A sign by the road said, KING CITY WELCOMES YOU across a drawing of two dolphins leaping in fat, blue arcs over a faded sketch of a factory. The wooden sign had grown pale with water damage and disrepair, so the factory building looked hidden in its own smog.

Below the factory was a banner that read MAYOR E . . . But the remaining letters had long ago lost their legibility. There was a very large crow standing just below the sign in the red desert dirt, but, as they drove slowly past, Jackie realized it wasn’t a large crow at all, but a very strange dog.

The dog (or perhaps it was a crow; it was tough to tell) stared at Jackie as they rolled by, mouth agape, displaying small, sharp teeth and a thin, red tongue.

“Guess it worked,” Diane said, smiling, but not feeling any joy.

“Yes,” Jackie said, cringing, but not feeling any fear.

There were few cars on the road as they entered what seemed to be the business district. The cars that were there were taupe, long, flat-hooded with short windshields, and they moved slowly, well below speed limits. No pedestrians were on the streets.

The dusk brought a sandy mist to the hot air, turning the sky ocher. There was a dull roar from above, as if a seashell had been placed directly atop the town.

Diane drove past the post office, which was a one-story stucco building with no front door, a splintered parapet wall with letters missing from its marquee, and a tree that had grown through the broken sidewalk and into one of the many shattered windows lining its front. There was no sign of movement inside.

The hum of the sky did not let up. It sounded like a low-flying jet in a never-ending holding pattern. Diane began to hear whispers in the noise, the way one sees patterns in clouds. The whispers were not words but had the rhythm of language, the tone was needy and desperate, but no matter how much she concentrated she couldn’t understand any of it. The whispers sounded like her own voice.

Diane felt both here and elsewhere. Like she was in the car with Jackie, but also entering addresses into a spreadsheet at work. She was sitting at her desk, clicking keyboard keys, with headphones in listening to soft rock. Diane felt two of herself. She had never looked at herself before, not like this. She did not recognize herself, but she understood who she was. Diane looked at her hand on the flamingos and felt her hand on her work desk.