Blood Zero Sky

by Gates, J.

  Work to do. I have to help with the evacuation before the drones make another pass. . . . Now, again, the rumble of nearby explosions. My stomach is in knots. I redouble my pace.

  Suddenly, I stop. The hairs on the back of my neck are standing up. My skin seems to be crawling with electricity; my teeth vibrate and my scalp feels as if it might creep off my skull on tiny insect legs. Something tells me to turn back, and I do.

  Through the skewed rectangle of the door, I see Randal’s figure, stopped halfway across the bridge. Slowly, he tilts his head to the sky. Without warning, white light sears my eyes. There’s a sound like a whip cracking inside my head, and a wave of heat brushes my cheeks, then disappears. My eyes are closed, but the image is still superimposed over my eyelids: Randal standing on the bridge, and the lightning striking him.

  When I finally open my eyes, he’s still smoking.

  He falls to his knees then topples over, charred black as coal from his head to his waist.

  I don’t have to look up to remind myself that the sky is a clear and cloudless blue; I already know. This is the power the Company has. Just like Randal said. The Black Brands—lightning sats—death from the sky—insurmountable.

  Somehow, I knew it all along.

  Beyond Randal’s smoldering body, a cloud of swarming Ravers rises. Hundreds of thousands of them, coming fast. Ashes of Randal drift in the wind. There’s nothing left but to turn and run.

  —Chapter Ø21—

  The nightmare has come.

  I run as hard as I can through the halls of the abandoned convention center, the buzz of the Ravers behind me growing louder every instant. My shirt is already soaked with sweat and clinging to my chest. I know I need every ounce of concentration I can muster to stay alive, but the image hangs over my vision, obscuring everything else: lightning striking Randal.

  The whirr is getting closer.

  Turning a sharp corner in the hall, I take four long strides and stop short, my boots skidding across the carpet. I turn back, gun up and ready, and see three darts stick into the wall where I just was. An instant later, a Raver shoots around the corner, faster than I had expected, and I open fire.

  CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!

  Three Ravers round the corner, three fall.

  I wasn’t sure my bullets would bring them down, but they did—at least temporarily. The Ravers might buzz back into flight at any moment, but I don’t wait to find out. I’m already tearing off again, sprinting for my life.

  Maybe twenty yards ahead, a set of fire doors stands propped open, flush against the walls of the hallway. I can hear the buzzing behind me again and feel the breeze as darts hum past my ears. My life depends on making the right decision now. If I can close the heavy double doors, I might be able to keep the Ravers out—they can’t be capable of opening doors, can they? But if I can’t get the doors shut fast enough, I’m going to be a dead pincushion in a matter of seconds.

  From what I can judge, the Ravers are maybe twenty-five yards back, and closing. This is my only chance. The doors get closer, closer. I’m going to do it.

  Now! I spin to a stop, my back slamming against the wall, and fling the near door shut with my left hand while firing two shots with the pistol in my right. My shots miss. The door swings closed.

  I watch the darts coming, my death on their tips. Two sink into the door, one passes through my hair and disappears down the hall. The Ravers are fifteen yards away, now ten.

  I kick the other door. It’s hooked open somehow, doesn’t close.

  Ravers: five yards away.

  I yank the door, yank again. More darts coming.

  Screaming, one foot against the wall, pulling the door with all my strength. There’s a splintering, snapping sound as the hook holding the door open gives way, and now I’m on my back. Darts pass over my head, the door drifts closed. The Ravers are two yards away, close enough to see the blood-red lenses that serve as their eyes, close enough to see the tiny N-Corp logo on their underbellies.

  And the door closes. There’s a loud bang as the first Raver slams into the thick metal. The others turn away in time.

  I stand. My lungs hurt, my hands are shaking. Sweat drips, burning, into my eyes. I stand and place my hands on the doors, bracing against them in case my mechanical assailants try to push them open. I hear them buzzing around on the other side, see their black shapes crisscrossing through the crack between the doors, but they can’t get through. For the moment, I’m safe.

  As if to negate my last thought, the floor jitters beneath my feet and the whole building seems to jump in a thunderous explosion. I’m safe—unless the bomber drones bring the roof down on my head.

  Running again. Black smoke collects around the ceiling. I hear more bombers pass overhead, and somewhere outside the sound of gunfire erupts and continues, unabating. It sounds like the demolition of the world.

  I run down several hallways through ever-thickening layers of smoke, until I pass what must be the only unbroken window in the place. It looks out onto a courtyard, and what I see there stops me dead. Outside, thirty or so members of the Protectorate, some with children, are pinned down, hunkered behind cement benches and flattened in weed-choked drainage ditches. Scores of Ravers rake the sky above them, raining death. About a hundred yards away, across a deserted roadway, several squad trucks are parked. The black-uniformed squadmen sheltered behind them fire ceaselessly at the cornered rebels. From my position behind the glass, it’s like seeing an exhibit in a museum of death.

  Unable to help, I run on.

  I encounter Ethan, Clair, and McCann and the rest of the survivors a few minutes later. They’ve made their way to a shipping-and-receiving area, and from there are planning to escape the convention center via a loading dock door and pass to an adjacent building, hopefully undetected. We all listen as Ethan lays out the plan.

  “McCann, you and a few others will make your way up to the café area and fire on the troops positioned across the road. Hopefully you can put enough heat on them to distract them while we make it across the parking lot to the old shopping mall. The rest of us will be running across open blacktop with very little cover. It’s a risk, but in another twenty minutes this place will be ashes. It’s our only option. Everybody got it? Okay, who’s going with McCann?”

  “I will,” I say.

  Ethan’s expression darkens. “Bear in mind,” he says, “whoever goes will be drawing a lot of fire, and will have to cross after us, with no cover. You’ll be in the open with a lot of Ravers. It’s extremely dangerous. Clear?”

  I nod.

  “Fine. Who else?”

  “I’ll go,” says Grace. She has a long, bloody gash down one side of her face and is limping badly. No doubt, she knows she couldn’t cross two hundred open yards if she tried. Better to be of use with us. She smiles at me—it’s probably the only time I’ve ever seen her smile.

  A tall Hispanic kid, one of the ex-prisoners, (his name is Chris, I think), raises his hand. He has two massive machine guns strapped over his shoulders and a fiery look in his eyes. Ethan nods at him.

  “One more, at least,” Ethan says.

  Clair glances at me.

  “I’ll do it,” she says.

  A look of concern passes over his features, then melts into resolve again. “Are you—?” he begins.

  “I’m sure. I’ll catch up with you,” Clair says.

  He looks at her hard, and some unspoken communication passes between them. Finally, he sets his jaw and looks us all over for a moment, no doubt expecting this may be the last time he’ll see any of us. “Okay, then,” he says, “Godspeed.”

  McCann musses his son’s hair, then winks at me. He might actually be insane, I think to myself—for even in this, the most dire of moments, he still wears a gigantic smile. He surmises my thoughts and puts a
strong hand on my shoulder. “If you gotta die, you should be grateful to die right,” he explains. “Isn’t that right, lady-lover?”

  Though a moment before I would have thought it impossible, I smile back at him, and place my hand on his shoulder, too. “That’s right,” I agree.

  Before we all part ways, I see Ethan grab Clair’s arm. He pulls her to him. I try not to watch, but out of the corner of my eye, I see him kiss her softly, just beneath her eye. Even amid all this, I still feel a pang of jealousy. But there’s no time to dwell on it. In the next instant, McCann is running like a gazelle down the pastel-painted hallway, a war cry on his lips, and we follow.

  When we reach our position, I see that Ethan was right: this is a place one goes to die. The café is a wide, jutting oval of a room with all glass walls, designed to look out upon the broad lawn below. To our right is the courtyard where, by now, the cornered rebels I saw earlier have all probably been killed. Ahead, beyond a wide bomb crater and debris-strewn yard lies the road where the squadmen have taken position.

  To our far left, sheltered for part of the way behind a wing of the building, we can see the crumbling parking lot across which our comrades must escape. And all round us, on every side, are nothing but windows, floor to ceiling. The only shelter to be had is behind a serving counter that stretches along the back of the room, and that’s where McCann leads us. Above the counter is a sign: a big, yellow, arched M. In a brief flicker of curiosity, I wonder what it used to mean—then my mind is back on the battle again.

  We take position, check our clips, and look at each other one last time.

  “Ethan and the others should be in place by now,” McCann says, then nods across the way at our enemy. “Pick one out, get him in your sights, and fire on my signal. Remember to aim for the head; they’ve all got body armor. On three. One . . . ”

  “Well,” Clair says, leaning over to me, “this is it.”

  Something tells me this isn’t true; we aren’t dead yet. But I don’t contradict her. Instead, I close my eyes and take a whiff of her scent. Even in the heat of battle, she smells of jasmine. I think of all the things in my life that I’ve wanted and never had, or had and took for granted, and am almost overcome with tears. I don’t want to die now; I don’t want to die ever, and certainly not like this. What I feel most is not fear, though I am afraid, it’s regret. I never saw the regions controlled by B&S, or took a nap with Rose, or went to the beach with Clair—Kali. I never did a million things.

  “Two . . . ” says McCann.

  I take aim at a squad member through the window, but can’t help glancing over at Clair again. For all I know, it might be the last time. With one luminous hazel eye, she winks at me.

  “THREE!”

  We all fire at once. Across the road, a couple squadmen fall.

  “Don’t let up!” says McCann. “Until your last breath, don’t stop!”

  And we don’t.

  The kid, Chris, seeing me firing with only my pistol, passes me one of his machine guns. Within seconds, the fury of hell is unleashed on us. Bullets come in torrents, breaking away every bit of glass in the windows then battering down the window frames themselves.

  Swarms of Ravers amass outside, hovering just above the line of fire. Every few minutes, dozens of the little planes swoop into the windows. We desperately rake them with gunfire, somehow miraculously dispatching wave after wave of them. All around us, every surface resounds with the clatter of bullets. The empty chairs skitter across the floor as if dancing. Tables overturn. Hanging lights fall, and the counter before us splinters and sags. We keep firing, but the end is inevitable.

  Chris takes a bullet in the throat.

  McCann is hit in the left arm and falls back. An instant later, he is up again, screaming curses and taunts at the Company, redoubling his efforts.

  We successfully force back another wave of Ravers, but by now we have a new enemy: a fire in the building, from the bombing, I guess, is catching up to us. The floor is hot to the touch. Smoke fills the air, and it quickly becomes too thick for us to see our enemies or for our enemies to see us. Still, we keep firing blindly—if we were to stop now, we would free up the squadmen to track down our fleeing friends.

  The reeking smoke makes me dizzy. My eyes water, and when I turn away for a second to wipe them, I see Grace. She’s sitting with her back against the counter, facing away from the fray, clutching her gun to her chest. Her face is white, her breathing shallow. I step around McCann, dodging the hot casings as they fall from his gun, and stoop next to her.

  “Grace?”

  She turns her face toward me, but her eyes don’t focus on mine. I look for a wound, but see nothing.

  “Grace?”

  “May?” she says, smiling weakly.

  “Yeah. It’s me. You okay?”

  She can’t hear me over the din. “What?”

  I lean toward her ear, placing one hand on the floor. The surface is slick beneath my fingers, and I don’t have to look down to know the puddle I’m kneeling in is red.

  “You’re going to be okay!” I yell.

  There are tears in her eyes, but she’s still smiling, or trying to. She pants, seemingly building herself up to speak.

  “You’re my favorite,” she says. She’s trying to yell, but it comes out a whisper.

  “What?”

  “I bet you always thought there was nobody else in the world who understood you,” she says, “but I was just like you once. Just like you.”

  I try to fight the tears that well up.

  “Yeah?” I say. “I always thought you hated my guts.”

  “No,” she huffs. “I liked you. I’m just a mean old bitch. ”

  She tries to laugh, and her face pinches in pain, then gradually grows lax. She’s sweating badly, but when I touch her forehead, it’s frigid.

  “Grace,” I say. “Come on, Grace!”

  She doesn’t respond, but I can still see her breathing shallowly.

  I reach out with one weightless-feeling hand and slowly pull the gun away from her chest. At first, she resists, but a second later her strength gives way. Beneath the gun, her stomach is torn open; I can see nothing but her shredded, soaked shirt and pools of thick, dark blood. I place the gun back over her wound. Soon, she’ll be dead. Not even Ada could save her.

  “May!” says McCann.

  He doesn’t have to say anything else. I resume combat, though there’s no way of telling what I’m firing at through the black, billowing smoke. It’s all I can do to stay conscious, breathing in the thick, hot, poisoned air.

  Seconds later, the structure all around us begins groaning, creaking, crackling. The final disaster comes with a single ear-splitting pop. At first I think it’s the sound of a bomb exploding beneath us, then the floor tilts and I’m sliding downward.

  Everything is in a tumult—arms, legs, guns, shards of glass, ragged bits of wood, warm blood—mine or another’s, I can’t tell which. I’m tumbling, sliding. Heat lashes my face and debris hammers my shoulders.

  Then I’m on the grass. Coughing, dizzy, and nauseated, I get to my hands and knees, staring through the rolling smoke.

  “May!” a voice cuts through the haze. I hear another cracking sound, this one coming from above, and throw myself toward the sound of the voice. Behind me, a deafening crash.

  I’m kneeling in chest-high grass. McCann is pulling me to my feet. Clair stands next to him, eyeing me with concern. “You alright?” she says.

  “I don’t know,” I mumble. My heart is beating fast. I’m so lightheaded I don’t know if I’m alive or dead.

  I look over my shoulder. The near side of the cantilevered room we were in has collapsed. The floor we had been standing on, once the second floor of the building, now forms a ramp down to the ground. And the second crashing I heard mus
t’ve been the roof caving in, for now its tarred surface extends from the grass at my feet and up through clouds of smoke to the second floor, where the other half of the room still stands. Now, the whole structure is being engulfed in flames. Only God knows how we made it out alive.

  Somewhere, there’s another explosion—either another part of the building falling or a drone dropping some massive bombs.

  “She looks like she’s hit,” Clair says, studying me with concern.

  “I don’t see the wound,” says McCann. He glances at me and then over his shoulder, eager to be moving out of this exposed spot.

  “I think I slid through Grace’s blood,” I say. “I’m okay.”

  “Let’s go,” McCann says. “We get caught in the open like this and we’re done.” And he leads us away.

  We run blindly through the choking haze, across the parking lot, toward the old shopping center. The sun is just a pale place in the drifting soot. Large bits of ash float around us like will-o’-the-wisp, and burning embers glide past, bright and fleeting. I watch Clair from the corner of my eye, thinking how I wish I could hold her hand right now. It’s an absurd thought, but I can’t help it. I’m buoyed with confidence and bravado and an illogical certainty that Clair will be mine.

  The smoke masks our retreat beautifully, and for a minute, I almost smile with triumph at the thought that despite all the firepower the Company has thrown at us, we’re about to escape.

  The next disaster comes without warning.

  “Down!” yells McCann, his voice choked with terror. He dives away from us into the smoke and is gone. Clair and I both dive in the opposite direction and land together on the crumbling, weed-cracked concrete.

  Above, two Ravers buzz past.

  Hardly breaking her momentum, Clair rolls back onto her feet. She holds her hand out to me and with one surprisingly strong pull brings me to my feet. “Come on!”