End of Days (Penryn and the End of Day #3) (27 page)

But before they get close enough to begin a fight, my sister circles overhead with her locusts. There are only three of them, but if there’s one thing the locust victims fear, it’s the locusts.

As soon as the resurrected see them, they scatter back into the grove across the street and disappear, no longer shuffling like zombies.

The Resistance people stare at the fleeing attackers, then at Paige and her pets as they fly low overhead. Some of the people give up on their injured and take cover, apparently more afraid of the locusts than of the resurrected.

The rest, though, stand firm and point their guns at Paige.

One of them is the guy who was in the council room with Obi the last time I was here. The one who lassoed Paige like an angry villager chasing after Frankenstein’s monster. I think Obi called him Martin.

‘She’s here to help.’ I put my arms out to try to calm everyone. ‘It’s all right. She’s on our side. Look, she scared the attackers.’

No one lowers their gun, but no one shoots either. That probably has more to do with not wanting to attract angels with the noise than believing anything I said.

‘Martin,’ I say. ‘Remember what Obi said? That my sister could be humanity’s hope.’ I point to Paige. ‘That’s her. You remember her?’

‘Yeah, I remember her,’ says Martin. His gun is firmly aimed at Paige. There are two others near him who look familiar. They were part of the group that held Paige down with ropes when they caught her. ‘I remember she has a taste for humans.’

‘She’s on our side,’ I say. ‘She came out into the open to protect you. Obi believes in her. You heard him.’

Everyone watches Martin to see what he’ll do. If he shoots, they’ll all shoot.

He maintains his aim on Paige as if fantasizing about shooting her.

‘Hey!’ he yells to Paige. ‘The gangs who hit us went that way.’ He swings his rifle to point north up El Camino Real. ‘I shot several of them. They should be easy pickin’s for you and your pets.’

He lowers his rifle and slings it over his torn shirt. ‘Never let it be said that we didn’t feed our honored guests.’

There’s a moment when everyone watches Martin. Then one by one, the Resistance people lower their guns.

Paige looks down at me from the sky as her locusts circle low above us like vultures. She looks both eager and confused, like she’s not sure what she’s supposed to do.

She’s looking to me for answers, but I don’t know what to do either.

‘Yes!’ says my mother as she runs toward Paige, waving her arms in the direction that Martin pointed. ‘Go, baby girl. It’s lunchtime!’

That’s all the permission they need. The locusts fly north along the road with my sister.

‘Be careful,’ I call out.

I’m horrified. Relieved. Scared. Confused.

Nothing is as it’s supposed to be.

51

I keep expecting Obi to show up and take charge, but I still don’t see him. Not knowing what else to do, I continue to help carry the wounded while looking for Obi.

The injured sometimes scream and are sometimes too silent as we carry them into the main building. I have no idea if there’s even a doctor there, but we carry injured people in as though there were a full hospital in there.

We act as if this Spanish-style high school building is full of doctors and equipment. We tell the patients they’ll be okay, that the doctor will be with them soon. I suspect that some of them die while they wait, but I don’t stop to confirm as we lay down the wounded and head out for more.

There’s a rhythm to it, this task of carrying the injured. It gives us all something to do, something that feels organized and proper. I shut my brain off and just move like a robot, one wounded after another.

Surprisingly, everyone else behaves as though there’s order as well. Some bring water to people who need it, others gather crying children and reassure them, while others put out the fire still lingering in one of the buildings. There are people who stand guard with their rifles pointed at the sky, protecting the rest of us.

Everyone steps into a role to help without being told what to do.

That sense of organization falls apart, though, as soon as we find Obi.

He’s in bad shape. His breathing is shallow, and his hands are freezing. He has a wound in his chest that has soaked his entire shirt in blood.

I rush over and press my hands to his wound. ‘We got you, Obi. You’re going to be just fine.’ He doesn’t look at all like he’s going to be fine. His eyes tell me that he knows I’m lying.

He coughs and struggles to breathe.

He’s been lying here, watching the whole drama unfold with my sister, and patiently waiting for us to find him while we carried the other wounded.

‘Help them,’ he says, staring into my eyes.

‘I’m doing my best, Obi.’ I can’t press hard enough to stop his bleeding.

‘You know the angels better than anyone.’ He takes a labored breath. ‘You know their strengths, their weaknesses. You know how to kill them.’

‘We’ll talk later.’ No matter how hard I press, the blood seeps between my fingers and out of the sides of my hands. ‘Rest now.’

‘Get your sister to help with her monsters.’ He closes his eyes and opens them again sluggishly. ‘She listens to you.’ Breath. ‘People will follow you.’ Breath. ‘Lead them.’

I shake my head. ‘I can’t. My family needs me—’

‘We’re your family too.’ His breathing slows. His eyelids droop. ‘We need you.’ He puffs out his words between breaths. ‘Humanity. Needs. You.’ His words are barely a whisper now. ‘Don’t let them die.’ Breath. ‘Please . . .’ Breath. ‘Please don’t let them die . . .’

He lies still and stares blankly into my eyes.

‘Obi?’

I listen and feel for another breath, but there’s no sign of life.

I pull back my trembling hands. They’re covered in blood.

He wasn’t even my friend, but my eyes sting with tears anyway.

It feels like the last linchpin of civilization just broke.

I look around, noticing for the first time that everyone around me has stopped to watch Obi. Everyone has tears shining in their eyes. Not everyone may have liked him, but everyone respected him.

No one had realized he was lying there among the other injured until we found him. Now the people carrying the injured, the ones giving water to the thirsty, the ones handing out armfuls of blankets – all are frozen and staring at Obi, who lies on the blood-stained grass with his empty eyes staring at the sky.

A woman drops her pile of blankets. She turns, her face crumpling, and walks away, stooped and shuffling like a broken person.

A man gently puts down an injured woman on the main building steps. He turns and walks dazedly away from the battle scene.

A boy my age pulls his water back from an injured man propped against a building wall. He screws on the top of his water bottle while looking thoughtfully at the next injured man beside the first. He walks away as the second man reaches out to him.

As soon as the first few stop helping, the others stop doing their own work and begin leaving too. Some are crying, others look scared and lonely as they walk off the school campus.

The camp is unraveling.

I remember something Obi said to me when I first met him. He said that attacking the angels wasn’t about beating them. It was about winning the hearts and spirits of the people. It was about letting them know there’s still hope.

Now that he’s gone, it’s as if the hope went with him.

52

It doesn’t make me feel any better to have to tell them to evacuate. I had assumed I could just tell Obi and he would tell them. But now it’s on my shoulders.

I gather everyone into the school yard with the help of a few people. For the first time, I don’t worry about being out in the open or making noise, because I know the hunt won’t start until sundown. Despite the number of people who left camp, we cover most of the yard. We catch a lot of people as they’re preparing to leave.

I could just tell a few people and let the word spread, but I don’t want to risk a mass panic full of confusion about what’s happening. It seems worthwhile to take twenty minutes to have a final, civilized meeting and let them know what’s going on.

I climb slowly onto a lunch table, even though I know we should be in a huge rush. There’s something about telling people that they’re about to die that stiffens my muscles. Half, maybe most, of the people here won’t be alive by morning.

It makes things worse that there are still dead bodies in the yard. But I don’t expect this to take long, and it’s pointless pretending that a bunch of people didn’t get killed.

I clear my throat, trying to figure out what to say.

Before I can begin, a new group of people walk toward us from the parking lot. It’s Dee, Dum, and about a dozen freedom fighters, all streaked in soot and looking around at the bodies spread on the ground.

‘What’s going on?’ asks Dee. His forehead creases. ‘What happened? Where’s Obi? We need to see him.’

No one says anything. I guess everyone expects me to answer.

‘The camp was attacked while you guys were gone.’ I try to figure out how to tell him about Obi. I lick my lips. ‘Obi . . .’ My throat dries up.

‘What about him?’ Dum sounds suspicious, like he knows what I’m about to say.

‘He didn’t make it,’ I say.

‘What?’ asks Dee.

The fighters look around as if asking for confirmation from the crowd.

Dee shakes his head slowly in denial.

‘No,’ says another fighter. He backs away. ‘No.’

‘Not Obi,’ says another fighter covering his face with soot-smeared hands. ‘Not him.’

They look dazed and overwhelmed.

‘He was going to get us out of this mess,’ says the first fighter. ‘That bastard can’t die.’ He sounds angry, but his face crumples like a little boy’s. ‘He just can’t.’

Their reactions shake me.

‘Calm down,’ I say. ‘You can’t help anybody if—’

‘That’s just it,’ he says. ‘We can’t help anybody, not even ourselves. We’re not enough to lead humanity. Without Obi, it’s over.’

He’s repeating the words I’ve been saying to myself in my head. It makes me angry to hear the defeat in his voice.

‘We have a chain of command,’ says Martin. ‘Whoever’s below Obi takes over.’

‘Obi said Penryn should lead,’ says a woman who helped carry the injured with me. ‘I heard him. He said it with his last breath.’

‘But the second in command—’

‘We don’t have time for this,’ I say. ‘The angels are coming. At sunset tonight, they’ll hold a hunt that’s a contest for the largest number of human kills.’

I wait for a response, but no one seems surprised. They’ve been beaten, abused, and traumatized. They stand there in their rags, skinny and malnourished, dirty and beaten, looking to me to give them information and a direction.

They’re in stark contrast to my memories of the perfect bodies and the gold and glitter of the angel gatherings. Many people in the audience are injured, bandaged, limping, and scarred. Their wide eyes are a window into their desperation.

A wave of anger hits me. The perfect angels with their perfect place in the universe. Why can’t they leave us alone? Just because they’re better looking and have better hearing, better eyesight, better everything than us doesn’t make them worth more than us overall.

‘A hunt?’ asks Dee. He looks at his soot-streaked brother. ‘So that’s why they did it.’

‘Did what?’ I ask.

‘They set a line of fire to the south end of the peninsula. The only way out is across the bay or by air.’

‘We saw it through the surveillance cameras,’ says Dum. ‘We went down to try to fight the fire, but we spent half our time avoiding angels. It’s completely out of control now. We were coming back to tell Obi.’

The implications hit me.

The bridges are in pieces from the earthquakes. Even if we manage to gather all the working boats and planes, only a tiny fraction of people would be able to get off the peninsula before sunset.

I’d assumed that because the hunt wouldn’t start until tonight, we’d be free to run until then.

‘The fire is moving up north,’ says Dee. ‘It’s like they’re corralling us.’

‘They are,’ I say. ‘They’re herding us for their hunt.’

‘So we’re sitting ducks,’ says someone in the crowd. ‘That’s it then?’

‘The best we can do is run and hide and hope they don’t find us?’ There’s an edge of anger in their voices.

Everyone starts talking at once.

An anxious voice rises above the noise. ‘Can somebody take this girl?’

We all look at the man in the crowd who yelled out his question. He’s a skinny man with bandages across his shoulder and arm. Two girls about the age of ten stand beside him.

He pushes one girl behind him and the other in front of him. ‘I can’t feed and protect her if we have to go back out on the road.’

Both girls begin crying. The girl peering around behind him looks just as scared as the girl being pushed forward.