Valiant

by Merrie Destefano

  “I know all of you saw the attack on Washington two days ago,” the president begins. “But you may not know that we weren’t the only city invaded—Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, Boston, Seattle, and Houston were assaulted as well, and the effects have spread throughout the country. We’re hoping to get our communication systems back up soon. But in the meantime, I need to ask all of you to stay strong and carry on. If at all possible, get back to work—especially if you’re a doctor, nurse, paramedic, or volunteer firefighter. The police force, the firefighters, and the armed forces are doing the best they can under the circumstances, but we all need to pull together if we want to win this battle—”

  I agree with what he’s saying. We do have to pull together if we want to win. It’s our only chance for survival. Then I notice a couple of preschoolers huddled together in a corner, crying. I go over and kneel beside them. They throw their arms around my neck.

  “Is it the end of the world?” one little girl asks.

  I shake my head and hold my finger to my lips.

  “The White House was attacked,” the president continues, his tone sounding upbeat and confident despite the situation. “But we managed to fight off our enemies—most of our enemies.”

  He pauses, and several kids around me stare at one another, eyes wide.

  He’s not telling us the whole story. Apprehension swells inside me.

  This is exactly how a Hunter would talk.

  “We know who’s behind all these invasions. And we plan to retaliate soon. But first, I must ask you not to give in to fear. We may need to go through a few more dark days before we begin to see the light again—”

  Natalie has come back down the hallway, and she’s looking at me. That bloodstain on her shirt has widened. It seems to be spreading with every heartbeat.

  “It looks like we’re in the midst of another kind of war,” the president says, and a collective gasp sweeps down the hallway. “Already Iran, Iraq, England, Japan, India, Russia, and Australia have experienced this. As I mentioned, several American cities have been attacked. What I didn’t say is that this new enemy, this race of aliens from another planet, has gotten control of our white bombs.”

  No.

  In an instant, all my strength is gone.

  This is the nightmare we’ve all had since we were children, that someday one of our enemies would send the white bombs to kill us.

  Except the nightmare just got one hundred times worse.

  The Xua have white bombs.

  Some military leaders claim this is humane, the death is quick, and, hey, it doesn’t destroy any buildings. But we all know that’s just propaganda. When a white bomb explodes, Agent-X rains down like acid, so strong it can penetrate through steel-plated buildings. When it gets within twenty-five feet of you, your skin begins to melt. At ten feet, your brain starts to boil, right inside your skull. At five feet, your bones begin to dissolve. Once Agent-X hits ground zero, all the people and animals within a twenty-mile radius are vaporized.

  Almost nothing left behind to prove you ever existed. Not a shadow, not a whisper. You’re gone.

  No one around me moves; no one breathes. It’s like we’re all trying to be quiet so the white bombs won’t find us. The only sound I hear is the wind blowing through the trees outside. It’s an eerie, constant rushing almost like the sound of the ocean. Relentless. Merciless.

  No matter what I do, no matter how often I travel through time, I can’t stop the inevitable.

  I can’t stop people from dying.

  “Did he say white bombs?” Billy asks, a tremor in his voice.

  “Are the Xua going to bomb us?” Ella asks. She shelters the little kids in our group by draping one arm around their shoulders. Bran leans against her, his thumb in his mouth.

  I stand, listening to the whisper of the wind as it continues to moan through the trees. It almost sounds like a thousand voices, all of them reminding me of my mistakes. Why is everything else suddenly so quiet? Then the lights in the hallway flicker. Light spatters on, off, on, and finally off with a crackly hiss that wicks its way throughout the building. I keep waiting for the president’s speech to continue, but it doesn’t. I notice the people around me are more alert than before. Gov-Net must have switched off, too.

  Maybe the president, wherever he is, was the first target hit by the white bombs.

  I glance at Natalie. She’s just staring off into space.

  All I can think about is the Xua having control of our greatest weapon. Meanwhile, the bloodstains on Natalie’s shirt continue to widen. Where the heck is Carla and that nurse?

  “The Xua have gotten the advantage,” Natalie says, her words hollow.

  Finally someone moves. Footsteps race down a distant hall, doors swing open, and a girl calls to us.

  “Look! Look!” she cries.

  It’s Carla, and she swings into my line of vision then, eyes wide like she’s just seen an army of ghosts. She slides to a stop next to Justin. It takes a heartbeat for her to catch her breath.

  She points toward the front door, wordlessly.

  We all turn and look. Nothing’s there.

  “Outside,” she says, her words little more than a gasp. “They’re here.”

  45

  The front doors are still closed, but the whispering wind has grown louder. It murmurs now, an eerie sound that both unnerves and compels. I want to tell everyone to stay where they are, but we’re all straining to listen. Carla stands frozen in the middle of the hallway, still too frightened to speak.

  But Natalie’s not afraid. She pushes through the crowds, heading toward the exit. I follow her, realizing that a cluster of kids and young children has already gathered there. A few adults are trying to peer through the nearby broken windows. Every single person with a view to outside wears an expression of horror on their face. Before, we had a constant backdrop of chatter, people talking to one another, even while they were listening to the transmission from the president. Now an unnatural silence fills the building, and we all hold still, trying to understand what we hear outside.

  Natalie glances back at me.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  But before she can answer, the other kids begin to flow past us in a brisk stream, all of them converging on the exit.

  Up ahead of me, the door swings open, light pours in, and kids flow out. I’m swept up in the crowd, trying to catch up with Natalie. I know the others in my crew are nearby; I see them from time to time—Justin’s broad shoulders, Billy’s blond-streaked hair, Carla’s frightened expression, Ella’s wild red hair—but the crowd separates us. I push my way through a sea of shoulders and elbows until I find Natalie. I pull her to a stop before she reaches the door that leads outside. “What are you doing?”

  She strains against me, her face a mask, like she’s in the midst of a nightmare and can’t wake up. “Don’t you hear them?” she says, her voice choking at the last word.

  “Hear what?”

  But the door is open now, and I realize I do hear something, like murmuring, indistinct words being spoken, over and over. I tilt my head, listening, my heart skittering. I freeze, unable to believe what I hear. In the midst of the clamor, two familiar voices are calling my name.

  “Sara—Sara, sweetheart—”

  My parents.

  Oh, dear God, no. Please, no.

  Natalie nods. “They’re all out there. Calling us.”

  The door hangs open, and a crowd of people pools outside, all of us stunned, unable to think clearly. Voices are calling out to us in every language: Chinese, English, German, Russian, Korean, Farsi, Czech, Spanish, Hindi, and more.

  “Don’t go out there!” I yell. But how can I compete with this?

  The building is surrounded on all sides by the worst effing body-snatching army in the history of horror. It’s made
up of our parents, sisters, brothers, cousins, and best friends. Every one of them calling our names, arms outstretched.

  “Sara—Natalie—Ella—Justin—Carla—”

  The list goes on and on, until every one of us has been shot through the heart and we’re dead; we can’t fight. Natalie’s sister and mom stand in the front row, bruised and beaten. Her mom’s clothes are scorched, and her sister has bloody scratches all over her face, like someone forced her jaw open to let a Xua get inside. Both of them call to her, feigning heartfelt love.

  “Join us, Natalie. Come here, my precious daughter—”

  Natalie’s crying, tears running down her face. She brushes a palm across her cheek, then shoves her way haltingly through the crowd until, at last, she stands on the pavement outside.

  I follow her, terrified she’s going to run out and join them.

  I grab her by the arm and stop her from going any farther.

  “That’s not your mother or sister,” I tell her.

  “I know—it’s just all that’s left of them.” She turns toward me, her lashes thick with tears. “I was hoping they were safe.”

  Then I realize most of the other kids are rushing past us; they’re racing toward the parking lot. Toward the Xua horde that surrounds the building.

  These kids need to be stopped. We can’t afford to lose even one of them.

  “Stop!” I yell, but they aren’t listening to me. “You all need to get back inside! These aren’t your parents or friends! They’re here to kill you!”

  I see Justin behind me, head and shoulders taller than the rest of the crowd. He has that same look of torment in his eyes as Natalie. I want him to be the sensible one, to help me, but I can tell he’s fighting the same emotions as all the others. I twist around and follow his gaze, then locate his mom and dad in the tangle of broken bodies standing at the edge of the salt perimeter. He thought they were safe, too. He thought they got away, that they made it to his sister’s house and somehow the alien curse had passed them by. Most of us don’t know what happened to our families—they just went missing, like a runaway dog with the backyard gate left open. And now, here they are, calling us to come home.

  Home. It’s what we all want. Mothers and fathers who love us enough to turn down the volume on the endless stream of Gov-Net news and music and pay attention to us.

  I turn toward Natalie. She’s lost interest in me for a moment. She’s staring at her mother again.

  Holy crap, I’ve got to do something fast.

  I lunge forward, reach into Natalie’s pocket, find that gun she’s been lugging around since last night, and I pull it out. It’s heavier than I expect, and it yanks my hand toward the ground. My fingers latch onto the barrel just in time, before it slips away. I find the trigger, and it becomes my new best friend. Then I dash through the crowd, elbowing everyone out of my way. I race, gun hidden at my side, until I’m standing in between the kids and their Xua-possessed loved ones.

  Feet braced, chest surging, shoulders back, and head high, I face them all.

  “Nobody’s leaving!” I shout, louder than I’ve ever done before. It’s a shout so loud it burns my throat and empties my lungs. I draw another savage breath and yell again, “Do you hear me?”

  But they all just keep trying to push past me.

  In horror, I see a little silhouette darting between everyone’s legs. Behind me, Ella is yelling. A child is running toward the Xua, weaving between people. He’s too far away for me to reach him in time and he’s crying.

  “Mommy!”

  No. It’s Bran.

  Panic shoots through me. “Somebody stop him!”

  Meanwhile, the crowd surges forward and a few people have already stumbled over that line of salt.

  “Come back, Bran, come back!” Carla and Natalie and I are all yelling. Ella is chasing him and her fingers latch onto his shirt, but he wriggles out of her grasp.

  My heart freezes when an older boy picks Bran up in his arms and carries him across the line of salt. Someone who must be Bran’s mother reaches for the little boy, a broad smile on her face. He drops his T-ball bat, takes his thumb out of his mouth, and tries to wrap both arms around her.

  “Put him down!” I cry.

  It’s too late.

  The woman has already snapped his tiny neck.

  She leers at me, then drops his lifeless body on the ground.

  I don’t even stop to think. I aim my gun at her chest and fire.

  She collapses next to him. Her body twitches, like there’s a live snake trapped inside, and everything I’ve ever heard about Xua anatomy proves true. If they’re trapped inside a human host when they die, they die, too.

  I feel like someone just ripped my heart out of my chest, but I can’t stop. I just can’t. Bran isn’t the only one to die. Every single person who crosses that line of salt is murdered while we watch.

  One by one.

  And now, I’ve got an out-of-control crowd on my hands. They’re all being called to their deaths. Most of them are trying to stop, but some of the people behind me don’t know what is happening and, in their panic, they keep shoving me forward. That line of salt is growing closer and closer. If I can’t stop this madness soon, I’ll be pushed into the arms of this nightmarish horde, too.

  “Get back inside the building—now!” I yell. “All of you!”

  Then I raise the gun over my head, and I fire it toward the heavens.

  Ba-boom!

  Everyone in Santa Ana knows the sound of gunfire. We’ve been raised on it. It thunders through our sleepless nights; it echoes down our dark alleys. It ends every fight and it begins every gang war. It sends our loved ones to the morgue and invites us to too many funerals. Our streets are always lined with memorials—flowers and candles and tear-stained letters of goodbye.

  Not this street. And not today.

  “If anybody moves closer to that crowd, I’m going to start shooting. Right at them!” I face the people still poised in front of me, but my right arm is aimed back toward that crowd of alien body snatchers. “Do you hear me? I’ll kill them if you don’t get back inside!”

  The children closest to me start crying, deep soul-stealing sobs, their chests shaking. They’re pleading with me, all of them.

  “Don’t kill my mom, please—”

  “Not my sister, don’t shoot her—”

  “Please don’t, please—”

  I’m the monster now, and I can’t believe I’m doing this. Behind me, my dad’s voice rises above that unending chant of names.

  “Sara, Sara, don’t, little girl. Put the gun down, baby—”

  Oh, sweet Jesus, he’s never sounded like he loved me so much. Not even when I was a little girl.

  “Sara, sweetheart, we just want you to come home—”

  I fire my weapon toward the sky again, and this time the crowd responds. They look around, wide-eyed, and then slowly begin to move back toward the doors.

  They don’t know I’m fighting my own personal demon.

  I’m the girl who can never save her own brother, so how can I possibly save anyone else?

  My gaze flickers over the remaining crowd. I can’t bear to look behind me—I can’t look at my dad, I just can’t—then I see Justin, still staring at his mom, sorrow and panic in his eyes. The two of them have always been close. It’s one of the things I like about him.

  “Get back inside the building!” I say, and I hate myself because my words quiver at the end.

  The last few people disappear back into the building, but Justin doesn’t move. Billy now stands beside him.

  I can’t stop the helplessness that floods through me, a river of bad water, a riptide pulling me out to sea. I turn and glance behind me. My father has moved. The entire Xua-possessed throng has. They’ve come several steps closer, almost close enough to lunge at me and
grab the gun.

  But it’s the look in my father’s eyes that reaches inside my chest and stops my heart.

  His expression has changed; the light has darkened, and now a sinister grin reshapes his face. It’s hatred, as dangerous as a lightning storm, bolts of jagged light striking down, killing everyone. The gruesome expression on his face sickens and terrifies me. I can’t move.

  And at that moment, when I’m the most vulnerable, someone grabs the gun from my hand—Natalie. Her chin held high, her tears dried. She stands at my side, aiming the weapon at my father, something I was too weak to do.

  “You’ll be the first to go,” Natalie says. “You frigging monster.”

  She shoots him in the leg, and he stumbles to the ground, still alive, but at least he’s not looking at me anymore. He continues to call my name, his face buried in the grass, his words muffled. My mother stands at his side, oblivious to what just happened. No compassion for him, no notice that his blood is pouring on the ground, painting the brown grass a brilliant red.

  And then, just when I think it can’t get worse, it does.

  46

  My team has all drawn their weapons, even though we know we won’t be able to hold this horde of Xua back for long. Not if they find a way to cross that narrow bridge of salt. Even the wind could brush away a patch and give them an opening.

  That’s when it happens.

  The sky overhead rumbles. Like distant thunder.

  Rain would wash the salt away.

  My heart races as I look up. Nothing but blue sky overhead. No storm. No clouds. Still, the thunder grows and the ground beneath me trembles like the earth itself is afraid.

  My father has crawled to his knees. As much as it hurt me, Natalie was right to shoot him.

  That horrid grin on his face grows.

  “You had to know we had a backup plan,” he says to me, his voice loud and clear, carrying throughout the crowd and beyond.

  The Xua-possessed army begins to laugh, heads lifted. Some of them even dance, though the only music is the sound of engines, whining and raking the sky like monster hands ripping the heavens.