Chance was glancing toward the hills. He said, “In a way. It was, um, a kind of transmitter. An old message. Nothing new.” He put his hands on his hips, staring intently at something in the distance Calliope couldn’t see, but his posture had gone rigid.

“Something wrong?” Calliope asked.

Chance squatted to the ground, balanced on his haunches, pressed his palm to the dirt. “Something’s coming.” He stood, his face alert, his eyes darting, searching. “Get into the hangar.” He moved toward the truck. “Amy, you too. I’ll get the girl.” When Calliope didn’t move, he said, insistent and loud, “Hurry.”

His voice was so urgent, so full of alarm, she didn’t argue. She clutched Bisabuela’s bowl and scurried into the hangar, Amy close behind her. In the aluminum threshold, she turned toward the truck to make sure Eunjoo was following. The wind had intensified, the orange windsock fluttering maniacally, until it broke off completely and blew away. The swirling in the clouds made wings of the sky, an angry bird searching for prey. Calliope replayed the Sleeping Sisters’ reemergence—howling awake.

Chance unhooked Eunjoo from her booster seat, and the girl ran toward Calliope, who bent down and opened her arms. “Hurry, chica.” The dust eddied around her, a miniature whirlwind. The girl tripped, fell flat on her stomach. “Eunjoo!” Calliope lurched forward to grab her, but Chance reached her first, carried her inside.

“Shut the door, hurry.” He was panting, set the girl down, helped the women lug the screeching metal door shut, closing the accordion from both sides, joining the handles in the center of the door. They were enveloped in darkness. The ground vibrated. Calliope gripped the wall. Another Sleeping Sister awakening?

Amy screamed, “Earthquake.” She dropped flat to the ground, kneeling as if in prayer, except Calliope heard what she was muttering under her breath, not prayer but obscenities.

Calliope reached for Eunjoo, huddled on the floor covering her head as when Calliope had found her cowering before the coyotes. Although her own stomach lurched, she held the girl and hummed in her ear a Spanish song Bisabuela had sung to her.

Chance was looking around the hangar wildly, tossing things toward the door. The earth kept trembling; the air seemed to have frozen, a jolt of high-pitched sound vibrating through nothingness, as if the air had been sucked away and all that was left was noise—

A strange pause, a void in the atmosphere. Calliope cleaved in two, her skin too tight for her body, nitrate-cold splintering her skin. She tried to keep humming to Eunjoo, tears running down both of their faces, but she couldn’t. Nothing would come from her mouth, as if she too were a void. She was dying. She was suffocating. She could not breathe.

The flashlight dropped to the ground, pieces of ash forming at the base like dust motes. They clouded Calliope’s eyes, they sparkled. She shut her eyes.