"Why is this happening?" Merlot whispered. "Why didn't we turn into something?"
The same question had occurred to me on and off. I'd set it aside because I had to figure out how to drive, and not hit anything.
"Age?" I suggested. "I was the only one who stayed normal in the auditorium. Everyone else was an adult and they all—" I swallowed, "turned."
"That's stupid," Lilly said. "What, so you turn eighteen and you're sorted into Gryffindor?"
I gripped the steering wheel harder. I'd be seventeen at the end of the year.
"No," Merlot's voice was quiet, barely over a murmur. I glanced back to see her clutching a flowery old purse to her chest. It had probably been her grandmother's. "I was in the bathroom with Jennifer when everyone else began to turn. She was acting like she couldn't breathe. Then her skin started to—it began, like, melting. She made these gurgling noises, and—" She stopped.
"It's okay," I said. "You don't have to say it. But was Jennifer your age?"
Merlot nodded and looked down. "A little younger, I think."
"Maybe it has to do with virginity. We all know Jennifer didn't have hers." Lilly’s smile to Merlot was mean. "That would explain Dill, too. He's never had a girlfriend."
"Shut up." But my heart wasn't in it.
"Maybe it's the ozone layer," Merlot suggested. "My science teacher said it still thin and allowing radiation in—"
Lilly scoffed. "You think radiation did this?"
My attention drifted back to the road as the Hummer crept past another charred car. Why were so many of them burned out?
For the same reason people turned into griffins and trees, I thought sourly. Whatever that was.
The burned-out car was butted up against a light duty truck. As I drove by, I caught a glimpse of movement in the passenger seat. A flash of a tiny clenched hand.
I hit the brakes, jolting the two girls forward.
"Why'd you stop?" Lilly complained. Then, as I opened the door, her voice rose to a shriek. "Dylan! What are you doing? Don't go out there!"
"I think I see something."
"No, you can't—"
I shut the door and took a careful look around. With the street lamps all out, my eyes were pretty adjusted to the dark. We were in an area I knew well, right by the library and the state park, with the lake just across the street. I waited, my breath held, but nothing came at me from the gloom. Overhead, the tops of trees swayed in the light breeze. It was getting foggy—or was that smoke in the air? The charred cars already reeked of burnt oil. I couldn't tell.
From the direction of the truck came a thin, piteous wail.
I followed the sound. The truck was one of the few that didn't look like something had crawled out. No broken windows. No blood. The driver's side door was slightly ajar, like the driver had got out but didn't close it hard enough behind them.
"Hello?" I called softly as I pulled it open.
The interior light came on, flooding the cab and making me blink. Heart pounding, I smacked the off switch on the roof and waited a beat, half-expecting to feel the sharp stab of talons.
Nothing happened, and I found myself looking down at a baby.
It was maybe nine or ten months old, still strapped into its car seat and garbed in a little pink T-shirt and shorts. Probably a girl, then.
She reached out to me, making short half-crying sounds. Her bottom lip stuck out.
"Shh." I didn't know anything about babies, but if she made too much noise, she would attract attention. "Where's your mom?" Dumb question.
I fumbled with the strap that kept her in the car seat, and then lifted her out. The baby was loose and trusting in my arms, and smelled like ripe diaper. She'd been alone for hours, after all.
I awkwardly patted her back. "It's all right. It's okay... Shh..."
Maybe the baby knew of the danger after all, or maybe she was just exhausted. Either way, she kicked me once, hiccuped, and then settled.
"What are you doing?" Lilly hissed behind me.
I startled and whirled to glare at my sister. "You scared the hell out of me!"
"That's a baby."
"Yeah, I saw it move as we drove by." I looked around, feeling suddenly sick. We'd driven past a lot of cars in the last couple hours. How many others had small children trapped inside?
I didn't expect my sister to step close to me, or grasp my forearm hard. The points of her fingernails dug into my skin. "We can't do this, Dylan."
"What?"
"God! You are such an idiot. Look around you." Lilly gestured to the dark road, the burned-out cars, everything. "Do you think this is a game? This is life or death, and that," she gestured to the baby, "is going to need food and water and diapers and formula and... And who knows what else."
I stared at her. "I can't believe you. You're actually saying we should leave her behind to become griffin chow?"
Lilly's eyes flicked to the baby. She pressed her lips together and nodded once. "We can't afford any dead weight."
I hadn't physically fought my sister since we were little. I wanted to hit her now. "We’re not leaving anyone behind," I said between clenched teeth. "Mom would be ashamed of you."
"Mom's dead," Lilly said. "And unless we start thinking ahead, we will be too."
I growled something under my breath that babies shouldn't hear and moved to push past her, but Lilly stepped in my way.
"You don't know anything about taking care of a baby."
"I'll figure it out."
"What's going on?" Merlot walked up to us tentatively, looking around like she was ready to bolt at any second. Her eyes widened when she saw the baby.
"Dylan's being an idiot." Lilly glared up at me. "We can't take in everyone we come across. I'm sorry, I really am, but we have to be realistic."
"This is the first other person we've seen." Merlot crossed in front of a fuming Lilly to look in the cab of the truck. "She smells like she needs a diaper change." Merlot crawled in and dug around in the foot-space in front of the passenger seat, coming back with a baby bag patterned with stars and balloons.
"You know how to change a diaper?" I asked.
Merlot shrugged and looked down modestly. "I've babysat a few times. Come on." She swung the strap of the pack up to her shoulder. "We should probably do it in the Hummer. She's going to cry when we take the diaper off."
"So that's it?" Lilly demanded. "You two are out-voting me?"
Her snotty tone frayed away the last of my temper. Turning around, I shoved my sister back against the truck, hard. "There's no vote," I told her coldly. "Not on this. You don't vote on doing the right thing."
She narrowed her eyes and stomped viciously down on my foot with the heel of her shoe. I yelped and stepped back, bobbling the baby for a dangerous second. When I'd righted myself, Lilly was slamming the door of the Hummer behind her.
I winced and quickly looked around. We'd both made a lot of noise.
When nothing came at me out of the shadows, I headed back to the car. Merlot took the baby from me and immediately my arms and chest felt colder. The comforting weight was gone.
"We don't know her name," Merlot said, patting the baby's bottom. The baby made a small noise and mouthed Merlot shirt.
I shook my head. The top of my foot ached. "Come up with something, I guess. We have to get moving."
"How about Jane? You know, like Jane Doe?"
I smiled. “That’s a good one.” But I got the feeling that if any of us survived this, there were going to be a lot of Jane Does.
CHAPTER FIVE
- Clarissa -
The way down the steep hill was even worse than climbing up. A night breeze cut right through my thin shirt. Ben held onto my arm, dragging on me like an anchor. He was scared, and I didn’t blame him. I didn’t have the heart to tell him to let go, even when he slipped on a patch of wet pine needles and nearly brought us both down.
The bite behind my shoulder throbbed constantly, no matter how I shifted or moved. Rol
ling my shoulder, I resisted the urge to rub at it. I should have had Terry have a look back in the culvert. What if griffin bites were poisonous?
Terry strode confidently ahead like the cold didn’t touch him.
He doesn’t know where he’s going, I thought with a sinking feeling. There were no landmarks I could see. Just more trees and bushes. We weren’t even following a trail.
What if he’s getting us lost? We should have gone back to the road when we saw the power was out.
People died out here: Tourists, experienced hikers who should’ve known better, and dumb kids like us. There was a reason this area was literally named the Desolation Wilderness.
The full moon had risen about an hour back. Maybe it was my imagination, but it looked huge tonight. Under the trees, there was more than enough light to see by.
I was just about to call for a rest, when my eye caught movement to the right. A dark shape I had thought was a bush or boulder shifted as Terry walked passed it.
I froze midstep, causing Ben to crash into me.
“Terry!” I gasped.
Terry turned, and his mouth dropped open.
For one second I thought—I hoped—the dark shape was a brown bear. They usually weren’t dangerous unless you got between a mother and her cubs. Then the shape made a low hissing sound, like a tire being deflated. It stepped forward, seeming to grow in size as it moved into a dim patch of moonlight. I caught a glimpse of a sharp beak and feathers.
“Run!” Terry yelled, and then turned to sprint through the brush.
I pushed Ben ahead of me as the griffin lunged.
Ben screamed at the top of his lungs, and I heard a thump as the griffin landed where we’d just stood.
The cut behind my shoulder burned like fire. I expected the weight of the griffin to come down on me at any moment. I was dead... I was so dead...
I twisted back to look. The griffin had slowed its charge. Something was wrong with its left paw, which it held up, limping. A wing drooped to the ground. Broken.
Ben slowed down, seeing it too. I shoved him forward again. “No, keep going!”
We scrambled over logs and through prickly brush. I was too scared to care if I turned an ankle.
I followed Ben through a thicket of bushes and then stumbled, suddenly, onto flat ground. My shoes hit gravel. It was a dirt road.
“Where is it?” Terry demanded. He stood just up the road from us, looking ready to bolt in a moment’s notice.
I wanted to yell at him, but had to bend to rest my hands on my thighs to gulp air. I wasn’t a track star or anything, but I thought I'd been in better shape than this. My little skateboarder brother breathed hard, but he wasn’t destroyed, like me. My shirt clung to my injured shoulder. Was it sweat? Or did I tear something new?
"... Griffin... stopped back there." I took another deep breath, forced myself straight, and resisted the urge to touch my shoulder. "I think it was hurt."
"Oh." Terry looked sheepish as he walked back towards us. He had the tire iron in his hands, so I snatched it from him.
"If you’re just going to run off and leave us behind, give this to me."
He rubbed the back of his neck. "Sorry about that. I didn't think—but look." He pointed up the road. “This is the way that leads to my house. We're almost there."
"Is it far?" Ben asked, a whine to his voice.
"A quarter mile or so to the subdivision. We should have seen lights from the houses, but I guess the power's out here, too."
Ben looked at me. He wasn't too good with distances yet.
I forced a smile. "Not far." Which was great because my thighs and calves burned almost as badly as my shoulder. I felt lightheaded as I trudged behind Terry.
The lights were all out and every house was dark. The yards looked pretty big and spread out, though. This was a rich person’s neighborhood.
Eventually, we came to a gated wrought iron fence that stretched across the bottom of a long driveway. Terry punched a code in the combo lock by a side gate. Either it was battery-powered, or mechanical, because it opened.
We walked up the long, incline driveway, and I quietly tried not to die.
Terry's uncle’s house looked like a hotel. The lights were all off, so I couldn't see much. But I got the impression of manicured lawns, which was kind of a big deal in the high Sierras.
Made log-cabin style, the house was at least three stories tall with a peaked roof and a garage large enough to hold a small airplane. The door itself looked like a gate to a grand entranceway. Super fancy.
A white FedEx package lay tucked half under the welcome mat. Delivered, no doubt, before people turned into monsters. It might have been one of the last normal things that happened today.
After scooping the package up, Terry fished a key from under a fake stone and unlocked the front door.
"Uncle Richard!" he called. "Dylan! Lilly!" There was no answer. Terry shrugged. "I guess they're not here yet." He flicked on the light switch, but nothing happened. "We have a generator for when the electricity goes out during storms,” he said. “I could go down to the basement and start it up."
"Don't bother," I muttered as I walked in. There may have been no electricity, but the air was much warmer inside than outside. Right now, it felt like heaven. I wanted to find somewhere soft and pass out.
Terry dug around in a nearby closet until he came up with some flashlights. Through the beams of light, I caught glimpses of knotty pine walls and high-vaulted ceilings. A fireplace tall enough to stand in stood in a living room practically the size of my mom's apartment.
"You live here?" Ben asked in awe.
Terry grinned. "If you think this is nice, you should see my dad's house in Big Sur. It's right on the ocean, and I have my own boat."
"Where's your bathroom?" I asked.
Terry pointed to the right and I quickly stepped in and shut the door, leaning my forehead against it. The bathroom was all stone tile and just as huge as the rest of the house. Parched, I turned on the sink and cupped water from the faucet, drinking greedily.
Then, wincing, I took off my shirt and turned to look at the slash under my shoulder blade. It wasn't as bad as I feared. The gash was maybe four inches long, and only a little blood oozed out. It started from under my left shoulder blade and went diagonally downward. Between the flashlight and the reflection, it was tough to see, but I didn't think it needed stitches.
Wetting a washcloth, I dabbed at the cut. The blood had clotted into a dark line, and it itched and burned as I ran the cloth harder over it.
"Gross," I whispered as a little of the scab came free. There was something strange about it. I held the washcloth to the light.
It wasn't dried blood. There, lit in the trembling beam of the flashlight, was a tiny russet feather.
CHAPTER SIX
- Dylan -
I could feel Lilly's disapproval coming off her in silent waves as I slowed past one car after another to peer in for survivors. I didn't dare roll down my window and call out. It didn’t matter. The cars were all empty shells; abandoned, burned, and sometimes splattered with blood.
The clock on the Hummer’s dash read midnight by the time we turned the last block to Stateline.
Back when the world was sane, Stateline was the big corporate hub of South Lake Tahoe. A smattering of eclectic motels and boutique shops edged both sides of the road on the California half. Two feet after crossing the California-Nevada border, sleek, twenty story tall casinos rose into the sky. California didn't allow gambling, but Nevada did, and the city took advantage with three of the largest, tallest buildings in the area. To me, they looked like two separate cities.
Now, the casinos, and some of the buildings on the California side, were on fire.
We all stared. Smoke poured from out broken windows. Panels and brickwork had detached from the buildings and broken on the concrete below. Even from blocks away, I could see thick moss and lichen draping down from the casino walls, spilling into the stre
et where the flames had not yet reached. It didn't matter because dozens of unnatural trees had sprouted up between the casinos, choking what was left of the road.
And hundreds, maybe thousands of griffins flew around the flaming buildings like demented moths around a flame. They landed on every available ledge, hung off hotel balconies, and crawled on top of one another. They fought, called, and screamed.
"Well," I heard myself say into the heavy silence. "We know where all the griffins went."
"I bet there were a lot of people in the casinos. It makes sense,” Lilly said.
No, it doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense, I wanted to tell her. When I swallowed, my throat was dry. "We... We shouldn't drive through there."
"So, they're attracted to light," Lilly continued, ignoring me. "That's useful."
Merlot sat in the passenger seat with Baby Jane sleeping in her arms. "I think there are some side roads that can take us around." She touched the tip of the baby’s nose as she spoke. She seemed much calmer now she had someone to look after. Like if she focused on making sure Jane was safe, nothing else mattered. Maybe it was a way to deal with shock. "My driver used to go that way when the roads got too crowded in the tourist season. Take that next right up ahead."
I didn't like the idea of heading off the main boulevard into smaller streets. There would be less room to turn, and I kinda sucked at aiming the car already. But we were lucky the fire hadn't yet spread from the casinos.
Come tomorrow, the whole city could burn.
At the next intersection, I turned the Hummer down the right-hand road. Driving wasn't natural yet, but I'd relaxed my death grip on the steering wheel, and most the time I didn't have to think about where to put my feet when I braked. It was kind of like a full-body videogame, only using my hands and feet instead of my thumbs. The tough part was remembering how wide the car was and not scraping anything as I passed.
And if I kept thinking about that, and not about the thousands of man-eating griffins who’d taken over Stateline, my breathing stayed steady.
With Merlot's instructions, I navigated a path around the casinos. The roads back here were narrower, winding between clusters of ratty duplexes without sidewalks. Twice, I had to use the Hummer’s front bumper to push dead cars out of the way. Even without trees growing out of them, the cars tended to cluster together when they stopped.
Under Wicked Sky: Book 1 Page 4
