The Glass City [#Wattys2016]

Part 6

    I walk out of my house, amazed that I can breath without a gas mask.  In place of the wasteland, green grass sprouts out of the ground, and trees cast shade over the grass.  I look up, and a yellow sun shines in a cloudless blue sky.  I stand on the porch, staring out at it all, when Cass runs by me, laughing.
"Come on, Kitty!" she squeals, and runs barefoot onto the grass.  My mother is there, holding hands with my father, and she hugs me with one arm, around my shoulders. 
"Go play with your sister," she says.
But something about all this is wrong.  The sky is too blue, the sun too bright, and everything has a shimmering quality to it.  "This isn't real," I say to Cass as she beckons from the meadow.  "None of it." She just smiles.  I turn to my mother.  "You shouldn't be here," I say.  "You're dead."  She smiles, and all of her teeth fall out.  My mother rots into a corpse, and I look away.  The landscape is quickly changing, the trees are shriveling up and dying, the grass is turning brown, and the sun is being covered by clouds of toxic black smoke.  My father disappears, staring at me from inside the house.  I bang on the door, but he won't let me in.  I turn back to the wasteland, and Cass stands there, coughing.  It's getting harder for me to breath, but I run to her anyway.  She is barefoot, and steam envelopes around her.  I scream her name, and when the smoke clears, evaporating into the sky, she is gone.
I wake up, panting in a puddle of cold sweat.  It was just a dream, but I get up anyway.  Cass is running out of time.  I check my watch.  I slept for six and a half hours.  Not nearly enough sleep to function on, but I can't sleep again after that nightmare.  I fold up my blanket and stick it in my bag, along with my flashlight.  The sky is gray, and I can see without it now.  Plus, the closer I get to the Glass City, the more light it gives me.  I can see some of the details of the city now, with the skyscrapers and the little lights and the shadows.  Every step I take pulls me closer to the city, every step I take pulls me closer to saving Cass.