Five Greens erupt from behind a mountain. Saddled, harnessed. Their riders wear white cloaks and wield machine guns and rocket launchers. A cascading rumble of dragonfire thunders in front of me. I flinch, spin around. An explosion ignites.
The thunder crescendos. Gunshots echo. Car horns blare. Soldiers scramble from the wreckage of APCs.
I crawl beneath one as the Greens converge.
I squeeze my eyes shut, cover my ears. Doesn’t matter. I still see everything, hear everything.
Something shocks me. I retch.
Men in white cloaks sift through the carnage. I hear laughter.
“Not real.” I collapse. Another shock. I crawl on.
Blues charge through the streets of a small town. The road cracks beneath me. Soldiers fire weapons. Reds and their riders battle dragon jets overhead.
A Red swoops in behind a squadron of soldiers using a scorched minivan as cover from the Blue stampede. The rider fires his rocket launcher into their huddle.
I get a closer look. Bandanna over an oxygen mask. Beady eyes barely visible behind goggles. Familiar?
The word Jedi leaps to mind, though I have no idea what it means.
The world spins. I’m in an explosion crater. Beside me, I find a severed hand holding a picture of a family.
“Not real,” I mumble.
The earthquake subsides. The sky shades bright green. Growled roars blast from above. The temperature swells. Tornados of fire erupt. Gunshots ring out. Explosions detonate.
I wipe sweat from my eyes. Through wisps of smoke, I see hills of rubble. A Tiny Tots child-care center sign dangles from the blown-up remnants of a roof. A firefighter emerges nearby, a crisped body in his hands.
A number pops into my head. “Twenty-One?”
A man dismounts from his Green. He looks familiar, though I don’t know why. He aims his machine gun, shoots. The firefighter falls, full of holes. The dead child tumbles from his hands.
“Please don’t be real.”
I hear singing in the distance. Coming closer? Nursery rhymes?
A school bus appears at the end of the street.
“Faster! Drive faster!” I implore, but instead the driver stops, his jaw slack, his focus on the sky. I look over my shoulder, see only the sun. There. Two spots of red breaking the corona. They take shape. Wings tight to bodies, they dive in fast.
“Turn around! Run! Go away!” I scream at the driver.
Nobody ever listens.
I try to crawl toward the bus, but something holds me back. A sharp throb ignites in my head. I turn left, scurry down a side street, jump to my feet, get knocked down.
“Over here!” I yell, flourishing one arm overhead.
The dragons swoop in low. Their riders rise from their saddles, aim their weapons. I wave more frantically, yell louder, but they don’t notice me. I whirl to my right, just in time to see a torrent of bullets rip through the bus.
“No, no, no. Not real!”
My world blurs. I blink. Shattered glass everywhere. The Reds pick through the wreckage of the overturned bus, gorging themselves. Their riders watch from the steps of the adjacent school building, goggles on their heads, oxygen masks unstrapped. A man and a woman. A cigarette dangles from her mouth. He’s smiling, pointing at his neck. Closer, I see the tattoos. Little swords.
I crawl forward for a better look at the woman. Olive skin, dark hair pulled back in a tight bun, a faint tan line around the ring finger on her left hand.
“Mom?”
No, Mom didn’t smoke. . . .
At least I don’t think so.
“Not real!”
I scream it at her, flee as fast as my aching knees and hands can take me.
Asphalt gives way to gravel and gravel mixes with grass, then back to gravel and asphalt. I feint left, take a sharp angle right, whirl around, then do it again, push up a rise, circumnavigate a scorched APC, scurry through wild grass into gravel. . . .
She meets me at every turn, follows me across the broken world through rain and darkness, sometimes on foot, sometimes atop her dragon, sometimes beside the man with tattoos.
My knees go numb, my palms turn bloody. I push on. Crawl and crawl and—
I tumble into a trough, face-plant in wet grass. I struggle to my knees. My wrists buckle. I lie there. At some point I realize my eyes are closed. Yet I still see her. Delivering death in a thousand different ways. I cover my ears, but it doesn’t matter. They’re part of me now.
Not real, not real, not real.
But what if it is?
Dragons murder people. Insurgents murder people. Maybe in the deep dark of my soul I knew the truth. Maybe I’ve gotten mixed up backward because I couldn’t handle the fact that Mom was evil—
“No! No!”
It takes me a while to visualize her face, her real face, but seeing her there, smiling at me, floods me with good memories. I hold on to them as I drift to sleep, because I know it won’t be long before I hate her forever.
An explosion rattles me awake. I’m lost in darkness.
A second explosion sends me skittering sideways. The sirens cut out. Something clanks beside me. My head starts to throb as the boom boom boom of anti-dragon artillery fire goes off.
New sounds, new sensations. Same terror. Unable to find my balance with the ground trembling beneath me, I fall onto my stomach. I lie there, but receive no CENSIR shock. No need to crawl, I guess, when they can throw me around at their whim.
Or perhaps I’m not supposed to be fleeing dragons this round. Maybe I’m stuck in a gen-one dragon shelter, buried beneath tons of concrete. It’s getting colder in here. Breathing hurts.
A deafening blast pitches me sideways into a wall.
A wall? Real? The throbbing in my shoulder definitely is. I reach out to check, expecting to be CENSIRed, but receive no jolt, and my fingers find a glassy surface. I quickly run my hands along my scalp until they meet atop my head. No CENSIR. I do it again, just to make sure.
I’m wobbling to my feet, steadying myself against the wall because my legs are weak and the ground’s still shaking, when a door opens. The haze of distant daylight illuminates a swath of asphalt spattered with gravel, the shadowy edge of a roadblock. A silhouetted figure appears in the doorway. The blinding beam of a flashlight swings my way.
Two things occur to me in fast order: whoever opened the door did so without hesitation, like he knew what waited on the other side; I should move.
I dart sideways as a gunshot echoes through the room. A sting of hot pain slices across my upper arm. Fear and adrenaline suffuse me. I duck low and race toward a nearby mound of rocks.
“Take your medicine like a good girl, Melissa.”
Major Alderson.
He fires again. The bullet whistles past.
Someone screams. The major shifts the flashlight to a grassy knoll on the opposite side of the room. With my eyes adjusting to the light, it takes me a moment to spot the girl peeking out between thick shoots of brush. Twenty-One. I’d forgotten about her.
“Kill the dragons, yes, yes!” she hisses at the major.
Alderson aims the gun at her.
I rush around the roadblock. “Over here, asshole!”
He spins toward me, but not fast enough. I kick him square in the chest. He smashes into the doorframe, dropping pistol and flashlight. I scramble for the gun, but he catches me by the ankle and twists.
I flip over. He punches me hard in the face. Starbursts explode in my vision. Straddling me, he puts his massive hands around my neck.
I kick and flail, but it’s useless.
Like ink spreading fast through water, my vision clouds dark until I see nothing but Major Alderson’s eyes. My legs and arms spasm; the world spins. Faster and faster. Blackness engulfs me, but it’s silent—no dragons, no insurgents, no victims.
Peacefully, wonderfully silent.
“Kill the dragons, yes, yes.” A whisper at the edge of consciousness.
Abruptly, the majo
r’s hands loosen. I gasp for air. Liquid sprays my face, clogs my throat, makes me cough more. Alderson lets go altogether and lurches back. Sensation crawls into my body, and I knee him in the groin as hard as I can. It’s not much, but it’s enough to weaken his leghold around my waist. I squirm out from under him.
As I scrabble backward, groping for the gun, my vision returns. The major’s close to dead. Twenty-One sits on his back, stabbing him with the tail of the dragon pin I gave her in another lifetime. One side of the major’s neck resembles a field of tiny crimson flowers. Blooming, then wilting. I watch the last trickles of life pulse from his wounds.
“Kill the dragons, yes, yes.” Twenty-One grins and continues to gouge the dead major. “Or the dragons kill them.”
39
I no longer hear the buzz of jets amid all the dragon howls overhead. The artillery’s gone silent, but otherwise the battle carries on. Bullets, missiles, dragonfire. Roars, yells, screams.
Real?
I peer past Alderson and Twenty-One into a smaller room cloaked in shadows. Beyond its open door, a hallway leads outside. I can see columns of smoke and the front of a Humvee. Several soldiers rush past, followed by a crackling cone of flame.
“Allie . . . Twenty-One?” I say. She looks up, cocks her head.
I edge closer. “Do you know who I am?”
“Yes, yes.”
I crouch down, close enough to hear her mumbling to herself.
“The dragons kill them, yes, yes. Yes they do.”
“I’m sorry about Baby . . . Arabelle,” I say.
She glances at me. “Why?”
“I couldn’t save her,” I whisper.
“No, no.” She drives the pin deep into Alderson’s neck, then laughs. She jerks it out, wipes it clean with her shirt, and offers it to me.
I’m not sure what just happened, but it doesn’t matter. We’re friends again. “You keep it safe.” I retrieve the flashlight and gun. “Right now, we’ve gotta go check on the others.”
She helps me strip him of his clothes. I put the helmet on—God, it smells like him—and slip into his jacket. It reaches the floor and could fit a girl twice my size, which is perfect. I wrap the excess around Twenty-One. She peeks out, mumbling to herself.
We shuffle around Alderson. A dragon roar sounds somewhere behind me. I hesitate in the doorway, waiting for the screams, but none come. Real? Or is everybody dead?
I look behind me with a sweep of the flashlight. Massive screens form an octagon around a grid of cracked streets and crumbling sidewalks. Gravel pits and undulating stretches of brush fill the adjacent lots. Scattered rubble piles dot the terrain. I focus the beam on the charred minivan crashed into the roadblock, then onto the mangled APC a dozen feet away in a field of wild grass.
I release the breath I didn’t know I was holding. Set pieces. Not real. No corpses in sight. Other than Alderson.
I level the gun at his head. I want to shoot him, shoot his face into a bloody pulp, shoot him until nobody, not even his family will recognize him.
I force myself to look away. Might need the bullets. I kick him hard in the ribs, stub my toe, curse him.
Following the brightening swath of sunlight, we creep down the hallway. I clamp my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering. A couple of soldiers flash past the open doorway, but they’re too busy fleeing or shooting at the sky to notice us.
Nearing the exit, I look up through the fog of smoke and almost remember what happiness is. Tracer bursts and strings of fire make chaotic patterns as dozens of insurgent-mounted Reds and Greens zip across the sky. Gunships weave among them, blasting away.
Machine-gun fire snaps my focus back to earth. It seems to be coming from the opposite side of the road, but a billowing wall of smoke obscures my view of everything but the dragon skulls atop the ER.
A Humvee’s parked a few feet away, undamaged. I peek out the door to get a better view. Overturned vehicles, dead dragons, and scorched corpses litter the road. No live A-Bs I can see.
I pocket the flashlight, duck low with Twenty-One, and scurry to the Humvee, sloshing through half-melted ice. We get in fast, shut the door faster. The heater’s at full blast. The hula-girl clock on the dash reads 2:31. The talkers should be in the barracks.
It takes me a couple tries to maneuver past a nearby crater. I spot a few A-Bs hiding in doorways, several running in the opposite direction, but they don’t seem to notice us. I check the rearview mirror, but don’t see any signs of those soldiers.
I don’t see the crater either, but it’s hard to tell with all the smoke. I take a long blink and focus forward.
The closer we get to the barracks, the quieter it becomes.
At two thirty-four, we arrive. The door’s open halfway, enough to see three scrub-dressed bodies inside. I can’t make out the faces.
“Stay here,” I tell Twenty-One as I scan the area. Another Humvee idles two blocks down in front of the infirmary. The battle rages on behind us. Otherwise we’re alone . . . I think.
“Hide now.”
Twenty-One hunkers down, eyes darting about. “Vultures?”
“Everywhere.” I point to the floorboard. “They won’t see you there.”
She scoots off the seat and scrunches up into a ball.
I get out of the Humvee, take several breaths of cold air to numb my senses, and enter the barracks.
Five, Seven, and Ten lie nearest the door in an expanding pond of blood. Noses and cheeks bluing, eyes glazed, torsos riddled. Twelve, Eighteen, and Nineteen are sprawled behind them, facedown, shot in the back.
These were Evelyn’s girls, the ones who’d convinced themselves the soldiers were their friends. Twelve, Eighteen, and Nineteen probably realized what was happening and fled. All of three steps before they were cut down.
Gunfire erupts nearby. My legs wobble, the room spins. Men in white cloaks burst from the darkness in front of me, firing away. I drop to my knees, crawl through blood. “Not real!” I squeeze my eyes shut. The noise fades to the distance. I open my eyes. The men have disappeared, but the girls remain.
I rise, force myself to look at them. Evelyn’s not here. Maybe she escaped. Maybe others did, too. I check in, around, and beneath each bed. No more victims in the main room.
Five in the bathroom.
Lorena’s there, her face ripped apart. Sixteen, Twenty, and Twenty-Two appear asleep on the floor. Pam’s propped against the back wall, Bible clutched in her hands.
I shut off the flashlight, lean against the wall. It hurts too much to cry. They weren’t supposed to be dead. That’s not how rescue works.
Footsteps. I raise the gun, touch my finger to the trigger, and peek out. Twenty-One. Shivering and giggling, she raises her arms. “Don’t shoot.”
I enfold her in the jacket. “I told you to stay put,” I say, almost yelling.
“I needed my chocolate. For the island.” Knowing I can’t convince her otherwise, I help retrieve her stash.
We’re almost back to the Humvee when two All-Blacks emerge from the infirmary. The taller one’s limping. They head toward the thinning wall of smoke that splits Georgetown in half.
A missile blisters overhead. I grab Twenty-One tight, tuck in, and brace against the Humvee. The infirmary explodes. Another missile. Another earthshaking detonation. A wave of heat warms my face. Staying low, I open the Humvee, load Twenty-One in, crawl in behind her.
I’ve just shut the door behind me when the barracks gets pulverized. Rubble pelts the windshield and chassis of the Humvee, as rapid as a machine gun.
I floor the accelerator. Buildings blow up left and right. The world becomes a jumbled nightmare of fire and smoke. The hailstorm of debris intensifies. Louder. Louder. Louder. We slide from side to side. I glance in the rearview mirror. Through the haze, I see four gunships closing in, unloading their arsenal. A half-dozen Reds pursue at full flame, their riders launching their own rockets.
“Watch out!” Allie screams.
I snap my gaze fo
rward. A dead dragon blocks our path. I jam the brakes, swerve hard right. Fishtail. I throw the wheel left. Too much! The Humvee tips.
We roll.
Glass shatters. Pain ignites. Screams everywhere. The world unravels.
Blackness.
Wake up, human.
I know that voice.
Wake up, Melissa Callahan.
The armies gather. We will come.
Blink.
Red glow.
A screech of metal.
Blink.
The Humvee roof peels away.
A dragon’s looking at me. I shudder.
“Hold still.” Two pairs of hands grab me by the armpits, haul me from the wreckage. “You look like hell, Callahan.” He injects me with something. “Don’t worry, we’ll have you patched up in no time.”
As they load me onto some sort of stretcher, I see the infirmary. With effort, I turn my head, squint. The barracks are there, too. “They blew them up. I saw it. They blew them up!”
“Calm down.” He holds my head still, puts a bulky collar around my neck, straps me down so I can’t see anything but the smoky sky. They bind my legs and hands.
They lift the stretcher, start walking. A dragon lumbers beside us.
“Al—”
“Everything’s gonna be fine. You’re safe now. Just calm down.”
“Allie?” I groan. “Allie? Where’s Allie?”
“The girl? A few scrapes, but she’s Jedi. You took the lion’s share. . . .” He continues to talk, I drift.
“Can I see her?” Her voice awakens me. A small hand touches my cheek. “You want some chocolate, Twenty-Five?”
I squeeze back tears, open my eyes. Her face bounces in my vision as she walks alongside me. She’s got scratches on her cheeks, a black eye, a lopsided grin. “You okay?”
She nods. “You’re not a very good driver, no, no.”
“I’ll work on it.” My laugh turns into a grimace.
“Really, you have to take it easy, Callahan.”
Talker 25 (9780062121929) Page 27