by S. S. Segran
Rage ignited within Tegan, setting her veins on fire. With a bellow, she seized the creature’s muscular neck in both hands, digging her fingers deep. It choked as her thumbs pushed into its trachea. Unsheathing its claws, it plunged them into her shoulders. She cried out as the nails pierced through her clothes and into her flesh. Someone screamed her name but she could barely hear it through the rush of blood in her ears. Adrenaline narrowed her vision to the demon above her as saliva spilled down its exposed fangs and onto her face.
For a split second, their eyes met. The beast’s pupils were blown wide, leaving a thin ring of deep blue on the outside. Its tongue snaked from between its incisors, as if eager to taste her.
Then its pupils constricted and its saliva ran red.
Tegan blinked, her vision expanding back to normal. Just under her hands clenched around the creature’s throat was Kody’s staff. Its deadly metal tip had entered through one side and punched out the other. Dark crimson dripped down. The fiend was still alive, struggling to free itself. The blade was yanked out before being driven back into the neck at an upward angle. The beast gurgled on its blood, expression frozen for eternity. Then the corpse was shoved off and Kody was kneeling over Tegan, face contorted. He was yelling but she looked up at him helplessly, tapping one ear to indicate she couldn’t hear.
He helped her up and pointed toward the SUV. Her knees nearly buckled. The car was completely wrecked, its windows shattered. Four beasts with gore-soaked muzzles weaved over and around it, the elderly occupants inside mangled and motionless. A fifth had Victor pinned to the ground and had nearly got him in its jaws. Before it snapped them completely shut, the Sentry sent it hurtling through a glass storefront with a crash. He scrambled to his feet and took off at a staggering run, barking at the teenagers to follow him.
Tegan did as she was told, dazed. As they retreated from the ghastly scene, her hearing returned. Deverell was screaming from the other end of the quay. “There’s more of them! They’re coming ’round the other side!”
The trio made it back to the truck. Kody and Deverell helped Tegan up as her injured shoulders sent a searing pain through her arms. She knew she’d feel it tenfold once the adrenaline wore off completely.
The truck’s tires screeched as Victor floored the gas. Passing the islets, Tegan caught sight of the back end of half a dozen more creatures rounding the establishment where the wrecked SUV was. Beside her, Kody was gaunt. “We couldn’t reach the couple before the others came, and they just . . .”
Tegan shook her head and turned away.
As they left the blood-soaked city behind, the aurora illuminated innumerable silhouettes approaching from the sky. Tegan could just make out long tails and strange wings. Whatever the swarm was, it covered the width of Lake Geneva to the left before swooping low through the buildings. Tegan watched it emptily.
And, finally, her tears fell.
Hutar strolled by the riverbank, observing the snow-covered village around him with a flicker of resentment, trailed closely by barbed melancholy. How different his home was now . . .
He could hear the footsteps of the guards behind him, a few paces away. Perhaps he was a prisoner, but at least there weren’t as many eyes on him as before. He hadn’t even been able to relieve himself without at least three armed villagers watching him.
His mind drifted off, recalling the last time he’d been face to face with Nal. The accusatory tone, the hurt in her eyes—he’d braced himself against it but the sting had wedged its way between the cracks in his wall. That was the problem with developing attachments. Eventually people let you down, or you let them down and they leave you.
To be fair, he’d chased her away; it was for her own good. But again, that had happened out of his regard for her. Though he’d never admit it out loud, he liked the way she stubbornly tried to work past his armor, how she’d sniff out a piece of him that hadn’t been burned by the trials of his life or his own darkness and would draw that thread into the open. For some forsaken reason, she refused to give up on him.
He wasn’t blind. He knew how she felt about him. The slight blush on her cheeks, the way her eyes sometimes wandered over him before she caught herself. But there had to be more to her refusal to give up on him.
Maybe she was just that good a person.
He snorted. No one is that unselfish. Everyone wants something. Everyone.
His ears twitched at the sound of crunching snow. He looked up at another youth approaching. As the young man drew closer, gaze glued to his feet as though in thought, Hutar bit back a disgruntled sigh. This was the last person he wanted to see.
The youth stopped in front of him, raising his head to meet his eyes in a glower. Hutar’s brows rose to his hairline and he smirked. “I see, Akol. A new tactic has been employed.”
The other youth stole a glance at the guards, then responded in a low voice. “You are about to be exposed. Ashack is on to you. But he has yet to mention anything to the other Elders because he still cannot prove what you have done with full certainty, despite Nal all but admitting it. It is only a matter of time, so I will handle this.”
“How do you plan to do that?”
“I have an idea. However, your informant is also a risk that needs to be dealt with.”
A fire flared deep in Hutar’s chest. “Do not lay a finger on her.”
“Resist the urge to become a liability yourself, Hutar.”
“Just . . . leave it to me. Am I clear?”
“As you wish. But if you prove to be compromised—”
Hutar bristled. “I am far from compromised. Say that again and you will choke on your own blood. What about Magèo?”
The other youth’s gaze flicked over Hutar’s shoulder to the guards now just a few paces behind him. “Do not concern yourself with that. When the time comes, you will know.”
The guards greeted their friend, who smiled in turn and continued his way down to the other side of the valley. Hutar stood still, thoughts whirling.
The time is fast approaching. Do not waver, not for anything or anyone. And especially not for her.
Marshall sat cross-legged on a wooden crate, one of many that lined the inside walls of the old DC-3, or Dak, as it was affectionately known. The light from Dr. Bertram’s laptop spilled onto his face as he scrolled through document after document. There was no way he’d be able to memorize every bit of content, but even something was better than nothing. At least he’d learned what the new beasts were called—Scourgers.
Fitting, considering the damage they’ve done, he thought.
Victor had reached out a few hours prior to inform him that EMPs had gone off, stripping the planet of most of its electricity and chip-based technology, and that frightful creatures had been unleashed.
That explained the faint burst of light he and Nadia had seen from the cockpit as they flew over the Java Sea. Marshall’s stomach had dropped when he realized how fortunate they were to be in a plane than did not rely on electronics for basic flight functions. Otherwise, it would have been all too likely that they’d have taken a dive into the waters below.
Upon receiving Victor’s news, the Sentries had sat in stunned silence, struggling to make sense of everything. Without a word, Marshall had removed his headset, relocated to the middle of the cargo hold, and opened the laptop, which Phoenix appeared to have shielded from EMP blasts.
Ever since, he’d been trying to focus on the files inside, but his mind would wander—to the fate of the world, to Reyor, to Dema-Ki, and to the friends at the crux of the prophecy.
Always the friends.
He closed his eyes, recentering his thoughts. Before he opened them again, Nadia’s presence brushed against his mind. He opened up and she called for him telepathically; it was the only way she could be heard over the sound of the plane’s two radial piston engines. He tucked the laptop into another crate and joined her in the cockpit, strapping himself in. The morning sun streamed in through the magnificently wide winds
hield that offered an ample view around them, as well as above the plane and below it.
Nadia nodded at the thin, mist-like clouds as they parted, revealing approaching land. Singapore.
Marshall shifted to the side, looking down at the city-state below him. At this time of the day there should have been speeding lines of cars on every road. But the island was lifeless.
I’m looking at it, he murmured, but I’m still not processing it.
It’s a new world now, she said.
Marshall slipped on his headset. “Have you called the radio tower?” he asked into the mic.
“I tried, no response. It was worth a shot. I tried the nearby air force base too.”
“Are we gonna land anyway?”
“We should. We really need to refuel.” Nadia’s forehead pinched and she leaned forward. “What . . .”
Marshall tracked her gaze toward a dark splotch in the sky. A massive, shapeless form drifted a couple of hundred feet below them, to the east. “What is that?”
Nadia took the plane lower. “It’s enormous. Maybe a quarter mile across? Some kind of a swarm but definitely not birds.”
Marshall pulled out a pair of well-used binoculars from the side pocket of his seat and held them up to his eyes. As he did, the tail end of the form split off and climbed into a tight turn toward the aircraft. He took a closer look at one of the separated silhouettes, and his throat dried.
A nightmare creature with skin of raw umber filled his vision—three feet in length with forelimbs adapted as wings covered in red veins, and a bulbous insectile head. Its sickle-shaped jaws opened sideways to reveal a single row of saw-like teeth between the extended slit of its forked tongue. Its long, muscular tail swirled around, working independently of the body, a glossy stinger at the tip.
“Camazotz!” Marshall shouted.
Nadia immediately banked westward toward the Straits of Malacca. One of the creatures smashed into Marshall’s side of the plane, denting the aluminum skin. Another slammed against the windshield, its gruesome features on full display. Nadia screamed, launching into a verbal barrage, presumably cursing it in Indonesian with every word under the sun.
“Get off my girl!” she raged in English at the end of her tirade. “Get off!”
The strength of the wind forced the creature to slide off the plexiglass. Nadia guided the plane forward at full throttle, and Marshall gaped after the monstrosities as they fell back to rejoin their group. When he finally picked up his jaw, he croaked, “Guess we can’t land here.”
“Back to Malaysia, then,” Nadia decided through rough breaths. “We only have one hour of fuel left. That is cutting it too close.” She paused, then pushed her headset from her right ear. “Uh, Marshall? The queen.”
Marshall removed his own headset. Sure enough, a constant, ululating shriek came from the back of the plane, piercing enough to be heard over the engines. The farther they flew from the monstrosities, the less agitated she seemed to become, until she fell quiet again.
The gears in Marshall’s head spun and flashes of the documents he’d read appeared in his mind. He leaned back in his seat for a moment, then put his headset on once more. “I think,” he said slowly, “that she knew when those things were close. And if she’s called the queen, then it means . . .”
“Is she the one controlling them?” Nadia sounded simultaneously befuddled and repulsed.
“Possibly. Which would make her incredibly important to Phoenix.”
“Do you think she has a tracking device on her?”
“If Reyor’s people manage to find us, that’ll answer the question.”
Nadia, somber, checked the small analog clock on the panel between them. “Then let’s refuel as fast as we can. Where did Lei say to meet her? Hanoi?”
“Ho Chi Minh City.”
“And she’s sure her contact can figure out what the queen is?”
“We’re running on hope at this point. She’s dealing with the Scourgers that were released in China so we didn’t have much time for a proper conversation. Bertram’s laptop is a goldmine of information, though, so that could be her contact’s starting point. There’s a lot to wade through. I searched for ‘queen’ in the documents but not a single hit turned up.”
“Maybe that’s a nickname they give her in the lab. They would probably use her binomen in the documents.” Nadia glanced back into the cargo hold. “Why didn’t those things stick around to attack us more?”
“We might have just been an unintended target of opportunity,” Marshall said. “It looked like they had a set destination to get to as a group.”
“Did you find anything more in the laptop?”
“Yeah, but it was a little hard to untangle without knowing much about their operations. And a lot of the jargon went over my head. Hopefully Lei’s biologist friend can decipher it.”
They traveled for another hour, keeping a close eye on the clock and the fuel gauge. By the time they approached Kuala Lumpur, it was 8:30 am and the plane was running on fumes. Nadia had called in to Kuala Lumpur International Airport, but it was unresponsive. Her full lips puckered. “No one there. Let’s try for Subang.”
She dropped their altitude until they were no more than three thousand feet above the ground. As they passed over the airport terminal, a scene of grisly carnage came into view. Mutilated bodies littered the compound and large patches of the tarmac glistened with blood. Baggage trucks and a few armored vehicles lay overturned. Fires twisted toward the sky and the wind blew black smoke with it. Military personnel battled merciless, sinewy beasts; their weapons hardly did any damage.
“Oh, my God,” Nadia murmured.
Marshall watched the scene fade into the distance as they flew on. They really are out in full daylight for the world to see, he thought, ice curdling his veins. Reyor, what have you done?
It didn’t take long for them to reach Subang airport. The situation below looked just as bad as at KLIA. “This is not good,” Nadia said. “If we don’t land soon . . .” Her jaw worked from side to side. “There’s an old military airbase somewhere here. It was meant to be converted into commercial development, but I think it fell through.”
“We’re running out of options,” Marshall said. “Let’s do it.”
They approached the metropolis of Kuala Lumpur, with the Petronas Twin Towers directly ahead of them soaring to almost fifteen hundred feet. The glass-and-steel skyscrapers glinted with the morning sun reflecting off the two-hundred-foot-long double-decker skybridge connecting them. The bridge was held up by an inverted “V”-shaped arch anchored to the buildings.
The city, always a hub of energy and movement, lay as dead as the people in its streets. Cars clogged the roads, some with doors ripped clear off, others on their sides with the last remnants of smoke floating out.
Marshall heard a muffled sound through his headset. Startled, he looked at Nadia. Her dusky skin was flushed red, her eyes overflowed with grief, chest shaking with sobs she tried to suppress. Seeming to sense his attention on her, she turned her face away from him.
They passed the towers, banking to make a quasi-loop eastward, and roared over an urban park mere steps from the iconic structures. More bodies littered the ground—men, women, children. Corpses floated in a large manmade lake that had turned almost completely red. Marshall leaned his head in a hand, barely able to breathe.
Something brushed against him. Looking down, he saw Nadia’s trembling fingers skimming over his forearm, searching for something to hold on to. He took her hand, feeling how cold she was. Bringing the back of her hand up, he pressed his forehead against her knuckles, not moving until they’d left the city behind them.
When they both felt a little less broken, they let go of each other. Moments later, an old airbase slightly to the west of them appeared, fast approaching. Marshall pulled out the binoculars again. “Less body count here, but no less gruesome. Looks like the Scourgers finished their work here and moved on.”
“Good.
We’re practically flying on nothing now.”
Nadia brought the plane in for a clean landing, taxiing close to a gravity drop fuel tank. The Sentries disembarked but before they could get more than a few paces, a voice thundered from the row of hardened hangars on their right. A man in military fatigues limped out from the shadow of one of the structures, pistol aimed directly at them.
“Whoa, whoa.” Marshall put his hands out placatingly.
Nadia did the same and called out in Malay. The man yelled back, and they conversed until he holstered his weapon. Under her breath, she said, “That’s Colonel Razif. He says he’s the last man alive here and he will help us refuel. He can speak English, too, if you’d like to talk to him.”
“Thank you, Colonel,” Marshall said, dipping his head as the man approached. “We’re trying to get to Vietnam as soon as possible.”
Razif eyed the new WHO logo emblazoned on the DC-3’s fuselage, taking in the gold wings of the three human figures stamped over the United Nations symbol. “I will help how I can.”
“Could you connect a couple of hoses from the fuel tank to the plane?” Nadia asked. “We can save time that way.”
As the colonel headed off, Marshall called out, “Do you have any firearms you’re willing to part with?”
Razif pointed him toward one of the hangars. Marshall made a beeline for it, taking in the stacked rows of weapons inside that seemed to have been hastily laid out. The soldiers must’ve tried to put up a good fight before they were taken down, he thought, grabbing a sizeable canvas bag and gathering everything he could, from sidearms to a rifle, and even a rocket-propelled-grenade launcher with a couple of warheads.
As he hauled it out, he found Nadia on the right wing of the DC-3, attaching one of the hoses that trailed across the apron from the fuel tank. The other hose was already connected to the left wing. Noticing his bloated bag, she planted her hands on her hips. “Why?” she yelled.
