Dying Light

by Kory M. Shrum

He gets her pun immediately. “Exactly.”

  “Anyway.” Rachel turns to me again. “Yes, there are twelve forces. Jesse has one of the most volatile.”

  “Lucky her,” Gideon says with a raised brow.

  “What’s her force?” I pull my knees into my chest.

  “Fire,” she says with a shrug. “Though I don’t think that’s a direct translation.”

  My confusion must show on my face.

  “Humans have given all these things names: Life. Death. Force. Space. Light. Dark. Flesh. Mind. Water. Earth. Air. Fire—but I think these are oversimplifications. Our little monkey brains, as Gideon puts it, can only accept small concepts. I think on a universal scale, these forces are more elaborate. Take my power for example. Force. Is it gravity? Not exactly. Is it kinetic or potential energy? Not exactly. But all of those things are connected to the same “source”—the whatever it is that makes one object move to another place. That’s what I’m channeling—whatever the angel-aliens are calling it.”

  Gideon gives me a patronizing smile. “She really is convinced the angels are ancient aliens.”

  “You don’t know,” she wails.

  Gloria squeezes my shoulder, before crossing the room to inspect some of the guns on the wall.

  Rachel keeps talking. “Jesse is fire. But is it the fire like what we make with a match, or is it like atomic bomb explosions or gamma ray bursts. Or all of it?” She shrugs. “Whatever the thing is that makes the boom. That’s Jesse’s thing.”

  “And Caldwell?” Gloria asks.

  “Space,” she says. “He steps in and out of dimensions, I think. I also think it’s why he was one of the first called. He was probably closer to the angel-aliens.”

  Gideon snorts.

  “I don’t see you with an angel chattering into your ear,” she chides him.

  “Praise be to Allah,” he says. “A conscience is the last thing I need.”

  “Are you a devout Muslim?” I ask, curious. I hope I don’t sound judgmental. Both Gideon and Rachel burst out laughing. Even Gloria cracks a smile.

  “Darling,” Gideon says, with another upward glance. “The only god I serve is myself.”

  “He likes to talk about Allah the way I like to talk about being Mexican.”

  I did wonder about her complexion, the dark eyes and hair, the features of her face.

  “We are a quite removed from our roots,” Gideon says. “The infidels have ruined me.”

  He’s smiling. Another joke. I try to relax.

  The conversation lulls and after a stretch of silence, Rachel says, “Well, now that we’re all acquainted, let’s go get our girl.”

  “Yes,” Gloria says, coming to life as if this were the cue she was waiting for. “We are going to have to attack The Needle.”

  She comes forward and lays her sketchbook on the floor in front of me. The three of them crowd around the drawing.

  In the drawing, Rachel, Gloria, and I are in a boat heading toward The Needle.

  Gideon is nowhere to be seen.

  The waters look choppy, and I’m holding the side of the little boat with white knuckles.

  “Well,” Rachel exhales, a great harrumph from her chest. “This will be fun.”

  Chapter 40

  Jesse

  I’m going to lose my mind. I keep pacing the circular room looking for the door that doesn’t exist. The crazy bastard really did build a needle in the middle of the lake with no entrance or exit.

  The city taunts me. Sunlight reflects in the windows. Cars drive along the beach, a knot of people trying to get somewhere, completely unaware that Caldwell intends to kill them all.

  I collapse on the sofa and my eyes take in the ceiling above. At some point, I begin to slip out of consciousness.

  Gabriel appears, standing over me.

  “Oh here we go,” I say. “Initiate another lucid dream sequence. Any chance that I’ll get some real sleep one of these days?”

  He makes no reply. Instead, he reaches down and pulls me into his arms, holding me against his chest. His wings extend and my stomach jolts at the feeling of being propelled up into space.

  I seriously doubt he is actually flying or we are actually going anywhere. I get that my body is still on the sofa, asleep, even while he carries me up and away.

  We land and we are at the beach house again.

  I slip out of his arms and my feet sink in the sand.

  “So what’s for dinner tonight?” I ask. “Ally making spaghetti again?”

  “We made progress. Let’s try again.”

  I go into the beach house with the understanding that something must be different. I push open the front door, and immediately I know the vision has really changed.

  A plastic tricycle and a floor full of colorful toys assaults me. A horrible whistling-whining comes from the corner, and I realize the racket is from a kid slamming a plastic, squeaky hammer down over and over onto a set of piano keys. The piano lights up and plays a tune with every whack.

  “Uh, no,” I say. “I think you’re moving in the wrong direction.”

  When the hell did I give him the impression that I should have children?

  Ally comes out of the room, wearing the same off the shoulder sweater as before and scoops the kid up.

  “Are you making music?” she coos. “Are you my little musician?”

  She falls onto the sofa and bounces the toddler in her lap. It laughs and laughs, and when she turns it over to blow raspberries on its belly, it squeals more.

  “Jess?” Ally calls.

  “Right here.” How could she not see me standing in the middle of the room? It’s true that I’ve gone stark still. I get that way around kids, sort of viewing them like dinosaurs. Maybe if I’m still enough, they can’t sense me.

  “Jess, can you come here a minute?”

  “She cannot see you,” Gabriel says.

  “Why?” I ask. “I thought this was supposed to be my fantasy.”

  “This is one of many possibilities.”

  An older kid, maybe seven or eight, comes down the stairs two at a time. Jumping off the last step and landing on her hands and knees on the floor.

  “Careful,” Ally calls out, annoyed. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

  “I did three this time.” She brushes off her knees proudly. “Last time I could only jump off two.”

  “Did you do your homework?” Ally asks the girl.

  “Most of it,” she says looking away.

  “Jess,” Ally says with a threatening tone. “We talked about this.”

  “Math is stupid,” she says.

  “Math is stupid,” I grumble. “She’s never going to use it.”

  “Bring it down here and I’ll help you,” Ally says.

  “Mom—”

  Whatever Jesse was going to say doesn’t surface. With one look from Ally, the girl harrumphs and marches back up the stairs.

  I shiver as someone walks right through me.

  Nikki.

  “Gee-zus,” I say, shaking it off. “Watch where you’re walking, Sasquatch.”

  She bends down and gives Ally a kiss. Then she takes the toddler and twirls it around. “How’s my baby?”

  “Your baby?” I whirl on Gabriel. “Ally had babies with Sasquatch?”

  Ally sighs. “Natalie has been fed and changed, but Jesse—”

  “Let me guess. Math?”

  Ally gives a sweet smile.

  “I’m on it,” Nikki says, and after planting another kiss on Ally’s lips, this one a little longer, Sasquatch starts to march upstairs with the toddler in tow.

  Ally isn’t quick to get up. She lies on the couch, clearly exhausted. Then she pulls herself up and starts gathering up the strewn toys and dumping them into the box in the corner.

  She comes upon a collection of action figures, pirates, clearly too old for the toddler and smiles.

  “She’s just like you, Jess,” she says. “What am I going to do with her?”

&nbs
p; She looks right at me.

  “I thought you said she can’t see me?”

  “She can’t,” Gabriel assures me.

  Ally’s gaze goes soft and she returns to dumping the toys into the box.

  The house begins to fade, and I find myself on the beach with Gabriel. The house behind us in the distance.

  “What the hell, man?” My temper flares, crashing against me like the waves. I jab a finger at the house. “What was that supposed to be?”

  “Your choice,” he says with all the calmness that I hate about him. “One of your choices.”

  “Uh, I liked the one with just us actually,” I say, crossing my arms. “If you’re needing me to verbally agree to something here.”

  “You desire her happiness. She desires children and a full life. You can give her that world.”

  “But that world is a world without me,” I say. “Can you see me with kids? They’d be scarred for life.”

  “You can give her the world she wants. It is in your power.”

  “Are you asking me to be selfless?” I say, stunned.

  “It is only my duty to show you all of your worlds. I cannot choose for you. It will be your choice.”

  “Thanks, Oprah.”

  Something rumbles in the distance. The sand beneath my feet shifts.

  “What was that?”

  Another rumbling roar and the sand shifts more. The sky darkens above us like a storm is rolling in.

  Gabriel scoops me up. “I must take you back.”

  I blink my eyes open, the ceiling above coming into view. The Needle comes into focus around me, the feel of the couch solidifying beneath me.

  “You’re missing it,” Maisie says.

  I sit up and see Maisie at the big window—the side of The Needle that faces the city.

  Black smoke is billowing into the sky.

  “Shit.” I jump off the sofa and go to the window. “What’s happening?”

  “Dad,” she says. “It’s started.”

  “He’s blowing up the city?”

  I don’t need her to answer. Another explosion goes off and the vibration of the blast can be felt even here in The Needle. The glass windows tremble under my palm and the floor vibrates under my feet.

  Ally. I see all the different Ally’s out there. Ally in the beach house with me. Ally with kids. None of them will exist if she’s blown up. Please be safe. At least I know Jeremiah wasn’t lying about Caldwell’s threat to the city, some ploy to get us to come to Chicago.

  “Why is he doing this?” I ask Maisie. Beside me, her face is a mixture of regret, sadness, and resignation—way too serious a face for a kid of sixteen.

  “Because everyone is here,” she says.

  “Everyone who?” I demand. Because she can’t mean everyone, everyone. The whole world is not in Chicago.

  “Everyone is here that needs to be.”

  Chapter 41

  Ally

  I’m not so sure about this.

  The boat isn’t much of a boat. More like a paddleboat, or even a little dinghy—but certainly no yacht, no ocean liner, which is what I feel like we would have to have in order to approach The Needle. From here I see no doors, only windows that circle the exterior of The Needle’s head.

  “What are we going to do?” I yell over the roar of the motor and the waves. The fierce wind rolling off of Lake Michigan tears at our coats and clothes as if trying to rip us from the metal cradle we’re hunkered down in. I have both hands on top of my head, trying to hold my hair into place. “We can’t shimmy up the side.”

  “Don’t worry so much. I have a plan,” Rachel says, from her place at the front of the boat. What is that called, the stern? The bow? I don’t know boats. Gloria sits in the back, controlling the motor.

  Rachel turns around and grins at me. “Think of it this way. If we don’t die, hooray. If we do die, nothing matters. We’re dead.”

  This isn’t exactly how I would like to look at the world, but I force a smile. She is making the effort to rally my spirits. I can at least acknowledge and appreciate that, even if I might be pitched out of this boat and into the icy water at any moment.

  I feel useless sandwiched between Rachel and Gloria, shivering. My coat isn’t much protection on the mainland and, on the water, it’s even less useful. It flaps around me wildly, and I clutch the fabric to my chest. My hair whips around my head too, sometimes falling into my face and blotting out the lake altogether, despite my efforts to hold it down.

  The sound of a helicopter roars overhead. A nondescript black wasp with a propeller whizzes by, momentarily making the horrible wind worse.

  “There’s my boy,” Rachel says, looking back at me and Gloria with a huge grin on her face. “He’s good, right?”

  I can’t smile or speak because of my chattering teeth.

  I peer over the edge of the boat at the gray water sloshing against the sides. I feel sick.

  “Okay, are we ready?” Rachel asks, holding her hand up to the helicopter.

  “Ready for what?” I ask.

  Her hand comes down and for a heartbeat, nothing happens. Then, what I am pretty sure is a missile, shoots out of the front of the helicopter and explodes into the side of The Needle.

  “That,” Rachel says, laughing wildly as if she is having the time of her life.

  She really is crazy. The realization that I’m in a tiny boat on a huge turbulent lake with an escaped mental patient hits me all the harder. Fear, real fear, rakes across my skin. I scoot back so far I bump into Gloria’s knees.

  “Just keep breathing.” Gloria cuts her eyes from Rachel to me. “It’s all you can do.”

  “It’s all I can do,” I repeat, as another rocket slams into the side of The Needle, exploding on impact.

  “Surely to god someone is going to notice this. What will we do when the authorities show up?”

  “They will have their hands full,” Gloria says.

  “Get me a little closer.” Rachel shouts over all the noise, pinning her own wild hair back away from her face. “Not so close that the debris falls on our heads though.”

  Gloria angles the boat a bit, veering off to the side of The Needle. A particularly horrible wave slaps the side of the boat, spilling over the side and soaking my leg. I gasp, sucking in icy air.

  “It’ll dry,” Rachel says, after surveying my distress.

  “Firing rockets at The Needle can’t be the best plan, can it?” I ask. I hope I sound curious, diplomatic even, anything but miserably cold and terrified out of my mind.

  “Jesse’s got her shield and she can heal now, right?” Rachel asks. “She’ll survive this. Our real concern is if Caldwell realizes what we’re doing and comes running. We don’t want that.”

  Jesse will survive this, I repeat. God, I hope so.

  “What the hell did he make this building out of?” Rachel whines. “Steel?”

  A third rocket slams into the small hole created by the second rocket and part of the glass is blown away, revealing the inside of The Needle. I stare into the jagged black mouth and wait.

  Chapter 42

  Jesse

  Black smoke billows up into the sky above the skyscrapers. Another explosion goes off somewhere to the north—the Magnificent Mile maybe—and all I can do is picture all the stylish mannequins in storefront windows burning, their two hundred dollar scarves going up in flames.

  Another explosion sounds and The Needle shakes. The plates in the cupboards of the little kitchen nook rattle and Winston howls the way he does at home if the UPS guy comes or it’s trash day.

  Maisie and I lock eyes.

  “That sounded—” I begin.

  “—like it was right on top of us,” finishes Maisie.

  “Caldwell wouldn’t bomb The Needle, right?” I know I sound freaked out, even to me. “I mean, he put us here so we’d be out of the way. An I’ll-deal-with-you-later kind of thing?”

  This time I hear the whistle, followed by another explosion that rocks
The Needle. A funnel of black smoke erupts from the other side of the room, the side facing the lake, not the city. I rush over to the other windows and see a giant helicopter hovering about two hundred feet away. I can’t see who is driving it, but it’s clear that it’s packing and pointed at us.

  “What the hell?” I ask.

  “It must be one of the bad guys,” Maisie squeals. “Winston!”

  Winston comes running and she scoops him up into her arms. Then she looks at me. “What should we do?” she asks. “You’ve got the super powers.”

  “I can only shield myself or the people I’ve replaced,” I tell her. “But maybe if I hug you hard enough I can get it to be big enough to cover all three of us.”

  Maisie’s eyes are big and wet.

  “Ah, don’t cry,” I tell her and I sound a little mean about it. I swallow and try to make my voice soft, the way Ally would do it.

  “If one of those partis fuckers came to kill me, they won’t be trying to get you,” I tell her. “They’ll be focused on me, okay? Just hold on to Winston and stay out of the way, and you should be okay.”

  She nods vigorously, her cheeks red.

  A plume of smoke shoots out of the back of a third rocket and I yank Maisie away from the window before I hear the whistling whine of its release. I grab hold of Maisie and erect my shield. This time as the rocket hits, glass sprays into the room, raining down on us. But I do a decent job of protecting us from the blast.

  If I grab on to her before I raise the shield, the shield covers her rather than repels her. Good to know.

  A whirlwind of icy cold air bursts into the room through an 8-foot hole where the rocket blasted out the glass.

  “Get your coat.” I don’t know why the hell that is the first thing I think of. But Maisie doesn’t question me. She runs off in the direction of her bedroom, still clutching the fat pug to her chest, her blonde hair streaming out behind her.

  I go to the hole and look out over the water. I don’t see anything but the copter at first. And it occurs to me that by standing in the hole, I might be making myself a target.

  Then I hear a noise, like a giant bee buzzing. It’s almost inaudible over the sound of the wind and waves.