Eunjoo nodded, stuffing another peanut butter cracker in her mouth.

Calliope handed her a bottle of water from the pantry, so she wouldn’t choke on the thick paste, and drank some herself. There wasn’t much.

When they left Susana’s house, Eunjoo still held her jar of peanut butter—and Calliope, a bag of food, a liter of water, and the gun her friend had used to shoot herself.

Outside, Calliope picked three ears of corn and added those to the bag.

“Look.” Eunjoo called out, pointing toward the sky.

Beyond the Sandias, a trickle of pink irrigated the skyline. Morning. The sun was rising. Calliope would find their families. She still had hope, and a girl with peanut butter on her mouth.

SIX

SIX

AMY DENVER

Susana the corn woman shooting herself replayed through Calliope’s mind, a film unreeling, as she drove toward the freeway. The stygian darkness around the car had blanched into an ashen dusk against the rising sun. How much of her beloved forests—Sandia, Gila, Taos—were ablaze? What was going on in the rest of the state, the country? Even before the flash of light and the disappearances, the news had become terrifying, the environmental agencies long-gutted, pipes everywhere exploding, not just on the reservations. Gunmetal gray emanated through the ash and smoke; she imagined Bisabuela watching this wreckage with her, whispering, When they destroy the Earth, they do it in the dark.

Calliope’s grief, palpable, rode in the passenger seat beside her; it guarded the gun in the glove box. That gun was the culmination of humanity’s toolkit, child borne of flint and core, borne of Clovis spearheads buried beneath riverbed. She merged onto the southbound 25, tangled with stalled, empty cars, piled into each other, some in pieces after catching fire. She wove through stopped traffic, twenty miles per hour to avoid crashing into the wreckage.

It would take forever to get to Tía’s.

On the edge of the freeway beside the guardrail, a figure hunched beside a rundown scooter. Calliope slowed to a crawl. A white girl in hipster jeans, a sheer beige tank top with a faux leather jacket tied around her slight waist, and black army boots to her calves. She held a helmet at her hips, and bent over her bike on her haunches before standing and kicking the back tire. A petite young woman, jutting-wire skinny, ponytailed hair the color of summer squash, fawn skin with rose undertones. Her bare arms and shoulders were sleeved with colorful tattoos. Even from several feet away, Calliope could clearly discern Medusa, her snake-hair coiling the white girl’s bicep like bracelets. The artwork didn’t bother her; tattoo culture permeated Albuquerque. Years before, the fact that everyone and their grandma at church sported tattoos was a culture shock, but after a while she stopped paying attention.