Susan Ee: World After

Obi sighs, seeming reluctant. He speaks into the radio. “Change of plans. All vehicles head to the old aerie. Approach with extreme caution. Repeat, approach with extreme caution. Hostiles have been sighted. This is now an observation mission. But if you get the chance, bring back a bird specimen. Dead or alive.”

THE ICY rain pelts my face as we race through abandoned cars in a sea of junk. Well, racing is a strong word for an SUV rolling at thirty miles an hour, but these days that speed is neck-breaking—literally, since I’m perched on the window and hanging on for dear life.

“Tank at two o’clock,” I call out.

“Tank? Seriously?” asks Dee-Dum. He strains his neck to see above the debris cluttering the road. He sounds excited even though we both know that the angels would hear a tank from miles away.

“I kid you not. Looks dead.” My rain-soaked hair drips down my neck and traces a finger of ice down my back. It’s a light rain, as most San Francisco rains are, but enough to seep through everything. The wet chill freezes my hands and it’s hard to hang onto the grab-handle.

“Bus at twelve o’clock,” I say.

“Yeah, that I can see.”

The bus lies on its side. I briefly wonder if it got tilted by one of the earthquakes that shook the world when the angels came, or if it was picked up and tossed by avenging angels when the Resistance hit their aerie. My guess is that it was tossed, since there’s a long crater in the road near the bus with an upside-down Hummer in it.

“Uh, giant crater—” Before I can finish my sentence, Dee-Dum swerves the car. I hang on tight as I’m pitched to the right. For a moment, I think I’m going to smash into the asphalt face-first.

He does a crazy zigzag maneuver before he straightens the car.

“A little forewarning would be nice,” says Dee-Dum in a singsong voice.

“A little smoother driving would be nicer,” I say mimicking his tone. The hard metal of the car door presses against my thighs, bruising my muscles as we bump onto the sidewalk.

As if that isn’t bad enough, I haven’t seen a single hint of batwings attached to an Adonis-like body anywhere along the way. Not that I expected to see Raffe.

“That’s it. Glasses or no, it’s Sanjay’s turn.” I slide down from my perch and sink into the back seat as Sanjay climbs up to sit in the open window on his side.

We’re approaching the Financial District from a different direction than Raffe and I had a couple of days ago. This part of town looks like it wasn’t the nicest part to begin with, but a few buildings still stand with only their edges singed.

Colorful beads are splashed over the sidewalk in front of a store with a sign reading Beads and Feathers. But there’s not a single feather in sight. The bounty that someone has put out for angel parts must still going strong. I wonder if all the chickens and pigeons have been plucked? Their feathers might be worth more than their meat if they could be passed off as angel feathers.

My stomach feels full of ice as we near the disaster zone that was once the Financial District. The area is deserted now, with not even scavengers looking for bits of usable supplies or scraps of food.

“Where is everybody?”

The Financial District still stands, or at least a few blocks of it does. In the center, there’s a gaping hole in the skyline where the aerie used to be. A couple of months ago, it was a high-end, Art-Deco hotel. Then the angels took over and turned it into their aerie. Now it’s just a pile of rubble from when the Resistance crashed a truck full of explosives into it.

“Oh, that’s not good,” says Dee-Dum, looking up into the sky.

I see it the same time he does.

A funnel of angels swirls from the place where the aerie used to be.

“What are they doing here?” I whisper.

Dee-Dum pulls the SUV over and turns off the engine. Without a word, he takes two pairs of binoculars out of the glove compartment and hands one to me. Obi already has his so I guess I’m supposed to share mine with Sanjay.

Obi grabs his rifle and gets out. I follow with my heart pounding in my chest.

I worry that the angels heard our engines, but they continue to fly without looking toward us. We zigzag on foot from car to car toward the old aerie. It doesn’t seem to occur to Obi or Dee-Dum to run away.

An angel with snowy white wings takes off into the blanket of clouds. My eyes follow him even though I know Raffe doesn’t have those wings any more.

As we near the destroyed building that was once their aerie, everything is covered in dust. The pulverized concrete fell all over the cars, the streets, and the dead bodies. Cars lie strewn upside down and sideways on the sidewalks, on top of other cars, and partway embedded in nearby buildings.

Our feet crunch over broken concrete as we dart between the cars and debris. The angels were not pleased about the attack in the middle of their party, and they left the scene the way a child would leave a Lego town after a tantrum.

There are bodies lying in the street and they’re all human. I get the sick feeling that the attack didn’t do as much damage to the angels as we had initially thought. Where are the angel bodies?

I glance over at Dee-Dum and see from his eyes that he’s wondering the same thing. We pause close enough to see what’s going on.

The old aerie is just a pile of broken boulders and bent rebar. The steel rods that used to support the high-rise hotel now stand broken and exposed like bloodstained bones.

I expected the aerie to be a mountain of rubble. Instead, the rubble is spread everywhere.

The place is swarming with angels.

Winged bodies lie haphazardly in the wreckage while some are arranged in a row on the asphalt. Angels dig up enormous boulders and toss them away from what was once the aerie. A few of them drag angel bodies and line them up on the road.

My heart is racing so hard I swear I have to swallow to keep it from galloping out of my mouth.

A warrior with spotted wings walks out of one of the nearby buildings with a bucket in each hand, sloshing water with every step. He kicks the nearest body.

The supposedly dead angel groans and starts to move.

The warrior tosses water onto the bodies in the street. They were wet from the drizzle anyway but now they’re soaked.

As soon as the bodies get splashed, they begin to move.

“WHAT THE—” says Sanjay, too startled to remember to be quiet.

A couple of the angels lying on the asphalt immediately resurrect and vigorously shake the drops out of their hair like dogs. The others groan and move sluggishly as if the morning alarm went off sooner than expected.

Some of them are clearly shot up with bullets. Their wounds have ugly entry points and even uglier exit points that look like raw hamburger flowers.

The warrior with spotted wings grabs his other bucket and tosses the water onto the rest of the “bodies.” He also kicks a few of the wounded still lying on the asphalt.

“Get up, maggots! What do you think this is? Naptime? You’re an embarrassment.”

Apparently, Sanjay’s not the only one who forgot to be quiet because one of the angels grabs a chunk of broken concrete and throws it at a car the way someone might throw a stone at a rat. And just like rats, two of our men scamper out of the way as it smashes into the car that they were hiding behind.

A couple of other angels grab chunks of broken fixtures and rebar and throw them at us. I barely have time to dive to the sidewalk as the car windows shatter.

I jump up and run so hard I’m hyperventilating by the time I hide in the doorway of a building. I peek at the angels. They’re not chasing us any more than we would chase rats in a garbage dump.