Bombs flying overhead. Cylinders popping. Propellers whirring. Calliope awoke to cacophony as alarm, Chance yelling in a language she didn’t understand. Chance yelling anything wasn’t a good sign. Eunjoo was sitting upright in bed, eyes wide with fear. Amy’s bag was empty. Her boots and clothes were gone. Calliope knew better this time than to leave Eunjoo alone. She reached for Susana’s gun that she’d left beside her sleeping bag on the ground, but it was gone. She pulled on the hiking boots then scooped up the girl and hurried to the zippered mouth of the tent. Chance was waving his arms in the air, calling out. In the sky toward the southeast, flying away from their destination, a yellow-and-white stripe moving away from them. Calliope couldn’t see the writing, but she didn’t need to; she knew it said Vixen. “Mentirosa!” Calliope yelled. “That lying snake. I knew it wasn’t out of gas!”

“Where’s she going?” Eunjoo asked.

“Cruces,” Calliope spat, unable to take the bitterness from her voice. To Chance she demanded, “Did she say anything?”

His expression sheepish, he said, “I dozed, didn’t realize she was splitting until takeoff.”

If there was a deus ex machina in this apocalypse, it needed to come now.

Calliope felt betrayed. But why? She hadn’t known Amy. They weren’t friends. Naturally, she would’ve put her family above Calliope’s. Why shouldn’t she have? Every woman for herself.

Still. Calliope felt deflated—heavy with rocks.

After several minutes of cursing Amy in Spanish and pacing the campsite, wringing her cold hands, Calliope finally took a deep breath, turned to Chance and said, “What happened to the cars? The campers’ cars. They wouldn’t be in the middle of nowhere without some way of getting here.”

Worry lines formed across his forehead. “I didn’t want to scare you, but come over here. I have to show you something.”

Holding Eunjoo’s hand, Calliope followed him past the yellow grass, past the empty visitor center, past a dirt road, to a small lake.

It wasn’t much of a lake. More of a pond, really. Sludged with blackish water. Protruding from the center like a bulging belly or makeshift island, the round red hood of a car.

“Are the campers inside?” she asked, horrified at the thought she’d brought Eunjoo to a slaughter scene, picturing a whole family submerged and pickling in the oily water.

He raised his eyebrows and took a deep breath but didn’t answer her.

“How long have you known this was here?” she asked.

“Since yesterday, when I climbed that rock to assess our bearings.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I told you. Didn’t want to scare you.”

“What should we do?”

“Not like we can call the police.”