by Alex Mersey
Beth stood, a small wave, a deep frown.
He leapt over a kid playing on the floor, tripped over too many legs and had to push himself off a well-padded woman who squealed in surprise, then cursed in anger.
“Beth, we’ve got to get out of here,” he said, reaching the girls.
“But Alli hasn’t—”
“They’re here,” he cut through, his breath short from the wild dash, from the panic twisting inside him. “The Silvers are attacking the hospital,” he said, louder, wanting the girls out and safe before the mass exodus impeded their path but no longer able to forestall the warning.
All these people, kids, babies, they needed a chance, too.
He swung around, shouting, “You need to clear the building. Now! The Silvers are here!”
Back to Beth and Alli, who’d lurched to her feet as well, pure dread frozen on her face. He grabbed Beth’s arm, Alli’s hand, dragging them through the crowd who’d started to stir, parents gathering up their kids, others racing, pushing, shoving their way to the doors. Some bored, unconcerned people staying right there in their seats, staring at the eruption as if they didn’t understand or couldn’t care.
Sean shoved with the best of them, determined to get the girls out, elbow jamming out into a man as he barreled into Alli. Sweat and fear thickened the air, turned the meek savage. A father with a small child on his hip was knocked to the floor, trampled.
“Jesus!” Sean let go of the girls to hit back against the stampede. “The trees across the parking lot,” he shouted at them to be heard, then he was shouting at the man on the floor, “Get up!”
The man, scrawny thin like a weed stalk, rolled over, looked up through glazed eyes, his body still curled around the child.
“Get the fuck up!” Sean screamed, hitting and pushing at the bodies trying to swarm over him. How many fucking people had they crammed into that waiting room? But it wasn’t the numbers, he realized, it was the panicked energy that had ballooned the crowd into a frenetic mass. They’d all be outside already, if they’d exited into a neat, single file.
He reached down and grabbed the man beneath the armpit, yanked him up with more strength Sean thought he possessed. The man almost went flying, but thank God he held onto the child and his flying stumble sent him in the right direction.
Where was Beth? Alli?
He saw them, being taken with the flow, hanging onto each other. Beth flung a look over her shoulder, their gazes connected. He nodded at her, Go! and stood there a moment, battered from all sides, until he saw the tide carry them out the door.
A part of him desperately wanted to follow. Hell, all of him wanted to follow, but the thought of the teeming upper floors turned him around, fighting his way through the swing doors.
A finger pointed at him across the reception desk. “That’s him.”
“Sir!” The second woman, hair drawn back into a steel grey bun, stormed around the desk, eyes narrowed to squinting. “Have you lost your mind? You have no right—”
“The Silvers are out there,” he interrupted, charging up to her. “You have to evacuate the hospital.”
“I don’t take orders from you.” Her arms crossed, folded over a navy suit jacket. “I need you to calm down, young man. Have you seen the distress you’ve already caused?”
“There are dozens of them, drone fighter jets, and they’re headed this way.”
“That is not my problem.”
Sean’s jaw dropped. “They’re firing. Attacking. You need to evacuate the hospital. Do you understand?”
“You don’t understand,” she said, her tone frosty. “The last time we tried that, I lost five critical care patients in the mess. And they didn’t attack us. The Silvers left this hospital alone.” She unfolded her arms to jab a finger at his chest. “I’ve already lost dozens of patients when the power grid went offline and our generators failed to come on. I’m not putting any more lives at risk.”
“Okay, okay.” Shit. “Fine, leave the patients, but at least evacuate the refugees.”
“Why would I possibly want to send them away from a safe zone?”
“Safe zone?” Sean spluttered. “You think this is a safe zone just because the Silvers passed you over once? Listen, Lady, I don’t know what their agenda is, but I guarantee our wellbeing didn’t make the cut.”
“I’m not delusional,” she seethed, lips narrowed, stare slicing into him. “They are not our friends, I’m well aware of that. But for whatever reason they’ve decided to give us amnesty here, I’ll take it. We are not evacuating and you need to leave without causing any more disruption.”
The woman wasn’t delusional. She was certifiably insane.
And he was wasting his time.
Sean spun about, searching as he strode across the room, finding what he was looking for right beside the doors. Shoulder level, out of reach from grubby kiddie hands. The cover flipped open, he didn’t even have to break the glass.
“Hey, don’t you—”
Ignoring the woman’s screech, he pulled the red lever down and then he ran, bashing through the swing doors, the siren wailing in his ears.
The first shudder came before he made it across the wide hallway. Glass sprinkled from above, the ceiling halogen tubes shattering. The next strike shook loose parts of the walls, dropped him to his knees as brick and mortar flew into his back. Winded from the sudden impact and the burst of pain, Sean staggered to his feet and pushed forward.
The wailing cut off and, in that space, he heard the tempest on his left, above, everywhere. He looked. Rebar and steel spiking through from the floor above. The stairway crumbling in on itself in a cloud of dust and rubble.
All those people. I should have warned them on the way down. I should have sounded the alarm sooner.
He launched out the front doors, and then he was flying in the air, propelled by a force of hot air. His mind blanked. His fear went silent. There was just the air floating alongside him, the heat swelling at his back, the vacuum of sound.
And then the pain.
Exploding through his body as he landed on the roof of a car.
He flipped over onto his back with a grunt, lay there spread-eagled, dazed, watching the pair of Black Arrows zig zag over the hospital, over the other buildings of the medical center, back and forth, back and forth, pecking gaping holes into the massive structures with their laser focused attack.
From his unique angle, he saw the beam was an inverse three-prong, radiating from the nose and wing tips to converge into the shooting flash of lightning. One of the Arrows swooped low enough to cast a shadow over him. Not quite as miniature as they appeared high in the sky: roughly the width and length of the car he’d landed on. A silvery mist clung to the underbelly, but not so dense as to hide the sleek, obsidian form.
Phantom hands grabbed at Sean.
His name called to him.
No, that couldn’t be right. He rolled his head to the side.
“Sean, dammit.” Beth’s eyes had a crazy look in them, like she was freaking mad at him. “Move.”
He blinked.
She was still there, looking even more furious. Tugging at his legs, sliding him from the roof.
He came alive as his body slipped down the windshield, lifted his head weakly. “Beth?”
“Thank God!” She released him, bent double to suck in deep breaths. Then she lurched upright again, stuck her hand out. “We have to go. Now! Can you walk?”
“I’m good.” He shuffled himself off the car, to the ground. His knees buckled. He locked them down. Blood trickled into his eye. He wiped it away.
Above, the battle still raged, the buildings spitting everything they had, from the foundations all the way up to the flat roof. Steel, bricks, plaster, rebar, glass…raining down on the parking lot.
He took Beth’s hand and they ran, winging it through the cars and the falling debris, across the road, into the press of trees, and they kept going, bashing through the shrubbery, deeper and deeper,
until there was no more forest, just the bombarded residential conclave he’d seen from the top floor window.
Panting, Sean sank to his knees, looking left, looking right. “Lynn? Alli? Johnnie?”
“They’re okay.”
“Where?”
Beth shook her head, as out of breath as him. “Somewhere between here and there.” She nudged her chin in the direction they’d come charging from. Then she dipped her head, looked at him an intense moment, and a brittle smile curved her mouth. “I think we outran them.”
- 21 -
Chris
As predicted, Williams was not happy, and he didn’t even yet know about the work camp Chris had signed up for. As it turned out, breaking out of a second story bedroom was a lot easier than breaking back in. His choices had been to wake up the household in the wee hours of the morning or sleep out on the porch.
He thought he’d made the wise choice, the considerate choice, until Williams had burst through the front door with the sunrise, rampant intent drawn all over his usually stoic features.
Words had been said, words Chris wasn’t proud of, although they had contained a measure of truth. Why Williams hadn’t already bailed was beyond Chris. The world had crashed and burned. No one would blame the man if he decided there were more important things—more important people—than his job. Williams was no longer on the payroll. Hell, there wasn’t any payroll anymore, hence this, Chris shoveling dirt and turning spuds in the length of a field that stretched into next week.
Bran worked one row away, shirt tossed aside so he could sweat like a man under the mid-morning sun and, probably, show off the vine tattoo that rambled from his shoulder up his throat.
Somewhat less brawny, Chris stuck the gardening fork deep into the ground to lean on while he grabbed the end of his t-shirt to wipe his brow. The small area they’d cleared so far was a mess of holes, plants tossed one way, potatoes plopped—carefully—in the wheelbarrow. Farmer Brown, not his real name so far as Chris knew, had been specific about that.
The potatoes would rot if the skins were damaged before curing, he’d wheezed, spitting tobacco and his disgust with this damn apocalypse. Well, not the apocalypse itself, but the timing. Two months sooner, and he’d still have had his trusty old tractor that worked like a plough horse. He’d spent a fortune upgrading to one of those fancy harvesters and what was it good for? Rusting in the feckin’ barn, that’s what. His words.
“Another break?” Rachel called, stretching her long legs out to improve her tan as she sat with her butt on the ground and played in the dirt with a hand spade.
He tried to scowl at her, failed miserably when she brought out a magnetic smile. “I thought you came along to help.”
Bran shouted out a laugh. “Man, that is funny.”
She pouted at him. “Do you have something to say?”
“Not at all, babes, I love you just the way you are.”
A twinge of jealousy twisted in Chris’ stomach. He shut it down quickly. Nothing had happened with Rachel last night. He was leaving in the morning and doubted their paths would ever cross again. What did it matter if she and Bran were more than friends?
Rachel picked out a potato from the pile of exactly three that she’d dug out in the last hour and threw it at Bran. The spud fell far short of its target. “At least I showed up.”
The laugh in Bran’s throat devolved into a curse at the reference to Jake, the idiot who’d started them down this road.
His auspicious absence, however, made what Chris had to say a whole lot easier. “Bran, I don’t know what deal you made here…” His gaze swept over the daunting stretch of un-churned field. “But you’ve only got me for one day. I never planned to stay longer than today.”
“Just Chris Just Passing Through,” Rachel sang out. “What’s the rush?”
“No rush.” Chris grabbed the fork handle and got to work. “We’ve just got somewhere we have to be.”
Bran pushed his shovel away, leaving it to topple over as he bore down on Chris in bulldog mode.
Feet planted in a combat defensive stance, Chris stopped digging to brace himself for impact. Theoretically, he was armed, but that didn’t count since he’d hardly take a swing at Bran with the pronged iron fork.
Bran the Brute, once again, caught Chris totally off-guard. He slapped a massive palm down on Chris’ shoulder and squared a look at him. “I reckon one day’s fair. Surprised you even showed, thought I was wasting good breath when I told you to meet me at the crossroads out of town.”
“You mean you wouldn’t have hunted me down and dragged my skinny ass all the way to Mill Creek?”
Bran scratched his head. “I said that?”
“Right before you shoulder punched me and slammed another beer into my gut.”
“You’re okay, you know that?” Bran grinned, nodding. “I figure you get to call me Bran now.”
This guy was more confusing than algebra. “That’s what I’ve been calling you.”
“Yeah, and now I don’t have to keep count anymore of how many times I have to knuckle that pretty face for it.”
Chris threw a worried look at Rachel. “He’s kidding, right?”
“About the pretty face?” She tugged her straw hat low and angled her chin to slant those sultry brown eyes his way. “I wouldn’t say pretty, not exactly.”
“You know that’s not what I was asking about.”
Her gaze shot wide with a cheeky smile. “There comes Farmer Brown. Chop, chop, pretend you’re hard at work.”
“Some of us aren’t pretending,” Chris pointed out and bent his head to look toward the farmhouse. Accompanying the wiry farmer was a tall, buff, dark-skinned man wearing denim, a flannel button down and dark sunglasses. Seemed Williams had taken to heart the doctor’s criticism about him having secret agent written all over him. “Shit.”
Rachel’s interest perked. “A friend of yours?”
“Yeah.” He shoved the fork aside and trudged through the furrows to meet them halfway.
Before he reached them, Williams veered away from the farmer, waving Chris to follow for a private chat.
“Where’s your IV stand?” Chris demanded.
“You expected me to haul it all this way?”
“I expected Nathan to keep you home.”
“The doc weaned me off the drip,” Williams said, his tone neutral, the truth hidden behind the shades.
“You ripped out the tubes, didn’t you?”
“You said you were going to walk off your foul mood,” Williams countered. “That was two hours ago.”
“How did you even find me?”
Instead of answering, Williams crossed his arms and stared Chris down behind those dark shades.
“I intended to return to the house at midday to let you know where I was.” Chris sighed. “I suppose you’re wondering—”
“I know,” Williams cut in flatly. “I ran into your sparring buddy.”
Chris had to think about that for a second. “Jake?”
“That’s the one.”
“And I’m sure he gave you an unbiased account of events,” Chris ground through his back teeth.
“I don’t care about the bike or the kid.” Williams tipped the sunglasses up. “Chris, I know you don’t particularly want me around.”
“I never said that!” Or maybe he had, in the heat of the moment. “I’m glad you’re here, Williams. I couldn’t do this without you.” And if he were being truly honest, “I wouldn’t want to do this without you.”
“But you don’t need a babysitter,” Williams said. “I get it.”
“You do?”
“But…” Williams put a finger up. “I do need to know where you are at all times. No more sneaking around.”
Chris nodded. “What about you? Did Nathan really give the green light on that drip?”
“There was a discussion.” Williams’ mouth hinted at the shape of a smile. “We agreed that the situation wasn’t practical.”
Since he looked a hell of a lot better than he had yesterday, and wasn’t wheezing after the mile walk to the farm, Chris let it go. “Where did you get the disguise?”
“A clothing store in town.”
“They’re taking credit cards?”
“No cards or cash, just the doctor’s good standing in this town.” Williams’ hand dropped and the sunglasses came down. “Nathan made it happen. I’m going to take a quick look around, then I’ll leave you to it.”
Under no delusions as to what he meant by look around, Chris said, “If you don’t find a working car, we could always cycle.”
“Not ideal, but faster than foot.” Williams said. “I’ve considered it, and we know where to find one bike at least.”
“We are not stealing Bran’s bike.”
“Isn’t that what you’re doing here?” Another glimpse of what might be a smile as he turned to go. “Paying for it?”
“Williams!”
Williams threw a hand up, whatever that meant, and walked off.
- 22 -
Sean
The road stretched out in the noon heat, leading nowhere. Well, nowhere that still stood. The swarm of Black Arrows had blasted everything for as far and wide as Sean could see. They passed others on the road, not many, some coming, some going, everyone just desperate to leave behind the place they’d fled.
Sean’s group made no attempt to exchange greetings and they weren’t prompted. They were all war children now, there was no good news to share and they’d all had just about as much bad news as any person could handle. No one that Sean could see or came across had any fight left in them, least of all him. Lynn had cleaned the cut on his brow and taped it, but the rest of his bruised and battered body couldn’t be patched. He just had to walk this wreck out until his body seized up or got over it.
The silence hung over them like a cloud, a haze to lose their thoughts in, a cotton-soft puff to absorb the shell shock. They’d now survived their second Silvers assault. What were the odds? Sean couldn’t decide if they were the luckiest or the unluckiest shits on this planet.