by Floating Boy
But there, four stories up, a hand waves down to me. It’s so friendly, geeky, and panicky. It’s Marcus. He’s yelling, too, and bent over coughing. I think he’s saying can’t fly can’t fly. Which is kinda obvious because, you know, he’s not already flying off the burning building.
I take two steps in every direction, not sure what I’m going to do. The totally despairing part of me imagines running back to the river and cupping water in my hands to douse the fire because that’s as about as useless as I feel right now.
As I’m running in circles behind the mill, and my head is running back to the river for another handful of water, Terry says, “I’m thirsty.” He sounds so dry and wasted, like he’s dying of thirst, and I’m so frazzled that hearing that in his voice might be enough to burn me down, totally.
But then he says it again. And I get an idea. A real one. One that might save, like, everything. I say, “Hold on, I’ll get you something.” I readjust Terry on my back, and oh please oh please oh please, I hope crazy Aunt Beth parked her crazy mobile out front.
“I’ll be right back!” I yell up to Marcus, even though I can’t see him anymore.
We fight through fallen branches, and we run through big twisting hunks of ash floating by my head, and I make my way to the front of the mill.
There’s thirty, forty, fifty, I don’t know how many people out front. The Claremonts brought, what, their whole church parish with them? Neighbors? The rest of Ipswich? And not-so-holy floating cow, the ones who aren’t holding hands and swaying are holding torches. Seriously, torches! This isn’t a horde, it’s a mob.
To my left is one of the first station wagons ever made. I sprint over and duck behind it, waiting to hear the crowd roar GET HER! When that doesn’t come, I peek my head up, and look through the rolled-down windows of the wagon.
The mob is a chaotic mess, a slushie made of people. There are some folks singing and throwing their torches at the mill. Beth’s sister-in-law and all the old dudes I escaped back at my house are here. They’re across the lot from me, on the other side of the mill, and let’s keep it that way.
There’s a smaller and less brimstone-y mobette of people who are barely standing upright. They just shamble around, coughing, crying, bumping into people and randomly parked cars, and they moan a little, and keep shambling. I don’t think I’ll ever wear my zombie shirt again.
And there are others who, like the rest of their mob buddies, are still clearly sick, clearly brain challenged, but seem to be a bit more with it. They’re going around asking why the kids on the roof haven’t flown away. They shout up to the kids on the roof, yelling, “Hey! You still up there?”
I see Aunt Beth. She’s saying, “Maybe they’re stuck. We have to help them!” I’m guessing the mob’s idea was to smoke the kids out, make them come down off the roof, not burn them alive. Real shocker that the brain-addled mob didn’t think things through clearly, right?
There’s a crash from inside the mill somewhere, and Liv is screaming from the roof. There isn’t much time for my super idea.
Cars are zigzagged all over the lot, which looks like Terry’s room after one of his Matchbox frenzies. I need Aunt Beth’s T Rex-sized SUV, the one with fake wood paneling on the side. It’s hard to see any color other than orange and every car looks like an SUV or wagon. But there! It’s parked behind the crowd, maybe twenty yards away from me, its passenger side scraped right up against the trees.
Then everyone starts yelling and pointing at the mill. There are kids on the edge of the roof, waving their arms and yelling for help. Liv is on the corner of the mill closest to me. I wave my arms, tell her in my head that I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying, even if to her it looks like I’m running away.
Terry’s still on my back, and he hasn’t really said anything. Is he asleep? I tell him to hold on and I sprint to Aunt Beth’s SUV, to the trunk. As I’m running I hear there she is and get her, and it’s almost a comfort to finally have something that I expect to happen actually happen.
None of the sick adults can move as fast as I can right now so I get to the car no problem. My little cousin is in the backseat, asleep, strapped into his car seat, which is both seat-belted down tight and then bungee-corded over, just in case.
I go behind the car, open the trunk and, thank someone, Aunt Beth’s kid cantina is there, or at least the cooler is still there. I open the lid, afraid it’ll be empty, but it’s not. It’s half full of juice boxes, granola bars, cookies, animal crackers, and even some bags of orange wedges in case an end-of-the-world soccer game breaks out.
Quickly, I put Terry down in the trunk, give him a juice box and a little bag of animal crackers. “Drink and eat as fast as you can, T.”
I don’t have to tell him twice. He sucks the juice box dry and turns the crackers into dust, inhales them. I fill the backpack with the rest of the snack-time haul while he’s chowing down.
Aunt Beth is the first person to make it over to her car. She puts her hand on my arm but doesn’t grab onto it. She’s gentle. Already, without her saying anything, I know she’s not going to stop me, not going to try and keep me here.
“You’re okay? You’re not up there? What are you doing, Mary?” She sounds and looks terrible. Her hair has fallen out of the pigtails and is all stringy. Her eyes are so red they’re almost swollen shut.
“I’m helping my friends. You know, so they don’t burn to death.” I zip the pack and crouch down to T’s level, and put my face in his.
Aunt Beth is crying and mumbling about how this wasn’t supposed to happen, how she isn’t sure how this happened, how it got so out of control.
“Terry,” I say, trying to ignore Aunt Beth. “I need you to fly up to the roof and give Liv the food in the pack, okay?”
It’s not a sentence I’ve had a lot of practice with, but Terry nods his head and gives me exactly what I’m terrified of here: a thumbs up. It means we’re really doing this. It means I’m having him float to the top of a burning building. Yeah.
Aunt Beth tugs on my shoulder again, and I tell her, “Just keep everyone else off us, okay?”
She nods and wanders away, into the rising slushie of the mob. I think she’s officially part of the shamblers crew now, and will not be any help at all.
Terry is up on my back one more time, and it’s another sprint in wet socks through the lot, dodging cars and old, sick, demented Claremonts and their posse. Hands reach out for me and Terry, but they can’t get a good grip on us with their weakened, designer-flu-infected fingers.
There are more crashes and smoke and ash plumes inside the mill. I don’t know how long before the place collapses, but we need to get closer before I let Terry take off, just in case the backpack is too heavy for him and it limits his flying. I jump on the hood of the station wagon that’s parked closest to the mill and scramble up onto its roof. Up here the flames are jet engines. They’re bombs going off.
I yell, “You know not to touch fire, right, T? Please be careful!” and I know I sound like Mom.
Terry is looking all around, and too fast, like he’s not sure where to go. This might be the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my life: letting him try this, saving him just to ask him to do something like this. I’m about to make myself think of something better when he lets go of my neck and floats up. His comfortable weight suddenly goes away. My heart goes up into my throat after him. And, for real, my left arm goes up, too.
Crap, we’re still tethered together! One end is still wrapped all around my stupid wrist. I quickly wriggle out, hoping I didn’t weigh Terry down too much and ruin his takeoff. Takeoff is probably important, maybe the most important.
Terry goes up slowly, like he’s unsure of how far up and how fast to go. And he’s too close to the mill’s front wall. He’s only about ten feet off the ground, hovering between the first- and second-floor windows. His takeoff—I did screw it up!
“Stay away from the wall!
”
The added weight in the backpack must be throwing him off. He dips and lists off to the side like a drunk bumblebee. He’s not going up anymore, and he’s screaming and reaching for his ankle.
The tether! I follow the length of it from his ankle down to a rounded piece of metal sticking out of the mill’s front wall. Terry’s stuck! Stuck to a burning building!
I fall to my knees on the car roof and everything in my head goes swimming. The car under me is swimming too, or bouncing. The nastiest part of the mob, the one still tossing torches and praising the Lord, has me surrounded. They’re rocking the car back and forth.
Terry screams again and I don’t think. I just do. I run off the roof and onto the hood, but Claremonts block my path to the mill. I jump over their front line and land on some old dude’s back. He goes down. I land on my feet and run like a wrecking ball at the mill. Fire spits out of the window just a few feet away from me, but I don’t care. The tether is above that window. I can reach it. I have to.
I leap like I’m jumping into the mill, plant my left foot on the smoldering window frame, and push off and up, using everything my non-floaty legs have to launch me up the wall, toward the tangled tether. And then I’m going up, the hard way, and I stretch, pressed up against the mill, which is like pressing up against an open oven. I’m willing my right arm and wrist to be long enough, to get longer if they have to.
I snatch a handful of tether and hold on, but I’m not falling back to earth like I should. The tether is still stuck, and all my dangling weight threatens to pull my shoulder out of my socket. I’m not letting go, though. My arm can rip off and I’m not letting go.
Finally, I do fall, like everything does eventually, and I land hard, a jolting shock of pain jouncing up through my feet, into my ankles and into my knees. And I’m still holding the tether.
I’ve pulled Terry down to me. He’s crying. “It’s okay, T, I promise. Watch.” He watches and I untie the tether from his ankle. He stands twisting his leg all round, looking for, what, a ghost tether?
And when he starts to bob away, I pull him to me. I can’t let go again.
He looks up to the roof, like this is confusing him. Do big sisters say one thing and then do another?
“No,” I say into his neck, “no no no.” But then a Claremont paw on my shoulder makes me flinch around, and Terry kind of giggles right in my ear and pushes off. And he’s gone, just like that.
He goes. Up, up. Claremont hands stab into the space Terry was a millisecond ago. Their hands reach up and over me, and in the shadow of the mill, they look like crows flying above my head, but they’re too late.
Terry rises up fast, like a superhero. He quickly reaches the same height as the roof, and there are other hands up there, gently reaching out to him. I blink, and Terry disappears above the roof.
The Claremonts move in, pressing up against me so tight I can’t move. Everyone’s yelling and grabbing and pushing. I’m lifted off the ground. My feet lose the pavement. This isn’t floating.
I scream and thrash around, connecting an elbow with somebody’s nose. It feels squishy. The mob collectively breathes and retreats just enough to give me the opening I need. I gain my feet, bust through and past them, then dash over toward the mill and pick up one of the still-burning torches.
“Stay away!” I wave the torch at them, and they back off, cringing and groaning and praying the whole way.
I walk away from the mill, to its side, and near the path to the river. Not that I have any sort of plan. I mean, I did what I could do. Now it’s just me waiting, dying a thousand deaths inside until Terry floats off the roof, down and safe.
I can’t see them up there. I don’t hear them up there. Did he tell them what to do?
Even if they do eat, I don’t know how long it takes to metabolize the food, to get whatever nutrients they need into the bloodstream and do whatever it is their new DNA needs them to do.
Not that I can wait even one breath longer to see. “Terry! Terry!” I yell. “You okay? Liv! Liv! Can you hear me?”
I’m still yelling and waving my torch around and sending the most urgent mental texts when the mob stops its mobbiness. They stand slack and just stare up. I do, too. And I laugh because right now, this is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Four of them rise above the roof and the flames, hand in hand, in a kind of formation, a giant wing. Liv, Marcus, and is that Logan?—yeah, it is—and flying far enough out in front of them that I want to have a heart attack . . . Terry. They’re beautiful, and maybe always have been.
I laugh some more and wave my hands. Terry sees me, I think. He waves back and kicks his legs like he wants to just bounce up and down.
The mob breaks out of its trance and rallies for one last unified roar against those meddling kids floating in the air, and they make one last charge at me. I back away with my now-dying torch, and I’m near the woods.
Liv yells something but I can’t hear it. Then they turn away from us. They fly behind the mill, above the woods, and toward the river.
Okay. We’re totally done here. I drop the torch and make a mad sprint to the path. I’m into the woods and I can hear people following me, their footsteps slow and heavy. They crash into and through branches and young trees.
I’m not scared of them anymore, though. Not now. No way. I’m running to the river. I’ll get there before them. Nobody can swim like me. It’s my flying.
I get to a clearing at the shore, and I look up. Terry is flying way too far ahead of Liv and Marcus. And Liv, I hear her. She’s yelling Terry’s name.
Wait. Are they chasing him now?
The Claremonts are still coming, so I’m about to dive into the river, see how far downstream I can get. Maybe break some sort of river swimming record. And then there’s a light tapping on my shoulder, even though no one’s behind me.
Logan says, “Need a lift?”
20.
Yuck. Because it’s just Logan being Logan, I don’t scream, but it’s a close one. The way he plopped down behind me without me seeing, and the way he’s gotcha-smiling at me now, he so wanted me to scream.
“Jerk,” I say, not-so under my breath, in a jokey, happy-to-see-you-ya-big-lug way, instead of asking him what he’s still doing hanging around us.
I do need a lift. Liv and Marcus not stopping for me and then tumbling and yelling after Terry, it’s not a good sign. Maybe I should’ve put Terry’s tether in the backpack with the food, so Liv could’ve put it back on him right away or something.
“Can you, you think?” I say to Logan, tilting my head up into the sky, to the flickering light that’s either a square fairy or the screen of Liv’s phone.
Logan chuckles an insulted little chuckle. He’s lying along the bottom side of the thick branch of a giant dead tree, now. He rests back like people in picnics do, with his feet crossed, hands behind his head, and a gigantoid mouthful of Aunt Beth granola bar crumbling down. It’s all ideal and normal except it’s nighttime, he’s upside down, and the Claremonts are still crashing through the trees behind us.
“I think I can, yes,” Logan says, way too much emphasis on the “can,” there.
“I need to get my brother, and now,” I say.
“Freaky little kid,” Logan says, and kind of smiles. He adds, “Why can’t you?” and kind of nods up, above us.
“I don’t know, okay? Because everybody’s better than me. Because they’re not, because they don’t, because I can’t—”
I stop because I’ve said too much. And I stop because I’m listening to how close the Claremonts are getting.
Logan pushes off his branch hard enough to pat his feet into the ground beside me and then hook his right foot under a climbed-out root.
“So where they going?” he says, about Liv and Terry and Marcus.
I give him my best really? look. He’s earned it. “They’re not going anywhere.
They’re going after my little brother.”
“Oh, yeah, right,” he says, and, “Hey, thanks for the delectables,” saluting me with some chocolaty remains before popping the last bits in.
“Big word,” I say back, and his right hand finds my left. He gives me his smirk and arched eyebrow look. It’s a look that says I’m supposed to melt because he’s going to be a senior, football captain, and I’m just a squat little sophomore, a less-than-nobody.
A gaggle of Claremonts stumbles out of the woods and onto the shore. One almost falls into the river. They yell and point at us, but they’re not moving so fast anymore.
“Um, come on,” I tell Logan. “Let’s go.”
Logan nods, looks above us for clearance, then unhooks his foot anyway, so that when he takes my hands and we bob up, we crash through dead branches and I try to kick them out of our way.
Up here, the river is a flat glass surface and the town stretches out below us. There are soldiers on the bridge. The glow of fires is all over Ipswich. Helicopters thump and tear the night into black ribbons falling down over us all. And over there, a bobbing speck—
“That’s her! There’s Liv!” I say.
Logan squints and isn’t so sure, and then my dead, dead weight pulls us down below the canopy again.
Logan grunts a laugh, hauls me back up, nearly pulling my arms off like I’m an action figure. But then I get why: the momentum of him jerking me straight up like that, the follow-through, it pushes us up just enough.
It takes me a bit to find her again, but I see Liv’s cell light.
“So they’re not going into town?” Logan says.
“They’re not going any—just follow that car,” I tell him in my best movie voice.
“What car? I don’t see any car.”
Why am I not surprised Logan doesn’t get me? “Just follow Liv.”
Logan smiles, we dip down again, and finally, to stay high enough, he spins us around, and kind of swings me like one of those hammers with the long leather strap that they throw at the Olympics. It’s ugly, probably looks like I’m a dry cat in a wet sack, but it gets us going faster than usual, too.