Joshua McCune - Talker 25

I rise, force myself to look at them. Evelyn’s not here. Maybe she escaped. Maybe others did, too. I check in, around, and beneath each bed. No more victims in the main room.

Five in the bathroom.

Lorena’s there, her face ripped apart. Sixteen, Twenty, and Twenty-Two appear asleep on the floor. Pam’s propped against the back wall, Bible clutched in her hands.

I shut off the flashlight, lean against the wall. It hurts too much to cry. They weren’t supposed to be dead. That’s not how rescue works.

Footsteps. I raise the gun, touch my finger to the trigger, and peek out. Twenty-One. Shivering and giggling, she raises her arms. “Don’t shoot.”

I enfold her in the jacket. “I told you to stay put,” I say, almost yelling.

“I needed my chocolate. For the island.” Knowing I can’t convince her otherwise, I help retrieve her stash.

We’re almost back to the Humvee when two All-Blacks emerge from the infirmary. The taller one’s limping. They head toward the thinning wall of smoke that splits Georgetown in half.

A missile blisters overhead. I grab Twenty-One tight, tuck in, and brace against the Humvee. The infirmary explodes. Another missile. Another earthshaking detonation. A wave of heat warms my face. Staying low, I open the Humvee, load Twenty-One in, crawl in behind her.

I’ve just shut the door behind me when the barracks gets pulverized. Rubble pelts the windshield and chassis of the Humvee, as rapid as a machine gun.

I floor the accelerator. Buildings blow up left and right. The world becomes a jumbled nightmare of fire and smoke. The hailstorm of debris intensifies. Louder. Louder. Louder. We slide from side to side. I glance in the rearview mirror. Through the haze, I see four gunships closing in, unloading their arsenal. A half-dozen Reds pursue at full flame, their riders launching their own rockets.

“Watch out!” Allie screams.

I snap my gaze forward. A dead dragon blocks our path. I jam the brakes, swerve hard right. Fishtail. I throw the wheel left. Too much! The Humvee tips.

We roll.

Glass shatters. Pain ignites. Screams everywhere. The world unravels.

Blackness.

Wake up, human.

I know that voice.

Wake up, Melissa Callahan.

The armies gather. We will come.

Blink.

Red glow.

A screech of metal.

Blink.

The Humvee roof peels away.

A dragon’s looking at me. I shudder.

“Hold still.” Two pairs of hands grab me by the armpits, haul me from the wreckage. “You look like hell, Callahan.” He injects me with something. “Don’t worry, we’ll have you patched up in no time.”

As they load me onto some sort of stretcher, I see the infirmary. With effort, I turn my head, squint. The barracks are there, too. “They blew them up. I saw it. They blew them up!”

“Calm down.” He holds my head still, puts a bulky collar around my neck, straps me down so I can’t see anything but the smoky sky. They bind my legs and hands.

They lift the stretcher, start walking. A dragon lumbers beside us.

“Al—”

“Everything’s gonna be fine. You’re safe now. Just calm down.”

“Allie?” I groan. “Allie? Where’s Allie?”

“The girl? A few scrapes, but she’s Jedi. You took the lion’s share. . . .” He continues to talk, I drift.

“Can I see her?” Her voice awakens me. A small hand touches my cheek. “You want some chocolate, Twenty-Five?”

I squeeze back tears, open my eyes. Her face bounces in my vision as she walks alongside me. She’s got scratches on her cheeks, a black eye, a lopsided grin. “You okay?”

She nods. “You’re not a very good driver, no, no.”

“I’ll work on it.” My laugh turns into a grimace.

“Really, you have to take it easy, Callahan.”

The person at the other end of the stretcher chuckles. I don’t recognize him. “You’ll have to excuse Preston. He’s very concerned about his balls right now,” he says.

“Trish didn’t threaten to castrate you ,” Preston says.

“With a butter knife, I believe she said. What was it? ‘If you don’t get Melissa out in one piece, I’m gonna—’”

“Trish?” I interrupt.

“Diva Trish,” Preston says. “Acts like she did all the hard work. Biotracer was my idea, thank you very much. Don’t let anybody else tell you otherwise.”

My head swims. “She’s one of you?”

“An honorary Grunt now.”

“Need to get her to do a Loki run,” the other guy says.

“For sure. First thing when we get back.”

“We really need to recruit more chicks. . . .”

They continue their chatter. At some point I notice that Allie’s no longer at my side. The smoke that clouds the sky has thickened, but it’s now somehow brighter, too.

We pass through a jagged opening into a building. I hear footsteps and conversations. Becoming louder. Somebody kisses my forehead, murmurs my name, says he’ll be back. I glimpse the sword tattoos on his neck, and then he’s hurrying away, shouting orders.

“Where are—” I start.

The room brightens, illuminating winches and cranes overhead. The power’s out, but it’s getting brighter. Doesn’t make sense. We’re headed toward the slaughter slab.

It keeps getting brighter. So bright.

“She’s got her light saber up for you,” Preston says. I can hear the smile in his voice.

Hope sneaks in. “Baby?”

Melissa?

She has the voice of an angel.

“Let me see her.”

“You need to stay immobilized until we can fully evaluate you,” Preston says.

“If you don’t let me out of this thing, I’ll castrate you the first chance I get, and I promise you, you’ll be wishing I’d used a butter knife.”

The moment I’m loose, I stumble from the stretcher. She’s strapped to the slab, cameras and green screens still around her, her wings so broken. But she’s licking Allie into hysterical giggles, looking at me with those beautiful blue eyes. And glowing. Glowing so bright.

I laugh and I cry and my body almost gives out. Preston tries to help me, but I shrug him off and run. And it hurts. Everything hurts. So fucking much. But she’s alive and she’s glowing and she’s fucking alive.

So fucking alive.

At least two dozen insurgents surround her, some taking pictures, others tending her wounds and removing her bindings. I’m pushing through the crowd, am almost to her when I see two All-Blacks huddled together at the other end of the slab, backs to me, heads bowed together. The shorter one looks my way.

For a second, I don’t recognize her. She seems too haunted. Too human.

Evelyn.

We stare at each other—different strangers than before. Then she turns back around.

“He’ll get better, Melissa,” Allie says from beside me. It’s the first time she’s ever used my name. Sounds odd.

“Who—”

A chain saw revs up. I flinch. So does that soldier next to Evelyn. He turns his head halfway to glare at something I can’t see.

I stop breathing.

I thought I’d killed him.

For the briefest moment, he focuses on me, and I’d swear his scowl softens and his eyes brighten. In that glance I recognize the boy from Shadow Mountain Lookout. Then he looks away.

“Arabelle has some silly ideas for the island,” Allie says. She sounds excited.

An ice cave is not silly, Baby says. Based on Allie’s snort, I assume Baby’s in broadcast mode. And don’t forget the snowfield where we can play ball.

“Snow will melt.”

Not if it’s cold.

“It’s cold here. I don’t like the cold, no, no.”

Somewhere else, where it’s a nice cold.

“Tell her she’s silly, Melissa.”