Joshua McCune - Talker 25

Two things occur to me in fast order: whoever opened the door did so without hesitation, like he knew what waited on the other side; I should move.

I dart sideways as a gunshot echoes through the room. A sting of hot pain slices across my upper arm. Fear and adrenaline suffuse me. I duck low and race toward a nearby mound of rocks.

“Take your medicine like a good girl, Melissa.”

Major Alderson.

He fires again. The bullet whistles past.

Someone screams. The major shifts the flashlight to a grassy knoll on the opposite side of the room. With my eyes adjusting to the light, it takes me a moment to spot the girl peeking out between thick shoots of brush. Twenty-One. I’d forgotten about her.

“Kill the dragons, yes, yes!” she hisses at the major.

Alderson aims the gun at her.

I rush around the roadblock. “Over here, asshole!”

He spins toward me, but not fast enough. I kick him square in the chest. He smashes into the doorframe, dropping pistol and flashlight. I scramble for the gun, but he catches me by the ankle and twists.

I flip over. He punches me hard in the face. Starbursts explode in my vision. Straddling me, he puts his massive hands around my neck.

I kick and flail, but it’s useless.

Like ink spreading fast through water, my vision clouds dark until I see nothing but Major Alderson’s eyes. My legs and arms spasm; the world spins. Faster and faster. Blackness engulfs me, but it’s silent—no dragons, no insurgents, no victims.

Peacefully, wonderfully silent.

“Kill the dragons, yes, yes.” A whisper at the edge of consciousness.

Abruptly, the major’s hands loosen. I gasp for air. Liquid sprays my face, clogs my throat, makes me cough more. Alderson lets go altogether and lurches back. Sensation crawls into my body, and I knee him in the groin as hard as I can. It’s not much, but it’s enough to weaken his leghold around my waist. I squirm out from under him.

As I scrabble backward, groping for the gun, my vision returns. The major’s close to dead. Twenty-One sits on his back, stabbing him with the tail of the dragon pin I gave her in another lifetime. One side of the major’s neck resembles a field of tiny crimson flowers. Blooming, then wilting. I watch the last trickles of life pulse from his wounds.

“Kill the dragons, yes, yes.” Twenty-One grins and continues to gouge the dead major. “Or the dragons kill them.”

Ino longer hear the buzz of jets amid all the dragon howls overhead. The artillery’s gone silent, but otherwise the battle carries on. Bullets, missiles, dragonfire. Roars, yells, screams.

Real?

I peer past Alderson and Twenty-One into a smaller room cloaked in shadows. Beyond its open door, a hallway leads outside. I can see columns of smoke and the front of a Humvee. Several soldiers rush past, followed by a crackling cone of flame.

“Allie . . . Twenty-One?” I say. She looks up, cocks her head.

I edge closer. “Do you know who I am?”

“Yes, yes.”

I crouch down, close enough to hear her mumbling to herself.

“The dragons kill them, yes, yes. Yes they do.”

“I’m sorry about Baby . . . Arabelle,” I say.

She glances at me. “Why?”

“I couldn’t save her,” I whisper.

“No, no.” She drives the pin deep into Alderson’s neck, then laughs. She jerks it out, wipes it clean with her shirt, and offers it to me.

I’m not sure what just happened, but it doesn’t matter. We’re friends again. “You keep it safe.” I retrieve the flashlight and gun. “Right now, we’ve gotta go check on the others.”

She helps me strip him of his clothes. I put the helmet on—God, it smells like him—and slip into his jacket. It reaches the floor and could fit a girl twice my size, which is perfect. I wrap the excess around Twenty-One. She peeks out, mumbling to herself.

We shuffle around Alderson. A dragon roar sounds somewhere behind me. I hesitate in the doorway, waiting for the screams, but none come. Real? Or is everybody dead?

I look behind me with a sweep of the flashlight. Massive screens form an octagon around a grid of cracked streets and crumbling sidewalks. Gravel pits and undulating stretches of brush fill the adjacent lots. Scattered rubble piles dot the terrain. I focus the beam on the charred minivan crashed into the roadblock, then onto the mangled APC a dozen feet away in a field of wild grass.

I release the breath I didn’t know I was holding. Set pieces. Not real. No corpses in sight. Other than Alderson.

I level the gun at his head. I want to shoot him, shoot his face into a bloody pulp, shoot him until nobody, not even his family will recognize him.

I force myself to look away. Might need the bullets. I kick him hard in the ribs, stub my toe, curse him.

Following the brightening swath of sunlight, we creep down the hallway. I clamp my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering. A couple of soldiers flash past the open doorway, but they’re too busy fleeing or shooting at the sky to notice us.

Nearing the exit, I look up through the fog of smoke and almost remember what happiness is. Tracer bursts and strings of fire make chaotic patterns as dozens of insurgent-mounted Reds and Greens zip across the sky. Gunships weave among them, blasting away.

Machine-gun fire snaps my focus back to earth. It seems to be coming from the opposite side of the road, but a billowing wall of smoke obscures my view of everything but the dragon skulls atop the ER.

A Humvee’s parked a few feet away, undamaged. I peek out the door to get a better view. Overturned vehicles, dead dragons, and scorched corpses litter the road. No live A-Bs I can see.

I pocket the flashlight, duck low with Twenty-One, and scurry to the Humvee, sloshing through half-melted ice. We get in fast, shut the door faster. The heater’s at full blast. The hula-girl clock on the dash reads 2:31 . The talkers should be in the barracks.

It takes me a couple tries to maneuver past a nearby crater. I spot a few A-Bs hiding in doorways, several running in the opposite direction, but they don’t seem to notice us. I check the rearview mirror, but don’t see any signs of those soldiers.

I don’t see the crater either, but it’s hard to tell with all the smoke. I take a long blink and focus forward.

The closer we get to the barracks, the quieter it becomes.

At two thirty-four, we arrive. The door’s open halfway, enough to see three scrub-dressed bodies inside. I can’t make out the faces.

“Stay here,” I tell Twenty-One as I scan the area. Another Humvee idles two blocks down in front of the infirmary. The battle rages on behind us. Otherwise we’re alone . . . I think.

“Hide now.”

Twenty-One hunkers down, eyes darting about. “Vultures?”

“Everywhere.” I point to the floorboard. “They won’t see you there.”

She scoots off the seat and scrunches up into a ball.

I get out of the Humvee, take several breaths of cold air to numb my senses, and enter the barracks.

Five, Seven, and Ten lie nearest the door in an expanding pond of blood. Noses and cheeks bluing, eyes glazed, torsos riddled. Twelve, Eighteen, and Nineteen are sprawled behind them, facedown, shot in the back.

These were Evelyn’s girls, the ones who’d convinced themselves the soldiers were their friends. Twelve, Eighteen, and Nineteen probably realized what was happening and fled. All of three steps before they were cut down.

Gunfire erupts nearby. My legs wobble, the room spins. Men in white cloaks burst from the darkness in front of me, firing away. I drop to my knees, crawl through blood. “Not real!” I squeeze my eyes shut. The noise fades to the distance. I open my eyes. The men have disappeared, but the girls remain.