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.