Dying Day

by Kory M. Shrum

  “Is she dead?” I ask him. I have no idea why this is the first thing I ask.

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” Maisie says, giving me a sharp look.

  My brother Eli looks at me with a quizzical brow.

  “Jesse’s tough,” she adds. But it’s Maisie’s face that reminds me of the perils of this double vision.

  Is she alright? I ask Gabriel, but only with my mind this time.

  No. She can’t push him out, and I can’t get back in. He has placed his army between us. I must defeat them if I am to reach her. And the gate is open…the gate is open….

  I want to ask what that means. I assume, of course that it is a metaphoric gate, not a literal gate. But still, a gate to what? To what purpose? Gates are opened so that things may pass through them. What in the world is going to pass through?

  Before I can ask, three bolts slide back, and one of the panels unhinges. It swings into the room, separating from the wall. A siren is wailing so loud that I reach up to cover my ears against it. The padding covering the walls must have been soundproof.

  Nikki steps around the door, appearing in full tactical gear, all black from the neck down and guns on her hips. Her hair in a high, severe ponytail. Her eyes sweep the room, noting each occupant until falling on me.

  “You want to get out of here?” she asks by way of introduction.

  “Yes,” I breathe, and I’m already up and rushing for the door.

  “Good. Because this offer expires immediately.”

  The five of us run down the hallway, feet pounding thunderously. We must sound like a stampede. Nikki doesn’t take us to the elevator. She leads us to a stairwell that is unmarked and easy to overlook. My chest is aching by the time we scramble through the narrow concrete space.

  We step into the hangar, and the siren is deafening. One half turn, and I recognize where I am from my walk to the conference room earlier today. Gideon doesn’t seem to care about orienting himself. He runs toward a sleek black plane with dark windows which sits in the shadows. He touches it lovingly, as if reunited with a long, lost friend.

  He finds a ladder leaning against an adjacent wall and carries it over his head to the craft.

  “Is that your plane?” Nikki asks. She shifts the guns strapped across her hips.

  “No, darling, this belongs to a very good friend. And if I so much as scratch it, he will shave me, tar me, feather me, and dump what is left of me off the coast of Tripoli after a couple of his hyenas nibble off my most cherished…” He meets Maisie’s eyes. “Parts.”

  “They will have removed one or both of the ignitor plugs,” she says. She says this gently, the way one might say a beloved pet isn’t going to survive the surgery.

  His face screws up. “Bloody bastards.”

  “What does that do?” I shout over the roaring siren.

  “Grounds the plane,” she says. “We’ll have to take one of Jeremiah’s planes.”

  Gideon descends the ladder cursing, while Eli, Maisie, and I follow Nikki out of the hangar and onto the tarmac.

  It’s dark out here and almost completely empty. Only one plane sits on the tarmac, its nose pointed toward the dusty runaway stretching ahead. I guess Jeremiah wasn’t kidding about not having a plane to spare.

  “So many options,” Gideon quips.

  “What about Winston?” Maisie skids to a screeching halt. “We left Winston and Gloria in there!”

  “We can’t go back,” Nikki says.

  “Why?” I ask. Now that the shock of the sirens and the adrenaline of possible escape dips, I’m able to see the situation more clearly—I’m not asking enough questions.

  “I directly disobeyed him. And I had half my soldiers detain him. He’s the one who initiated lockdown.” She turns her wristwatch in the moonlight, and its green face blinks to life. “We have two minutes to get off the base, or we aren’t getting off at all.”

  I face Maisie, catching her wide, fearful eyes. I have to shout over the sound of that damned siren. “You should stay, Maisie,” I say. I brace myself for her refusal. “Gloria and Winston need someone here to advocate for them. Someone to make sure Jeremiah doesn’t take any…liberties.”

  But it’s more than that. I don’t want to take a teenager or my brother who is expecting a child onto a plane.

  Maisie straightens her spine. “I can do that.”

  “I’ll stay, too,” my brother says, volunteering just as I expect him to. His eyes are like burning coals in the light. “I’ll do everything I can.”

  “I know you will.” I throw my arms around his neck and squeeze him hard. His return hug is just as fierce. And when our eyes meet, I know with absolute certainty that we are thinking the same thing: I’m never going to see you again.

  “Good luck.” His face tightens.

  “You too.”

  He shakes his head as if clearing a thought and says, “Do what you have to do.”

  “I love you,” I tell him, without reserve. Then I throw my arm around Maisie’s neck and kiss her temple. “And I love you too.”

  Tears stand out in the girl’s eyes. I think she’s going to pull away from me and run toward the jet that Gideon is already firing up, but at the last second she leans forward and presses her mouth to my ear.

  “Azrael says that you have to make her remember. Make her remember who she is. And tell Jesse I love her. Tell her that I’m proud to call her my sister.”

  Her lip trembles furiously.”

  So many questions. So many things left to say. To my brother, to Maisie, and even Gloria. I don’t think I’ve even thanked her for all that she’s done for us.

  “We need to move!” Nikki screams, she’s hanging out the side of the plane.

  “I love you both,” I say again, and I turn, running to the plane before I burst into tears.

  Nikki helps me up into the aircraft with one strong pull of her arm.

  “They’ll be okay,” Nikki assures me as she shuts the door, air-locking it behind me. “Jeremiah has a soft spot for Gloria, and if Maisie really needed to, she could go public and bring hell down on his head. She is Maisie Caldwell, after all.”

  I say a silent prayer for Maisie. That she finds her own strength. That she uses it to protect herself in the days ahead.

  “I’m just glad she remembered the bloody dog,” Gideon says from the copilot seat. He’s already reading gauges and punching buttons. “For a moment, I thought you were actually going to bring her on this suicide mission.”

  Nikki gives us both stern looks. “No one is going to die.”

  “Sweetheart, if I don’t nearly die at least twice, it hasn’t been a good day.” He flashes me one of his bright, roguish smiles. As charming as it may be, I don’t miss the slight mania in his eyes.

  “You’re a little crazy,” I blurt. It isn’t meant as an insult, yet I realize how it must sound.

  I blush.

  Gideon only laughs and accelerates the plane down the long dark road ahead.

  “Oh, darling. You have no idea.”

  Chapter 20

  Jesse

  I walk down a street.

  There is a line three blocks long extending out of the soup kitchen on the corner. Across the street, there are whole families who clutch their possessions in bags. All their possessions from their old lives in plastic sacks. Army jets zoom overhead. Police with dogs walk up and down the streets, trying to maintain order.

  They thought they could live above the system, Michael whispers in my ear. I turn and see him beside me. Tall and handsome with long, blond hair and brown eyes. He reminds me of someone, but I can’t quite place who. Did he look like this before? Or have his cheeks rounded, his eyes softened?

  It seems so hard to hold a thought in my head for more than a minute or two.

  They were born within an ecological system. A perfect check and balance equilibrium meant to breed prosperity and abundance. But their ambition, their carelessness led them to overreach.

  I look at the w
oman holding an infant against her chest. She looks so tired. So alone.

  You don’t follow your own protocols. When an animal outgrows its ecosystem, when an imbalance is struck between predators and prey, your governments issue permits for a hunt. They cull the offending population to restore balance and harmony. And yet they can’t impose the same order on their own species? They can’t manage their own resources properly. They take too much and when you weaken your base, the top will fall.

  You can restore the balance to the earth. You can make it a peaceful place of prosperity again.

  The woman’s eyes bore into mine.

  “Please,” she whispers, clutching her baby close. “Please.”

  End her suffering, Jesse. End yours.

  I count the bodies in the street, my eyes finally falling on a bare foot, protruding from the end of tattered jeans. A fly dances on the toes, rubbing its crystalline wings together in the smog-filled light.

  You can do this for them, Michael whispers.

  Be their savior.

  Be their second coming.

  The baby in her arms stops breathing. And I understand all that lies ahead for her is misery and death.

  “I can do this for them,” I whisper.

  Yes.

  “I can set them free.”

  Chapter 21

  Ally

  Pain rockets through my body. Red starbursts erupt behind my eyes. My head splits in two. I throw my head back on the leather seat and scream.

  I’m dying.

  Oh my god, I’m dying.

  Someone is yelling my name.

  But I can’t answer. Pain bows my back and hollows out my throat.

  In the throes of it, I see Jesse clearly. I feel her, like a freezing cold hand on the back of my neck. The power ripping through me is her power. Someone is pulling it out of her, out of me. Someone is twisting it, polluting it, and it’s his fingers that slip into my brain like ice.

  “Alice,” a voice whispers. And I become aware of the rush of wings. I’m enveloped in darkness, cut off from Jesse and drowning in the scent of rain. “Breathe.”

  I try. I really try, but there is so much pressure in my chest I can’t get any air into my lungs.

  “I can’t breathe,” I cry. “I can’t breathe.”

  Someone releases my seatbelt and I slump.

  Then the power ceases. I drop. I slide out of the seat, my hands and knees hit the ground, and I’m sucking air into my lungs with great hungry gulps. Tears stream down my face.

  “Jesus Christ,” Nikki pants beside me. “Are you okay?”

  “No,” I say. I’m aware of the snot and tears all over my face. The agonizing burning in my throat.

  First, I just lay here, on the floor, with a rubber mat pressed against my cheek until I can stand to lift my head. The balled muscles in my back unclench. The world around me stops spinning, and someone is hauling me up into the leather seat again. I collapse against it, every inch of me sore and throbbing.

  “Fucking Christ,” Nikki says again and collapses into the seat across from me. “You scared the shit out of me. What happened?”

  I lick my lips and say, “I don’t know.” My voice is hoarse from screaming. It comes out like a croak.

  “Jesus.”

  And she looks like someone who’s just been terrorized within an inch of her life. Her face is pale, and a thin sheen of sweat stands out along her temple. She runs her hands over her face as if to collect herself. I try to adjust myself in my seat but my muscles aren’t working right.

  “Can I have some water?” I ask. “Or a wet rag.”

  I’m in too much pain to really be embarrassed by what must be my mess of a face. Not to mention my terror for Jesse. I try to piece together what I just saw.

  “Michael is manipulating her,” I say to no one in particular, trying to understand what I just saw, the bits and fragments. “He’s wielding her like a weapon.”

  “I thought you were dying,” Nikki says. She hands me a bottle of water and a t-shirt. She opens the bottle, cracking the plastic cap with one twist, and wets the shirt. I drag it down my face and then drink the rest of the water in slow, steady gulps. I take long, deep breaths between swallows.

  Nikki’s still talking. “I thought I was watching you die.”

  She settles back against the seat.

  And I thought I was dying until Gabriel stepped in and shielded me from the onslaught of power.

  Gideon tries to look around the seat to see me with his own eyes. “All right back there? Or is Tamsin talking your ear off?”

  I don’t have an answer.

  “I’m sure Alice wasn’t trying to scare the devil out of you. Perhaps you can quit accusing her.”

  “No,” Nikki says, her spine straightening. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  Gideon glances over his shoulder again and meets my eyes. “It was rather terrifying, love. I won’t lie.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “It was rather painful.”

  “It was rather painful,” Gideon snorts. “You have a gift for understatement, darling.”

  And the aircraft suddenly feels wobbly and myself wobbly in it. I turn and vomit onto the floor between the seats. All the water and everything else—which is mostly burning acid bile—comes up. It hits the rubber mat.

  Nikki holds back my hair.

  “You don’t have to apologize,” Nikki says. But the way she turns her own face away and presses her lips together makes her look like she’s going to be sick, too.

  When I collapse against the seat, she throws a white sheet over the mess, as if giving it some decency. But now the whole plane smells like vomit.

  I would be horrified if I didn’t feel my pulse rabbiting in my throat and temples. My limbs are shaking and my voice nearly gone. I put the cold cloth over my face and breathe.

  The plane dips suddenly, and I snatch hold of my seatbelt at the last moment, securing it around me. The plane swerves again and then levels out.

  “Are you trying to make me puke again?” I ask, pressing the cold cloth into my eyes.

  “What is that?” Nikki asks as she climbs into the copilot seat.

  “I suspect that’s what she felt,” Gideon says.

  I pull the cold cloth from my face and find the world is basking in a soft, purple glow.

  “What is that?” My voice cracks.

  “Three guesses, darling, and they’re all that damnable woman you love.”

  We watch the horizon, dumbfounded as purple light shimmers across the sky. It seems to be radiating from a central plume in the distance while lightning crackles overhead.

  “Is that going to bring down the plane?” I ask, tightening my seatbelt across my hips.

  “No. I lowered our altitude. But there goes our navigation instruments,” Gideon says with an exasperated hiss.

  Nikki pulls my face toward her. She forces me to look at her. “Jesus, your eyes are completely dilated.”

  “I’m okay,” I say. “Or I will be if you can keep this plane in the sky.”

  She looks like she wants to kiss me. I can actually see her considering it, and that’s just gross. I can taste the vomit in my mouth and that fuzzy sheen along my teeth. I turn my face away, trying to catch my breath again.

  What’s happening to me?

  I have blocked the connection between you, Gabriel whispers.

  I understand that this is a giant favor, considering that same power almost tore me apart just now.

  I won’t be able to close it off forever… when you get closer…

  His voice is lost in a string of swear words pouring from Nikki’s mouth. But I catch enough.

  I understand, I tell him.

  “Lucky for you,” Gideon says, still talking about the navigation system. “I know how to fly blind. At this altitude, we won’t run into any commercial traffic.”

  “You spoke too soon.” Nikki’s voice thins and is lost in the roar of the engine.

  I lean forward just in
time to see a 747 Boeing nose dive toward the earth, its left engine engulfed in flames. It hits the ocean and breaks apart like a child’s toy dashed against concrete.

  “I suppose something could fall from the sky and crash into us,” he amends. “That would knock us from the sky. Once we get past Rio, air traffic will be almost non-existent.”

  “How far are we from Rio?” I ask. I can’t be sure how long we’ve been flying. I remember Nikki pointing out the Caribbean and making a joke about taking me to Antigua when this is all over. But how long ago was that? How long after that had the surprise bolt of power ripped through me?

  “We are a hundred miles from Rio,” he says. “Fingers crossed, we’ll be over the South Atlantic any moment now.”

  It seems like we all hold our breath for this.

  Suddenly, I’m so tired. I catch my eyes drooping. The soft purple light permeating the cabin isn’t helping. I feel like it’s lulling me to sleep with its glow.

  When my head slips off my hand for the third time, Nikki says, “Why don’t you lay down? I think you need it.”

  And every part of my body agrees with her. So I place my head on my folded arm and close my eyes. I sleep without dreaming. I can hear the rustle of wings, and the scent of rain never leaves me. It seems to be in my hair and clothes, all around me. It’s better than that bitter taste lingering in my mouth.

  I doze, but don’t fully enter unconsciousness. Part of me surveys the cabin and the soft conversation exchanged between Nikki and Gideon. Requests for flight adjustments. A couple gallows humor jokes from Gideon. Stone silence from Nikki.

  Then I hear something click on. It’s so loud, so noticeable because of its difference.

  I sit up in my seat, coming straight out of my dozing.

  “You’re up,” Nikki says. Her eyes are violet in the light emanating from the horizon. “How do you feel?”

  Seeing Jesse’s light like that, cast over everything, makes my heart sink again. I overlooked the sound for a moment, as I flirted with the edge of a dream.

  Now that I’m awake, I have this horrible reminder that no matter what I do, whatever is coming next, is coming.