Talker 25 (35 page)

“Kill the dragons, yes, yes!” she hisses at the major.

Alderson aims the gun at her.

I rush around the roadblock. “Over here, asshole!”

He spins toward me, but not fast enough. I kick him square in the chest. He smashes into the doorframe, dropping pistol and flashlight. I scramble for the gun, but he catches me by the ankle and twists.

I flip over. He punches me hard in the face. Starbursts
explode in my vision. Straddling me, he puts his massive hands around my neck.

I kick and flail, but it’s useless.

Like ink spreading fast through water, my vision clouds dark until I see nothing but Major Alderson’s eyes. My legs and arms spasm; the world spins. Faster and faster. Blackness engulfs me, but it’s silent—no dragons, no insurgents, no victims.

Peacefully, wonderfully silent.

“Kill the dragons, yes, yes.” A whisper at the edge of consciousness.

Abruptly, the major’s hands loosen. I gasp for air. Liquid sprays my face, clogs my throat, makes me cough more. Alderson lets go altogether and lurches back. Sensation crawls into my body, and I knee him in the groin as hard as I can. It’s not much, but it’s enough to weaken his leghold around my waist. I squirm out from under him.

As I scrabble backward, groping for the gun, my vision returns. The major’s close to dead. Twenty-One sits on his back, stabbing him with the tail of the dragon pin I gave her in another lifetime. One side of the major’s neck resembles a field of tiny crimson flowers. Blooming, then wilting. I watch the last trickles of life pulse from his wounds.

“Kill the dragons, yes, yes.” Twenty-One grins and continues to gouge the dead major. “Or the dragons kill them.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

I
no longer hear the buzz of jets amid all the dragon howls overhead. The artillery’s gone silent, but otherwise the battle carries on. Bullets, missiles, dragonfire. Roars, yells, screams.

Real?

I peer past Alderson and Twenty-One into a smaller room cloaked in shadows. Beyond its open door, a hallway leads outside. I can see columns of smoke and the front of a Humvee. Several soldiers rush past, followed by a crackling cone of flame.

“Allie . . . Twenty-One?” I say. She looks up, cocks her head.

I edge closer. “Do you know who I am?”

“Yes, yes.”

I crouch down, close enough to hear her mumbling to herself.

“The dragons kill them, yes, yes. Yes they do.”

“I’m sorry about Baby . . . Arabelle,” I say.

She glances at me. “Why?”

“I couldn’t save her,” I whisper.

“No, no.” She drives the pin deep into Alderson’s neck, then laughs. She jerks it out, wipes it clean with her shirt, and offers it to me.

I’m not sure what just happened, but it doesn’t matter. We’re friends again. “You keep it safe.” I retrieve the flashlight and gun. “Right now, we’ve gotta go check on the others.”

She helps me strip him of his clothes. I put the helmet on—God, it smells like him—and slip into his jacket. It reaches the floor and could fit a girl twice my size, which is perfect. I wrap the excess around Twenty-One. She peeks out, mumbling to herself.

We shuffle around Alderson. A dragon roar sounds somewhere behind me. I hesitate in the doorway, waiting for the screams, but none come. Real? Or is everybody dead?

I look behind me with a sweep of the flashlight. Massive screens form an octagon around a grid of cracked streets and crumbling sidewalks. Gravel pits and undulating stretches of brush fill the adjacent lots. Scattered rubble piles dot the
terrain. I focus the beam on the charred minivan crashed into the roadblock, then onto the mangled APC a dozen feet away in a field of wild grass.

I release the breath I didn’t know I was holding. Set pieces. Not real. No corpses in sight. Other than Alderson.

I level the gun at his head. I want to shoot him, shoot his face into a bloody pulp, shoot him until nobody, not even his family will recognize him.

I force myself to look away. Might need the bullets. I kick him hard in the ribs, stub my toe, curse him.

Following the brightening swath of sunlight, we creep down the hallway. I clamp my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering. A couple of soldiers flash past the open doorway, but they’re too busy fleeing or shooting at the sky to notice us.

Nearing the exit, I look up through the fog of smoke and almost remember what happiness is. Tracer bursts and strings of fire make chaotic patterns as dozens of insurgent-mounted Reds and Greens zip across the sky. Gunships weave among them, blasting away.

Machine-gun fire snaps my focus back to earth. It seems to be coming from the opposite side of the road, but a billowing wall of smoke obscures my view of everything but the dragon skulls atop the ER.

A Humvee’s parked ten feet away, undamaged. I peek
out the door to get a better view. Overturned vehicles, dead dragons, and scorched corpses litter the road. No live A-Bs I can see.

I pocket the flashlight, duck low with Twenty-One, and scurry to the Humvee, sloshing through half-melted ice. We get in fast, shut the door faster. The heater’s at full blast. The hula-girl clock on the dash reads
2:31
. The talkers should be in the barracks.

It takes me a couple tries to maneuver past a nearby crater. I spot a few A-Bs hiding in doorways, several running in the opposite direction, but they don’t seem to notice us. I check the rearview mirror, but don’t see any signs of those soldiers.

I don’t see the crater either, but it’s hard to tell with all the smoke. I take a long blink and focus forward.

The closer we get to the barracks, the quieter it becomes.

At two thirty-four, we arrive. The door’s open halfway, enough to see three scrub-dressed bodies inside. I can’t make out the faces.

“Stay here,” I tell Twenty-One as I scan the area. Another Humvee idles two blocks down in front of the infirmary. The battle rages on behind us. Otherwise we’re alone . . . I think.

“Hide now.”

Twenty-One hunkers down, eyes darting about.
“Vultures?”

“Everywhere.” I point to the floorboard. “They won’t see you there.”

She scoots off the seat and scrunches up into a ball.

I get out of the Humvee, take several breaths of cold air to numb my senses, and enter the barracks.

Five, Seven, and Ten lie nearest the door in an expanding pond of blood. Noses and cheeks bluing, eyes glazed, torsos riddled. Twelve, Eighteen, and Nineteen are sprawled behind them, facedown, shot in the back.

These were Evelyn’s girls, the ones who’d convinced themselves the soldiers were their friends. Twelve, Eighteen, and Nineteen probably realized what was happening and fled. All of three steps before they were cut down.

Gunfire erupts nearby. My legs wobble; the room spins. Men in white cloaks burst from the darkness in front of me, firing away. I drop to my knees, crawl through blood. “Not real!” I squeeze my eyes shut. The noise fades to the distance. I open my eyes. The men have disappeared, but the girls remain.

I rise, force myself to look at them. Evelyn’s not here. Maybe she escaped. Maybe others did, too. I check in, around, and beneath each bed. No more victims in the main room.

Six in the bathroom.

Lorena’s there, her face ripped apart. Nine, Sixteen, Twenty, and Twenty-Two appear asleep on the floor. Pam’s propped against the back wall, Bible clutched in her hands.

I shut off the flashlight, lean against the wall. It hurts too much to cry. They weren’t supposed to be dead. That’s not how rescue works.

Footsteps. I raise the gun, touch my finger to the trigger, and peek out. Twenty-One. Shivering and giggling, she raises her arms. “Don’t shoot.”

I enfold her in the jacket. “I told you to stay put,” I say, almost yelling.

“I needed my chocolate. For the island.” Knowing I can’t convince her otherwise, I help retrieve her stash.

We’re almost back to the Humvee when two All-Blacks emerge from the infirmary. The taller one’s limping. They head toward the thinning wall of smoke that splits Georgetown in half. To the ER—

A missile blisters overhead. I grab Twenty-One tight, tuck in, and brace against the Humvee. The infirmary explodes. Another missile. Another earthshaking detonation. A wave of heat warms my face. Staying low, I open the Humvee, load Twenty-One in, crawl in behind her.

I’ve just shut the door behind me when the barracks gets pulverized. Rubble pelts the windshield and chassis of the Humvee, as rapid as a machine gun.

I floor the accelerator. Buildings blow up left and right. The world becomes a jumbled nightmare of fire and smoke. The hailstorm of debris intensifies. Louder. Louder. Louder. We slide from side to side. I glance in the rearview mirror. Through the haze, I see four gunships closing in, unloading their arsenal. A half-dozen Reds pursue at full flame, their riders launching their own rockets.

“Watch out!” Allie screams.

I snap my gaze forward. A dead dragon blocks our path. I jam the brakes, swerve hard right. Fishtail. I throw the wheel left. Too much! The Humvee tips.

We roll.

Glass shatters. Pain ignites. Screams everywhere. The world unravels.

Blackness.

“Wake up, human.”

I know that voice.

“Wake up, Melissa Callahan.”

The armies gather. We will come.

Blink.

Red glow.

A screech of metal.

Blink.

The Humvee roof peels away.

A dragon’s looking at me. I shudder.

“Hold still.” Two pairs of hands grab me by the armpits, haul me from the wreckage. “You look like hell, Callahan.” He injects me with something. “Don’t worry, we’ll have you patched up in no time.”

As they load me onto some sort of stretcher, I see the infirmary. With effort, I turn my head, squint. The barracks are there, too. “They blew them up. I saw it. They blew them up!”

“Calm down.” He holds my head still, puts a bulky collar around my neck, straps me down so I can’t see anything but the smoky sky. They bind my legs and hands.

They lift the stretcher, start walking. A dragon lumbers beside us.

“Al—”

“Everything’s gonna be fine. You’re safe now. Just calm down.”

“Allie?” I groan. “Allie? Where’s Allie?”

“The girl? A few scrapes, but she’s Jedi. You took the lion’s share. . . .” He continues to talk, I drift.

“Can I see her?” Her voice awakens me. A small hand touches my cheek. “You want some chocolate, Twenty-Five?”

I squeeze back tears, open my eyes. Her face bounces in my vision as she walks alongside me. She’s got scratches on her cheeks, a black eye, a lopsided grin. “You okay?”

She nods. “You’re not a very good driver, no, no.”

“I’ll work on it.” My laugh turns into a grimace.

“Really, you have to take it easy, Callahan.”

The person at the other end of the stretcher chuckles. I don’t recognize him. “You’ll have to excuse Preston. He’s very concerned about his balls right now,” he says.

“Trish didn’t threaten to castrate
you
,” Preston says.

“With a butter knife, I believe she said. What was it? ‘If you don’t get Melissa out in one piece, I’m gonna—’”

“Trish?” I interrupt.

“Diva Trish,” Preston says. “Acts like she did all the hard work. Biotracer was my idea, thank you very much. Don’t let anybody else tell you otherwise.”

My head swims. “She’s one of you?”

“An honorary Grunt now.”

“Need to get her to do a Loki run,” the other guy says.

“For sure. First thing when we get back.”

“We really need to recruit more chicks. . . .”

They continue their chatter. At some point I notice that Allie’s no longer at my side. The smoke that clouds the sky has thickened, but it’s now somehow brighter, too.

We pass through a jagged opening into a building. I hear footsteps and conversations. Becoming louder. Somebody kisses my forehead, murmurs my name, says he’ll be back. I glimpse the sword tattoos on his neck, and then he’s hurrying
away, shouting orders.

“Where are—” I start.

The room brightens, illuminating winches and cranes overhead. The power’s out, but it’s getting brighter. Doesn’t make sense. We’re headed toward the slaughter slab.

It keeps getting brighter. So bright.

“She’s got her light saber up for you,” Preston says. I can hear the smile in his voice.

Hope sneaks in. “Baby?”

“Melissa?”

She has the voice of an angel.

“Let me see her.”

“You need to stay immobilized until we can fully evaluate you,” Preston says.

“If you don’t let me out of this thing, I’ll castrate you the first chance I get, and I promise you, you’ll be
wishing
I’d used a butter knife.”

The moment I’m loose, I stumble from the stretcher. She’s strapped to the slab, cameras and green screens still around her, her wings so broken. But she’s licking Allie into hysterical giggles, looking at me with those beautiful blue eyes. And glowing. Glowing so bright.

I laugh and I cry and my body almost gives out. Preston tries to help me, but I shrug him off and run. And it hurts. Everything hurts. So fucking much. But she’s alive and she’s
glowing and she’s fucking alive.

So fucking alive.

At least two dozen insurgents surround her, some taking pictures, others tending her wounds and removing her bindings. I’m pushing through the crowd, am almost to her when I see two All-Blacks huddled together at the other end of the slab, backs to me, heads bowed together. The shorter one looks my way.

For a second, I don’t recognize her. She seems too haunted. Too human.

Evelyn.

We stare at each other—different strangers than before. Then she turns back around.

“He’ll get better, Melissa,” Allie says from beside me. It’s the first time she’s ever used my name. Sounds odd.

“Who—”

A chain saw revs up. I flinch. So does that soldier next to Evelyn. He turns his head halfway to glare at something I can’t see.

I stop breathing.