Julie stands up. Her back is to me; I can’t see her face. Just her hair whipping in the wind.
She starts walking.
“Julie?” I call after her.
She keeps walking.
“Jules!” Nora shouts. “Where are you going?”
“Need to piss,” Julie replies, but the flatness of her voice sets off my alarms. I catch up to her as she enters a narrow alley, hidden from the sun and piled high with sand drifts like a pyramid burial shaft.
“Julie.”
She keeps walking.
“Julie, talk to me.”
I touch her back and she flinches, wrapping her arms around herself while continuing to walk. “I’m seeing things, R,” she says in a plaintive whimper, and I realize with a jolt that she’s crying. I try to put my hand on her shoulder but she pushes it away and keeps walking.
“What are you seeing?”
She shakes her head and clutches her elbows, looking disturbingly unwell. “Something’s wrong with this place.” Her voice trembles. “I can see through it. Like it’s watery soup. And my . . . my dreams are in there.” She raises her head, looking toward—or through—the distant buildings. “The monsters, the men. And my—”
She stops. She finally looks at me. “Am I awake?”
“Yes, Julie, you’re awake. Please, just . . .”
I make one more attempt to touch her. She turns around and runs.
? ? ?
Her muscles are young and alive, but my legs are twice as long. I follow at a light jog as she scrambles through the tangled streets, as she glances left and right like a lost hiker trying to find the trail. I let her run until I hear her breath starting to whistle, then I put a hand on her shoulder and squeeze firmly.
She slows to a fast walk, taking long breaths until her lungs stabilize just shy of an attack. Her tears have dried. Her fear seems to be cooling into a hard edge of purpose. I scan the city, looking for a glimpse of whatever signs she’s following, but every block looks the same to me: centuries of artistry and architecture ground down to shapeless lumps and dunes of monochrome dust. The red evening sun creeps around twisted masses of metal. Shapes dance in the corners of my eyes and vanish when I look. I remember what I saw on the plane, that blurring and twisting of streets, like the city was forgetting its own form. When Julie says something’s wrong with this place, I don’t doubt her.
I’m able to make her pause just long enough to grab a bag of toy army men from a corner store, which I drop at each fork in our path, imagining the horror of getting lost in this vast urban labyrinth. Julie is in no state to consider such precautions. She walks in a trance, her face pale and stiff, eyes damp but fierce. If I hadn’t followed her . . . if I hadn’t known the tune of her voice well enough to catch that dissonant note . . .
Lost in grim speculation, I almost crash into her when she comes to a sudden stop. We have entered a sort of courtyard, an empty space between four buildings that appears to have been recently colonized. It’s overrun with bristly weeds and malnourished vines, but it bears less resemblance to ancient Egypt than the rest of the city does. Lawn chairs sit in loose circles throughout the space, surrounded by beer and wine bottles, marijuana pipes, and stacks of books that rain has reduced to pulp, however rigorously highbrow they once were.
“This must’ve been them,” Julie mumbles, taking in the details of this sprawling still life. “The ‘Remakers.’?”
Scattered throughout the space are long workshop tables covered in the tools of various artistic trades. Chisels, brushes, silk screens, pencils, paint cans, knives, crochet needles, a drum kit in the corner, a pile of guitars, a podium, and a mic stand. And on one of the walls, a mural, or a blend of a dozen murals, their starkly contrasting styles somehow intertwining into a jungle of colors and figures, from crowds of tiny people to hundred-foot giants.
“They were building a different kind of city, Mom said.”
I can’t place the emotion in her voice, a dissonant chord of anger, sadness, and love.
“Something based on different values. Different measures of success. It was supposed to be a message to the world.”
The mural reaches to the very top of the wall, where a solar panel once powered a single yellow bulb, now dark.
“I wonder how long it lasted.” She cranes her neck to look at the bulb. “I wonder what killed it.”
I follow a few steps behind her as she walks the perimeter of the space, running her hands along the brick walls. “We could have ended up here instead. We were so close. Ten miles, the sign said . . .” Her voice is hard but faint, like she’s shouting from a great distance. “Dad wouldn’t take the exit. Mom was screaming at him, but . . .” She turns in a slow circle, staring up at the mural, the inert remains of a movement. “Was this what she needed to make her hold on?” Her chin quivers. “Did she leave us for this?”
“Julie.” I say it so softly it gets her attention. “Why are we here?”