Rocket’s Red Glare

by David Hardy

  “Then I’ll look funny tomorrow, too. Mason sounded like this is important. We can finish it tomorrow evening.”

  Lucine bit her lip, trying to decide: follow this or walk away? Finally she spoke. “Take me with you, Mr. Eddie. I have to understand this.”

  ○●○

  Instead of riding the cab, today Mr. Eddie drove his faded blue Focus. It was old and small, but he proudly kept it in excellent condition, so they didn’t look completely out of place as they drove among the luxurious cars of Hollywood to Mason’s place. The car was clean but cramped. The radio played a sermon. Lucine didn’t catch much of it, but the preacher mentioned the Book of Matthew. Mr. Eddie said “Amen” and “That’s right” and other words of approval.

  The sun was “falling” behind tall buildings as they crossed town. It wasn’t as dark as true twilight, but in some ways it was worse. Your eyes could go from still-bright late sunlight to dark shadows in moments, and you would never see what hid in those shadows until it was upon you. Lucine imagined that every shadow hid a hamal, but then she laughed at herself for being afraid.

  It was a surprise, then, when the true danger came from the bright sky, not from the shadows. A flash caught her eye, and she looked up to see a tiny silver and white shape speeding ahead of them. Then she saw a second, and a third, as they drew up a block away. At the same time Mr. Eddie’s phone rang, but he ignored it as Lucine asked, “What’s that up ahead?”

  Keeping his eyes on the road, he would not see the Dahans in the sky, so he didn’t understand the question. “That’s Mason’s apartment building, but how did you know?”

  “I didn’t—” A loud whistling sound came from ahead, and bricks started falling from Mason’s building. Then with a tremble and a rumble, the front third of the building slid into the street.

  Mr. Eddie swerved. Lucine screamed. Horns honked as vehicles smashed together, a chain reaction that soon engulfed the Focus. When the chain of vehicles finally drew to a halt, Lucine looked up again. The Dahans were gone. Mr. Eddie was shouting at her to get out of the car.

  And then, just as she had feared, Lucine saw a hamal step from the deep shadows far across the road. She had a vision of bloody tile, and she shuddered.

  Lucine tried to open her door, but it was jammed shut by a yellow Aztec. She looked at Mr. Eddie, and he was already out of the car, beckoning her. “Get out! Get out! The rest of the building is falling!”

  Lucine looked ahead: yes, bricks were raining down, a small drizzle now but growing. She looked back: the hamal was gone, but there were shadows everywhere.

  She looked at Eddie; and between them was the shift lever, the steering wheel, and the cramped seat of his tiny Ford Focus.

  Lucine unbelted, rose up, and tried to pull her girth through the car. The gear shift stuck in her side, and yesterday’s pain flared up. She groaned loudly and sat back down. Then she lifted up from her seat, turned, and knelt, her head in the space between the seats. She turned farther, her feet pressed against the door as her head entered the driver area.

  At least this didn’t hurt, but she still couldn’t get through. There was too much of her to fit between the wheel and the seat. She tried to squeeze through, but she got stuck. Pushing with both feet against the door only tightened the trap.

  Then Mr. Eddie reached down to the front of the driver’s seat, and the seat slid back, releasing her. She scrambled forward and he grabbed her arms, pulling her free. She propelled herself from the car, pushing him backward so that he tripped and fell backwards, pulling her down with him.

  And then a chunk of masonry half as big as the Focus fell onto the car, smashing the engine and the front seat, showering glass and metal everywhere. It was too late to run or move, so Lucine buried her face in Mr. Eddie’s chest. He wrapped his arms over her head to protect her from debris, and she heard him praying, though she could not make out the words.

  Finally the rain of debris stopped, and the street quieted, though there were still shouts and screams, honking and car alarms, distant sirens. Lucine looked down. “You saved my life, Mr. Eddie. Thank you!”

  He smiled. “I had to save you, Lucine. You have to finish my haircut.”

  “Oh, you!” She knelt over him, kissed him on the cheek, and stood. Her side and stomach throbbed again, and her back and neck twinged from dozens of bruises where small debris had struck, but she could stand. And so could he: he was on one foot and one knee, and she helped him to his feet.

  Then Lucine remembered. She looked back across the street and behind them. And she saw a large white-furred form drop back into shadows.

  “Run!”

  Mr. Eddie answered, “What?” But she didn’t wait around. Near at hand was a parking garage, and she had already run inside and was sprinting for an exit on the far side. She heard Mr. Eddie running behind her. At least she hoped it was him. She wasn’t waiting to find out.

  She reached the far exit, pushed open the double glass doors, and turned back. Mr. Eddie was behind her, slower but still moving. She saw no sign of the hamal. Of course, she didn’t know how many there might be, nor which shadows they might hide in.

  Mr. Eddie caught up with her, and they plunged out into the street. Outside were five lanes of stalled traffic, with people abandoning vehicles and fleeing the wreckage. Lucine saw that they were all headed south, and she decided that it would be impossible to make progress if they went that way. So she pushed through the crowd, crossed the street, and ran up to a glass wall on the far side: a ground-floor food court of a mall. People inside pressed up against the glass, peering out at the destruction one block over. Some were wide-eyed with shock, while others wept. A hundred cell phones were raised to film the destruction.

  Lucine and Mr. Eddie found the glass entry door, pulled it open, and pushed their way through the crowd. Once inside the mall, they had a clear path. The mall was practically deserted, with everyone having either fled or run to watch the collapse. But they were both too tired and sore to maintain their pace. It took nearly ten minutes for them to exit the mall on the far side.

  As the door slid shut behind them, Lucine fell back against the wall, panting. Mr. Eddie did as well, and he pulled out his cell phone, pushed a button, and listened. Then he frowned. “You need to hear this message.”

  He pushed another button, and this time the message played on the speaker phone. “Edward, this is Mason. Afraid you’re going to have to find yourself another sponsor, buddy. The Dahans have found me. Don’t let them find you, too. Page 23, bud. God be wi – ” The message trailed off into static, and then silence.

  Lucine looked at Mr. Eddie and saw big tears rolling down his cheeks. This is getting to be a habit, she thought as she wrapped him into a big hug, pulled his head down to hers, and held him as his body shook with silent sobs.

  They stood there like that, and for a few minutes Lucine forgot the danger. She was just too tired and sore and emotionally wracked to move. It was Mr. Eddie who finally broke the embrace. “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t let Mason die for nothin’. There’s something important on page 23, and the Lord wants me to see it through.”

  “Page 23?” Lucine asked. He pulled away, reached inside his pocket, and pulled out a folded, stapled stack of printed pages. Lucine saw a cover and a title: Los Angeles Area Groups and Meetings. The pages were bent and curled, but they were still readable. Mr. Eddie turned to page 23, and they both looked it over.

  Lucine pointed to one entry near the bottom third of the page. “Seventh Street Community Center. SSCC.”

  ○●○

  Traffic was gridlocked for miles. Police and fire were everywhere, but also National Guard, FBI, and FEMA. Not to mention numerous sightings of Dahans on their sleds. None were paying attention to Lucine and Mr. Eddie that she could tell, but they still made her nervous.

  With no cabs or buses, it took over an hour for them to walk to Seventh Street, and Lucine was nervously checking behind them the entire way. It was approaching true twi
light, so there were many more shadows, and several times Lucine thought she saw a dark shape merge back into them. Mr. Eddie assured her that she was imagining things, but she couldn’t be convinced.

  And the next moment, she knew she was right. On a deserted street, three Dahan sleds appeared in the sky ahead of them, zipping their way. Then she heard a crashing noise behind them, and she looked back to see a hamal crashing through a stand of trash barrels.

  Mr. Eddie pulled her to the ground and over to the side of the road, where they crouched beside a dumpster. Lucine looked out, expecting to see the hamal headed her way. Instead it ran to a nearby parked car, picked the vehicle up, and hurled it into the air. Lucine watched the car fly up and smash into the nearest Dahan. There was a great shower of sparks as the light shroud shredded and the car knocked the alien from the sled.

  The other two Dahan zoomed closer. The loud whistling sound returned, and two brilliant white lances speared out and struck the pavement, tracing a path to the hamal. Where they struck, the asphalt bubbled and melted.

  Before the beams could catch the hamal, it leaped into the air, somersaulting over the lances. One of the sleds got too close, and the hamal caught the edge, hanging on as the sled flew. Then it swung its legs up, gripped the other end, and flexed. The sled bent, bent further, and then suddenly snapped. The hamal and the now-unshielded Dahan fell to the ground almost in front of the dumpster. Lucine looked away as the hamal picked up the Dahan and dashed it against the side of the dumpster with a wet crunching sound.

  But that had given the third Dahan time to zero in. The lance stabbed forward, and the asphalt in front of Lucine and Mr. Eddie burst in a bubble of hot air, tar, and gravel. Lucine cried out in pain from the burns, but Mr. Eddie cried louder. Lucine looked and saw that a blob of hot tar was burning through the leg of his fine gray pants.

  With only seconds to act, Lucine unbelted Mr. Eddie’s pants – careful not to touch the tar – and pulled them down to his ankles. Then she pulled off his shoes and pants. As she had hoped, most of the tar had come off with the pants. But there was still some stuck to his burned thigh, and she didn’t dare touch it herself. So she used the hard soles of his shoes to scrape the skin clean. She tried not to think what damage she might do to the burned flesh, but it had to be better than letting the burning continue.

  By the time she was done, Lucine smelled the curious scent of burned licorice. She looked up to see that the last Dahan had fallen, though she had missed the event. The third sled was on the ground, nearly split by a fragment of the second. And the hamal, one arm hanging loose and burn marks over its upper body, stood methodically stamping a wet, meaty pile of debris into the ground. Then it did the same to the other two bodies, smearing them out into discolored spots on the pavement. Despite knowing these were aliens, Lucine had expected the spots to be red, instead of the bluish gray that they were.

  Then the hamal turned toward Lucine and Mr. Eddie. Fluid leaked from its mouth, and the red ridges weren’t flapping. It stepped forward, and Lucine couldn’t think of any way to stop it.

  Except one. She stood, took the chip from her pocket, and held it out. “Here... Please...”

  The hamal stopped before her and held out its uninjured arm. The bulb once more distended into a cone – she now saw that it was hollow in the middle – and wrapped it around her fingers. The sensation wasn’t unpleasant, at least not to her. As a child in Armenia she had let the calves lick her with their giant tongues. This feeling was like that: not as wet, but just as soft.

  Lucine let go of the chip and pulled her fingers free. The cone collapsed, swallowing the chip, and then most of the bulb drew up inside the hamal’s arm. When the bulb came back out, it shaped into a flat grip, and two chips were in the grip. Lucine took them. She saw immediately that the second chip was identical in most respects, right down to the SSCC mark, but it was only a three year chip.

  Lucine nodded, handing back the second chip. “I... recognize you.” And she was sure that was true on two levels. The chips were a recognition sign. Her hayr had told her how Armenian rebels had used those when they hid among the populace. But also, she recognized this hamal. It was the one from her shop last night.

  Then faster than she could follow, the hamal picked up Mr. Eddie, lifted the lid of the dumpster, and gently laid him inside. Then it picked her up and dropped her in as well before leaping in with them. As it pulled the lid closed, Lucine saw a white dot fly through the sky, far away but still too close for her.

  Lucine took several breaths to calm herself, and then she used her cell phone to light the interior of the dumpster and assess their situation. Mr. Eddie was breathing fitfully, and she was sure he was in horrible pain from his burns. He couldn’t stay in this unsanitary dumpster for long.

  And the hamal... She didn’t know how to tell a healthy hamal from a sick one, but she was sure it wasn’t healthy. Some blue-gray fluid oozed from its injured arm. The mouth ridges flexed weakly when they flexed at all. And its eyes twitched every few seconds.

  And Lucine? She ached, her legs were on fire, and her breathing came in deep gasps. The saddest part was she was sure she was in the best shape of the three of them. But that didn’t mean she was in good shape. She just wanted to sit in the trash and collapse, but she had to get help for Mr. Eddie.

  The hamal held out its chip to show her the edge: SSCC. Lucine shook her head. They were very close, but still too far. She couldn’t get them all there. The hamal could carry Mr. Eddie, certainly, but then everyone would see the hamal.

  The hamal waved the chip up and down, and Lucine thought: Maybe somebody there can help me. Help us all.

  Lucine shrank at the thought. She didn’t want to go out there again where the Dahans could find her. She didn’t want any of this. She owed so much to Mr. Eddie, and she even felt a debt to the hamal, but her fear was so strong.

  Then she remembered hayr’s stories. Even in the worst of the genocides, some Turks had done the right thing, sheltering their Armenian neighbors. Her grandfather had survived thanks to one such neighbor; and to his dying day he had said, “All Turks are devils, except Dursun. Good man. Hanged for sheltering Armenians.” Hayr also said that if there had been more such good men, she would have had more cousins, more uncles.

  Lucine looked at the hamal and wondered if it were an uncle.

  ○●○

  Lucine crouched at the corner of a building, under a large awning. There were Dahans out there, she had seen the lights, but not many of them. They moved in some sort of search pattern, and she thought she had it timed. She could predict long stretches where there were no sleds overhead. She had planned out three sprints that would get her from one cover to another on the way to the community center. The only question was could she get from cover to cover before the Dahans flew over?

  She calmed her breathing and got ready to run. When the first gap opened, she sprinted out as fast as her legs would move, headed for two sad palm trees that overhung the road. She grabbed the trees to stop herself just as the next Dahan passed over.

  Lucine stood, catching her breath once more. She was still panting when the next gap opened, so she let it pass. She was ready for the gap after that, and she leaped out into the road.

  Suddenly a horn blared, and a car barreled down the street straight at Lucine. She had been so busy watching the skies, she had forgotten about the sparse evening traffic. She dove out of the way, trying to roll clear of the car. The fender clipped her foot, and she tumbled on the pavement, but she managed to escape the car.

  Lucine slowly climbed to her feet. Once again her side and stomach erupted in pain, only now her heel cried out as well. She could put weight on it, but every step was like stomping on an apricot pit.

  Pits or no, though, she had to go! The gap would close soon, and she had to get under the doorway of that shop. So she ran, crying out with every other step. She reached the doorway, but she knew it was too late. At least two Dahans had flown over. If they had loo
ked her way, she was dead.

  Lucine looked down the block at the community center. It looked like a school, or maybe a hospital: a short, squat brick building that covered nearly a quarter of a block. Most of it was dark at this time of night, but the nearest door was lighted and she saw lights and movement inside.

  Lucine had no breath left. She wanted nothing but to wait one or two gaps to catch her breath. But the longer she waited, the more the chance that the Dahans would return. When the next gap opened, she checked for traffic, and then she ran as if a piatek pursued her. She was sure she felt its hot breath on her neck, sure she heard its clacking beak at her shoulders. Her pains seemed to join, one long agony from heels to side to stomach and ultimately to her burning lungs. But she must not let the piatek win!

  Lucine smashed into the glass doors, and they rang from the impact, but of course they opened outward. She pulled them open and ducked in just before two lights appeared.

  A guard came to the inner door, opened it, looked Lucine over, and asked, “Are you in trouble, ma’am? Should I call the police?”

  “No... police... Need... AA...”

  The guard looked sad. “I’m sorry, ma’am. Meetings are Tuesdays at 7. If you need help immediately, you should call your sponsor. Or there’s a women’s shelter three blocks down.”

  Lucine wanted to scream, but she had breath only to wheeze, “AA... Mason...” She looked for another word to convince him, and finally she settled on “Sanctuary.” She pulled out the chip and held it out to him with SSCC facing him.

  As soon as the guard saw the coin, he pulled out his radio. “Maria, we’ve got a woman who needs medical aid here. And I think we’ll need a rescue team, too.”

  ○●○

  Lucine wanted nothing more than to sleep in the warm, soft bed they had provided for her after the doctor had treated her ribs and her heel. But she refused to sleep until she knew that Mr. Eddie and the hamal were safe. As soon as Dr. Maria confirmed that, she fell deeply asleep.