Dune woke up, sweating as if she’d been having a nightmare. She couldn’t quite remember what she’d dreamed about, but knew Marta was in it and that she could feel the pulsing in her body of desire.

She got out of bed and grabbed her cigarette case. She stepped out on the back porch with it and was surprised to see that the moon was full. She could see every single thing. The trees in the yard, mostly stripped of leaves now, were sharp and black against the navy shadow of the night sky.

Across the yard, Dog stood at attention, the moonlight making his coat look silver. She stepped onto the grass, making a small animal sound in her throat to greet him. Dogs were so much easier than humans. Dog sat down, company. She looked back at the shadow she made in the moonlight.

She slipped a joint into her hand and lit it. As she got quiet, she heard the city’s night sounds. Something small, skittish, was moving in the yard. There were dogs calling to each other across the city, and she appreciated that Dog didn’t feel the need to join in the chorus. As she settled into her high, she sensed something move in the apartment building across the way.

It had been abandoned for some time, the windows mostly broken out with tossed rocks in moments of teenage vandalism. Each year the city threatened to repair it, but nothing changed. Dune was sure that people squatted there in the summer months, though come winter there were better structures. Especially this winter.

And yet she saw something sway in one of the upper windows. And then another. It looked like the moonlight itself, moving against windowpanes that weren’t there. Dune watched now, her head tilted back. The movement came again, this time in several windows at once, a swaying. She realized it was a tree, a reflection of a tree, moved by wind.

She slipped back into the house, spooked and goose pimpled, leaning back on the inside of the door. At this angle there is no tree that could be reflected in those windows. There were no windowpanes for a tree to reflect in. There was no wind swaying any of the other trees.

She felt behind her for the lock and turned it.

One day, the gardens she knew of were all picked over. Methodically, like an industrial workforce had come and cleared every single piece of fruit, every vegetable, even the weeds, even the rot.

Had the city done this? Was it someone else? Was she angry? Or jealous?

Outside of the emergency relief centers, the streets were generally empty. When she saw other people who were alone and alert, which was now rare, she would wave. Most of these survivor-­strangers would scurry away, using isolation as their guard.