Robison Wells - Blackout

“Name?” the man with the clipboard said.

“Kelly Wagner.”

He looked through the papers on the clipboard until he found a black-and-white photocopied yearbook picture, and compared it to Kelly’s face.

“How long is this going to take?” she said.

He ignored her, and peeled a sticker off his paperwork.

“Hold out your left wrist,” the second man said, taking the sticker and pressing it onto one of the thick plastic bracelets.

Kelly obeyed, and the soldier strapped the bracelet on her arm. He tugged on it until Kelly squealed. He then motioned for her to hurry along, and a third soldier escorted her to a bus.

Aubrey moved to get a better view of the clipboard, but by now she could hardly stand. She waited through two more people, hoping to catch a glimpse of her own name on the list—to see if it was marked in some way.

Something rumbled, like the low growl of an animal.

The soldiers noticed it too, and they retreated away from the line of teens. The man with the bracelets dropped them and lifted his rifle, leveling it at the crowd. The other soldier twisted his headset microphone to his mouth.

“Possible Lambda,” he said. “At the loading area. Over.”

The soldiers’ fear was contagious and Aubrey stumbled slowly back from the teens—from kids she’d known for as long as she could remember.

A loudspeaker squawked. “Attention, students. Please get down on the ground, and keep your hands in front of you.”

The crowd was hesitant to move, and a few of the girls called out, saying that the asphalt would ruin their dresses.

Aubrey heard the rumble again. It wasn’t an animal—it sounded like rock grinding against rock.

“Everyone get down,” the voice commanded sharply. All the soldiers’ guns were raised now, and the students slowly began to comply.

Aubrey reached the edge of the lit area. She couldn’t stand any longer and rested on the bumper of a truck. She searched the faces for Nicole, but didn’t see her—the line still wound all the way back into the barn.

Someone near the front of the line moved. It was Nate, only . . . it wasn’t Nate. He was wearing the same boutonniere she’d pinned on his jacket earlier that night, the same garish tie, but his face was wrong. Aubrey rubbed her eyes to see if fatigue was blurring her vision, but he still looked off. His face and hands were black and rough, almost like the asphalt he was standing on. He stood fully erect, against the soldiers’ orders.

The soldiers barked at him to get back down, then ordered him to come forward, but he didn’t do either. His eyes—small and black—scanned across the crowd of students as though he was waiting for something.

The soldiers were screaming at Nate now, commanding him to listen and obey. He spoke words that Aubrey couldn’t hear, and she almost thought she saw his grotesque face smile.

Then he lunged forward, running toward the nearest soldier. His footsteps were heavy and Aubrey thought she felt the ground shake. Rifles flashed all around the parking lot as the army opened fire on him, but Nate didn’t stop. He collided with the soldier, tackling him to the ground with a horrible crunch. As the bullets hailed into Nate, he stood again, leaving the soldier crumpled in a motionless heap.

Aubrey dashed across the lawn, her bare feet stumbling. The soldiers weren’t looking for her—they were looking for Nate, and he was some kind of monster. Or were they looking for both of them? At the edge of the lawn she plunged into the bushes, fighting her way through the tangled branches and sticks. Bullets continued to roar behind her, echoed by the screams of the terrified students.

Finally, she took a step and there was nothing beneath her. She flailed for something to grab, but fell.

JACK WATCHED AS THE SOLDIERSfired at the—what was it? A gorilla?—but their guns seemed to have no effect.

The gorilla—no, it was human; it was wearing clothes—attacked another soldier, charging into the direct path of the bullets and leaping forward. The soldier was smashed to the pavement and didn’t get up.

Several of the students began to creep away, crawling for safety or to escape. Jack saw two girls sprint from the school bus toward the denser brush.

And then the thing tried to run, thundering out of the parking lot and onto the empty road. Jack saw a soldier fire something else from his rifle—slower than a bullet and arcing like a thrown baseball. It hit the ground behind the creature and exploded in yellow fire and smoke. All the way up on the hill, Jack felt the shock wave thud into his chest and pass through his body.

How could this be happening? And what was that thing? Was it a terrorist? That seemed like the only explanation, though it didn’t make any sense. Everyone assumed the terrorists were Islamic fundamentalists, or political extremists, or environmental activists. No one thought they were . . . monsters?

As the smoke cleared, the thing was struggling to stand.

Another grenade was launched—that’s what it had to be—and this one was a direct hit.

Jack realized his hands were clutched on the sides of the truck’s cab, his knuckles white and the sharp edges of rusty metal digging into his skin.

As the cloud of smoke and debris drifted away, the creature wasn’t moving.

He didn’t look menacing anymore. Just a man—just a kid, like Jack—lying motionless on the road, next to two craters in the asphalt.

Four soldiers moved out to check on him, and suddenly the rest of the army was back at work—corralling the kids who were trying to crawl away, and herding them all into some semblance of a line.

Jack realized suddenly that he was hearing screams. They’d been there all the time, he was sure, but he’d just noticed them now that the guns had stopped. They weren’t frightened screams, or calls for help—they were wails, like uncontrollable sadness.

Few of the students would stand. Jack wondered how many had peed themselves, and then realized how stupid that was—someone had just died. Some teenager had just turned into some kind of monster and had then been gunned down, blown up, by the United States Army.

Jack watched as, one by one, the students were pulled from the ground, checked against paperwork, put in some kind of handcuffs, and led onto buses. There were medics there now, removing the bodies of three dead or, hopefully, unconscious soldiers. A truck beyond the floodlights took the motionless monster—now a regular boy—away.

The soldiers made a final sweep of the area—in and out of the barn, up into the brush, down through the river—and returned with a few more terrified kids.

And then they left, the buses in a tight convoy surrounded by Humvees.

And Jack was all by himself.

He stumbled to his knees and puked over the edge of the truck’s bed, his whole body shaking.

What had he just seen? That was the homecoming dance—that was everybody he knew, all gone. When did teenagers at a dance become criminals?

No, not criminals. Police handle criminals. The army fights enemies.

A bunch of boys in hand-me-down suits and girls in skimpy dresses were enemies of America?

What was that thing, that monster? That must have been why the army was there. But then why did they take all the others away? Was the army protecting them or arresting them?

Jack didn’t dare drive his truck to the barn—he didn’t want any lights to make him a target—but he made the decision to hike down the grassy hill.

He moved slowly, instinctively using the slow, toe-to-heel footsteps he’d been taught over a lifetime of hunting deer and elk. The dark felt claustrophobic and heavy, like the night air was wrapping around him, crushing his chest. His breathing was rapid, even though he was hardly moving a mile per hour, and his heart raced.