Joshua McCune - Talker 25

In the distance, the elementary and middle school sirens blare to life.

I hear a different noise coming from the horizon. It takes me a couple of seconds to spot the black jets. They rocket over Mason-Kline, the booming roar of their engines following close behind.

When I turn to track them, I see Keith sprinting toward me. I think he’s calling my name, but I can’t hear above the sirens and engines.

I use Sam’s phone to text Dad: I can’t find Sam.

Keith grabs me. “We need to get inside!”

“Sam’s not here.”

The jets fan out, spin around, and bank up into the clouds.

“When did you last see him?”

He says something else, but my focus is consumed by the fireflylike trail of orange pulses igniting behind the gray blanket of sky. I press myself into Keith and brace for what I know comes next.

The rattling percussion of gunfire erupts louder than fireworks, and the shrieking whistles of multiple missiles scream over Mason-Kline.

“Melissa, where is Sam?” Keith shouts in my ear.

“We got in a fight.”

He leans in. “What?”

“We got in a fight.” My voice breaks. “He was—”

The explosion rips the sky apart. Keith and I stagger sideways as a dark shape plummets beneath the cloud line.

It’s far too large to be a jet.

Even from a distance I see the gaping wound in the dragon’s flank. The monster smashes into the ground, sending up a cloud of dust and cornstalks. It’s more than a thousand feet away, but the tremor knocks me off my feet.

As I push myself up, a fiendish roar—something that belongs in a myth and not Mason-Kline—booms from the heavens. Five more dragons plunge through the clouds, wings tight to their glowing bodies. I barely notice the four Reds, because at the front of the pack, the brightest by far, is a Silver.

I’ve never seen a silver dragon, never heard of one. Reds, Greens, Blues—that’s all. Until now.

The jets race after them. Tracers and missiles paint a patchwork of fiery dots across the sky. The Silver settles in the cornfield next to its fallen comrade. The Reds encircle them, spreading their wings to form a protective perimeter.

With tremendous roars, they unleash the geysers of hell. Arcs of fire sweep the sky like spotlights. Searching, searching, searching. But they never find their targets.

Dragons can’t see black. According to Dad, it’s kind of like infrared to them. There, but invisible. They rely on noise to hone in on their targets, but there’s too much of it now.

Missile explosions, bullet purrs, engine screams blare from every direction. The jets zip in and out, patient and methodical. The Reds bob their heads in quick circles, confused and angry, always just a second too slow.

One Red starts flickering. The fire it manages to spit out comes in sputters that don’t reach more than twenty feet into the air. With one last burst, it launches itself into the maelstrom, giving its compatriots a few seconds of reprieve as the dragon jets concentrate their arsenal on it. Moments later, it crashes into the cornfield, and the DJs resume their onslaught.

The three remaining Reds adjust position to best maintain their perimeter. One screams at the Silver, then looks skyward. The others chime in, but the Silver doesn’t seem to hear. It doesn’t seem aware of the battle at all, its attention consumed by the dead dragon. It sniffs and prods the body, tugs at a limp wing. In the briefest moments, when the cacophony is at its quietest, I hear it mewling.

A carpet of explosions kills two more Reds. The last one flees, firing over its shoulder, clearly trying to draw the jets away. Three chase after it. The rest focus on the Silver.

The Red arcs back around to reengage, catches a missile in the chest. When the explosion clears, the dragon’s glow is gone. It somersaults in a lifeless parabola toward the ground.

I look back to the main battle. The Silver’s no longer huddled around the dead dragon. It’s on its haunches, in attack position. Like a circus performer snatching knives in midair, it grabs the missiles from the sky and throws them aside.

I gasp. Those missiles are black. It looks like it’s tracking the jets, too. It opens its mouth wide. The DJs don’t change course. Sam once told me they wear armor that can withstand temperatures up to 10,000 degrees F, but it seems like suicide to dive at an angry dragon that can clearly see you.

Silver liquid erupts from the dragon’s mouth. It expands out and up into a shimmering funnel that speeds toward the clouds.

The nearest plane banks too hard and spins out of control. The pilot ejects, twirling like a wobbly boomerang. The parachute attached to his seat opens but gets tangled, and he plummets into the corn.

Two more jets roar into the funnel. When they emerge from the other side, what looks like ice encases everything. They fall from the sky and shatter on impact.

A louder explosion thunders in my ears, pulling my attention to the column of smoke forming at the center of Mason-Kline.

One of the planes smashed into the middle of the housing district. The dragon shelters might provide protection for anybody who made it underground in time, but what about Sam? What if Dad got my text and was out looking for him?

I force my gaze back to the battle. The dragon continues to toss aside every missile that comes its way.

But it can’t catch the bullets.

Rather than fleeing, the Silver puffs its chest, widens its stance, and seems to welcome them. Each volley knocks it a little lower, staggers it a little more, but it refuses to move from its fallen companion’s side.

As the remaining jets regroup, the Silver’s ice cuts out, and it dims to a dull gray. It unfurls its tattered wings to their full extent, roars once at the heavens, then slumps to the ground beside the dead dragon.

Maybe they’re brother and sister.

Keith touches my shoulder. “Inside, Melissa. You don’t want to see this.”

He guides me into the school. The siren is no longer blaring, and when he closes the door, the sounds of jets and gunfire fade to the background. If not for Sam’s phone clutched in my hand, I might be able to convince myself I’m standing in the lobby of a movie theater, not in the middle of a war zone.

“Dad’snot answering his phone,” I say as Keith pushes me down the hallway. Outside, there’s another muted explosion. The walls rattle.

“He probably took shelter.”

We reach the stairwell that leads thirty feet underground, into a large metal box with enough supplies to keep two hundred students alive for a week. My phone won’t get reception down there. The school shelter’s got a landline, but it’s a secure army channel, for priority use only. Who knows how long it will be before they let us out? It could be hours. Stuck with nothing to do but remember how the last time you were safe in a shelter, your mother wasn’t.

Now Sam and Dad are both MIA.

“Can we wait up here?” I ask.

“It’s not safe, Mel.”

“But the dragon’s almost dead, right?”

Keith grabs his mini tablet, enters a couple of passwords, and navigates to the video section of the army database. He loads a live feed that shows the Silver from afar. A soldier in body armor kneels behind a row of corn and lifts a rocket launcher onto his shoulder. Another All-Black loads the tube with a spike-tipped missile.

With this explosion, the dragon crumbles to its knees.

“It’s flickering. It won’t be long,” I say, ear pressed to my phone. Voice mail again. I don’t bother leaving a message this time. I look to Keith. “Please.”

He taps a flashing icon at the bottom of the screen. Another clip pops up, this one transmitted from the cockpit of a dragon jet. The time stamp’s five minutes old.