by Susan Ee
Onstage, the twins stand tall with goofy smiles on their faces. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, and the rest of you who fit into neither of those categories, I am your master of ceremonies, Tweedledee.’ He bows. ‘And here’s my co-MC, my brother and my bane, Tweedledum!’
The crowd whoops and hollers. Either the twins are extremely popular or people really like being able to make noise again. The twins take deep bows with a matching flourish of their hands.
‘Tonight, we have the show of a lifetime for you. It is unfiltered, unmanaged, and certainly undeniably awesome!’
‘We take no responsibility for any of the bad things that might happen tonight,’ says Dum.
‘And take all the credit for the fabulous, fantastic, and fun-filled things that will definitely happen tonight,’ says Dee.
‘And without further ado,’ says Dum, ‘let me introduce our First Annual World After Talent Show contestant. The San Francisco Ballet!’
There’s a stunned silence as everyone takes a moment to make sure they heard right.
‘Yup, you heard that right, folks,’ says Dee. ‘The San Francisco Ballet is here to perform for you tonight, you lucky dogs.’
‘I told you we had talent on the streets,’ says Dum.
Three women in ballet tutus and four men in matching pink tights come out onstage. They walk with the grace of professional ballet dancers. One of the ballerinas walks up to Dee as the others get into their ready stances. She takes the mic and stands in the center of the stage until everyone quiets down.
‘We are what’s left of the San Francisco Ballet. A couple of months ago, there were over seventy of us. When the world collapsed, many of us didn’t know what to do. Like you, we stayed with our families and tried to find the ones we loved.
‘But for us dancers, the ballet company is our family, and so we searched among the rubble of our theater and dance studio for those of us who fell. In the end, twelve of us found each other, but not all of us made it this far.
‘This dance is the one we were practicing on the day the world ended. This one is dedicated to the members of our family who are not here today.’ Her voice is clear and strong. It carries through the crowd like the wind caressing our necks.
The ballerina gives the mic back to Dee and steps into position. The dancers take what looks like random places in a line. I can almost fill in the rest of the line in my mind with the other dancers who are not here tonight.
The music begins, and the lights follow the dancers as they leap and pirouette across the stage. It’s a strange yet graceful postmodern kind of a dance with most of the performers missing.
There’s a move where a pair of dancers – a man and a woman – come up to center stage and dance together while the rest stand back and float in the air on their toes. Their motions are graceful and romantic.
Then a dancer comes forward to replace the pair. It’s clear by the empty air between the dancer’s arms and the sad line of his body that his partner is missing. He dances his part of the duet with empty arms.
After him, the remaining dancers come up to dance – one by one, dancing with a ghost partner.
They caress the air where the face of their partner would have been. They spin and land on the floor with their arms stretched out in longing.
Alone in a world of misery.
I watch the beautiful performance with an ache in my chest.
Then, just when I can’t stand the sadness anymore, a dancer floats out from the side of the stage. A dancer in ragged clothes, filthy and half starved. He’s not even in ballet shoes. He’s just barefoot as he glides out to take his place in the dance.
The other dancers turn to him, and it’s clear that he is one of them. One of the lost ones. By the look on their faces, they weren’t expecting him. This is not part of the practiced show. He must have seen them onstage and joined in.
Amazingly, the dance continues without a missed beat. The newcomer simply glides into place, and the final dancer who should have danced solo with her missing partner dances with the newcomer.
It is full of joy, and the ballerina actually laughs. Her voice is clear and high, and it lifts us all.
58
When the performance is done, the crowd goes wild with their cheers. There is total abandon with their clapping, whistling, and shouts of bravos.
It’s amazing.
I’ve never felt so moved by a performance before. It’s not like I’ve been to a lot of ballets or any other live performance at all. But the sense of camaraderie here tonight leaves me breathless.
Like true professionals, the dance troupe takes its bow first before the dancers converge on the newcomer onstage. The hugs, the tears, the cries of joy are a wonder to see.
Then they spread out into a line, hold hands, and bow again. Everyone is up on their feet, and none of us worry about the noise we’re making or what we might bring upon ourselves.
The twins are right. This is life.
No one can really top that ballet performance, and I assume no one will try. Everyone seems happy to have been a part of it.
The twins get up onstage to clown around and entertain people. I’m guessing they’re giving people time to absorb what they just saw so that someone else can get up the nerve to perform. They do a magic act that’s almost professional. They fumble a few times, but I know they’re doing that for comedic effect, because I’ve seen their work and it’s amazing, as good as any professional stage magician.
After that, a young guy walks up onstage carrying a battered guitar. He looks like he hasn’t had a shower in days, his face is covered in scruff, and his shirt has a splatter of dried blood.
‘This is a song sung by the late, great Jeff Buckley called “Hallelujah.”’ He begins strumming his guitar, and he quietly transforms into someone who I’m sure would have been a celebrity at any other time.
The bittersweet chords ring over the bay as his voice softly builds momentum. People begin singing along with his mournful crooning. Some of us have tears drying on our faces in the cold wind as we sing ‘Hallelujah’ in broken voices.
When it’s over, there’s a moment of quiet. We’re left wondering about life and love and other things that are messed up and broken, yet somehow still a triumph.
The clapping is subdued at first but quickly builds into a wild cheer.
After that, the singer strums his guitar aimlessly until he hits on a familiar tune. He begins to sing a pop song that’s light and fluffy and upbeat. Everyone sways and hops and bursts out in song.
We’re nowhere near as good as the angels I heard singing at the aerie. There are enough of us singing off-key that we could never be considered good, much less perfect like the angels. But all of us singing together – the cults with their greasy amnesty marks, the rival gangs on the suspension cables, the angry freedom fighters, the parents with their kids on their shoulders – that’s a feeling I’ll never forget for as long as I live. However long that will be.
I hold on to the feeling and try to lock it in the vault in my head where I know it’ll be safe and with me forever. I’ve never put anything good in there before, but I want to make sure it doesn’t get lost. Just in case this is the last big human show of any kind, ever again.
And then, I hear it.
The thing I dread. The thing I’ve been expecting.
There’s a low buzz. And the air begins to stir.
Far too close to us, the mist boils.
They’re coming.
The sky blacks out with their bodies, and the mist swirls with the wind of a thousand wings. Either no one spotted them coming in the gathering fog, or we were all too mesmerized by the show.
A voice over the speaker starts a countdown. That’s supposed to be a signal for the audience to run and for everyone to get into position.
‘Five . . .’
Five? It’s supposed to start at twenty-five.
Everyone wastes a precious second realizing that we’re already out of time.
‘Four . . .’
Everyone scrambles. People shove and run in panic. The overcrowded audience and the show contestants have only four seconds to evacuate to the hideaway lattice and net beneath the bridge.
The singer onstage keeps on singing as if neither hell nor high water nor apocalyptic angels descending on us will stop him from giving the best performance of his life. He’s finished his catchy pop song and is now singing a love song.
‘Three . . .’
I have to clamp down hard on the urge to run like everyone else. I keep my position and put heavy-duty earplugs in my ears, leaving my noise-canceling headphones around my neck. I see others doing the same around the edges of the stage, the rafters, and the suspension cables.
‘Two . . .’
There are too many people rushing in the same direction. The hideout lattices we set up can only handle so many people below the bridge. It’s utter chaos, with everyone running and screaming.
‘One . . .’
As the crowd drains, they leave behind camouflaged gunmen who scramble into position.
A cloud of locusts swoops in from the mist faster than I expect in a flurry of stingers and teeth.
Locusts?
Where are the angels?
59
Shots blast into the locust swarm, but we might as well be shooting at the clouds for all the good it does. The locusts must have been attracted to the lights and sound that were meant for angels.
They’re landing on all fours around us. Gunfire shoots off everywhere as the ground crew kicks into action.
I pull out my knives just as a locust drops down from the sky in front of me. Its stinger looms over its head and jabs at me.
My arms automatically come up. I slice and stab. I’d give anything for Pooky Bear right now.
That thought makes me all the more vicious. I voluntarily gave Raffe his sword back.
I slice again.
The stinger whips out of the way of my blade.
The scorpion in front of me is doing its best to kill me. It’s moving its stinger so fast I have to wonder if it was a tap dancer in its previous life.
I’m drenched in sweat in seconds as I evade and try to fight at the same time. These little knives aren’t going to do anything but annoy it.
I spin to the side and give it my fastest side kick. My foot slams into its knee with a crunch.
The locust screeches and leans to the side as its knee breaks.
I bend low and swipe the other leg. The monster crashes down.
‘Stop!’ My sister runs to the middle of the bridge flanked by her pet locusts, yelling at everyone around her.
It’s a war zone with bullets zinging by, and she still runs out in the middle of all the chaos with her arms out. My legs almost give out at the sight of her.
‘Stop!’
I’m not sure who stops first – our fighters or the locusts – but both sides pause to look at her. Hope and wonder rise in me as I watch my sister stopping a bloody battle with just her conviction.
I don’t know what she would have done next, because a huge locust lands beside Paige.
The white streak in his hair is unmistakable and so is his demented anger. This time, Raffe isn’t here to intimidate him. He grabs Paige’s pet locust and lifts him into the air above him like a squirming baby.
‘No!’ Paige’s hands reach up like a little kid trying to get her ball back from a bully.
White Streak slams the smaller locust down against his knee, breaking the beast’s back with a snap.
‘No!’ Paige screams. Her crisscrossed face turns red, and the cords in her neck stand out.
White Streak tosses the broken locust onto the concrete. Ignoring my sister, he stalks around the broken beast.
The injured locust pulls itself forward by its hands. It tries to get away from White Streak, dragging its dead legs behind it.
White Streak is making a show of it, puffing up and standing tall for all to see as every scorpion-tailed monster watches. He clearly plans to show that he’s the king of the locusts and no one else can challenge him.
That means he’s going to have to kill Paige.
I sprint toward my sister, weaving through the spectators. Although the air boils with locusts, no one else is fighting on the bridge. Doc had warned them that some locusts might be on our side. Now no one seems sure what to do. Everyone on the bridge – locust and human – watches the drama unfold.
Paige’s face crumples as she watches her pet locust drag itself helplessly on the asphalt, unable to move its legs or tail. She starts sobbing.
The sight seems to enrage White Streak. He swipes at her with his tail.
I scream. Every time I’ve seen my sister win a fight, she’s had the element of surprise on her side. But this time, White Streak knows she’s a threat and is out to kill her.
Then someone shouts over the loudspeaker, ‘They’re coming!’
The dark mass of locusts shifts and churns above the bridge, blotting out the sky. Between the stingers and iridescent wings, I catch glimpses of an ever-growing tide of bird-of-prey wings.
The blood hunt is starting.
60
I try to slam my fear and anxiety into the vault in my head, but they’re too big.
When I look back down from the sky, Paige is ripping her teeth into White Streak’s arm. She’s alive and fighting.
I run toward her, trying to be as small as possible in case there’s a stray bullet.
In the center of the bridge, White Streak swats and tosses Paige onto the ground like a rabid dog, then he stomps his foot on her chest, keeping her struggling form down as he looms over her.
My sister is unrelentingly furious and thrashing beneath him. Watching her pet be crippled and crawl helplessly must have triggered something in her, something so violent and intense that it might just choke her.
Just as I get close, her remaining two locust pets fly into White Streak. They’re no match for the monster, and he tosses them aside easily.
The rest of the scorpion-tailed locusts fly in nervous, agitated loops above and in front of me, going in every direction and just barely avoiding crashing into each other. They seem confused and upset.
I can’t get past them and have to back off from their shifting barrier.
White Streak lifts his enormous stinger, getting ready to strike at my little sister, who is still thrashing under his foot.
I try to dart in between the swooping locusts, but their stingers are everywhere and I can’t get past. On the other side of the fight, I see my mom having the same problem.
White Streak’s stinger whips down toward my sister.
I scream and take a step toward them. A locust flies right into me, slamming me down onto the concrete.
Amazingly, Paige reacts faster than the stinger. She twists her body out of the way. The stinger jabs into the asphalt, embedding the tip in the bridge.
Before White Streak can pull it out, she bites into his tail. Blood bursts out around her mouth as if she bit into an artery. She rips out a chunk of his tail before he can swat her away.
This time, when he hits her, there’s desperation in his motion. This time, when he hits her, a locust drops from the sky and stings his neck.
White Streak swings and blindly grabs at the traitorous thing. He snaps its neck and tosses its dead body onto the street.
Another locust hits him with his body in a fast flyby. White Streak staggers, taking his foot off Paige for a split second. It’s long enough for her to scramble up.
From above us, two locusts dive to attack Paige.
She ducks from one and runs headlong into the other. My blood freezes as White Streak’s locust shoots its stinger toward my sister.
A shotgun blast hits Paige’s attacker.
The locust falls writhing on the ground. The shooter stands nearby, looking familiar.
Martin nods to Paige, with his rifle still aimed at the bleeding locust. If he keeps this up, I might even
forgive him for lassoing Paige for being a monster.
Paige turns around and leaps to rip into White Streak’s throat.
Locusts begin swarming on Paige’s side, swirling above her as she rages. They’re drawn to her furious cries despite whatever influence White Streak has over them.
Another group of locusts swarms on White Streak’s side. I wonder if there is going to be an all-out war among them.
The ones hovering above Paige spin off to attack White Streak. The ones above White Streak drop to attack Paige.
Martin shoots at Paige’s attackers as they come for her.
Locusts clash midair, crashing and stinging until there’s a horde of them engulfing White Streak and Paige.
I can’t see what’s happening as they get buried under a mass of wings and stingers.
I think I stop breathing for a minute. I can’t see anything beyond the seething giant that is the swarm.
The locust cloud lifts from the bridge into the air as everyone watches. The wind generated from their wings buffets our hair and clothes, whipping us all. They float up into the sky until they blend into the mist, making it look like the sky is boiling.
They drift off over the bay, and I can’t see Paige or White Streak anywhere.
There’s nothing I can do for her now.
I have to accept that my sister has to go through her own fight. I just need to survive and be here for her when she gets back.
Don’t think about the possibility of her not coming back.
61
As soon as the locusts leave, I can see the sky filling with angelic warriors.
I catch myself automatically scanning the sky for Raffe, but I don’t see him in the mass of bodies.
I put my noise-canceling headphones on and shut my eyes to brace for what’s about to hit.
Even through my closed lids, I can see the blindingly intense spotlights turning on everywhere. The lights stab my eyes as soon as I try to open them.
I have to squint and blink several times to adjust to the brightness.
The angels shield their eyes behind their arms and pause in their flight. Several of them crash into each other. Many turn around to get away from the blinding light and fly straight into their buddies.