“The military doesn’t give a damn about you,” I say, amazed my voice comes out strong.
I wait for Shorty to recognize me, but it’s Granddaughter who speaks up. “You’re that executioner girl from K.D.”
Now they’re all squinting at me. Realization dawns on Shorty’s face. “What the hell are you doing in Chicago? You part of this attack?” Again, the idiot sounds more excited than worried.
The dragon sirens cut out for a message.
“Thirty Greens inbound from Milwaukee. Headed south at full flame. Seek shelter immediately.”
The sirens pick back up again, halting every few seconds to repeat the warning.
“Thirty!” Granddaughter’s face drains of what little color it had.
“Milwaukee’s ninety miles north of here,” Daughter says.
“How fast do dragons fly?” Shorty asks, all excitement gone.
“Lot faster than you,” I say.
Shorty extends his cuffed arm as far from the bike rack as it’ll reach. “What are you waiting for, dragon girl?”
I shoot. Shorty lurches to the ground with a cry. As the gunshot echoes through the emptiness, I examine the links. The bullet didn’t leave a mark, except for the one on Shorty’s face from shrapnel spray.
“Try again,” he says, eyes on the sky, unaware of or unconcerned about the blood running down his cheek.
The others slide down the rack as far as they can. I back the gun away a foot. Shorty covers his face with his free arm.
Three empty clips later, the handcuff links are barely dented, dozens of gunships and drones are flying in to form a perimeter around downtown Chicago, and Granddaughter’s crying. She goes hysterical when I tell them I’m going to get a bigger gun from the car. “You can’t leave us. You can’t leave us!”
“I’m not leaving you,” I say.
I’m turning around when Shorty clutches at my ankle with his free hand. “Don’t leave. Please.”
“I’m not leaving. I promise.” I pull free and scurry to the Prius.
I start the car. Their pleas turn to yells and their yells turn to shrieks as I roll away. I crank up the radio, which plays the emergency message on every station. A block away. Two blocks. Three. They’re beyond sight now, but I can still see their eyes, still hear their voices. Louder than everything.
“You can’t abandon us here!”
“Please!”
“Don’t let us die!”
A block later, the emergency message updates. “Greens incoming. Seek shelter.”
I keep the accelerator floored. Buildings and stoplights blur by. I’m nearing ninety when the opera of war ignites. Missiles scream toward the heavens; artillery and explosions provide the accompanying drumbeats.
I glance north, toward the cacophony. The military doesn’t seem to be firing at dragons. They’re creating a giant black cloud in, around, and over downtown Chicago. Gunships and drones circle the expanding nebula.
A honk pulls my attention back to the street. A car’s speeding right for me. As I swerve out of the oncoming lane, the driver flashes his lights. There’s a concrete barricade several blocks ahead. Soldiers patrol the other side. A few notice me and raise their machine guns. Doubt these contain rubber bullets.
I hit the brakes and cut the wheel a sharp left onto a street that stretches to the horizon, but it’s also blocked by a barricade. No soldiers, though. There are a few cars in the area, parked haphazardly, doors flung wide. I screech to a halt and leap out of the Prius.
I glance back. The blackness has swallowed Chicago, extending inland from Lake Michigan and reaching high enough to block the afternoon sun. The artillery and missiles continue to fire into it. The drones have disappeared, and the gunships dive in and out at regular intervals.
On the other side of the barricade, I search for a car, find a Ford Explorer at the second intersection. The driver door’s open, the thumbprint scanner that controls ignition has been smashed. Wires dangle from beneath the steering column. I click a couple of bare ends together, but I have no clue what I’m doing.
I’m sprinting toward the next abandoned car when I hear the roars. I look over my shoulder. A gout of blue fire erupts from the black haze, chasing a gunship. A Green the size of a semi bursts into the open and corkscrews left in hot pursuit. The helicopter banks up to avoid the flames, only to be incinerated by a second dragon exiting the cloud.
More gunships fall, more dragons emerge. Five, ten, fifteen . . .
They spread out, descend to rooftop level, their carpets of flame unrolling in parallel swaths, igniting everything they touch. At full speed, they will reach me in a matter of minutes.
I reach the car, an older model. Someone has already shattered the driver’s-side window, ripped the visors loose, and trashed the storage compartments. I spend too many seconds looking for keys anyway.
I’m exiting the next useless car when I hear a rumble of rolling thunder. A flock of dragon jets blisters by overhead. A hundred, maybe more.
The Greens roar and move to engage. They send a tidal wave of fire hurtling across the sky. The jets counter with an armada of missiles. The sky splits apart in a thunderous explosion, forcing me to shield my eyes.
When the light settles, eight dragons remain, but they’re retreating north. The jets pursue.
No, I am no dog to cower with tail between legs. The guttural voice is loud and angry inside my head. The largest Green does a sharp backflip, then incinerates two jets and rockets past the others.
You cannot leash Thog! he declares between torrents. He swerves up, down, sideways, crashing through buildings, slicing through trees, on a flaming roller coaster of destruction ever southward. Toward me. Toward Old Man and his family and those two college boys.
Jets chase Thog, but he’s too erratic for their missiles.
Thirty dragons were too much.
But now there is only one.
I run. Back between the concrete slabs of the barricade and into the Prius. I’m making a three-point turn when Grackel enters my head.
Do not do this, Melissa.
“I have to,” I say, gunning it.
You do not even know if they are in danger.
I honk the horn to the rhythm Mom used on her final ride. Thog doesn’t notice. Grackel somehow does.
Do not discredit your mother’s memory with this foolishness, human. She wanted to save you.
“Then she would understand. As should you,” I say aloud, and send her my mental picture of her broken tail.
That was different. I knew I would escape, Grackel says. I am old, you are not. Do not do this. Please.
“Kill emotion, dragon,” I say fondly. “Look after Baby for me.”
Thog weaves in and out of view between two high-rises, then drills through a third, which collapses behind him. He must have lost his rider, which makes him blind in all this blackness.
I resume honking.
Where are you? Thog sweeps his head back and forth in wide arcs, his scythe of fire slicing across three city blocks. Where are you? Talk to me, you treacherous human!
I don’t understand what he means by that second part, but I oblige and orient him to my location.
Thog tightens his wings and accelerates for an attack run. I take the nearest right, honking and providing directions the entire time. He appears in the rearview mirror, a flying freight train of annihilation. His gold-eyed headlights hone in on me; the flames come.
Fiery tongues lick at the car. Sweat soaks me. If I can keep Thog on the straight long enough, the jets can lock in and bring him down. Old Man, his family, those two college boys will be safe.
And I will die. For the first time in forever, I am at peace. I know what I’m doing is right.
Go left! Grackel screams.
Her voice so startles me that I obey on instinct and jerk the wheel that way. But I’m going too fast. As the car flips, I notice a couple of things.
Foremost, another Green in front of me.
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sp; Second, the banshee wail of a nearby missile.
The world becomes a tumbling mess of blacks and Greens as vicious roars thunder all about.
Then it ends.
19
The dream always starts the same way. Lorena and me sitting in the barracks bathroom, Kissing Dragons playing on the thinscreen. Claire’s nearby, her face stuck somewhere between a snarl and a scream. Only her eyes move, from me to the show and back to me.
Gunshots erupt from outside. Dragons roar. I turn to ask Lorena what’s happening, but she’s transformed into a corpse with bullet holes for eyes. A rivulet of alcohol trickles from her lips.
The noise of the battle intensifies. I leave the bathroom to investigate. My feet stick in a layer of liquid, but I can’t see what it is because the thinscreen’s off. Calling out names and numbers that go unanswered, I feel my way to the door.
It opens on its own. Sunlight blinds me. I look back into the barracks.
Daggers of light illuminate a floor coated in a crimson film, broken only by the meandering path of my footprints. My eyes drift up. Every bed appears to be filled. The blankets that cover the bodies begin to creep down to reveal dead faces. They’re all the same.
Allie.
I bolt out the door. The Antarctic snow is warm and soft, like bread a few minutes out of the oven. I look down. Not bread. Flesh. A human abdomen. I attempt to retreat into the barracks, but Georgetown’s disappeared, replaced by an endless field of bodies. I know them all. The man I’m balancing on died in my battle-room attack on Montego Bay. As did the children pressed shoulder to shoulder on either side of him. I saw the adjacent woman in the reconditioning chamber. There’s Sheriff and Old Man. Ahead, I spot Claire and Lorena.
I flee, keeping my eyes locked on the horizon. The sun drains from yellow to black and the sky shades a dark red. My foot lodges in an armpit or a groin and I trip forward. I reach out to break my fall and find myself inches from my mother’s face.
Her eyes open. “Run!”
I do.
I stumble onward, slip again.
This time it’s Dad, his eyes paralyzed, but not his mouth.
“Run!”
I fall again.
Sam. Glaring. “Run!”
Then Allie. Smiling. “Run!”
Colin. “Run!”
And as I push myself up, he turns into Claire.
I run.
I trip again, but this time my hands fall into emptiness. I’m spun around so that I’m facing the sky. The bodies on either side of me link their arms through mine, jam their legs against me. Feet above me curl into my hair and lock my head down. Fingers entwine my toes.
I’m sinking, sinking, sinking . . . becoming one with the dead.
Then I see the light above me, swelling larger and brighter.
Green, the entrance to hell. I blink and it’s gone and there’s only darkness. The smell of pine trees and earth reaches me.
Another blink and James is there, crouched beside me, close enough to touch, if only I could move my arms. But I cannot move, nor can I speak. I can only look at him. And I do, for as long as my eyes will stay open. His black hair’s cut too short and his blue eyes carry that ever-sadness, but it’s him.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he says, a world away. He digs me out from the wreckage, cradles me in his arms, looks at me in a way that makes me want to forget about the pain erupting through me. But it’s too much.
The dream boy drifts from sight.
Awareness returns with a low buzz.
I push through the heaviness and force open my eyes.
Blackness.
That buzz intensifies until it strikes through the numbness and drills into my skull.
Someone’s calling out something.
A number, maybe?
A jet of liquid hits my face. Salty, familiar, but I can’t place it. I get another burst on the other cheek. The jets slap me back and forth. Sensation trickles into my body, and soon I feel it all.
The bandages compressing my ribs.
The cuts stinging my face.
The shackles digging into my wrists overhead, stretching my arms from their shoulders.
And that ringing, so sharply resonant, means a CENSIR, means that hell will have to wait while crueler demons take their flesh.
“Twenty-Five?” The electronically deepened voice, so distant before, now booms from above.
I shudder. “No. No!”
The jets shut off, the ringing subsides.
“What were your plans, Twenty-Five?”
“What happened?” I groan. Even my toes hurt.
My CENSIR jolts me.
“What were your plans, Twenty-Five?”
“I don’t understand.”
The wall in front of me lights up with a panning image of downtown Chicago. What’s left of it. Rescue crews are already picking through the rubble.
How long have I been out?
I search for memories of what happened after the car flipped.
Nothing.
“Why were you in Chicago?” Interrogator asks.
“Did the shelters hold up?” I ask. “Did that man in the red suit make it? He was on Halsted Street near the—”
Another jolt. “Answer the question, Twenty-Five.”
If I lie, the CENSIR will detect it, so I stick to the generic truth. “I was headed back home.”
“You’re telling me your appearance during this attack was a coincidence?”
“Don’t you think I would have been flying a dragon and not driving a car?” I say, which earns me another jolt. “Yes, it was a coincidence.”
A couple more questions to verify my bad luck, then: “You went to see your family in Ann Arbor in search of your brother.”
Not a question.
The throbbing in my ribs intensifies. “Sam tell you that?”
There’s the briefest pause before he says “Yes,” but it’s enough. He’s lying.
For a moment, the pain of everything dulls. Sam didn’t report me.
“Where were you headed?”
“Home,” I say.
I receive a sharper jolt. I bite hard into my lip, choke back a scream.
“Don’t make me ask again. You know what we’re capable of, Twenty-Five.”
Far too well. But I won’t betray my friends. Never again.
My CENSIR shocks me hard enough to rattle the chains overhead. I scream.
“Where is home?” Interrogator asks after I’ve quieted. “If you do not cooperate, we will recondition you.”
I let my tears run.
“Saint Matthew Island,” I mutter, which is as much a home as any.
Silence. Does he detect the half lie?
I’m starting to think he’s no longer there when another picture flashes onto the wall, showing the inside of Kanakanak Hospital, cordoned off with crime-scene tape, the sheriff and his deputy laid out on the floor, necks twisted to dead.
“Was this you?” Interrogator asks.
“I was there. I didn’t kill them.” Another half lie. “Oren and his Greens were after Allie. Twenty-One.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. Oren mentioned something about her being tangled. Something about multichannel telepathy.”
“She can talk to multiple dragons at once?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t?”
“No.”
“Do you know anybody else who can?”
“No. I don’t understand. Why is she so important?”
Interrogator ignores my question, asks me dozens of his own about Oren and his Diocletians, often repeating them in different ways. I provide him Evelyn’s name, a guesstimate of the number of dragons at Oren’s disposal, and basic information that anybody could glean from news reports or Oren’s propaganda vids. Otherwise, my answers are a variation of “I have no idea.”
“How did the insurgents find Georgetown?” Interrogator asks after finishing his Oren line of questioning.
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“There was a tracker in my arm,” I say.
“Was?”
“After we escaped Georgetown, it was removed.”
“What about the others?” he asks.
“Others?”
My CENSIR jolts me. “Loki’s Grunts? Where are they?”
“Most of them are dead,” I say. After a sharper reprimand, I admit another generic truth. “Only Keith and Preston remain.”
“Where are they?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
The jolts sharpen, my screams weaken, my thoughts crumble.
“If you do not tell us the truth, we will hurt someone you love. Think on that, Twenty-Five.”
I’m lowered to a sitting position, shackled wrists laid in my lap. The thinscreen shuts off, and it starts to rain. It’s that same concoction from the jets. Salty and metallic, and this time I recognize it. They used it during my reconditioning. I’m lucid enough now to know it’s not blood—too watery. Not human, at least. Could be dragon.
I let my tongue pull in a few drops to wet my lips and lube my throat, then push away the thirst that twists my insides. I attempt to stand, wanting to get a better sense of my prison, but the chain connected to my shackles is locked rigid and I’m pushed back to the floor. There’s enough play for me to sit or lie down, nothing more.
A minute or so later, the overhead sprinklers shut off. I expect another round of interrogation or the next phase in the torture progression—images of dead Chicago cycled rapid-fire on the thinscreen, or maybe episodes of Kissing Dragons played in an endless loop . . . just don’t let it be that show with Sam.
I wait, but nothing happens. I listen. For footsteps somewhere outside my cell, for voices, for anything at all. Rain drips from my hair in fading intervals, and sometimes I rattle my bound hands just to hear the clink of the connecting chain. But that’s it.
The world’s gone eerily silent, and I am but a ghost in it.
20
The blood rain’s at it again. It seems only minutes ago that the sprinklers shut off, but I’ve thought that before. I keep track anyway. That and my bladder are the only metrics by which I can measure time’s ebb and flow.
Sprinklers: fourteen. Me: six. My best guess is that it’s been four days.
The Other Side Page 12
