D. MacHale: Storm

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High noon.

The sun floated directly above us on a warm, clear, mid-September day. The street was bathed with an intense white light that cast no shadows… until the world suddenly went dark. The warm, comforting rays of the sun had been blocked by what appeared to be an unscheduled lunar eclipse.

The music that came from the looming shadow told me otherwise. The dark shape had appeared from over the tops of the brick buildings of the Old Port and hovered above us like a rogue storm cloud preparing to unleash its fury.

“They found us,” Kent said with a gasp.

High noon.

Showdown time.

“Back in the car!” I commanded.

The four of us scrambled to get to the Subaru we had “borrowed” after making our escape from Pemberwick Island.

Tori Sleeper was hurt. She had been shot through the shoulder and needed to lean on Kent Berringer and me in order to keep moving. Slowing down to help her saved our lives.

The black attack plane fired a weapon, sending an invisible pulse of energy at the car that rocked it onto its side and ignited the gas tank. The wave of heat from the violent explosion knocked us back, shaken but alive.

“This way!” Olivia Kinsey shouted while running toward a row of low, brick buildings.

We had been standing in the center of Commercial Street, which ran past the busy piers of Portland, Maine. The normally busy piers.

We hadn’t seen a single living soul from the moment we hit town. Stranger still, many of the buildings in Portland had vanished. They weren’t destroyed or bombed, they were just… gone. We knew this was the result of the attack we had seen several nights before when an enormous fleet of these flying black predators put on a light show over the city. Tori and I had witnessed the attack from her father’s fishing boat as we were making our first attempt to escape from Pemberwick Island. It wasn’t the only horror we saw that night. We also got a close-up view of the lethal power of these planes when three of them fired a laser-like weapon at a fishing boat that was making the escape with us. The light enveloped the defenseless craft. Seconds later it was gone…

…along with Quinn Carr.

The black planes had killed my best friend.

They had devastated Portland.

Now one of them was coming for us.

The hovering plane fired another shot that tore up the ground behind us as we sprinted for the safety of a building. It was close. I felt a sharp sting across my back as I was hit by a wave of pulverized street.

“The alley!” Kent shouted.

With one arm around Tori’s waist, I changed direction and ran toward a narrow alleyway between the old buildings.

“You okay?” I asked her breathlessly.

She nodded, but I didn’t believe her. Tori had lost a lot of blood. She needed to be lying down in a hospital, not running for her life.

As we ducked into the alley, I glanced up to see if the plane was following. I expected to see it loom into view above the buildings. Searching. Hunting. These beasts could fly with the speed of a jet fighter, hover like a helicopter, and cause unfathomable damage. What seemed impossible was all too real.

Several seconds passed. No plane appeared, nor did the signature musical sound of its engines. Had it given up that easily?

The streets of the Old Port were narrow and paved with rounded stones, giving the area the feel of an old-time fishing port, which is exactly what it used to be. Now it was a tourist destination where the vintage brick buildings held restaurants, bars, and souvenir stores.

Olivia ran for one of the shops. She yanked the door open and held it so I could get Tori inside. Kent followed quickly and slammed the door shut… as if a closed door would keep out the boogeyman.

We found ourselves in a store packed with Maine souvenirs. Every last inch of counter and wall space was taken up with displays of model lighthouses, saltwater taffy, kitchen-magnet lobsters, scrimshaw snow globes, and anything else that would remind visitors of their trip to the Pine Tree State.

Kent hurriedt to the large front window and peered out with caution.

“Why are they after us?” Olivia asked anxiously. “Because we escaped from Pemberwick Island?”

I helped Tori into a chair behind the sales counter. Though she appeared slight, she was a strong girl who had spent most of her life working lobster boats with her father. But at that moment she was as weak as an old lady.

She looked at me with glazed eyes and muttered, “I need some water.”

I searched the shop, hoping they stocked bottled water as well as flip-flops.

“Tucker!” Olivia cried impatiently. “I asked you a question. Why are they after us?”

“How should I know?” I replied, annoyed.

“Because you have all the answers,” Kent commented with his usual dose of sarcasm.

Everyone looked at me, hoping for words of wisdom. I hated being the one who was always expected to come up with solutions.

Moments before being attacked, we had learned a frightening truth while examining the wreck of one of the black planes. The craft looked like a giant manta ray with no aerodynamic capabilities whatsoever. I thought it might have come from an alien world… until I saw the logo on its skin.

It was the symbol of the United States Air Force.

That morning the four of us had escaped by speedboat from our home on Pemberwick Island and found ourselves in the middle of a sea-air battle between killer planes from the U.S. Air Force… and warships of the United States Navy.

“What can I say?” I answered tentatively. “It looks like the Navy and the Air Force are at war with one another.”

“We were running away from SYLO,” Kent said. “And SYLO is part of the Navy, so that means the Air Force are the good guys.”

“How can the Air Force be good guys?” I shot back. “They just wiped out Portland.”

“Yeah and SYLO turned Pemberwick into a prison,” he countered. “Oh, and they also killed Tori’s father. Did you forget that?”

I hadn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Tori for a reaction.

“Maybe there are no good guys,” Olivia said gravely.

We let that sobering thought hang in the air for a few seconds.

Tori then added in a weak voice, “Or maybe we’re in the middle of the second Civil War. One side’s got the Air Force, the other has the Navy and SYLO.”

None of us commented. The possibility was mind-numbing.

“What are we going to do?” Olivia whined.

“Stick to the plan,” I replied. “First we get to a hospital and patch Tori up. Then we head to Boston and tell the world what’s been happening on Pemberwick Island. After that I don’t know what—”

“Get out!” came a threatening voice from deeper in the store.

We all spun to see an elderly man standing in the doorway leading to the back room. He was a typical Mainer with a plaid flannel shirt and jeans. There was nothing unusual about him… except for the shotgun he had leveled at us.

“Whoa, take it easy, gramps,” Kent warned.

“Don’t gramps me,” the old guy snarled. “Get outta my store.”

“We will,” I said, trying to defuse the situation. “But one of those planes was shooting at us and—”