by Damien Boyes
I guess that means he’s taking it.
8
No More Heroes
The hospital is teetering on the edge of chaos. The lights are dim and the patients who can get out of bed are crammed into the hallways, butts hanging out of their green robes, in wheelchairs and clutching IV poles, all trying to figure out what’s going on. The nurses and doctors on the floor are trying to get people to go back to their rooms, but don’t seem to have any answers and mostly look just as panicked as everyone else.
The intercom’s calling staff to the ER on a loop. That’s where Dad will be.
I’m pushing through the crowd, working toward the stairs, when the intercom comes alive again, this time with a Code Black. I’ve spent a lot of my life in this hospital and I read up on what all the codes meant so I’d know what was going on when they were called, but I’ve never once heard Code Black—the code for a disaster.
Suddenly all the shooting and explosions and the screaming add up in my head. This is happening. People are dying—
Mom.
It was only a five-minute drive. She should have made it home before the fighting started.
I look back and Grackle’s still behind me. “We have to find my dad,” I say. He’ll know what to do. We can go together and find Mom and get out of here.
“Jasmin Parker,” Grackle says, grabbing me by the arm. “We don’t have time for—”
I hold up my finger. “We’re finding my dad.”
Grackle blinks at me twice, but eventually nods, and I lead us down the three flights of stairs to the ER.
We exit the stairwell into a disaster area. The chairs are full, and people are stretched out across the benches and floors. Injured. Bleeding. Crying, covered in dust. And more keep pouring in, calling out for help.
A security guard is trying to stop people from coming through the wide Emergency Room doors, trying to tell them the hospital is full, but no one’s listening. Panic is taking hold.
The nurses and doctors are doing what they can, but even on the best of days this place is a zoo. There’s no way they can hope to keep up.
We fight through the commotion and I see Dr. Landry, the chief medical officer, coming toward us, heading for the stairwell. Like usual, he’s wearing his white coat, but he’s also clutching his briefcase. He must have come in from home.
“Dr. Landry,” I yell, but he doesn’t hear me as he shoves his way through the crowd, and I have to reach out and grab his coat. He turns, and for a second I think he’s going to swat me, but then stops himself.
“Jasmin?” he asks when he finally recognizes me—which takes him long enough considering I basically grew up here—and glances past me to the stairwell.
“Have you seen my dad?” I ask.
“Who?” he says, squinting at me like he doesn’t understand the question. Or English. Then he snaps to reality and looks back the way he came, toward the sliding door between the waiting room and the medical area. “Major Trauma. Last I saw him,” he says. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
He slides past me and into the stairwell, and as the door shuts behind him I notice the big red EXIT sign above it.
He didn’t just get here. He’s leaving.
People are bleeding out on the floor and he’s leaving? I want to run after him and drag him back here, but how am I supposed to do that? He’s a grown man.
Then I see a nurse and a doctor heading this way too. Everyone’s leaving.
There’s another red flash outside and the entire hospital shakes. The emergency lights flicker but don’t go out. I need to find Dad.
It takes forever to get through the waiting area, and I slip on a pool of blood seeping from the stump of some poor man’s shredded leg, only just catching myself before I land in it.
Someone’s tied a belt around his thigh but he won’t last long. Not that there’s anything I can do for him. I can’t help any of them.
I race past the admitting desk and back into the curtained-off triage rooms. It’s so chaotic no one tries to stop me, and after covering nearly the whole floor I finally find Dad. He’s in the Major Trauma room by himself, standing over a woman’s chest, hands clasped on her sternum and pounding her with compressions. The whole left side of her body is charred, and the green line on the machine next to the bed is flat, beeping the shrill note of death, but he still isn’t stopping.
“Dad.”
“I need five mls epi, stat,” he says, refusing to stop trying to save the dead woman’s life.
“DAD!” I yell, reaching out to touch his back, and he spins around with a frantic expression on his face. He’s covered in blood and looks shell-shocked. “She’s dead, Dad.”
It takes a second but he finally recognizes me, flicks his eyes between me and the woman on the table, and scoops me up in a hug. I wrap my arms around him. Everything’s going to be okay.
“Where’s your mother?” he asks once he’s let me go.
“She went home.”
“Okay, good,” he says, as if checking something off a list in his head. “Do you know what’s happening out there?”
My throat tightens up. “It’s an invasion,” I say. “They’re shooting everyone.”
He nods as if he’s been expecting this. “The Russians.”
He has no idea how wrong he is. “Dad, it’s not the Russians—”
“You need to get to your mother,” he says, slipping back into triage mode.
“That’s what I’m doing,” I say. “I came to get you first.”
“No, honey, I can’t leave,” he says, and I can tell by the look on his face he’s surprised I’d even suggest it. “People need my help. I can’t abandon them.”
“Dad, they called a Code Black, it’s a disaster. We need to evacuate.”
“And who do you think will evacuate them?” he says.
Is he for real?
How can I explain to him—invaders are pouring from the sky. There isn’t going to be an evacuation, the whole city’s being pounded to rubble. We need to get out of here.
“Now I see where you inherited your stubbornness,” Grackle murmurs from behind me.
I ignore him. “Dad, I promise you this isn’t World War Three,” I say. I grab him by the arm and physically try to pull him with me, but he still won’t budge. “We need to get to Mom together.”
He drags me toward him and takes me into his arms. He isn’t coming.
“Go,” he says, but doesn’t let me. Finally, he opens his arms and pulls away. “Find your mother and take her to your grandparents’ farm. I’ll meet you there.”
Tears well in my eyes and it takes everything I have to fight them back.
If he stays here he’ll die.
“I’m not leaving you,” I say, and I’m not taking “no” for an answer. I can help evacuate just as well as he can. We’ll all do it together—
Another blast rocks the hospital, shaking us like a mountain collapsing, and we’re all knocked to the floor. This time, when the lights flicker and go out, they don’t come back on.
I try to pick myself up but my ears are ringing and I can’t see a thing. Then I feel my skin tingle and a green light flickers next to me, shining through the thick dust in the air. It’s Grackle, and the light is shining from a ball of mist hovering in his hand.
Then Dad’s beside me, helping me up. He glances at the greenish light and gives Grackle a look like he’s only just now noticed him.
“This way,” Dad says, and walks me around the gurney toward the emergency exit out in the hall. We can barely see anything, but Grackle’s glowing ball is enough to navigate by, and when we get to the door Dad pushes it open and we gulp in the cool night air. Grackle comes out with a nod at Dad and drops his hand and the shimmering light winks away. Dad stays in the doorway, smoke and dust billowing out around him.
“Come with us,” I plead. But I know he won’t, and I feel the heat rising in my chest.
I don’t get mad much at Dad, usually Mom gets the
brunt of my frustration, but I’ve never been angrier at anyone in my life. I want to argue with him. To scream and cry and wrap myself around him and force him to come with us.
How can he stay here? How can he put these strangers above his own daughter?
I want to say something hard. Something that will hurt, but I know how much worse it would be if the last thing I ever said to my dad was in anger. I’d hate myself forever.
“I love you, Dad,” I say instead.
“Love you too, Minnow,” Dad replies, then turns and runs back into the smoke, and the door closes behind him.
9
Cities in Dust
I leave Dad to save the world and drag Grackle down to the sidewalk and out toward Main Street. After the screaming and darkness and chaos inside the hospital, things are quieter out here. Quiet, but even more terrifying. Downtown is on fire.
“We need to find my mom,” I say. Grackle’s head is flitting from side to side, his eyes twitching in their sockets. “Can you get us to her? Walk us through nothing or whatever it is you do?”
He shakes his head and checks around once again. “I cannot. Not here.”
“What do you mean? What if we went somewhere else?”
“No,” he says, then sucks in a breath and his brows furrow like he’s fighting with himself. “This timeline is fresh, and my abilities are diminished. Your home, it is nearby?”
I don’t understand any of this but I guess it’s not the time to argue.
“That way,” I say, pointing across Main toward the residential neighborhood between here and the lake.
“Then let us make haste,” Grackle says, and hurries off ahead of me.
We get to the corner and I check the six lanes up and down Main Street to make sure the coast is clear. Downtown is a disaster zone. A bunch of the office buildings are gone. Cars are burning. Even the steeple of the old church at Main and Edward has been blown off, but I don’t see any of those invaders.
Grackle nudges me and we start to cross, and that’s when I notice the large group of survivors about half a mile down Main, huddled together, shuffling toward the hospital. From the looks of them they’re all hurt, limping and bloody.
They need help. I move toward them and Grackle snags me by the shirt and points back up Main in the opposite direction. At first I can only see lights—headlights—racing toward us. Grackle pulls me the rest of the way across the road and we take cover behind the corner of a building just as the convoy races past, big green trucks hauling ass toward downtown.
It’s the Army.
They must be from the base up in Tonawanda—four troop transports and a couple jeeps roar by and I whoop as they pass. The Army’s here! They’ll show those aliens not to mess with us.
The trucks shudder to a stop ahead of the fleeing group and park sideways across the street. Before they’ve even stopped rolling, soldiers are leaping out the back, dozens of green-uniformed men with rifles moving to take up position around the trucks. Then a group breaks off and snakes forward toward the civilians, and just as they get close an entire squad of those flying invaders cuts out from a side street and opens fire.
The invaders fire red beams at the helpless people and those who try to run are picked off as they flee. The soldiers fight back as best they can, but their guns don’t seem to be doing much, and they’re taking heavy casualties as their bullets are absorbed or deflected in bursts of red light around the hovering invaders.
Just as it looks like things couldn’t get worse, one of those big floating pucks emerges from the cloud of smoke hanging over downtown. One of the remaining soldiers grabs what I think is a rocket launcher from the back of a truck, heaves it up on his shoulder and fires, but the explosion wraps safely around the silver disc in a dazzling flash of protective red light, and it just keeps right on coming. Then its belly glows red and fires, evaporating the soldier and the trucks and the rest of the scattered civilians with one brilliant beam of energy.
I slap my hand over my mouth, and Grackle pushes me around the building and out of sight.
They’re dead. They’re all dead.
Nothing can stop these invaders, they’re invincible. Even the Army was useless. How can we possibly survive against them? I’ll never make it to Mom—
The tug in my head grows stronger, like it’s knocking on my door.
“We can’t even hurt them,” I mutter.
“They are shielded,” Grackle states. “Negative energy in a semi-coherent state. Your conventional weapons are ineffectual.”
“We can’t do anything?” I ask and risk a glance back up the street. They’re still coming.
“No,” he says and tries to pull me away, toward the houses, but I don’t let him.
“You could fight them though, couldn’t you?” I ask.
He looks away, like he doesn’t want to answer, but nods. “I could. For a time,” he says, then he looks me in the eyes. “But that would call attention to us. I can escape—you cannot. Not yet.”
“What do you mean ‘not yet’?”
He raises a long slender finger and taps me between the eyes. “You feel it?” Grackle says. He’s watching me, like a bird might watch a worm.
That pressure in my head …
I nod. Whatever it is, I feel something. Back when I was getting the seizures hourly, I’d feel a pounding in my brain, like something inside wanted out. This feeling is similar. Back then I was scared of it and the pain it brought. It felt like something that wanted to kill me.
Now, I’m not so sure.
Now I want to let it out.
“What’s happening to me?” I ask, and it comes out in a whisper.
“The chronoverse is calling you,” he says.
“Am I supposed to answer?” I ask. What happens if I do?
“Yes,” he says, then squints around. “But not here. Take us to your home.”
I’m past the point of arguing now. All of this is so crazy I don’t know where to start.
“This way,” I say, and lead us along North Street to Pearl. We don’t get half a block before Grackle is pulling me down behind a car as another squad of invaders glides through the intersection ahead. I don’t know how he knows they’re coming before I do, they move silently as ghosts.
As the black-armored soldiers get to the middle of the intersection, one of them nudges another and points down the street toward us. They change direction and hover our way, and Grackle squeezes my arm. We’re stuck. Maybe now he’ll have to fight back.
Instead they stop fifty feet from the car we’re hiding behind, raise their weapons, and launch small red balls into windows of the houses on either side of the street. Two seconds pass without anything happening, and then the houses explode.
I bite down on my lips to keep from crying out. It’s the middle of the night, and people will be inside, maybe still sleeping, maybe hiding in their bedrooms, praying they’ll survive World War Three.
The invaders laugh as people flee through their front doors, wide-eyed in terror, moms and dads and grandmas and kids, batting the flames out from their nightgowns and carrying injured family members. The invaders use them as target practice.
They’re enjoying this, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
But Grackle can, I know it.
“Why aren’t you doing something?” I say, far louder than I intend.
His eyes widen and I clamp my mouth shut, but I don’t think the soldiers could have heard me over the roar of the flames now spreading from house to house.
Grackle shakes his head, his eyes full of sorrow, and backs away in the direction we came. I go after him, walking hunched over, darting from car to car until we’re far enough away we can straighten up and run.
I take him back up Pearl and go one street over to Franklin and we’ve only started down that street when a massive explosion lights up the sky behind us. I spin around and look for the source just as a mushroom cloud of smoke billows into the air. My stomach knows what happ
ened before my head does.
It was the hospital.
Dad.
I run back up the street, not caring who sees me, trying to see the big blue H on the roof. The H I could always see from my bedroom window, the H I used to look for in the night when I woke from another nightmare about demons in my brain and took comfort knowing that Dad was there, helping people.
But I can’t. I don’t see it. It’s not there anymore.
It’s gone.
He’s gone.
My throat closes and a sob clamps down on my chest like I’m having a heart attack. I want to go back to find him, but I keep walking, staggering but moving, toward home.
I don’t know how I’m still going, but I can’t think about it, can’t let myself stop. If I stop I won’t get back up again.
We only cover a few blocks up Franklin before our path is cut off once more, this time by a huge tree burning in the road. And it isn’t just some tree either, it’s the oldest tree in Buffalo. Twenty years ago they figured the tree was two hundred and fifty years old—they put a plaque on it and everything. It lived for almost three centuries and now it’s burning in the street.
It’s dead.
Everything is dead.
All at once I’m exhausted, overcome with a grief that’s so intense there’s no room for it inside me. My chest heaves and my knees give out and I nearly collapse. Grackle tries to help me up but I shake him off. He can’t make me feel better. No one can.
The world is in flames. Dad’s dead. Who knows where Mom is. And now a tree that’s lived for two-hundred and seventy years is on fire. I can’t take it. I can’t think. Everything’s spinning and I feel like I’m going to pass out.
The panic rises as my vision closes in, but as I’m about to let it take me I think back to when I was a kid and coming out of another episode, and how Mom would hug me then get straight to business.
What’s the plan? she’d ask.
