James Knapp - Element Zero

The light got brighter and the air rippled in front of me. My vision collapsed to a tunnel, until all I could see was the shape of the ruined sign. The surface of it began to warp. The blackened metal on the sign inverted and the soot began to fall away. The bent brackets straightened and turned shiny again. Powder boiled around it like fog and then formed lights in each empty socket, while pain began to build in my head.

“Zoe,” a voice said. It was Ai’s voice. The scene in front of me wavered as my concentration threatened to break.

Come on …

The building began to reform. Dust and debris and a zillion glass shards rose and took shape. It was huge. Mirrored glass formed massive sheets that tumbled back up into the air, then back into place as the walls reformed. The structure grew until it would have towered above even the other skyscrapers that once surrounded it. A warm trickle began to creep from one of my nostrils as the pain in my head got worse.

“Zoe, listen to me.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her. She was standing a few feet away, staring up at me with her large, penetrating eyes.

“Wait,” I told her. “I can see it…. ”

“You’re in terrible danger,” she said. “You have to wake up now.”

The twisted sign broke free of the sand and rose into the air to remount on one side of the building. As it did, it turned slowly, and I saw the lights that spelled out its name flicker on.

ALTO DO MUNDO

I gasped, and the sign fell. A loud boom went off, so loud it made my teeth rattle. The building’s glass panels warped and all of them blew into dust. I clamped my hands over my ears as a sound like thunder cracked through the air and the ground shook under my feet. I stumbled and tried not to fall as the dust mushroomed up all around me.

“Zoe, wake up!”

The last thing I saw before I closed my eyes was the silhouette of the building’s peak as it sank down into the cloud. The whole building was imploding, crashing down toward the street as voices all around began to scream….

I snapped awake to the sound of a car horn and sirens. Nearby I heard people running, their footsteps crunching on broken glass. Over the racket, someone was screaming.

What the hell?

All the blood had rushed to my face and my head throbbed. I opened my eyes and saw blacktop through the windshield, which had been webbed with cracks. My hair hung down over the blood-spattered dome light, where the neck of a glass bottle lay among broken shards. I was upside-down, hanging from my seat belt. As I watched, more dots of blood appeared to join the others.

“Penny?”

Several pairs of feet ran by the window to my right, and I heard something smash in the distance. A voice was barking over a bullhorn, but I couldn’t make out what the man was saying. I could smell smoke and gasoline.

I pawed the deflated skin of the airbag away and looked to my left. Penny’s body hung limp from her seat belt, lines of blood painted down one side of her face. Behind her eyelids, I could see her eyes moving back and forth.

“Penny, wake up,” I said. “We’re in trouble.”

A gunshot went off somewhere close by, and people screamed. Penny sucked in a quick breath and her eyes snapped open as two more gunshots went off, their muzzle flashes reflecting off the ice through the window.

“Zoe?” she called.

“I’m right here.”

She looked over, and for a second I saw tears shine in her eyes. She reached out and touched my face, turning my head gently so she could see better.

“I’m okay,” I said.

She clenched her teeth and held on to the steering wheel with one hand while she reached down and released the latch on her belt. She lowered herself carefully, then crouched on the roof’s interior while she twisted around to face me.

The latch on my seat belt was stuck, so she took a thin knife from her boot and cut it. I slipped into her arms and she guided me down.

“Let me see,” she said, brushing my hair away from my face. I could feel it was wet with cold blood, and tried to twist away.

“It’s fine,” I said. “I’m …fine. What happened?”

“Fawkes did it,” she said. “He sent the trigger code. The Huma carriers, they’ve all turned.”

“I saw her,” I said. “That bitch Flax …she’s one of them.”

“The slum rat?” I nodded.

“I saw her. She’s a carrier—”

We both jumped as something hit the window next to me hard, and I turned to see a homeless man crouched there with a brick in one dirty hand. Black spots had bled through the whites of his bloodshot eyes, and through the gap in his disgusting beard I could see teeth that were yellow and brown. He stared at us through the glass as he reared back the brick again and smashed it against the glass. If it hadn’t been bulletproof, it would have broken for sure.

“Here,” Penny said, grabbing my elbow. She pulled me over next to her, away from the window, as a loud boom went off and something left a big divot in the glass right in the middle of a big splash of blood. The homeless man convulsed and went face-first onto the pavement, the brick tumbling out of his hand. A second shot went off and the body twitched. More blood splattered against the outside of the window and began to roll down it.

“Idiots,” Penny snapped. She slammed her fist against the car horn and it blared. Through the bloody glass I saw two uniformed soldiers with assault rifles peer toward us. One signaled for the other to hold his fire.

Penny checked the video phone on the dash, but the screen was cracked and it wouldn’t come on. She dug her cell phone out of her pocket and made a call while the soldiers approached the car.

“It’s me,” she said after a second. “Yeah, we’re okay. We need a pickup.”

The two soldiers came up to the car door, and one of them shoved the homeless man’s body out of the way. The other one wiped blood from the window and looked in at us.

“Is there anyone else inside?” he shouted, trying to see into the back. I shook my head.

His partner fired a couple shots at something I couldn’t see down the street, as Penny snapped her phone shut. The soldier who had spoken to me tapped the other one on the shoulder and pointed at a woman, wearing a bloodstained nightshirt and nothing else, who was running barefoot down the rows of stopped traffic. One of them held up his hand as she closed the distance between them.

“They’re sending a helicopter to pick us up,” she said. “We just need to get to—”

A loud, low boom thumped through my chest as the woman in the nightshirt exploded just a few feet from the car. I caught a flash of pieces—an arm and a head—as they blew outward. Then the soldiers crashed back against the glass and everything was covered in blood. The car rocked as shrapnel slammed into it.

“Shit!”

Penny grabbed my arm and heaved the driver’s-side door open with a loud groan I could barely hear through the ringing in my ears. She dragged me out into the street and hauled me to my feet as a blast of cold wind blew black, stinking smoke over us.

The street was a mess. As far as I could see, traffic was stopped, and it looked like a lot of the cars had been abandoned. Lights from police cars and a fire truck flashed, and I could hear sirens wail in the distance. Groups of people ran every which way while others lay bleeding in the snow on the sidewalks. Gunshots echoed between the buildings, and I saw them going off down the street in the distance. A chopper banked overhead and shined a floodlight down over the mayhem.

I jumped as a shot went off behind me, and I spun around to see Penny fire a second shot into a shambling homeless man with black spots in his eyes. He staggered back, then turned and ducked behind a box truck that had one wheel up on the curb.