Dragonpocalypse 1: Burn It All Down
Page 3
“Space dragons,” Peter muttered as Dana absorbed this latest tidbit. “Mother fucking space dragons.”
Dana rose from the couch. “I’m going to pack. Fuck, I hope I can get gas down in Monterey or somewhere —“
The TV had cut back to the newscaster. “And now I believe we have a live report from one of our reporters on location in one of the cities currently under siege. Monica?”
The scene shifted to a pretty dark-haired woman standing on a bluff overlooking a skyline Dana was very familiar with. A large group of people jostled for position behind her, some mugging for the camera, but most training their eyes, and recording equipment, on the city beyond. “I’m here at Mulholland Drive, above Los Angeles, California —“
“No.” Dana sank back down into her seat.
“— as you can see behind me, it’s sheer pandemonium here, with people not trying to escape the city, as you might expect, but attempting to get a better view of what’s happening. And we do have an excellent view here, as you can see …”
On cue, Monica stepped out of the shot and the cameraperson zoomed closer in on the skyline. It wasn’t completely aflame like San Francisco’s, but through the smog, and between the heads of the onlookers, Dana could see bright orange spots flickering in the grid of streets below, and columns of smoke rising above the sprawling metropolis from at least a dozen spots.
“We’ve had confirmed sightings of four unique creatures in the Los Angeles area, with unconfirmed reports of at least half a dozen more. Their behavior is inconsistent; sometimes they seem to be hunting and attacking in a pack, other times, individually. It’s partially for that reason we’re having a hard time getting an exact count of how many oh my God!!”
This last was in reaction to a fast-moving blur which shot across the camera’s field of view from right to left. The onlookers snapped pictures and murmured excitedly amongst themselves.
Monica, still off-screen, attempted to regain her composure. “That … that appeared to be one of the creatures we’ve already identified, the large bright blue one. From, from what we can see here, it doesn’t appear to be attacking anything at the moment, it, it seems to be conducting an aerial survey of the area, to what end I couldn’t say, but — oh, oh, here it comes again —“
The blur passed by again, left to right this time, slower — slow enough for Dana to see that its color was indeed a bright, almost aquamarine blue — but still too fast to make out any details. The onlookers chittered.
The newscaster back in the studio appeared in a small box in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. “Monica, what would you estimate the extent of the damage to Los Angeles has been so far? L.A. and its suburbs encompass a much greater area than most of the other cities hit. Has the decentralized nature of the city lessened the impact, do you think?”
What Monica thought, Dana — and the rest of the viewers — would never know. “I’m sorry, Brian, I didn’t catch that … the blue one’s coming ‘round again … it’s — omigod. Omigod. OH MY GOD!”
The camera tilted, then shook. Dana caught a glimpse of that bright aquamarine blue, and various arms and legs flailing in and out of view. Panicked shouts and screams could be heard. Then Monica shouting: “Jesus, Chris, stop filming, it’s right fucking —“
The screen filled with orange and red and white as Monica broke off and screamed. There was a brief moment of static, then the scene cut back to the studio, and a very pale and unsettled news anchor.
“That’s, um … all right, that was … Jesus, someone call them, see if they’re okay …”
Dana reached over to the remote, switched off the TV, and immediately started rummaging through her purse. “Sweetie,” Peter started to say.
“Hush,” Dana told him, yanking out her cell phone. Though her hands and fingers were trembling, she managed to access her contacts list and put in a call to the one labelled HOME.
To be immediately rebuffed by a three-tone signal and a soothing operator’s voice. “We’re sorry. The cellular network is currently overwhelmed. Please hang up and tr—“
Dana dropped her phone back into her purse. “Gimme yours,” she demanded to Peter, who handed his phone over. Dialing the number from memory this time, she put Peter’s phone to her ear —
— only to drop it, also, a moment later. “Fuck!” She whirled around. “Karen?”
Karen shook her head. “I have the same carrier as you, remember?”
Dana ran her fingers through her short hair. “Goddamnit goddamnit goddamnit.” Reaching back into her purse, she pulled her phone back out and logged onto Facebook. Scrolling past panicked “OMG WAHT IS HAPPENING?” posts from people she vaguely remembered from high school (and a few cat pictures from people who, she assumed, lived in more rural areas and hadn’t yet heard that the world was in the process of ending), she searched for a post from her parents signaling they were okay. She didn’t see one — not from them or her sister up in Oregon, for that matter.
“Damnit damnit damnit.” Thumbs fumbling, she sent off a pair of missives — one to her parents, the other to Diana in Portland — asking if they were all right and to contact her as soon as possible.
Karen was pale. “So what now? Do we still go down to L.A.?”
Dana stared at her phone, willing it to ping with notification of a new message. Predictably, nothing happened.
She forced herself to look up at Karen. Peter was watching her, waiting for her answer, as well.
“I don’t know,” she finally said.
CHAPTER FOUR
They went up to the roof for a better view of the city. Several of their neighbors already up there, many with binoculars. From what Dana could tell from this distance, things had only gotten worse.
It was incredible, how much damage two creatures had done in a relatively short period of time. The city had gone up like a balsa wood model. The iconic Transamerica Pyramid, though largely concrete, had several holes blasted in it, burn scars cris-crossing over the majority of its surface, and — most striking — the top of the pyramid itself was missing, having been lopped off or smashed to rubble somehow. The Bank of America building had a huge smoldering crater carved out of several of its top floors, and a good number of the rest of its floors seemed to be on fire as well. Dana couldn’t spot One Rincon South for a moment, then realized that was because the residential skyscraper was at least thirty floors shorter than it used to be. The top of the building had either exploded or been dashed to pieces by the creatures, who were seemingly intent on turning San Francisco into a smoking wasteland.
The 101 freeway, the one Dana had passed under just earlier that afternoon, had collapsed, and traffic on the 280, just east of their building, was still. Traffic on 80 seemed to be moving — uniformly east, it appeared, as people tried frantically to get across the Bay Bridge and into the relative safety of Oakland. But Dana soon realized why traffic on the 280 was stopped. Both dragons were swooping down on cars trying to get across the bridge, either picking them up and then dropping them from tremendous heights, or dousing they with great gouts of flame. The dragons seemed either enraged by the sound or the movement of the cars, or — if one was to ascribe a certain intelligence to their actions, a notion which Dana, having seen the look in the blue one’s eye, was more than willing to entertain — they seemed intent on not letting anyone leave the city alive.
As one, however, both dragons paused in their assault on I-80 and raised their heads. Dana saw cars screech into motion beneath the giant reptiles, seizing the opportunity to escape, but the dragons didn’t seem to notice or care. It almost looked as if they were listening for something —
Then Dana heard it too. A high pitched whine, a terrific rumble —
“There!” someone shouted, pointing towards the east. Dana whipped her head around just in time to see four — no, five! — fighter jets scream over the bay. The dragons raised their heads and roared, but in a flash the jets had crossed the city and were out over the open
water of the Pacific.
“They’re coming back, look!” Karen pointed.
They were indeed. Having gotten the lay of the land, the fighter pilots were coming around for another pass. And this time, apparently, they meant business; they’d barely crossed back over land, it seemed, when all five jets were spraying machine gun fire, punctuated by bright tracer rounds visible even in the late afternoon sun, at the two dragons.
The dragons were no longer perched on the I-80 overpass, however. They’d taken to the air, and with another pair of those awful screams, were flapping their wings and shooting forward with incredible speed to meet the jets head on.
The pilots apparently hadn’t expected this, because the jets all wobbled and broke formation. One couldn’t get out of the way in time, and the blue dragon slammed its tail into the cockpit while dragging its claws along the wing of the craft. The jet banked to the north, wobbled, and went down somewhere in the North Beach area. A brief plume of flame amidst all the other fires already burning briefly marked the spot where it fell.
The four remaining jets came around for another pass, even faster, it seemed, than before. And this time, in addition to the barrage of machine gun fire, two of the pilots let loose with a missile from beneath their wings. One went wide and exploded harmlessly somewhere over Golden Gate Park, but the other one caught the green dragon, already flinching from multiple machine gun hits, in the midsection. The creature screamed as the missile exploded and the jets streaked overhead once again, this time in triumph. A few of the spectators on the roof cheered.
The triumph was short-lived, however; as the jets came around for another pass, the green dragon, though clearly shaken, appeared to have regained its equilibrium. The missile strike didn’t appear to have done any lasting damage, and as the jets came in again both dragons howled in defiance and challenge.
The blue one cut across the path of one of the jets, causing the pilot to panic and pull up. As he was trying to regain control, the blue one swooped down underneath the jet, then back up to slam into the craft’s belly. Already unstable, this sent the jet into a spin, and the pilot was unable to pull out of it. The jet went down in the bay just south of the Bay Bridge, landing with a violent SMACK which was audible even to Dana and the other rooftop spectators.
Meanwhile, the green dragon had held position, hovering in place above the ruined 101 freeway to await the incoming jets. As they dove towards the creature, spitting machine gun fire, the monster roared and doused them all in an incredible spray of fire. Two managed to peel off and escape the brunt of the assault, but the one in the middle caught the bulk of the flames, and the jet went spinning off into the Oakland hills, trailing fire. A distant boom signaled the end for that particular pilot, as well.
Dana half expected the other two pilots to cut their losses and get the hell out of there, but give them credit, they came back in for yet another pass at the monsters. Both fired missiles, but this time, the green dragon was ready for them, sliding almost majestically aside to let the missiles pass harmlessly by, then reaching out almost casually with a claw to knock one of the jets off-course. It wobbled, dipped, and slammed into the side of the Transamerica Pyramid. Jet and building alike went up in a flash, and when the explosion faded there was a fresh crater carved out of the side of the iconic structure.
That left just one jet, and the blue dragon, who had been circling overhead, took care of that one simply by landing on top of the jet and tearing the cockpit out with its claws and teeth. The pilot tried to eject, but the dragon’s reflexes were too fast. It caught the ejection seat, pilot and all, as the apparatus started to blast clear of the craft. The dragon hopped off the jet, letting it fall to the ground and explode somewhere in the Financial District, as the creature ripped the ejection seat — and the pilot — in two with a great sweep of its claws. There was a brief puff of red mist and falling machinery, and then the last of the pilots was gone.
The rooftop spectators fell silent. The dragons roared in triumph.
CHAPTER FIVE
Traffic on the streets and highways quickly ground to a halt after that. Anywhere it didn’t, the dragons quickly struck, and even the densest of individuals, even those most desperate to put as much distance between them and those creatures, realized that the dragons were attracted to or annoyed by the sound of car engines. Or, Dana wondered again, perhaps they were just doing everything they could to keep anyone from leaving. She might have counted it amongst her rare whimsical moments, if the thought of those evil ochre eyes didn’t still give her a chill. Nothing whimsical about it.
“So driving’s out,” Peter reiterated once they were back in the apartment. “Now what?”
Karen looked from Peter to Dana. “We’re … we’re not staying here, are we?”
“I don’t know,” Dana said.
“Because I know those things haven’t made it over here yet, but that doesn’t mean they’re not gonna!”
“We can still make it to my parents’ house,” Peter offered. “It’ll take a little longer if we’re not driving, but maybe we can get some bikes or, I dunno, horses or something.”
Dana checked her phone again. No Facebook messages, no texts. She tried calling her parents again, just to see if the lines had cleared up, and they hadn’t. She tried her sister too, for shits and giggles, but got, predictably, the same result.
Peter was watching her. “It’d be a lot closer than L.A., and a lot safer too. If nothing else, it’s a good place to plan our next move.”
“Goddamnit, I don’t even know if I want to go to L.A. now!” Dana said. She gestured towards the TV, which was muted, but still showing footage of the carnage. “They haven’t said anything about Portland yet. I have no idea if Diana’s okay up there!”
Peter looked frustrated. “Portland’s even farther than Los Angeles!”
“She’s eighteen, Peter! She’s in a dorm, away from home for the first time, eighteen years old and I don’t know if she’s fine or what!”
Peter ran a hand through his hair. “So you want to go to Portland, now?”
“I don’t know!” Dana paced back and forth in front of the window, beyond which the burning tableau that was San Francisco was still visible in the late afternoon light. “I want to check on Diana. But I also want to see if my parents are okay, and get them out of there, if I can. Or I can go with you to your parents’ place … or I can stay here, see if things settle down, see if Diana or my folks try and contact me.”
Dana stopped pacing and looked from Peter to Karen and back again.
“I don’t know, guys. I don’t know what to do.”
CHOOSE!
WHAT SHOULD DANA DO?
Should she …
Make her way down south to Los Angeles, to check on her parents?
Make her way up north to Portland, to check on her sister?
Go east with Peter, to his parents’ house in the foothills?
Stay put and wait to see how things shake out in San Francisco?
YOU GET TO DECIDE!
To cast your vote, visit www.majesticgiraffe.com/dragonpocalypse and enter in the poll there. Votes must be cast by midnight (PST) on Thursday, 28 February 2013. One vote per reader.
Check back to see which choice won, and to read the next exciting chapter of Dragonpocalypse!
Matthew Robert Bowers is a writer, filmmaker, podcast host, and delightful human being. He can be found on Twitter at @mrbowers, and his work can be found at www.majesticgiraffe.com.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHOOSE!
About the author