“Hang on, kid,” Cal said, and stepped into the grass. “Captain Cal, to the rescue. Da-da-da!”

By then Becky had her cell phone out, cupped in one hand, and was opening her mouth to ask Cal if they should call the highway patrol or whatever they had out here that was blue.

Cal took one step, then another, and suddenly all Becky could see of him was the back of his blue denim shirt and his khaki shorts. For no rational reason at all, the thought of him moving out of sight caused her pulse to jump.

Still, she glanced at the face of her little black touchscreen Android and saw that she had the full complement of five bars. She dialed 911 and hit CALL. As she lifted the phone to her ear, she took a long step into the grass.

The phone rang once, and then a robot voice announced that her call was being recorded. Becky took another step, not wanting to lose sight of the blue shirt and light brown shorts. Cal was always so impatient. Of course, so was she.

Wet grass began to whicker against her blouse, shorts, and bare legs. “From the bathing machine came a din,” Becky thought, her subconscious coughing up part of a half-digested limerick, one of Edward Gorey’s. “As of jollification within. It was heard far and wide and the something something tide blah blah.” She had written a paper on limericks for her freshman lit class that she had thought was rather clever, but all she got for her trouble was a head full of dumb rhymes she couldn’t forget and a C-plus.

A human voice supplanted the robot. “Kiowa County 911, what is your location and the nature of your emergency, caller?”

“I’m on Route 73,” Becky said. “I don’t know the name of the town, but there’s some church, the Rock of the Redeemer or something . . . and this broken-down old roller-skating rink—no, I guess it’s a bowling alley—and some kid is lost in the grass. His mother, too. We hear them calling. The kid’s close, the mother not so much. The kid sounds scared, the mother just sounds—” Weird, she meant to finish but didn’t get the chance.

“Caller, we’ve got a very bad connection here. Please restate your—”

Then nothing. Becky stopped to look at her phone and saw a single bar. While she was watching, it disappeared, to be replaced by NO SERVICE. When she looked up, her brother had been swallowed by the green.

Overhead, a jet traced a white contrail across the sky at thirty-five thousand feet.

↖

“Help! Help me!”

The kid was close, but maybe not quite as close as Cal had thought. And a little farther to the left.

“Go back to the road!” the woman screamed. Now she sounded closer, too. “Go back while you still can!”

“Mom! Mommy! They want to HELP!”