by David Estes
Down the hallway, into the stairwell, down the stairs. Second floor. Look back to make sure Laney and Huckle—who’s walking on his own now—are following. First floor lobby. Out the door and onto the street where the air is warmer than it looked from above. Perhaps winter is further away than I thought.
I try not to look at the heap of dead Pyros, but I find I can’t look away from the gruesome spectacle, no matter how hard I try. Are they the target of the air strike? Did someone alert the military that the gang of Pyros had taken over the city, only to have them destroyed by The End before the air strike could happen? Is some kind of a perverted pattern of destruction emerging?
I crane my head back, searching the endless miles of clear blue sky. Empty. Emptier than empty. Not even a wispy cloud or a patrolling bird paints a stroke on the rich blue canvas. Could Trish have gotten it wrong? Or did she hold back part of the message? Death cometh…in three weeks, maybe? Or—and now I’m starting to think like Laney, which scares me quite a lot—is her air-drawing just some weird form of post-traumatic shock syndrome, as meaningless as a firecracker with no fuse? Have I been forcing truth into something false?
“What do you see, Sis?” Laney says, snapping me out of my convoluted thoughts.
I glance down at Trish, who’s still holding my hand. But now her other hand is pointing skyward. Toward the east, I think, the opposite direction to where the sun is beginning to set. I follow the invisible path of her aim, holding my breath…and seeing nothing.
Letting out a deep sigh, my thoughts about whether I’m crazy for following this disturbed mute girl’s random messages return. And then I see it: a dark speck. Could be anything, a bird or a bit of dirt on my glasses or…
No, it’s moving fast. Too fast to be a bird, and dirt on my glasses wouldn’t move.
“Run!” I shout, even as I realize it’s too late—far too late. But we have to try.
I take off down the road, practically ripping Trish’s arm out of her socket, yanking her with me, willing her to move faster than her tiny legs should be able to move. Huckle quickly outdistances me, his long, loping strides awkward and stumbling, but effective enough. Laney passes us, too, because I’m anchored down by Trish, but she stops, looks back, waits for us. She won’t leave her sister behind.
Her eyes widen as she sees something over my head, skyward. Her mouth forms a dark circle and I can see the fear penetrating every part of her expression, a look completely foreign to anything I’ve encountered from her so far.
Even as I gesture for her to keep running, Trish squirms suddenly, wrenching her hand from my grasp. Propelled by momentum alone, I take another two strides before I’m able to stop, turn, and watch her bolt away from me, back down the street, right toward where—I can barely believe what I’m seeing—a freaking missile is blazing across the heavens, right at her, as if she’s the very target of its pent-up destructive forces.
She stops in the middle of the street.
—and the missile screams through the air.
Trish raises her hands over her head, almost preacher-like.
—and Laney screams from somewhere behind me: “Trish!”
She’s so small, so small, and yet there’s something about the way she stands that makes her look so much bigger than she is.
—the missile screaming, Laney screaming, and then…
There’s a scream from somewhere else, so much LOUDER, an earth-shattering keening that forces my hands over my ears, my body to the ground, as if I’m praying or bowing to a king.
“Oh God, not again!” Laney yells from behind me, but it’s muffled through my fingers and I can barely discern it, almost completely drowned out by the pitch of the other scream, which I only now realize is coming from
Trish.
With a bright light, the world explodes.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The earth trembles beneath my feet; rocks and debris rain from the sky like black hail; blinding red/orange/yellow/white light forces my eyes shut; a heavy WHOOOOSH! of air rushes over me, flapping and snapping the loose bits of my clothing.
Seconds—or is it minutes?—pass in that manner: trembling and raining and brightness and wind. Until the world turns black behind my squeezed-shut eyelids.
Flashes of light crackle across my vision, and I realize they’re echoes of color, like when you stare at the sun for too long and then see tiny sun circles even when you close your eyes.
Is this the end? Of us? Of the world? Will everything left be destroyed by rockets and missiles in an attempt to eradicate the witch gangs?
Am I dead?
I can’t seem to open my eyes. I can’t hear anything but a ringing in my ears, like after a rock concert when you’ve stood way too close to the speakers.
A hand touches my face, and I flinch away from it, but it persists, gentle and calm and—opening my eyelids.
I blink a few times, trying to erase the spots of explosive light, and an image becomes clearer. Blond hair, blue eyes, pale freckly skin. And a tiny mouth without a voice. Trish stands before me, looking small again, outlined by a gray/black smoky haze that seems to cover the entirety of a sky that was so recently clear and blue.
Clear and blue. Like her eyes.
“You…you did it?” I say, unsure of what she did and whether it was her or what the hell happened at all.
Trish just looks at me in the way that used to freak me out a little but which now seems so familiar and welcome.
I’m still huddled in a ball, my hands over my ears, my elbows touching in front of my chin. As I try to stand, to stretch out, my muscles ache and I start to stumble.
Someone grabs my elbow and helps me upright. Laney. Her face is serious again, absent of fear. “You okay?” she asks. It’s the most innocent thing I’ve ever heard her say.
“Yeah, I think so,” I say, fighting back the urge to hug her. “You?”
“I’m fine. A little shaken up, but fine. Trish?”
Trish steps forward to her sister, takes her hand tenderly, strokes it once, and then releases her fingers. “I guess that means she’s okay,” I say.
“Guess so,” Laney says, a shadow of a smile forming on her lips. I smile, too, because, well, sometimes just being alive is something to smile about. Laney’s hand is still on my elbow, and we seem to notice it at the same time. A flash of embarrassment crosses her face, but she hides it quickly, removing her hand and patting my arm firmly. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she says stiffly.
My smile vanishes when, over her shoulder, I see a body. “Tillman!” I say, pushing past her toward my friend, who’s sprawled out flat on his back, unmoving, Hex lapping at his chin.
When I reach him his eyes are open and he’s staring, unblinking, at the gray haze swirling above us. “Tillman?” I say again, scanning his body for injuries. “You okay?”
He blinks and finally seems to notice me. “Yeah,” he says. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
~~~
Tillman Huckle won’t go with us, but he did agree to leave town, just in case another missile is sent by whoever is shooting off the missiles.
“Are you sure?” I ask my friend. “You wouldn’t be alone anymore.” I help him load another crate of magical weapons into a white van that he’s managed to rig to run on solar power captured through large purple-black panels on the roof.
“Look, I appreciate the offer, but I’m okay. I’ve got witch hunters to supply, video games to play—”
“Ramen noodles to eat?” I interrupt.
“Exactly. Someone’s got to keep the high-sodium food industry booming.”
I laugh and shake his hand, turning to Laney and Trish, who come up behind us carrying some of Tillman’s food supplies. “We should go. We can’t risk another bombing happening while we’re still here.”
“What’s the risk?” Huckle says. “With that little lady over there”—he points to Trish who just stares at him—“they could send a whole fleet of missiles and she’d just blow them out o
f the sky.”
“She didn’t do—” Laney starts to say, but I cut her off.
“Thanks, Tillman, for everything.”
He waves me off. “You and your friends saved my life, in more ways than one. I have a little thank you gift for you.” He hands me a large cardboard box. “I’m hoping what we’ve just been through is the storm before the calm, but just in case…well, I wanted you to have these. Don’t open it until you’re safely on your way.”
Laney and I exchange a curious glance, but all I say is, “Thanks. Hope we see you around. Take care of yourself.”
“You, too. Don’t be a ranger.”
“Don’t you mean ‘stranger’?” Laney says, but Huckle’s already climbed into the van and slammed the door shut. With a low hum, the van starts, but not before vanishing as if it was never there.
Laney gasps. “Where’d it go?”
But I don’t have to answer her question as a cloud of dust swarms past us, heading south, to where Tillman earlier told us “the action is.”
“Even his van is magged-up,” Laney mutters.
Silently, I wish him luck, which is practically the only thing any of us have left in this world.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Although I know we have to talk about what happened at some point, I’m not ready for it, and I know Laney’s in no hurry, so we stay mostly silent, following Trish’s lead as we make our way north on I-79, beginning the—according to my map—thirty mile trek to Pittsburgh.
Of all of us, Hex is the most vocal, barking at everything: at parked cars; at a pair of dirty old boots that are, remarkably, standing upright in the middle of the highway, like its owner stepped right out of them and kept walking; at a group of sparrows hopping along the median, pecking at the brown grass in search of food.
At one point he barks at me for about ten minutes for no apparent reason. Sometimes I think he’s the smartest dog in the world, and other times, well, I think maybe I should have gone with a magical cat.
Finally, I can’t hold my tongue any longer, so I say, “Who do you think is shooting off the missiles?”
Laney shoots me a look that almost contains missiles, and says, “This isn’t some backend way of starting a conversation about…”—she gestures to her sister—“…is it?”
“No,” I say, shrugging innocently. “I’m just a little concerned that the last two cities we’ve been in have been blown up by someone.”
“A. Only the first one was blown up. Trish saved the second one. Actually, scratch that last part,” she adds hastily. “What happened with my sister isn’t up for discussion, you hear me?”
“What’s B?” I ask, letting it go.
“What?”
“You said ‘A.’ What’s B?”
“Uhh…” She scratches her head, trying to remember. “Oh yeah. B is that we already talked about this. Who in the good old U.S. of A could possibly have missiles? Only the military. So that means the government and army is operating in some form or another. Which is a good thing, right?”
“Not if they’re trying to blow us up,” I say.
“You really think they care about us?” she asks. Hex barks a resounding “No!” Or is it a “Yes!”? “Carter, I know you think you’re this badass witch hunter that everyone wants to get their hands on, but—”
“Those witches said the Necros put a bounty on my head,” I point out.
“True,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean the government wants you, too. Those things can’t possibly be linked.”
“Then why the missiles?” I ask, reverting back to a different form of my original question.
“To kill large groups of witches,” Laney says, which makes sense. “There were a ton of Necros in Waynesburg and a whole gang of Pyros running Washington.”
“The Pyros were already dead,” I say.
“But maybe the government didn’t know that,” Laney says, cocking an eyebrow. “Maybe they got intel a day or two earlier and by the time they launched their missile it was stale. But they don’t really care because they’ll probably kill a few witches either way.”
“Intel from whom?” I ask, churning through the possibilities. Other witch hunters, military spies, poor farmers…
“Who knows, who cares,” Laney says with a shrug. “They might’ve even already known the Pyros were dead. A clean missile strike to clean up the mess.”
“Without regard to potential human survivors?” I say.
“Since when has the military worried much about civilians in a warzone? If the target is a high enough priority, innocents be damned.”
I don’t have a question or an argument in response to that. War is hell, and no one is completely innocent in times like these.
“You know,” I say, “we’ve got to talk about how we’re still alive at some point.” Trish, for once, isn’t staring at us as we talk.
“Yeah, I know,” Laney says, averting her eyes, aiming them straight ahead. “Want me to help carry that box?”
A classic attempt to change the subject. I let it slide. The box is getting heavy, but my arms are far from tired. “In a few miles we can trade,” I say.
“What do you think is in it?” Laney asks.
“Knowing Huckle,” I say, “a whole lot of cool stuff.”
Laney nods in understanding. “Weapons.”
“Magical weapons,” I clarify. “Which is exactly what I’ll need to take on the Reaper and his Necros.”
“Exactly what we’ll need,” she says, kicking a stone down the road. It skips once, takes a big hop, and then clanks off the side of an abandoned Honda.
I look at her but she keeps staring straight ahead, so I don’t make a big deal out of it.
Scuff, scuff, scrape, Hex barks at a scrap of exploded rubber tire, and the sun glows red on the western horizon.
We’ve probably put five miles between us and Washington, Pennsylvania, and we’re all tired, so as we approach an eighteen-wheeled tractor trailer on the highway shoulder, I motion our group to a stop. The broad side of the truck is painted with a logo of a black and white splotched cow. “Hager’s Fine Dairy Products, since 1943,” is stenciled beneath the painted cow. “This will be as good a place to sleep as any,” I say.
I motion for Laney to go around one side with her shotgun, while I head around the other side. Simultaneously, we yank open the doors to the cab, each of us recoiling at the smell that wafts out, permeating our nostrils. Dried brown gore is crusted to the seats, the dash, and the windows. Thankfully, there are no bodies or bones.
Tugging the top of my shirt over my nose and mouth, I say, “Necros,” disgustedly, because who else would’ve taken the dead bodies from the truck? Good Samaritans trying to help a fellow human being? Riiiight. Not these days. A kind soul looking to give someone a proper burial, whisper a few words, maybe light a candle or two? Ha! Funerals are as extinct as the dinosaurs. Survival is the only thing that matters. And death has become so commonplace that it’s like watching a speed limit sign fly by on the highway.
We slam the doors on the odor and head back to the rear. Together, we shove the gate up, letting the force of the push roll it all the way into the roof. A thin beam of dying orange sunlight finds its way into the cargo space.
“Blech. Great idea, fearless leader,” Laney says, pinching her nose. If anything, the stench is even worse back here, thick and heavy with rotten eggs and rancid milk. Happily, Hex immediately jumps up to investigate.
“You have a better idea?” I say.
Laney looks up and down the highway. There’s not another vehicle in sight. “After sleeping in there, the Necros will be able to smell us coming.”
I don’t doubt she’s right, so I don’t respond, just follow Hex, who—tail wagging—has discovered a crate of smashed, rotten eggs, and seems to be soaking up every last odor into his high-powered smell-buds.
I watch as he makes his way toward the front of the compartment, where it gets darker and darker, more hidden from the
minimal outside light provided by dusk. Hex’s body starts to glow, brighter and brighter, until it’s casting a decent circle of light on a relatively blank corner, scattered with empty milk crates. For the most part, the truck’s been scavenged, leaving only the damaged products to fester for the last six months.
Turning back, I help pull Trish into the cargo space and then Laney, who surprisingly accepts my offered hand.
They follow Hex, crunching brittle egg shells under their feet, while I grab the strap and tug the cargo door closed with a rattling crash. When I catch up, Laney has already positioned three upside-down milk crates around Hex, who’s lying in a heap on the floor, the light emanating from his fur transformed in a way I’ve never seen before.
I shake my head and take a seat next to Laney.
“It’s almost like camping,” Laney says, smirking, pretending to warm her hands on the virtual fire that is my dog, red and orange flames licking around his sides and over his ears. I lean forward, and, feeling no heat, run my hand along Hex’s back, through the “flames,” which are almost like projected images.
Maybe you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but sometimes an old dog can teach itself new tricks.
“Shame we don’t have any marshmallows,” I say, retracting my hand and staring into the Hex-fire.
The thought of food makes my stomach growl, and I think Laney’s, too, as the both of us rummage through our packs at the same time. We eat from our measly supplies in silence, lost in our own thoughts. Even Trish eats without painting any invisible messages about death and destruction. Hex snores softly, his fiery chest rising and falling hypnotically.
When we’ve finished our supper, I steel myself for the conversation that I’m one hundred percent positive Laney doesn’t want to have. As if sensing what I’m about to say, Laney slides her crate closer to her sister and puts her arm around her protectively.
