Not in El Paso though.”
Chance’s eyes narrowed, hard-baked lines etched into his skin, questioning. She turned away, twirled one of Eunjoo’s shining black braids in her fingers. Amy had lit another cigarette, released the catch on the tailgate, and let her legs dangle while she smoked.
“I’ll go with you,” Chance said. “To keep you safe.”
“We’ve been doing fine without you,” Calliope said, her heart pounding.
“Yeah, Amy looked real fine on the ground.”
Calliope put a hand over Eunjoo’s ear, pressed the girl’s head against her shoulder, and made a hushing sound toward Chance.
“What?” he asked. “You think she didn’t hear the gunshot? Kids are smart.”
Calliope looked to Amy for support, but Amy shrugged. “I say let the cowboy nerd come. That asshole could’ve killed me. It wouldn’t hurt to have a hunter with us.”
Eunjoo leaned closer to Calliope, whispered, “That’s him.”
“Who?”
“The man from my dream.”
Calliope’s stomach flipped. She stared at Eunjoo’s round face, so earnest and solemn. She turned to Chance, who winked. “Have you met him before?”
Eunjoo shook her head.
Calliope sighed. “It was just a dream, chica. Someone who looked like him.” She tugged one of the girl’s braids playfully, and asked Chance, “Did you lose anyone?”
“I don’t know. Phones aren’t working, I can’t call home. I was on my way to the rez before I ran into you ladies. Yet, I have a feeling my people are unscathed. We’re survivors.”
She thought of the recent water crisis of the Sioux people, the snaking oil pipeline broken in the Heart River. Our people are survivors, Bisabuela had told her, at the graveyard outside Old Mesilla, where her sons were buried. They’d fought wars for a country that wanted a wall built around them, to keep them othered always.
&nb
sp; His people were unscathed. Where were her people? The hills in the distance glowed orange. Why were they glowing? She squinted, set Eunjoo down.
She was holding her belly and running before she knew what she was doing, the others calling after her. A flashing, strobe-like pulsing, and she rushed toward it, a cicada vibrating in her ears.
Andres had given her a flashlight their first Christmas together and she’d laughed. It had a Taser setting and a strobe light. She’d laughed that he would give her such a gift, and she’d turned on the strobe, pointed it toward the ceiling, and danced, mimicking a beatbox and techno sounds (something she was low-level famous for at talent shows as an undergrad). Pajama’d and messy-haired, she’d jumped onto a couch and danced. When she’d calmed down enough to explain, she told him that she’d thought the strobe was for signaling her distress if she was lost—a not uncommon occurrence—while hiking or out on a dig. Andres had corrected her, in the way of overprotective husbands and mansplainers worldwide (a phenomenon she was well aware of, as a female professor in academia): the strobe was to render attackers dizzy, off-balance, and generally unable to assault. I’ll still use it if I’m ever lost, so you’ll know where to find me. She’d pulled him into her dance, kissing him. It’ll be my signal for you, our secret code. Scientist lost at dance party, come find me. She had no idea where the flashlight went. She’d never used it. But it was their signal ahead, she knew it, knew it had to be Andres. The air was wet against her face, though it shouldn’t have been humid. She felt the bile rising in her throat, her stomach ached from exertion. She should not have been sprinting.
Chance caught her easily, grabbed her arm. Panting, he turned her to face him. “What on earth? Mujer, have you lost your mind?”
She tried pulling away, couldn’t. Turned her face toward the light instead, breathing hard, clutching her stomach. “The strobe, do you see it?” He raised his eyebrows skeptically. She groaned, said, “I’m not crazy, just look.”
He made an expression like he would only turn around and look to pacify her, and she rolled her eyes, but, still holding her, he turned in the direction she indicated. “What the …”
“I told you. Now let me go.”
“Fine, but I should go check it out, not you.”
“You can’t tell me what to do. I barely know you.”
“In case you haven’t realized, you’re insanely pregnant.”
Her cheeks burnt. It was the first time he’d shown any awareness of her pregnant belly. When he talked to her, before, he hadn’t looked down the way everyone else did. He’d kept his attention on her face, her eyes, like she was more than just a pregnant woman.
She cleared her throat. “I’m going.”
Amy and Eunjoo caught up, Eunjoo on Amy’s back. “Going where?”
“Toward that strobe light,” Calliope said.
“Why don’t we take the truck?” Amy asked. “It goes off road. I’m not lugging this kid piggyback all the way out there.” She scrunched her face toward the hills. “What is it anyway? Looks creepy. Why would we want to follow some creepy lights?”
“Could be a distress signal. Someone needs help.”
“We’re a rescue crew now? Apocalyptic crime fighters?”
“This isn’t an apocalypse,” Calliope said. That word came from the Greek apokálypsis, which originally meant the lifting of a veil or revelation. Calliope didn’t think Amy meant that version but the kind with brain-eating zombies. Calliope felt a slithering, like larva in her stomach. Baby feet. Snake feet. “You’ll scare Eunjoo.”
“What do you call most of the population disappearing?”
“You don’t know it’s most.”
“Like hell. Anyway, you’re the one scaring her. Running off like an escaped mental case.”
“We’ll take the truck,” Calliope said, turning back.
“Do I have any say in this?” Chance asked, following.
Amy and Calliope, in unison, “No.”
TEN
THE TRANSMITTER
The strobe grew brighter. Calliope dizzied as she watched. They veered into the brambles and sage, the truck jolting over ruts and furrows in the desert hills. A domed shape loomed above an overgrown field, a large building with a serrated aluminum roof, hay bales stacked against the sides, a dirt road leading toward the closed garage doors of a crop duster hangar. A communications tower jutted toward the sky. Static crackled the air. Calliope swallowed a metallic taste in her mouth. Something smelled of blood, the copper of wet pennies.
The sky reddened. She imagined the clouds had turned into wounds, festering as if they might drain blood. She squeezed Eunjoo’s hand, a small bright bloom of blood flowering through the bandage on her thumb. The girl’s face had gone pale. Whether from exhaustion or fear or the coyote bite, Calliope wasn’t sure. She breathed out heavily. A voice inside like cicada song in the late-summer grasses, growing louder, beckoning her. As the truck approached the yellow light that pulsed into the hills and swirling clouds of ash, the cicadas’ buzzing in Calliope’s ears grew louder. “It looks abandoned. Except for that light.” The strobe seemed to bore a hole in the sky above the aluminum roof.
“You think the radio tower works?” Amy asked.
“Depends what you mean by works,” Chance answered.
Amy stopped the truck in front of the hangar. Calliope told Eunjoo to stay in the car, something the girl must have been tired of hearing, because Eunjoo gave a pained expression, opened her mouth to say something, closed it again. “I’m sorry, chica. I’ll be right back.”
“It’s not that,” she said. “I saw something.”
“When? Where?” Calliope looked out the girl’s window. Nothing but fields, wild with tall yellow grasses and rocky hills in the distance. “Outside?”
Eunjoo shook her head, pressed her bandaged hand to her mouth.
“You can tell me.”
“In my sleep.”
“You had a nightmare? My boy gets those too. They’re not real, understand? Just pictures in our minds. When Phoenix has nightmares, I tell him to turn the page—like a book. You’re reading a scary page, that’s all. Turn it. The next one will be happier, I promise.” She patted Eunjoo’s hand, moving it away from the girl’s mouth. The bandage was red but not soaked. She’d check on it soon.
As she stepped onto the dirt runway, her ballet flats, leggings, and T-shirt insufficient protection against the cold wind, the clicking vibrations in her ears grew louder, more insistent. Then the rattling sound gave way to a voice—someone she recognized but couldn’t place, a human voice through the insect-like static. “Please tell me I’m not the only one hearing that.”
Amy shrugged, untied the faux leather jacket from around her waist and slung it over her inked shoulders. “I don’t hear anything, besides the wind.”
Chance put his palms to his ears, cupped them a few times, released. “You mean the cicadas? Or the voice?”
Calliope stared hard at him. He smiled into her quizzical expression.
“I hear it too, mujer,” he whispered to Calliope, putting his index finger to his mouth as if they shared a secret. Her limbs tingled. She crossed her arms around her chest, the air damp and cold.
On the closed hangar door, a rusted padlock. Chance slammed the butt of his rifle into the lock, and it busted open, debris of rust flaking to the ground like red snow. He and Amy pulled the massive hangar doors, each grabbing a handle at the center and walking away from each other. It screeched against the track, opening into darkness, a cave-like space inside, chill and dank. A loud flapping sound when the door stopped moving. Calliope looked up. An orange canvas windsock shook violently.
“I’m not going in there,” Amy said. “You two be my guests.”
Calliope had to know where the light was coming from. She imagined Phoenix huddled in the corner of the darkness, and her throat tightened
. But he couldn’t be in there; it was locked from the outside. If he were inside, who would’ve locked him in? She shivered.
“Looks like a dead end, mujer. Right?” Still, a catch in Chance’s voice spurred her curiosity, like the cicadas; he wasn’t signaling defeat but challenging her.
She turned toward Amy. “Did we bring the flashlight from the car?”
“In that box from your trunk.”
Calliope retrieved the light then strode into the hangar as if fearless. The flashlight beam caught threads of ash floating through the air. If the hangar were sealed, the ash couldn’t have gotten inside. There must’ve been an opening somewhere else, another way in. Her heart beat faster. She called out, “Phoenix? Andres?”
Heat at her neck, a hand on her shoulder. “They your people?” Chance had followed her.
“Yes.”
“Why would they be in here? They know how to fly planes?”
The light illuminated several small airplanes lining the walls, crop dusters, the kind of small planes Calliope imagined flew circles, performing acrobatics in the sky.
“No.”
He stood so close to her she could feel his breath on her skin. She moved aside.
“Mujer, I couldn’t say in front of your friend, but I think there’s a reason you’re here. What did the voice say to you?”
Calliope’s stomach clenched, pulse quickened. She shone the light into his face. He wasn’t smiling. Lines creased his forehead. “It was my bisabuela’s voice,” she said, without meaning to. “But that’s in my head, in my memory. I carry her voice with me everywhere.”
He reached out and redirected the flashlight beam away from his face and toward a back corner of the hangar. “She led you here. Not just to this shed. To this land.”
“I live here. My bisabuela’s people are from here.”
“Exactly.” Something in his voice sent a chill through her.
She wanted to ask what he meant, and why he couldn’t say that in front of Amy, but her light shone upon a rounded shape ahead, and she stopped, frozen in place. The lump appeared covered in tattered blankets, like a vagrant. “Is that a person?” she whispered, her voice shaking.
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