Dying Day

by Kory M. Shrum

  “Is Michael coming back?” I ask.

  “He is looking for a way in.”

  “Into…?”

  “You are the apex, and you control the gate. He must look for a way in.”

  “Because he wants…” I wave my hand, hoping it will prompt Gabriel to spit it out. Oh, believe me, solving the current problem is only the beginning. I intend to shake the whole truth out of Gabriel. Eventually. But this is Gabriel. I’m prepared for this to take a while.

  “When the gate is open, and your power fully realized, he will try to seize it. He will wield you like a weapon to build the new world he envisions.”

  Scratch the record. “Wait, what? Surely, he doesn’t think he’s going to get me to do what he wants.”

  Come on. In no world has any man—or angel—been able to get me to do what they want.

  Gabriel says, “He will try to defeat me first. Then he will try to take away your heart. When you are vulnerable, are you sure you will have the strength to stand up to him alone?”

  Good point.

  “But you called Ally my heart. What about that part about sacrificing my heart?”

  No answer.

  “Gabriel, don’t you dare dodge my question again! If someone is going to hurt her, you better tell me!”

  “It isn’t safe to speak of her here. He is looking for your weakness. You will make it easier for him to discover who she is, where she is. Push her from your mind.”

  I snort. As if. As if there is a minute in the day when I don’t worry about what she’s doing or who she’s doing. When you’re gone, who do you think will be there to pick up the pieces? Sasquatch said to me. Nicole-freaking-Tamsin. I wonder if she’s already proposed to Al. Built her a house. Whittled her a rocker or built baby furniture or something. I can totally see it. She seems like one of those nesting lesbians…

  “She is in danger of his attack. That is why I have not said more,” Gabriel says.

  “Then why are we here?” I should be with Ally. I should have a shield around her. A fortress. An army of ruthless butchers wielding bloody cleavers or something. And I should be taking a sledgehammer to any baby furniture that may or may not have been built in the last 48 hours.

  “I’m protecting her in your stead.”

  “Oh really?” I ask, surprised.

  “Yes, because you must focus on being here in this time, this place.”

  “Yeah, but why here? There’s not even a Taco Bell.”

  “This is the intersection of worlds. This is our strongest position.”

  “So the place of convergence is where I use my powers—one way or another.”

  “Yes,” he says.

  “And the gate is the beach. And that’s what? In my head?”

  He doesn’t answer. Per usual.

  “Either way, I am what stands between Michael and Earth.”

  “Yes.”

  “But what Michael wants is to blow up the world and start over—and that’s what I want.”

  Gabriel turns those feral eyes on me. What is it with the angels and glowing eyes today? “Why do you want to destroy Earth?”

  “Because you showed me all the horrible things that will happen! You made it seem like the only way to save Earth is to take it to the beginning again, to give it a chance to right all its wrongs. And now you’re telling me the psycho who whispered into Caldwell’s ear for all those years wants that too, and so now I’m like, say what?”

  Because if Mr. Nutty-McNutters wants what I want, I need to really think about this.

  “I will not deny the truth. You have done irreparable damage to your planet. It suffers.”

  “Hey, now. Not me, personally—I mean, okay, I ordered a lot of pizza, but I recycled every single one of those cardboard boxes, thank you.”

  Ally made sure they got into the recycle bin, actually, but I pushed that thing out to the curb, thank you very much.

  Gabriel continues on as if I haven’t spoken. “Certain areas of your planet can no longer sustain their populations and those unstable areas will only grow in the coming years. Before equilibrium can be established, many lives will be lost. Millions will move, seeking lands with more resources. However, due to arbitrary social and political borders created by your nations, this will cause conflict. Those displaced nations will not simply remain and starve. They must migrate as your species has always migrated. And these migrations will not be without consequence. They will cause war, discord, and distress until compromise is reached and equilibrium restored. Conflict will breed conflict. War is inevitable.”

  I squeeze my head with my hands. “See, you used a lot of bad words there, Gabe. Irreparable damage, war, conflict. Inevitable. When you put them all together like that, it makes it sound really bad.”

  Gabriel blinks at me with the resting angel face I’ve come to expect. He says, “I cannot make the decision for your people. You must choose the direction of your own time.”

  “So funny story: in high school, I was voted Most Likely to Get Expelled for Burning Down the School Gym, not Most Likely to Serve as Space-Time Ambassador of the Human Race.”

  His brow creases.

  “Just saying I shouldn’t be choosing the ‘direction-of-my-own-time’ either. You have terrible taste in apexes,” I say, stuffing my hands in the thick pockets again. But seriously, we’re screwed. No one in any universe should’ve put me in charge.

  “You are the apex,” Gabriel says, his voice sharp. “When the gate opens, you will ascend. And if your heart is with you at that moment, there will be hope and light. But if darkness stands in its place, darkness will prevail.”

  “No pressure.”

  “She is safe. For now. But we can go retrieve her, if you wish.”

  Ally. I can see her big brown eyes, wide and panicked when I said goodbye. I’m not going to do the goodbye thing twice. It was hard and horrible enough the first time.

  “I told her bye because you said I was going to blow up. I’m not bringing her here so she can blow up with me! I thought you said I could remake the world. That I might die, but I could make it good for everyone else. And Michael wants to hurt her. Do you think bringing her down here and parading her in front of him is a good idea?”

  I think of Michael’s veiled threat. What a sacrifice…

  “Is that how it’s supposed to go down anyway? Was she supposed to burn up with me? Because if that’s true, we’re screwed. Kiss the planet and time and all of history goodbye, because it’s not going to happen.”

  “What of her desires? What does she want?” he asks.

  I jab a finger at him, ready to poke out one of his pretty eyes. “I don’t know, but it’s not to blow up! Nobody wants to blow up!”

  I can make peace with the idea of dying for the people I love because I’ve done it so many times now. So I’m more than willing to sacrifice myself if it means a better world for Ally, and Maisie, and Gloria. And of course, Winston. But asking Ally to go through that…

  A faint sound catches my ear.

  “What is that?” I ask, turning in all directions, surveying the tundra all around me.

  The whomp-whomp-whomp grows louder. And because the tundra is vast and empty, I can see what is making the noise even though they are little more than tiny black dots on the horizon.

  “Are those helicopters?”

  “Yes,” Gabriel says as he turns those green eyes in that direction, black hair hanging past his strong jaw.

  “Oh, good. I was hoping someone would come check on the people at the station. I was worried about them. And someone is going to need a coat!”

  I snuggle into mine.

  “They are not coming to rescue those at the station. They are coming for you,” Gabriel says.

  Oh. Well, I don’t even know why I’m surprised. I’m a wanted fugitive that just blew up a government facility—and it’s like the second one this week. And they’re probably still mad about the town in the desert that I sort of demolished. And as remote as th
e place may be, we have satellites all over Earth. Someone has seen my face I bet. If those scientists at the station were able to get wifi and news programs, then they’ve definitely told on me by now.

  I sigh at the approaching helicopters. “And this is what I get for thinking I wouldn’t have to kill anybody today.”

  Make your shield bigger, Gabriel whispers into my mind.

  Of course, he doesn’t have to tell me twice. I don’t want those helicopters to get any closer than they already are. I exhale and expand my shield. It races across the snow, illuminating the iridescent white in a soft purple glow. I don’t just go out, I go up at least thirty or forty feet over my head.

  Who knows what they think of it? I’m sure I look like I’m in a glowing dome.

  A voice booms over a loudspeaker. I’m not sure if it is coming from the helicopter or something like one of those handheld megaphones. I can’t see from here. The six helicopters hovering above are little more than black smudges in the blue wintry sky overhead.

  “Jesse Sullivan, you are surrounded. Surrender peaceably or you will be taken by force.”

  I snort. “Taken by force. Good luck with that.”

  Gabriel doesn’t smile.

  “Why do they always say that? ‘You are surrounded.’”

  Gabriel’s wings lift and settle. “Call your fire.”

  “I think that’ll only provoke them. They look ready to shoot.”

  “Michael is close. Call your fire.”

  I flicker to the beach. Indeed, the angel is back, standing defiantly on the sandy shore and looking ready for an attack. And he has something in his hand. I can’t tell what it is because there is so much light surrounding it, that the object itself is hidden. In fact, up to his elbow is gone in that pulsing ball of light. And it’s crackling and spitting sparks.

  “Um.” I tug Gabriel’s arm. “What is that?”

  “It will disable your shield.”

  “What?”

  “You must be prepared to fight with your other gifts. You have many.”

  “Okay, but what about the people with the helicopters and the real guns!”

  “Dispatch them quickly,” he says, flatly.

  “Dispatch them. Freaking-A. You deal with Michael then. This angel crap is your business.” I flick back to my world, my problems.

  “This is your final warning,” the helicopter voice booms.

  Well. Here goes nothing.

  I call my fire. It blazes to life across my hands, licking up the air surrounding me in a bright blue flame. A gun goes off and the shield ripples. More gunfire, more purple rippling along the surface.

  Hurry before the shield falls, Gabriel warns.

  “Yeah, yeah. You’re always in a hurry for me to murder someone. It’s a little disturbing, you know.”

  “Billions will be lost if we fail.”

  I don’t bother to point out that it looks like billions will be lost either way. Because I destroy the planet, or because the humans on Earth destroy themselves—or because some jerky angels showed up and decided to put us out of our misery. There doesn’t look like a way to end this.

  I suck in a breath, drawing my fire to its full height and swing my arm as one might if throwing a baseball. The flames leap from my arm and sail skyward. The helicopter I aimed for dips sharply right trying to get out of line of the fire blast, but not quick enough. The tail takes the blunt force of the impact and is blown off. Black sheets of burning metal rain down onto the snow. Then the tailless aircraft hits the snow, and the ice shelf under my feet rumbles. The blades hit the ice several times, bending and breaking with each impact until they lose momentum and stop.

  My ears ache from the screech of crumpling metal and blades on ice.

  The two people who parachuted—base jumped, really—out of the helicopter into the snow land several feet away, obscured by the red flames and black smoke of the helicopter’s wreckage. If there were others in the helicopter, they went down with it. I hope they died swiftly, painlessly, on impact. I tell myself the high-pitched whine is only gasoline whistling in the fuel lines—not someone screaming as they burn alive.

  The second and third helicopters try to attack from two different angles, no doubt trying to overwhelm me with their numbers. But it takes almost nothing for me to throw them the ol’ one-two firebomb. The first takes the blast head on. The glass of the windshield shatters out in all directions. The nose dips and the helicopter dives toward the snow. No one jumps out before the black shell crumples against the ice shelf. So all occupants must be dead.

  The third helicopter takes the hit to its underside, and the force of it blows it upward. When it comes down, the foot rail hits my shield, but my shield doesn’t give. The helicopter is tipped backward, completely upside down and lands on its crumpled blades in the snow.

  The remaining three helicopters regroup, forming a smaller version of the triangle formation they arrived in. And the one in front takes that moment to fire what can only be described as a missile at me.

  A missile!

  Never in my life did I expect to see a missile flying at my freaking head. What does one even do with that?

  Jesse!

  Gabriel’s voice booms through my mind and the tundra flashes, replaced by that distant beach of the gate, of the in-between, whatever it is—at the precise moment the missile unlocks from its chamber and launches. I have just one moment to see it whistling toward me before my world disappears, along with all the snow and ice.

  On the beach, something shoots from Michael’s glowing-crackling orb and hits me square in the chest. A white torrent of pain rips through me. I’m screaming, my ears ringing with the sound. The sand shifts underneath and I stumble.

  “Jump,” Gabriel says. “Jump now.”

  Somehow, perhaps by willpower alone, I shuffle my right foot back, using the teleportation gift I inherited through patricide.

  I’m in the dark place now, that place of no light, no sound, only endless compression. When my foot connects with the world again, it’s the icy world. My hands hit the ice and snow, stinging on impact. I call the heat to warm my flesh and the ice melts, but better a little assault by the ice shelf than hypothermic hands that have to be cut off.

  Bare hands.

  No shield.

  A wave of nausea mixes with the pain. Too much world shifting—and a jump to boot. I feel ready to puke my guts onto the snow.

  I manage to get into a sitting position. My knees are folded under me like some Buddhist monk. I’m cussing up a storm. Howling.

  I’m running my hands over my chest again and again, thinking it was the missile that hit me. It clipped me somehow or just seared off a boob or something, but it isn’t the missile. It was whatever Michael shot from his freaking light orb.

  “What happened?” I beg, running my hands over my burning chest. “Gabriel, what the hell happened?”

  I look up to find the angel kneeling beside me.

  No, not kneeling. Crumpled.

  “Gabriel?” I ask, fear creeping in with the searing pain. “Oh shit, are you hurt?”

  He lifts his head to reveal blood oozing from one ear and his nose. Considering I’ve never even seen so much as a wrinkle in his suit, I’m winded like a stiff punch to the gut—completely bewildered—which goes nicely with this horrible fire eating through my chest cavity.

  “Oh my god, he hurt you!”

  “You need to finish the helicopters,” he says, lifting his hand to wipe his bloodied nose. It’s such a human gesture that I’m stunned into silence.

  “Jesse,” he urges again. “You must finish what you started.”

  I turn and see the remaining helicopters regrouped in their triangle formation. I’m behind them, looking at their tails. I jumped myself out of the missile’s path. They’re hovering over the smoking wreckage, no doubt waiting for the smoke to clear to verify that I’m dead. What do they hope to see? An arm? A leg?

  Without thinking, probably still in shock that m
y angel can be injured—a possibility I never in the world considered—I throw four firebombs without thinking.

  Fresh pain rips through me, from the invisible wound that Michael tore in my chest. I sink to my knees, crying out.

  The blue fire connects with the backs of the helicopters, sending them spiraling to the snow. All hit the ground. The ice shelf shakes with the impact. The black smoke blistering the sky intensifies, its billowing plumes thick.

  Apart from the smoke and flames, nothing else seems to move.

  And the pain in my chest spreads.

  “You have to pull it out,” Gabriel says, looking more like himself, which is good, because I’m on the verge of freaking out.

  I run a hand down the front of my coat, but there’s nothing. No wound. “Pull what out? I can’t see anything.”

  “Not here,” he says. “We must go back.”

  So we switch back to the beach. Back to Michael who stands alone on the shore, hands in pockets. He has one polished shoe planted on a rock in the sand. Man, I want to slap that grin off his face.

  I tear open the front of my jacket and see blood pooling there. There was no wound at the Pole, but here, I’m torn open. A gaping, puckered hole oozes blood.

  “What the hell?” I take a breath and plunge my finger into the wound. I see stars—a momentary flash of white-hot pain. I’m going to black out. Oh god, I’m totally going to black out. But I keep digging until my finger is pricked on something. But what’s a little finger prick at this point. I grab onto whatever is lodged in my chest and pull. Sick chills rake my body.

  Something rolls into the palm of my hand, beneath my bloody fingertips. I’m shaking, shivering, so it jumps in the crook of my palm.

  Okay, not a bullet. It looks like a star plucked from the sky. I feel like I’m holding something small, no larger than a quarter, but the light it casts completely covers my hand. I can’t even look at it fully without feeling the tears spring to my eyes.

  Michael holds out his hand for it, for this strange star-like bullet, like I’m just going to hand it over. So he can shoot me again with it? No thanks.

  I close my fist around it and feel its spurs bite into my hand. But again, compared to the fire ravaging my chest, it’s nothing.