Blackout

by Robison Wells

Page 5

 

  Aubrey didn’t care right then how it worked. Panic was gripping her as Nicole’s words sunk in.

  Were they here for her?

  Aubrey gave Nicole a final look, wondering when they’d talk again, and then forced her way out of the crowd into the night air.

  The parking lot was brightly lit with floodlights mounted on the tops of four army jeeps. At the far end were the newly arrived school buses. A line of kids waited in the center of the lot, surrounded by more armed soldiers. She realized they were the people she’d seen outside, including the boys—the soldiers must have rounded them up before entering the barn.

  She headed toward them—exhausted from being invisible for so long—hoping that something would let her know if the army was looking for her.

  Two soldiers stood at the front of the line, one carrying a clipboard and the other holding a handful of what looked like plastic hospital bracelets.

  Aubrey was out in the middle of the lights now. Her thin dress was doing nothing to stop the cold, and in her weakened condition she started shivering.

  Kelly was almost at the front of the line, and the look on her face seemed more inconvenienced than worried. As the boy in front of her was directed to the buses, she stepped up to the soldiers.

  “Name?” the man with the clipboard said.

  “Kelly Wagner. ”

  He looked through the papers on the clipboard until he found a black-and-white photocopied yearbook picture, and compared it to Kelly’s face.

  “How long is this going to take?” she said.

  He ignored her, and peeled a sticker off his paperwork.

  “Hold out your left wrist,” the second man said, taking the sticker and pressing it onto one of the thick plastic bracelets.

  Kelly obeyed, and the soldier strapped the bracelet on her arm. He tugged on it until Kelly squealed. He then motioned for her to hurry along, and a third soldier escorted her to a bus.

  Aubrey moved to get a better view of the clipboard, but by now she could hardly stand. She waited through two more people, hoping to catch a glimpse of her own name on the list—to see if it was marked in some way.

  Something rumbled, like the low growl of an animal.

  The soldiers noticed it too, and they retreated away from the line of teens. The man with the bracelets dropped them and lifted his rifle, leveling it at the crowd. The other soldier twisted his headset microphone to his mouth.

  “Possible Lambda,” he said. “At the loading area. Over. ”

  The soldiers’ fear was contagious and Aubrey stumbled slowly back from the teens—from kids she’d known for as long as she could remember.

  A loudspeaker squawked. “Attention, students. Please get down on the ground, and keep your hands in front of you. ”

  The crowd was hesitant to move, and a few of the girls called out, saying that the asphalt would ruin their dresses.

  Aubrey heard the rumble again. It wasn’t an animal—it sounded like rock grinding against rock.

  “Everyone get down,” the voice commanded sharply. All the soldiers’ guns were raised now, and the students slowly began to comply.

  Aubrey reached the edge of the lit area. She couldn’t stand any longer and rested on the bumper of a truck. She searched the faces for Nicole, but didn’t see her—the line still wound all the way back into the barn.

  Someone near the front of the line moved. It was Nate, only . . . it wasn’t Nate. He was wearing the same boutonniere she’d pinned on his jacket earlier that night, the same garish tie, but his face was wrong. Aubrey rubbed her eyes to see if fatigue was blurring her vision, but he still looked off. His face and hands were black and rough, almost like the asphalt he was standing on. He stood fully erect, against the soldiers’ orders.

  The soldiers barked at him to get back down, then ordered him to come forward, but he didn’t do either. His eyes—small and black—scanned across the crowd of students as though he was waiting for something.

  The soldiers were screaming at Nate now, commanding him to listen and obey. He spoke words that Aubrey couldn’t hear, and she almost thought she saw his grotesque face smile.

  Then he lunged forward, running toward the nearest soldier. His footsteps were heavy and Aubrey thought she felt the ground shake. Rifles flashed all around the parking lot as the army opened fire on him, but Nate didn’t stop. He collided with the soldier, tackling him to the ground with a horrible crunch. As the bullets hailed into Nate, he stood again, leaving the soldier crumpled in a motionless heap.

  Aubrey dashed across the lawn, her bare feet stumbling. The soldiers weren’t looking for her—they were looking for Nate, and he was some kind of monster. Or were they looking for both of them? At the edge of the lawn she plunged into the bushes, fighting her way through the tangled branches and sticks. Bullets continued to roar behind her, echoed by the screams of the terrified students.

  Finally, she took a step and there was nothing beneath her. She flailed for something to grab, but fell.

  FIVE

  JACK WATCHED AS THE SOLDIERS fired at the—what was it? A gorilla?—but their guns seemed to have no effect.

  The gorilla—no, it was human; it was wearing clothes—attacked another soldier, charging into the direct path of the bullets and leaping forward. The soldier was smashed to the pavement and didn’t get up.

  Several of the students began to creep away, crawling for safety or to escape. Jack saw two girls sprint from the school bus toward the denser brush.

  And then the thing tried to run, thundering out of the parking lot and onto the empty road. Jack saw a soldier fire something else from his rifle—slower than a bullet and arcing like a thrown baseball. It hit the ground behind the creature and exploded in yellow fire and smoke. All the way up on the hill, Jack felt the shock wave thud into his chest and pass through his body.

  How could this be happening? And what was that thing? Was it a terrorist? That seemed like the only explanation, though it didn’t make any sense. Everyone assumed the terrorists were Islamic fundamentalists, or political extremists, or environmental activists. No one thought they were . . . monsters?

  As the smoke cleared, the thing was struggling to stand.

  Another grenade was launched—that’s what it had to be—and this one was a direct hit.

  Jack realized his hands were clutched on the sides of the truck’s cab, his knuckles white and the sharp edges of rusty metal digging into his skin.

  As the cloud of smoke and debris drifted away, the creature wasn’t moving.

  He didn’t look menacing anymore. Just a man—just a kid, like Jack—lying motionless on the road, next to two craters in the asphalt.

  Four soldiers moved out to check on him, and suddenly the rest of the army was back at work—corralling the kids who were trying to crawl away, and herding them all into some semblance of a line.

  Jack realized suddenly that he was hearing screams. They’d been there all the time, he was sure, but he’d just noticed them now that the guns had stopped. They weren’t frightened screams, or calls for help—they were wails, like uncontrollable sadness.

  Few of the students would stand. Jack wondered how many had peed themselves, and then realized how stupid that was—someone had just died. Some teenager had just turned into some kind of monster and had then been gunned down, blown up, by the United States Army.

  Jack watched as, one by one, the students were pulled from the ground, checked against paperwork, put in some kind of handcuffs, and led onto buses. There were medics there now, removing the bodies of three dead or, hopefully, unconscious soldiers. A truck beyond the floodlights took the motionless monster—now a regular boy—away.