by Doug Goodman
While Mr. Seward led them in prayer, Aidan let the man’s words sink in. He had been a shepherd to this motley group that had become his family. Had he been a good shepherd? He knew the answer and didn’t like it. It wasn’t that he was beginning to doubt his every move since leaving the house on Vicksburg. It was how he treated people he had called family, and how he had sacrificed their feelings and their inputs for his own damn will. Like some Captain Ahab of the Apocalypse, Aidan had led them north on a perilous course, and they had followed, most of the time. But had he considered their opinions, their desires, or had he forced them to his will? Maybe it was time to, like Alyssa, start looking for the right thing to do rather than choose the path that just gave him the best chance to live. That made him feel better inside, and he hadn’t realized how hard he had gotten until then. It was time to live the right way.
Mr. Seward closed the book down and went to sit. The woman stood back up and started the crowd into “Away in the Manger,” “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” and “Joy to the World.” The songs lifted into the atrium and filled it with warmth and joy.
It was late when they returned back to the conference room. Somebody had gotten the PE system working and started playing Christmas standards over it. In the darkness, the lost boys gave each other gifts of food and drink: Vienna sausages, deviled ham, and tuna. The taste of the deviled ham was almost overpowering to the senses, but the protein felt good in their bellies. Somebody had found a can of Coke, which was passed around and shared. It tickled their throats and made them giddy.
While the others sang Christmas songs, Aidan pulled Alyssa to the side. With the light behind them, he got down on one knee and asked her to marry him. “I don’t have a ring or a promise of a better life, but I will never stop taking care of you. I have never stopped loving you, and I will always love you most of all.” Before she could say yes, he stopped her, “I am married to you. I have been for a long time now, I just didn’t know it. You can say no, but it won’t change who I am. You are my forever.”
He didn’t realize that the others had stopped singing and were watching Alyssa and Aidan.
“Yes, yes, yes!” she said, her eyes smiling with tears. He kissed her, and the lost boys cheered. They congratulated him, and that night, Aidan took her to bed alone with him. It had been months since they had been alone with each other. Always they were surrounded by lost boys or other strangers. Now, they slept in a small office next to the conference room, on a sleeping bag, and they made love while Christmas surrounded them and relieved them.
When Aidan awoke, his body was stiff, and his head felt groggy. Alyssa was still asleep, so he crawled into his clothes and walked down the hallway. People were huddled together in deep Christmas sleep, even the soldiers.
Nothing happened on Christmas, and that was good. The whole world needed a day off, and if this apocalypse was God’s work, then this was the day off they had earned over the past six months.
The smell of cocoa drifted down the hallway. Aidan followed it. Lightly playing Muzak versions of Christmas carols danced in the air. Today, he didn’t mind. In the cafeteria in the atrium, he found Dre making cocoa.
“Merry Christmas,” Dre said. She looked real good. Her long hair was trimmed and ordered, and she had a genuine smile he couldn’t remember seeing before today.
“Merry Christmas,” Aidan said as they hugged and he accepted a cup. “I haven’t seen you in a while. How you been?”
She smiled with abundant satisfaction. “I think we can get used to a place like this. I wish all of us made it here, but you can’t control everyone.”
Dre’s words rang true to Aidan. He also thought of the uncle running off into the mountains of Colorado. He hoped he found someplace to hole up for the winter.
“Good.”
“By the way, congratulations,” Dre said.
“Word travels quick.”
“Yes, it does. And why shouldn’t it? Something that beautiful happens and people want to know about it. I’m surprised Mr. Seward isn’t already planning your wedding his self. ”
Aidan felt something light and cold touch his bare scalp.
“It’s snowing.”
Dre followed Aidan’s eyes upward. Snow was falling softly through the atrium’s broken windows. He looked outside. It was a gray morning. Overnight, two inches had fallen.
Aidan crossed the atrium. In each corner of the atrium were large propane tanks. The tanks were kept behind cones and guarded by soldiers. Aidan wondered what the tanks were for. If he got Colonel Weatherford’s ear again, he might ask. In the meantime, there were things inside his circle of influence, and things outside it. The tanks were clearly outside his circle.
Aidan walked outside and rubbed his head. The snow was falling so peacefully and picturesquely. He had been born at the bottom of Texas, but he had always preferred colder weather.
He sipped his hot chocolate and stood in the snow and enjoyed the sleepy quiet.
Then it started to nag him, one of those deep-down thoughts rising up from its grave to torment him. Aidan tried to shake it off, but the feeling that something was wrong wouldn’t let go. He took another sip of his hot chocolate and looked out at the snow. Then he realized what was wrong, what was bothering him.
No fires.
The fires were out. Why were the fires out? Maybe it was wargs chewing at the front door. Or maybe it was the snow. The pain in his head told him otherwise.
“Hey!” he shouted at the flamethrower’s turret.
The man two stories up shook off his sleep and waved down at him. “Merry Christmas! Go back to bed!”
“The fires are out!” Aidan yelled. He pointed his arm to the fires, exaggerating his movements. The soldier saw the flames out, then started yelling into his walkie while the other shot a few preliminary bursts from the flamethrower.
That was when the pounding hit him. It was like an avalanche in his head. He had never felt anything like this before.
Aidan ran towards the atrium while the flamethrowers lit up on something in the distance he could not see. Gunfire erupted from the turrets as more soldiers reacted to whatever was coming towards them. Suddenly, rocs shot out of the thick clouds and stabbed like daggers at the turrets. Some rocs were staved off by curls of flame, but others evaded the tongues of fire and pulled soldiers out of the turrets. Holding them by the beaks, they tossed the soldiers over the side of the tower. The poor departed shouted until their bodies splattered like pulp on the pavement.
Aidan tried to push himself inside, but soldiers were pouring out of the tower like ants from a smashed anthill.
Aidan felt the pull in his head, like a compass with talons. He shouted at a soldier, “Over there! Fire over there!” The soldier took his advice just in time to stave off a leaping warg.
Suddenly, Aidan realized that he knew where they were, all of them. He had to get to the Colonel.
The lost boys awoke to the sound of gunfire.
“Crap!” Colt said, and Peter didn’t correct him. He just agreed with him.
Riley bolted out of her sleeping bag. “We gotta get going!” she said. “That’s gotta be wargs.”
Jax was the last one up. As the foggy fingers of his dreams lifted, only to be left with the sound of gunfire, he didn’t stop until he was dragging Riley through the doorway – Colt, Peter, and Val in tow.
In the hallways, people were running from the battle while soldiers ran towards it. Alyssa met them outside.
“We gotta get to the Humvees,” Jax said.
“Aidan’s gone.”
“We’ve got to go for my brother,” Peter said.
Jax looked around. “Okay, you guys run for the Humvees. I’ll get Aidan and meet you there, but if we aren’t there in like ten minutes, go without us. I will get him. We’ll catch up.”
In the distance, IEDs were exploding. Soldiers were cheering with each explosion like it was a touchdown, but Aidan knew what was happening. It was too far away for the soldie
rs to see, but through warg eyes Aidan saw encampment people being forced to enter the minefield. He also saw the bodies stacked on top of the jets of fuel. That was how they clogged the fuel lines. Bodies upon bodies burning like bonfires. If the wind turned direction, the smell would be too much for everyone in the tower.
“There is a something large coming from the south,” Aidan directed some soldiers.
“What is it?” Aidan recognized the soldier as the tall red.
“I’m not sure. Maybe a herd?”
The soldiers didn’t argue with him. They knew Aidan was the one the monsters were after.
“Take cover!” he shouted to another group of soldiers just as the rocs dove from the sky. The soldiers saw the rocs just in time to drive them away with their guns.
The other soldiers were waiting to lay gunfire on any monstercized heifer that tried to jump the last highway divider. They couldn’t have been more wrong. A large bulk reached over the concrete divider and gripped the openings at the bottom. Massive shoulders flung the barrier aside. Hands grabbed a soldier who was shooting at him wildly, and tossed the soldier light as a toy over its back. Aidan jumped back when he saw what emerged from the barriers. It was tall and bulky, and its thick grey hide was impenetrable. It walked on two feet like a man, but roared with the sound of a thousand doors slamming shut on Aidan’s life.
The bear grabbed the red-headed woman, lifted her over its head, and pulled her apart as easily as a child ripping apart a doll. Her blood splashed on the nearest soldiers. Aidan staggered backward. It had been no herd, just a monstrous creature more dangerous than an entire herd.
It was crushing them like an avalanche. Except instead of rocks or snow, the lost boys were being smothered by people who were shoving their way towards the stairwells. This was the evacuation procedure of every building in America. Avoid the elevator and take the stairs. But these people weren’t trying to exit the building, they were looking for a safe place to hide, and if the safest place to survive a tornado was the stairwell, it was also the most likely place to survive the apocalypse.
Val had an insane thought as he passed the recessed fire extinguisher case. In case of apocalypse, break glass, Val thought.
“What is the problem?” Alyssa asked when she heard him laugh.
“Nothing,” he said. “Just wish it was an axe instead of a fire extinguisher.”
The five, Val, Alyssa, Riley, Colt, and Peter in that order, flattened against the wall next to the extinguisher to allow the crowd of people to press past them towards the stairs. The people had panic in their eyes. Mothers, fathers, kids and teens terrified of what the day was bringing them and whether they would see another day. They were like a herd ready to stampede at the first crack of lightning. For now, they were gently pushing at each other, hands on friends and loved ones and neighbors. But with the right fuse, they would be shoving each other down to escape. Val hoped that didn’t happen.
“Could some of y’all lose a little weight?” Peter yelled out, but nobody except the other lost boys heard him. Everyone else was too busy trying to cram themselves into the stairwells in a not-so-orderly fashion.
Inch by inch, Val led them towards the back of the tower. Only Aidan had visited the parking garage, so Val was going on blind faith that it was in the back and not on an upper or lower level. If they had to go back this way, the assault may be over by the time they found the Humvees.
As they worked along the wall, Val thought of the garage and he hoped that it wasn’t guarded. Maybe he could talk his way through it, but if not, it would come to violence, and he had nothing to back himself up with. Speaking loud and carrying a big stick is going to suck, he thought. He could only hope that any guards had left their posts to defend the tower.
Alyssa must have seen the fear in Val’s eyes because she put her hand on his shoulder and said, “We’ve got you.” He looked at the grenade-throwing cheerleader, the crane-climbing gymnast, a 13-year old who had lived through more battles than most men, and the bitch of the yard. They were high school kids who had become survivors, and so had he. He pushed into the crowd.
Some of the people began shouting, then somebody shoved, and another person shoved back. Riley got the wind knocked out of her when a middle-aged man with a thick moustache bounced into her ribcage and would not move back. Alyssa had to kick the obese man in the knees before he would give Riley any breathing room.
Aidan shoved a man down into the pavement as a roc buzzed over them, its talons like the stretching blades of a harvester. A rush of wind from the downward push of the roc’s wings knocked Aidan flat on his butt. It was as if an invisible man shoved him in the chest. He looked up in time to see death in the cold raptor’s eyes. Death and maybe something more. Recognition? Aidan suddenly wondered what was showing on the psychic channel and whether or not his image was being broadcasted to the other beasts.
The roc did a quick whirl in the air, flipped, and reached for Aidan. This time, he was not fast enough to dodge the creature. Its cold, hard pinions grabbed him by the side and tossed him in the air. The gray sky did cartwheels around him, and then he was tight in the roc’s grip. The tower was racing beside him. The roc screeched a piercing call, a sound so frightening it was painful. As he heard other rocs responding, the Tooth flew to the side, and then impossibly the world raced back up at him, and he was back on the ground. A pain ripped through his shoulder, and his world went black.
When he woke, only moments had passed. Jax stood over him, prying roc claws off of him. Above him, the Tooth was like a giant black ladder reaching up into the skies. At the top of that ladder, Aidan saw giant rocs and worse creatures circling in the sky.
“C’mon! There are more coming for you!”
Aidan blinked and pushed a claw aside. It was like being held by a brick wall. More pain shot through his side. Jax pulled out his parang and chopped the claw off with three strokes. Then he jerked Aidan out and pulled him to his feet.
“You can still run, right?” Jax said.
Aidan nodded, and he followed him back towards the tower. Unfortunately, that took them right back towards the bear.
Tendrils of smoke curled up from its giant back. It stood on the concrete in a circle of dead bodies. As it breathed deeply, the bear made a throaty sound, not of defeat but of rising resolution. For the first time, Aidan noticed that the bear had four horrible cloudy blue eyes, like cataracts. Once again, he felt like he wasn’t looking into the eyes of a living, breathing thing but into the eyes of the dead.
That gave him a crazy idea. He shouted into a soldier’s ear, “Aim for the head! Hit it in its eye!” The soldier nodded and lifted his weapon up. The grizzly sensed the movement and looked up to. Right at them.
A bullet parted the air as it drove towards the monster’s eyes, and succinctly bounced off the giant cataract.
“Why won’t anything work?!” Aidan cursed.
The grizzly raised its massive jaws in the air, and then something truly hideous happened. The bear’s jaw split horizontally down the middle, like some nightmarish petal flower. Inside its terrible orifice, two new set of teeth glistened. The beast made a curse similar to Aidan’s, but in its language it came out as a terrible roar, and then it leaped towards Aidan and Jax. Jax dragged him away from the bear-monster and into the plaza towards the atrium. Aidan passed under Atlas’ muscular frame as the bear swiped at him. Atlas blocked the blow with his own concrete body, but it was not enough to stop the bear. The bear pushed Atlas down. The titan cracked and splintered in the dead fountain.
Around Aidan, soldiers fired on the bear, but the bullets were as useless as pelting acorns against its thick hide.
“Quick! Here!” Jax said, and darted to the side, away from the entrance. They had to leap over a dead soldier’s body, but they crossed to the open door just in time. Dre stood there with the door open. She slammed it shut as they entered. A giant open mouth full of dozens of sharp teeth descended on the door, and it was nearly thrown off i
ts hinges as the bear collided with the door. Inside, Aidan saw a large crowd of people stuffed into the stairwell.
A second later, the door was ripped from the foundation and thrown away. The bear chugged air as its cold dead eyes looked on the meaty buffet inside the stairwell.
Nobody moved. It was as if a spell had been cast on everyone in the stairwell, and they no longer had the power to control their limbs. They stared at the demon bear, and it stared at them.
Behind it, the soldiers were holding their fire. If they missed, they would hit the people inside.
The bear placed a paw gently on the floor in front of Aidan and Dre. It then positioned itself to squeeze into the stairwell entrance, which was much too narrow for its broad shoulders. It pulled itself forward, its serrated head entering the stairwell. The smell of blood and death came with it. With its four dead eyes, it studied all the bodies the way a grizzly might study honeycombs, or baby squirrels trapped in the knothole of a tree. It pushed its hulking mass against the doorframe, knocking dust and straining the concrete.
A second time, it reached forward with one paw. Aidan suddenly felt like rabbits trapped in a warren with all the exits sealed. Somebody screamed, and Aidan glanced up the stairwell. People were trying to move to another floor, but the problem was that nobody was moving fast enough for the people on the bottom. The USE HANDRAILS sign didn’t seem to deter them from climbing over each other to get to the next floor.
The scream excited the bear, and it reached farther into the stairwell as people tried to push up and away from the bear.
