Drake snorted to keep from laughing. “We’re looking for other survivors. Are you by yourself?”
“Nah. You guys alone?”
Drake nodded.
“Follow me.” The bat flapped his wings, pulling ahead of Drake and Preston.
“Where are we going?” Preston asked.
“You’ll see. Don’t worry, it’s safe. We don’t scout more than two at a time.”
Drake didn’t know what that meant, but he waited until they stopped for water to ask for clarification. “What did you mean by ‘scout’?”
“We take turns flying around, case there’s anyone looking, like you guys. There’s another group, seems they want to take charge of things. We just want to live.” The bat made eye contact with Drake. “You’re the first dragon.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, but that don’t mean anything. Other survivors arrive every day.”
“Arrive where?”
The bat took off and tilted his head. “It ain’t too much farther.”
After what felt like half a day, the bat descended near a housing development, which sat to the east of Vegas’s iconic casinos. The suburb must have been newer: only a few scant trees grew in tiny front yards.
An engine roared from below, and a souped-up Camaro blasted down the street. A guy hollered out the passenger window.
The bat huffed. “Damn skids found another one. Thought they’d run ‘em all outta gas by now.”
“How many have they driven?” Drake had entertained the idea of driving cars he found in the city, especially the muscle cars, but he quit when the second car he peered into contained a body. Not wanting to stumble on any more of those, he decided he’d only take a car if he needed one, which didn’t happen before he started shifting. Driving seemed dull by comparison.
“As many as they get their hands on.” The bat landed in a back yard. Drake and Preston followed his example.
The bat laughed. “Look, I’m happy we’re so comfortable here, but I like to know people a little before I end up naked in front of ‘em.” He tilted his head. “Find an empty yard.”
“Oh, right.” Thankful his dragon form would hide his embarrassment, Drake flew to the adjacent yard. Preston laughed behind him, apparently still talking to the bat and not in a hurry to become human again. The roaring motor and hollering teenagers down the street echoed through the neighborhood.
After he dressed, Drake found Preston on the street near a cul-de-sac where other young people gathered. A boy about Drake’s age with blond curls, a Captain America shirt, and torn jeans ran up beside them and held out a hand. “I’m Sonar,” he said in the bat’s voice.
Drake shook his hand. “Your name is Sonar?”
“Not originally. We changed our names to match our animals. I’m a bat, so…” He shrugged.
Drake laughed.
“What’s your name?”
“Drake.”
Sonar raised his eyebrows. “And you’re a dragon? That’s kinda perfect, huh?” He patted Drake on the shoulder and walked to Preston.
Another engine roar sounded, this time closer. The guy hanging out the passenger window yelled, “Hey, look! Noobs! Come on over.”
Drake glanced at the people in the cul-de-sac, then to the car.
Sonar put a hand on his shoulder. “Nah, don’t do that. Those guys drink and act like idiots all day. Scopes wants to kick ‘em out.”
“Scopes?”
He pointed to a front yard where a tall girl with short, blonde hair appeared to be giving instructions to a group of younger teens. She was older, probably Preston’s age.
“She’s in charge? Why does anyone need to be in charge?”
“She lived here first and found most of us. Remember what I said about that other group? The alternative is to be alone or join them, and from what I hear, they ain’t too nice.”
Drake scowled at Sonar. “From what you hear? You don’t know for sure?”
“Some of us know for sure. Let’s go. I’ll show you around.”
“Ah, come on, man,” the car guy yelled. The driver revved the engine and squealed the tires as he performed a one-eighty. He took off down the street.
Ignoring the car, Sonar led them into the cul-de-sac. A tall guy with dark brown skin cooked at a large grill set on the sidewalk, and a girl with tan skin and long, black hair sat in the yard behind him, drawing in a large pad of paper. A variety of mismatched patio furniture filled the middle of the paved circle, where a few other teens sat and talked to each other. About a dozen dogs and a few cats roamed the area.
With the late afternoon sun brightening everything, the place reminded Drake of block parties he’d gone to as a kid. If he stretched his imagination far enough, he could pretend there was never a virus, and these people were neighbors gathering for a friendly barbecue. All they needed was music.
As Sonar and Preston mingled, Drake wandered to the girl sitting on the grass. She glanced at Drake and grinned.
Drake ran a hand over his hair and tightened his ponytail as he walked around her to see the paper. “I like your drawing. Is it him?” He pointed to the guy at the grill.
She twisted around and nodded. “Do you want to sit down?”
He plopped next to her, unsure if his eagerness came from honest attraction or from not having spoken to a girl in months.
“You just arrived,” she said while completing a line of the boy’s back.
“A few minutes ago.” Drake chuckled. “You’re the first girl I’ve seen for a while. I hope you don’t mind a little company.”
She laughed and gazed at him with her copper-colored eyes, startling him a little. “I’m Talon.”
“Talon, huh?” He held out a hand. “I’m Drake.”
She shook it. “Is that your real name or your flier name?”
“Both, I guess.”
A golden retriever ran up and sniffed Drake before licking him on the face. Drake tried to block the friendly assault with his arms and pointed. “Go. Go lay down.” He looked at Talon. “What’s his name?”
“He doesn’t have a name.”
Before Drake could ask why, the guy at the grill whistled, and all the dogs ran to him. He threw bits of meat into the air, which they caught in their mouths.
Talon turned her attention to her drawing. “Drake,” she echoed. “So you shift to…” She squinted. “A duck?”
He laughed. “Come on. No. It has more than one meaning. You wouldn’t believe me unless I showed you.” He started to stand.
She put her hand on his arm. “Not here. We don’t change forms inside the neighborhood.” She pointed to the blonde girl. “Scopes made it a rule. We stay human here.”
“Yeah, Sonar told me about her. What does she change into?”
“A hawk. ‘Scopes’ sounded better than ‘Visual Acuity’, and Sonar gave her all sorts of grief when she tried Hawkeye. You know, because of The Avengers.”
Drake laughed. “And what does ‘Talon’ mean? Are you an eagle?”
“If I don’t get to know your flier form, then you don’t get to know mine.” She shot a half-smile at him.
He nodded. “All right. Come on.” He stood and gestured to the open land on the other side of the houses with a head tilt.
“What?”
“I can’t just tell you. It’s way too cool for that. So let’s go out there and solve this mystery.”
She set her drawing pad on the dead grass and stood. “Okay. Only because I’m dying of curiosity. You can’t possibly be what I think you are.” She brought her finger to her chin. “But I wonder if I should bring bread crumbs to throw at you, in case I’m wrong.” They walked alongside a house and into the back yard.
“I’m not a duck.” He scowled at her. “What do you think I am?”
She raised her eyebrows and quickened her pace to pull in front of him, walking through a gate on the other side of the yard.
He laughed, amazed the first girl he’d talk to was this cute.
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She closed the gate in his face. “I need privacy. Stay over there until we shift.”
He took off his shirt. “What should we do? Take off on three?”
“Yeah.” After a minute, she asked, “Are you ready?”
Drake’s nerves collected in his stomach. A cute, naked girl stood on the other side of the fence, just feet from him. “Yeah. One, two, three.”
A moment later, Drake hovered over the land across from the most striking owl he’d ever seen. Her brown and white feathers were full and glossy, and her copper eyes seemed to pierce through his. He remembered being surprised at Preston’s appearance the night they met, but there was something surprisingly regal about Talon that made him forget to breathe.
He tried to find meaningful words, but all he could come up with was, “Wow.”
She flew over the fence to him. “I was right. But I didn’t know you would be purple.”
He checked his scales. Purple. That was a new one.
She lowered to the ground on her side of the fence, and he did the same on his side. He shifted and dressed as quickly as he could.
Talon peeked through the gate, grinned, and sauntered past him to the front yard.
He almost forgot to follow her.
Chapter Five
As the others gathered in the cul-de-sac for dinner, Drake nervously surveyed the group. He hadn’t seen Zeke and the thugs from Denver, but this was the first time everyone came together since he and Preston arrived. Even the guys who’d driven the car showed up, sitting at a round table at the edge of the group.
Satisfied that Zeke and his cronies weren’t there, Drake settled into a chair next to Preston and across from the guy who had grilled the food. He bit into his burger and jumped when something he hadn’t heard in months pierced the air: music. It came from the front window of the ranch style house behind him.
Drake snapped around, then looked at the guy. “How is that possible?”
“We have power. It’s why we’re in Vegas.”
“What?” Drake had to see this for himself. He walked into the house and scanned the front rooms. Someone had set the plugged-in speaker in the window and attached an iPod to it. A green, digital display glowed from the microwave in the kitchen.
He stared in disbelief. It had been so long since he saw anything powered he’d almost forgotten what it looked like.
“How?” he asked upon returning to the table.
The guy held out a hand. “I’m Terry.”
“Drake” He shook Terry’s hand. “How do you have power?”
Terry laughed. “The Hoover Dam powers Vegas, as long as there’s water in the lake and the machinery holds out. It’s how we have this food. The freezers still work. We’ve had to move a couple times as transformers blow or whatever, but we scavenge the food before it spoils and take it somewhere with power.”
“Dang.” Drake listened to a few measures of the song that had been popular just before the virus hit. “Is Terry your flier name?”
He smirked and nodded.
Drake scrunched his eyebrows.
As if reading Drake’s mind, Terry asked, “You wanna see?”
“Yeah.”
“Hold on.” He looked past Drake.
Drake turned; Scopes entered the ranch.
“Okay, real quick before she comes back.” Terry held out his arm and shifted it into a huge, segmented wing with small digits at the end. A dinosaur wing. He shifted it back a second later.
“No shifting in the neighborhood!” Scopes yelled from the house.
Terry snickered and took another bite.
“You’re a pterodactyl?”
He nodded. “What are you?”
****
That night, Drake lay on the grass in one of the front yards, gazing at the stars. The golden retriever rested his head on Drake’s leg and slept.
Talon approached and lay next to him, putting one hand under her head. “Did you find an unclaimed room?”
“Yeah. It has working lights and everything.” That afternoon, he and Preston had explored the vacant houses, searching for places to sleep. Drake chose a room that looked like it had belonged to a young boy. It reminded him of his room back home.
Talon lifted herself onto her elbows. “How long have you been without power?”
“Since June, I think. How long is the power supposed to last here?”
“We don’t know. We figure we’ll leave when it stops for good, find somewhere to live that’s a little more hospitable in the summer.” She faced him. “Tell me about where you came from.”
Drake met her eyes. “How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Me too.” He looked back at the sky and told her about San Francisco and about his family, instinctively reaching for his sister’s phone in his pocket before remembering he’d left it on her desk. “Kelsey was twenty. She was one of the last to die. I thought we were both immune for a while.” He cleared his throat. “Where are you from?”
“Amarillo. The virus reached us in April.”
Drake faced her when she didn’t elaborate. She lay back on the grass and closed her eyes.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded and opened her eyes. “My brother also survived. My twin. He shifted into a big crow thing.” Her voice wavered, and she sniffed.
“Where is he now?” The roar of a car engine sounded from the end of the street, drowning out his words. He repeated the question when the revving stopped.
“I don’t know. We were together when we found this group a couple months ago. He didn’t want to stay. He kept saying he wanted to find our greater purpose and didn’t think it was here. So I stayed, and he left.” She kept her eyes on the stars through every word.
“What’s your real name?”
Talon smiled, stood, and left him alone on the grass.
He chuckled and looked back at the sky.
The engine roared, closer this time.
Drake stood, patted the dog on the head, and walked towards the noise. The guys might be skids, as Sonar had called them, but they still had a nice car to play with. Couldn’t hurt to check it out.
Two had their backs to Drake as he approached, but the one on the hood made eye contact and grinned. The other two turned.
The guy in the driver’s seat offered a head tilt. “What’s goin’ on?”
The other two laughed, reminding Drake of Zeke’s group. Dread filled his gut. He tried to sound casual in his response. “I thought I’d check out the car. The ones where I came from weren’t drivable.”
“Not drivable? Why not?” Hood Guy asked. “The batteries go bad?”
No, there were bodies inside. “Yeah, probably.”
The guy standing on the sidewalk, whose broad frame and buzzed hair reminded Drake of one of the football players at his school, reached into a cooler and pulled out a wet bottle. “The summer heat killed most of the batteries around here. We’ve had a hard time finding cars that work.” He offered the beer to Drake. “I’m Brody.” He gestured to the driver. “He’s Miguel,” then to Hood Guy, “and he’s Seth.”
“Drake.” He took the beer and allowed Brody to open it with a key ring bottle opener. He took a sip and tried to hide his grimace. He’d had beer a couple of times, once with his grandpa and once at a friend’s house, but those didn’t taste like soapy dishwater. After eyeing the label, he pretended to take another swig. “You guys don’t have flier names?”
Miguel shook his head. “Those names are dumb, man. Like we have to bury our past or something.” He reached into the passenger seat and grabbed his own beer. “Our families died. They want to pretend nothing happened. New names, new forms, new lives. It ain’t like that.”
“You guys shift though, right?”
Brody nodded. “When it suits us. That girl, Scopes…” He rolled his eyes. “She doesn’t want anyone shifting anyway. So she leaves us alone. Beats the alternative.”
“The other group?” Drake took
another fake swig.
Seth jumped down from the hood. “Yeah. We left L.A. after the fires started and saw a big group of fliers, maybe fifteen of them, before we got here. They talked crazy though, like how we’re supposed to be animals now, take care of the world like nature intended, shit like that. We told ‘em where they could stick those ideas. And then they almost didn’t let us leave.”
Drake ran his hand across the top of the car’s frame. “How could they keep you from leaving?”
“You seen anyone who can spit acid yet?” Brody asked.
Drake shook his head. Fliers can do that?
“That’s how. Big lizard dude shot it right at me. I dropped and dodged it. Asshole. We flew the other direction, and they didn’t follow us.”
Drake wanted to ask if Zeke was with the group they’d seen, but he didn’t know what Zeke shifted into.
Miguel patted the car’s dash. “You wanna drive it?”
Drake grinned, then set his beer on the sidewalk. He walked to the car as Miguel slid over to the passenger seat, and he fell into the driver’s seat.
“You know how to drive a stick, right?” Miguel asked.
“Kinda. My dad started to teach me when the virus hit.”
Miguel pressed his lips and shook his head. “Sucks, man. Grieve if you need to. Don’t let Scopes and those others tell you to bury it.”
“You sound like a shrink.”
Miguel laughed. “My mom was a counselor. She was smart.” His eyes glistened.
Great, I made him cry. “Why don’t you show me what to do?”
He nodded and wiped his face with the back of his wrist. After giving Drake instructions on how to work the clutch, he turned the key and told Drake to press the gas.
The engine roared, and the seat vibrated. “Whoa.”
Miguel grinned. “Yeah, it’s nice, huh? Put it in gear.”
Drake pressed the clutch and put the car in first. As he slowly lifted his left foot and lowered the gas, the car scooted forward and stalled.
“Oops.” Drake restarted the engine and tried again, this time stalling after a long lunge forward.
Miguel laughed. “It’s all good. Keep trying. It ain’t that hard.”
Drake put the car in neutral. “You know, flying works for me, so I’ll leave the driving to you.” He patted Miguel on the shoulder, left the car, and headed to the house with his new room.
Drake and the Fliers Page 3
