Chapters (41)
- PART ONE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- PART TWO
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- PART THREE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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
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.