She falls.

Mom falls, her momentum is kept. Her body smashes on our left side, the car. She hits it so hard that it moves out of place and the rear bumper is knocked off. Our backs no longer have support and touch the ground. I see her face. Her mouth is bleeding, the blade turns to blood and evaporates.

The noise of the planes doesn't stop, they don't stop ringing, neither do the hundreds of thousands of footsteps, closer and closer, shadows growing larger, covering the horizon in the north.

Her stomach, we hit her stomach. Her stomach acid destroys her from the inside. It burns her. Regeneration doesn't matter if your own acid is burning you. It gives her pain, it incapacitates her, I know. But of course, she's not going to die. Not from something so simple.

She reaches out to grab me, to squeeze and burst me. I roll over myself to the right. I save Soda from her grip as well. I feel a stitch so hard in my arm that I see black for a few moments. We roll over what's left of the other monster. We smear ourselves with its blood, but it fades right away. It fades in the sunlight. Its body doesn't... its blood fades, not its body, not its flesh. And the blood that is not yet struck by the rays of light remains.

She tries to get up, lifts her torso, but remains rigid, grimaces and her chest impacts the ground again. This is our last chance. Soda hands me his revolver, almost reflexively. I open the cylinder, raise the gun to the sky and the last bullet drops. I hold the revolver with only my mouth, with my teeth. It’s heavy, the metallic taste of the tip burns my tongue. I take the bullet from the ground and force my right hand into the half-monster’s entrails, get it out, and put it in the cylinder.

I turn around and meet her figure, coming from below.

Her arms outstretched, seeking to embrace me.

I wish I had hugged you more.

I wish I had told you many things.

I wish you were here.

I shoot.

Her body falls on top of mine.

It knocks the air out of me, makes my ribs crackle.

The planes in the sky, the hundreds of thousands of monsters in the distance…

I can't breathe. My arm...

I hear dripping. Her blood doesn't drip so much from the hole in her head, it drips from her nose, from one of her ears, from her mouth. It's a trickle of liquid first, then drops. On her forehead, a small hole, behind her head, the petals of a bloody flower peak out. And soon her blood will evaporate in the sunlight.

Soda... Soda's hand is behind my head, on the back of my head, kept me from hitting the asphalt. He, with all the strength a child can have, helps me get mom's body off me. He turns her around while I push her with my one good arm.

I can't see well, I think I'm going to faint. But no, it's the tears. Soda cries too, we both cry as we move. Finally, finally, I can cry and not from pain. Mom is dead.

Mom is dead and she's going to stay dead. I killed her, we killed her and gave her peace at last. Soda takes from mom's pocket the car keys. He also takes the rifle and the revolver I left lying on the ground.

The noise of the planes has never stopped. Neither has the sound of footsteps. They intensify. The hundreds of thousands coming towards us are at the distance of the car behind.

With my hand on my ribs, we climb into the car. Soda throws the guns in the back seat next to our backpacks and tries to shove the car key where it goes. His hands shake badly, I help him with my right to put it in place. We turn it. The cold comes in through the missing door, through the broken window in the back.

The monsters are like a mudflow, covering the entire north, seeking to consume us.

We turn it again more noise.

And then…

The car vibrates. It's the noise of the engine starting.

Me at the wheel, Soda in the passenger seat. We feel the vibration of the engine, the noise, the smell of gasoline. There's not that much fuel left.

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I press the gas pedal to the floor, the wheels squeal on the asphalt, our backs sink into the seats from the momentum shift. I watch from behind as one of the faster beasts jumps to grab hold of the car, but hits the ground… there is no back bumper to hold on to.

Behind us, the darkness caused by the thousands and thousands of monsters begins to recede, like the giant hand of a beast that couldn't reach us. Mom’s body becomes smaller and smaller, her blood turns to vapor.

Ana, our beloved mother, goodbye.

Soda buckles his seatbelt and slowly reaches up and puts mine on, being careful with my injured arm. Smart kid.

Trails are seen in the sky.

And I hear. We both hear. Several sounds like whistling and moments later, through the rearview mirror…

The world turns red.

The bodies of the monsters rise into the air and fall apart. Their black figures in front of the reddish background disappear.

The trees, on the sides of the road behind in the north bend, they break under an unstoppable force, their branches fly through the air, catch fire.

That invisible force comes toward us, shattering the trees, lifting the asphalt, undoing the whole world behind us.

Soda covers his head.

I feel the heat.

And for a moment I see, the crumbling buildings coming down, the shabby hotel collapsing, the market and its supplies blowing up, the streets crumbling, the cars melting.

And I see our house. The kitchen-dining room, the small table, and the TV. And my mother, Soda, and I are sitting there, eating, laughing.

And we both hug mom, and she tells us she loves us. And we tell her that we love her too.

And the destruction doesn't reach us.

And the destruction doesn't reach us.

I don't take my foot off the gas, the speedometer reads one hundred and twenty kilometers per hour.

The noise arrives, the momentum arrives. We feel it on our backs as if someone wanted to push us out of our seats, to kick us forward. My eardrums echo, the car sways, my arm twinges so much from the violent movement that I vomit yet again.

And I don't take my foot off the accelerator, because if I do, it will all be in vain.

I steady it, I keep it on the road, I don't slow down. If I didn't have the seat belt on, I'd fall out the door.

More fire, more noise.

And suddenly, silence.

***

Behind us, there is nothing left. Our home, what was once a city full of life, reduced to nothing, only flames. Everything has collapsed. Nothing but ruins.

No, they were already ruins. They were because there were no people to inhabit them. When the two of us left the city, we left ruins.

The trees burn.

I don't know how long I drive. I drive so long that the pain comes back to me, the vibration of the car, the bumps of the road in such a bad state that has taken so many lives make the car shake. For every jolt I see blurry, my arm throbbing and with it half my body. The air that enters from the missing door burns my front even more.

But Soda keeps me in this world.

He is alive. I am alive.

The new residential neighborhood finally appears. A fledgling neighborhood, far, far away from the city. A miniature of a metropolis built with money from foreign countries. Some houses look unfinished. Of course, this is Latin America, Argentina, it would not be without negligence of the authorities, without money that disappears in the passing of hand to hand and public works that are left unfinished because of it.

We are out of fuel. In my seat, I wallow in my own urine. It doesn't matter, I’ll clean myself afterward, with anything. We are alive, I don't give a fuck about anything. I'm still alive, I'm going to live, my little brother is with me. We're going to survive. Even if this neighborhood is empty. Even if it is full of monsters. Even if we have no bullets, I have one arm left, my big machete. Even if I didn't have it, even if I had to fight tooth and nail, whoever comes near me, I'm going to beat the shit out of them.

And in the distance, a figure emerges from the neighborhood.

A figure carrying a rifle in his hands, one of those Russian ones. A rifle that he lowers and holds with one hand to show us the other. A back and forth to the sides. He is waving at us. Soda gestures to him, but I can't see what it is and the boy appears to gestures us to wait and hurries back.

Soda laughs in relief. I hear him laugh for the first time in all this mess.

What’s the point? To hear my little brother laugh.

Soda pulls his cell phone out of his pocket. I feel like I'm going to fall asleep at last.

He shows me the screen. The battery is at five percent, then four.

The cell phone pictures, the pictures with my mom.

I don't care that I lost my cell phone. I hate selfies. I hate them. I hated them because I didn't like to see my face, my spots. I would cover them up. I'm never going to cover them up again, to hide them. I'm going to wear them with pride. I hate selfies, so I didn't have any... but how I would love to have had one with her, at least one with mom.

But my little brother, always one step ahead, has one there. He appears with his smile, my mother with her dark circles under her eyes accentuated by the white of her skin in just that spot, but the joyful face she used to put on for us, despite her sadness, her untold stories, her silence. And me too, with my unfriendly face, I'm there.

Che, I don’t look so bad…

...

I push my tears away, so they don't get in the way of seeing this image. The cell phone rings on its low battery alert, the number points to zero percent. I close my eyes before the cell phone dims its screen. I know Soda does the same.

May this photo remain forever with us. Please, may it never be erased from my mind.

Why did I choose to study medicine, my little one? Isn't it obvious?

The figure from just now comes to the car, accompanied by another man. Some distance behind them, another one, walking awkwardly, slower.

The one who arrives first is the one with the rifle. He's just a boy, about my age. He looks like he's not from here and I just notice he's wearing a beanie and a fucking tank top with this cold.

The other man, more Argentine than dulce de leche, a fellow countryman, greets us as well.

“You're going to be alright, amiga”—says the boy in the beanie with a Yanqui accent— “. That guy back there is a doctor.”