I look out the windshield and imagine the world the way Corbin said it was, all under water. The sun is going down and the shadows wash like waves across the valley from one hillside to another. The light gets greyer, and I can imagine that the water is flooding up to the sky.

In the distance something small as a mosquito is rising over a hillside. It flashes bright in the moment of pure light the sun is leaving behind as it drops behind the western horizon. Maybe that speck is a helicopter shark that will slide through time and the sky to become a raven, or a meadowlark.

“No! No! Turn around! Turn around now!” I scream, and I hit Eric.

“What the hell?” Eric yells and flinches toward the door.

The dog jumps at my arm, but his teeth don’t find me. It is stuck — wiggling and fighting — over Eric’s shoulder. Eric fights the dog, fights the wheel, and the car snaps from one lane to the other and back.

“Turn around!” I yell, and I point at the sky where I can see what’s coming now. “Black helicopter!”

Eric pushes the dog off him and into the backseat. He cranes down to see the thing coming at us.

“No! No! Don’t look. Never look! Turn around!”

“I can’t turn here. I can’t go the wrong way on the freeway.”

“Just go across the middle, just go!” I grab the steering wheel and push it the way I need to go. But Eric pushes back and the car turns, skates across the lanes, and scrapes the metal guardrail beside a steep bank. Eric brakes and the car stops on the shoulder.

In front of us, the black helicopter is moving toward the east, not toward us, please not toward us.

“Don’t look! Don’t look!” I say it again and again. “Never look at a black helicopter.”

“It’s not black,” says Corbin. “I saw it. It’s green and white. It’s a rescue helicopter from the hospital.”

I rise up and my fist flies over the seat and connects with the side of Corbin’s head. Before the dog can take another fly at me, I grab its ear and pin it to the seat. Corbin is screaming and crying. “Shut your mouth or I will kill this dog,” I say. I pull the paring knife out of my pocket and push the point at the dog’s eye.

“Listen to her, Corbin. Shut up. Shut up now,” says Eric.

In the back seat, both the kid and the dog are whimpering.