Remy bounces Mom in her arms as she runs. Hundred barks at the end of a street lined with trucks that sell food to long lines of impatient people. A man with a chrome cart sells a product called hot dogs that float in bins of hot water, little puffs of steam rising each time the lid is taken off. The chrome cart has a glossy red hot dog with legs and the hot dog is smiling as a salivating mouth from the right chomps away at the hot dog’s bun-clad body. Remy thinks They put that in their mouths.
Another rumbling is felt through the soles of their feet, this one larger, this one knocking people to the ground who curse the sky while trying to stand back up. They look to see what new buildings are rising. They scream and laugh and cry. Everyone in the city is insane. Everyone is touching technology. Free space in the city doesn’t exist. Every inch is filled, and from a cloud’s view, it’s all moving like a tidal wave of concrete and blinking lights toward the village.
“Moms should never be allowed to die because Moms are forever,” says Remy, seemingly to no one, only concentrating on finding the hospital, her eyes trying to read the letters painted on windows. There’s a store that sells just dog food.
“What?” says Dad.
“Moms are a void never to be filled.”
“What are you saying? Slow down.”
“We can’t.”
“Are we close?”
“Just come on.”
The hospital is a towering white building of glass windows with a glowing +. It’s so white it blinds through the red sky, the blowing filth of the city. Hoards of people stand outside the entrance. It’s hurricane windy but many don’t care. A woman in a wheelchair smokes a cigarette with her hair flying around her head like a baby’s handwriting. She stares blankly ahead until she sneezes blood and smoke and loses her cigarette. A man dressed in green lights another and places it between her lips.
The earth shakes and blurs and Remy fights back tears as she runs holding her dying mom.
A half-naked man with his face covered in black crosses stands on a wooden box and yells, “THE SUN IS COMING TO CLEANSE US ALL, HALLELUJAH, THE SUN IS COMING TO CLEANSE US ALL,” and the man selling hot dogs slaps the air. The half-naked man grins and drawn on each tooth is a black cross and the hot dog vendor looks scared. He continues to yell, “THE SUN IS COMING TO CLEANSE US ALL, HALLELUJAH, THE SUN IS COMING TO CLEANSE US ALL.”
They run down street after street and Remy bleeds as people take pictures and upload videos.
Another ground trembling, another slight tilting of the universe, another inch the sun pushes in.
A collective moan as the sky vines with cracks.
“The sun is to blame,” says a woman named Sharon or Carol or Tammy or Julie or Amy or Mom or Cathy or Kelly. “But you know something, I don’t really know.”
“Everyone is a falling number,” says Remy. “Get inside, protect yourself.”
A boy named Joey, the son of Sanders who has recently begun airing political ads claiming victory over the village says, “What’s that?” and points.
In the center of an intersection a fountain of dirt sprays the sky with a rush like a stream grown after a storm. Men and women scatter away and clog up doorways. A man drops his phone, starts to go back for it, but is pulled away by his wife. Roads split and the earth tilts and those still standing don’t wait to fall. From inside the fountain a giant yellow insect crawls upward.
“COME ON!” says Remy. “PLEASE COME ON!”
They sprint down a final area of sidewalk and reach the hospital, the fountain in the intersection still in partial view from the hospital entrance. Mom is going to be saved. There’s a hotel attached to the hospital and there’s a church attached to the hotel and all three are in a race to consume the most sky. Two men dressed in green standing at the sliding glass doors take the blanket and pull the fabric down to reveal her face. Mom will be Mom forever. They call, without emotion, for a stretcher. The woman in the wheelchair smoking, hair in the wind a fighting nest of odd angles, laughs at the sky and then coughs in a way that makes Remy think she’s near zero. The two men look at Remy, ask if she’s okay, and she nods. She hasn’t seen what her feet look like. Mom is safe now, don’t worry about me. One of the men looks Dad up and down, Dad trying to catch his breath, he’s so out of shape, his stomach hurts, his back throbbing. But he also feels a strange kind of opening, something like success because they’ve made it.
“She’s red because she’s losing her final crystal,” says Remy.
One of the men turns and looks at her. “What?”
“She’s a red giant.”
“What she’s trying to say,” says Dad, “is that she needs an injection, or whatever, to increase her count.”
“Okay,” says the other man, looking so totally lost that he smiles. “Wait, what?”
The stretcher arrives. They place Mom on it and enter the hospital. Dad stays outside because he can’t stop looking at what’s happening back in the intersection, the fountain growing taller, getting louder, more people screaming. He’s completely distracted by something he’s never seen before, that no one has seen before, all that dirt blowing into the air with this thing, this yellow insect, coming up and out of it.
“Wha,” says Dad. “HOLY.”
There’s another eruption and triangular shapes of street bloom outward from inside the fountain of dirt and the yellow insect rises. It makes a high-pitched whining sound as it struggles to pull itself from the hole. Those on the ground crawl on their stomachs toward building entranceways where people scream to hurry, their heads filled with sci-fi endings. The wind shatters a bank’s ATM window. A man crouches, holds his head, looks for his ATM card with the password LIZ&MONTY. The sun bends pavement. Laughing teens run in place, the wind holding them in place as they sink into the road. The yellow insect drags itself from the hole and becomes a machine with clumps of dirt spilling around it.
“How is that,” says Dad.
Two black crystals fall off the back as the yellow machine rights itself with two final flops. The engine buckles with the changing of gears, the whine relaxes to a growl, and a part, looks like a rusty pipe, falls under a tire as the machine moves forward.
Z. is hunched over the wheel, covered in gunk, dirt still raining down all around him. A few rocks clang off the metal roof. He screams for everyone to get out of his way and swats the air wildly in front of him. The tires leave two trails of dirt clumps shaped like hexagons in the street as he drives, trying to remember where the prison is. Dad steps back, turns, and runs into the hospital.
Inside, orderlies and patients and doctors and janitors pressed to the walls allow a clear path for Dad to follow. Ahead of him is Remy. The walls are an endless smear of green. Dad has the weird expression of a man terrified but smiling, catching up to her and the wildly swerving stretcher disappearing around corners, then reappearing again and scaring old men glued to the walls, clutching their metal poles on wheels. He runs and feels himself come alive.
Doors fly open and inside are doctors with rubber-gloved hands. They turn their heads, their bodies not reacting. Free-standing fans blow hot air.