Laney punches me lightly in the shoulder. “Jury’s still out on that one,” she says. “But regardless, I could use a weapon like this to protect me and my sister.”
Huckle’s clutching the gun to his chest like an overprotective mother with her baby.
“Tillman Huckle. Give it to her. She’s not going to steal it.”
He squints an eye as if he finds that hard to believe, but hands the gun over, barrel first. Laney grabs it, spins it around, and points it square at Huckle’s chest. “Any cursed bullets in this thing?” she asks, peering down the sight.
“What do I look like, an amateur?” Huckle says.
Laney plays with the gun for a minute and then says, “Where’d you get all these weapons anyway? I’m guessing the witches don’t just make them and then hand them over.”
“Trade secrets,” Tillman says obscurely.
“Whatever,” Laney says, testing the weight of the gun in her hand.
“There’s no way you can afford a weapon like that,” Huckle says.
“Not even for a friend?” I say.
“She’s not ‘a friend,’” Tillman retorts, his fingers forming air quotes. I swear his glasses have a new strip of duct tape from yesterday. “If you want the gun, you’ll have to pay up.”
“We don’t have any money,” Laney says.
“Money?” Tillman laughs. “Money is worthless. Trading is not.”
“What do you want?” I ask.
“I’d accept a certain four-legged beast whose name rhymes with sex,” Huckle says.
“Gross,” Laney says, as if just hearing that word roll off of Huckle’s tongue is more disgusting than trudging through a puddle of vomit.
“Why do you want Hex?” I ask.
“Companionship,” Huckle says. “All my other friends just end up dying.”
I’m about to respond, but Trish starts air-drawing. “Trish, stop it,” Laney commands, but it only makes her sister form the letters faster.
“Death…” I start to read, but then Laney grabs Trish’s hand.
“No,” she says. “No more.”
Why is she so unwilling to explore her sister’s apparent gift, if that’s what it is? At the very least, we need to know what it means. Whether it’s real or just the random ambiguity of a child still in shock.
“Let her finish,” I say, taking hold of Laney’s wrist and trying to pull her away.
“Don’t touch me, Carter,” Laney says, her eyes blazing. She’s still got the Glock in the other hand and I’m tempted to reconfirm with Huckle that it’s not loaded.
“What are you scared of?” I say.
“Nothing,” she says, but I can see the fire in her eyes die just a little, replaced by something resembling anxiety.
Even as we stare at each other, we both seem to realize at the same time that Trish is now drawing with her other hand. “Cometh,” Tillman says. “Death cometh.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Trish’s finger slashes at the air, moving with more vigor than I’ve ever seen from the small girl. Her blue eyes are beaming with intensity and there’s a determined line to her jaw and pursed lips. She looks a little scary, if I’m being honest.
And she’s drawing the same message one more time, as if once wasn’t enough.
D.E.A.T.
Blood is throbbing in my head, pulsating in my temple, hot and fierce.
H.
“Death,” I find myself murmuring aloud.
“C. O. M. E. T. H.”
I grit my teeth and hope for a few more words, something to change the message to a phrase less grim and horrible, but the nine-year-old’s slender hand drops back to her side.
“Death cometh,” I repeat, my voice nothing more than a whisper. “From where?”
Her hand lifts once more and she points to the ceiling—but no, that can’t be it.
She’s pointing to the sky.
“Flying witches,” Laney says, quickly getting up to speed.
“Destroyers? Maybe…” I say, but it doesn’t sound right and Trish is already shaking her head. An attack from the sky. Something overhead. Something that brings only death. Icicles lance down my spine and my legs freeze in blocks of ice, because I realize there’s only one answer out of a million that makes sense:
Missiles.
“We’ve got to go, now!” I say frantically, grabbing Trish’s hand and pulling her toward the door. When Laney and Huckle just stare at me, I yell, “NOW!” which Hex punctuates with a loud “WOOF!”
Laney’s eyes widen but she moves, even grabbing Huckle by the elbow and hauling him forward. She looks like an elf trying to move a lumbering giant, but, despite the surprise plastered on his face, he allows himself to be dragged toward the door.
Down the hallway, into the stairwell, down the stairs. Second floor. Look back to make sure Laney and Huckle—who’s walking on his own now—are following. First floor lobby. Out the door and onto the street where the air is warmer than it looked from above. Perhaps winter is further away than I thought.
I try not to look at the heap of dead Pyros, but I find I can’t look away from the gruesome spectacle, no matter how hard I try. Are they the target of the air strike? Did someone alert the military that the gang of Pyros had taken over the city, only to have them destroyed by The End before the air strike could happen? Is some kind of a perverted pattern of destruction emerging?
I crane my head back, searching the endless miles of clear blue sky. Empty. Emptier than empty. Not even a wispy cloud or a patrolling bird paints a stroke on the rich blue canvas. Could Trish have gotten it wrong? Or did she hold back part of the message? Death cometh…in three weeks, maybe? Or—and now I’m starting to think like Laney, which scares me quite a lot—is her air-drawing just some weird form of post-traumatic shock syndrome, as meaningless as a firecracker with no fuse? Have I been forcing truth into something false?
“What do you see, Sis?” Laney says, snapping me out of my convoluted thoughts.
I glance down at Trish, who’s still holding my hand. But now her other hand is pointing skyward. Toward the east, I think, the opposite direction to where the sun is beginning to set. I follow the invisible path of her aim, holding my breath…and seeing nothing.
Letting out a deep sigh, my thoughts about whether I’m crazy for following this disturbed mute girl’s random messages return. And then I see it: a dark speck. Could be anything, a bird or a bit of dirt on my glasses or…
No, it’s moving fast. Too fast to be a bird, and dirt on my glasses wouldn’t move.
“Run!” I shout, even as I realize it’s too late—far too late. But we have to try.
I take off down the road, practically ripping Trish’s arm out of her socket, yanking her with me, willing her to move faster than her tiny legs should be able to move. Huckle quickly outdistances me, his long, loping strides awkward and stumbling, but effective enough. Laney passes us, too, because I’m anchored down by Trish, but she stops, looks back, waits for us. She won’t leave her sister behind.
Her eyes widen as she sees something over my head, skyward. Her mouth forms a dark circle and I can see the fear penetrating every part of her expression, a look completely foreign to anything I’ve encountered from her so far.
Even as I gesture for her to keep running, Trish squirms suddenly, wrenching her hand from my grasp. Propelled by momentum alone, I take another two strides before I’m able to stop, turn, and watch her bolt away from me, back down the street, right toward where—I can barely believe what I’m seeing—a freaking missile is blazing across the heavens, right at her, as if she’s the very target of its pent-up destructive forces.
She stops in the middle of the street.
—and the missile screams through the air.
Trish raises her hands over her head, almost preacher-like.
—and Laney screams from somewhere behind me: “Trish!”
She’s so small, so small, and yet there’s something about the way she stands t
hat makes her look so much bigger than she is.
—the missile screaming, Laney screaming, and then…
There’s a scream from somewhere else, so much LOUDER, an earth-shattering keening that forces my hands over my ears, my body to the ground, as if I’m praying or bowing to a king.
“Oh God, not again!” Laney yells from behind me, but it’s muffled through my fingers and I can barely discern it, almost completely drowned out by the pitch of the other scream, which I only now realize is coming from
Trish.
With a bright light, the world explodes.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The earth trembles beneath my feet; rocks and debris rain from the sky like black hail; blinding red/orange/yellow/white light forces my eyes shut; a heavy WHOOOOSH! of air rushes over me, flapping and snapping the loose bits of my clothing.
Seconds—or is it minutes?—pass in that manner: trembling and raining and brightness and wind. Until the world turns black behind my squeezed-shut eyelids.
Flashes of light crackle across my vision, and I realize they’re echoes of color, like when you stare at the sun for too long and then see tiny sun circles even when you close your eyes.
Is this the end? Of us? Of the world? Will everything left be destroyed by rockets and missiles in an attempt to eradicate the witch gangs?
Am I dead?
I can’t seem to open my eyes. I can’t hear anything but a ringing in my ears, like after a rock concert when you’ve stood way too close to the speakers.
A hand touches my face, and I flinch away from it, but it persists, gentle and calm and—opening my eyelids.
I blink a few times, trying to erase the spots of explosive light, and an image becomes clearer. Blond hair, blue eyes, pale freckly skin. And a tiny mouth without a voice. Trish stands before me, looking small again, outlined by a gray/black smoky haze that seems to cover the entirety of a sky that was so recently clear and blue.
Clear and blue. Like her eyes.
“You…you did it?” I say, unsure of what she did and whether it was her or what the hell happened at all.
Trish just looks at me in the way that used to freak me out a little but which now seems so familiar and welcome.
I’m still huddled in a ball, my hands over my ears, my elbows touching in front of my chin. As I try to stand, to stretch out, my muscles ache and I start to stumble.
Someone grabs my elbow and helps me upright. Laney. Her face is serious again, absent of fear. “You okay?” she asks. It’s the most innocent thing I’ve ever heard her say.
“Yeah, I think so,” I say, fighting back the urge to hug her. “You?”
“I’m fine. A little shaken up, but fine. Trish?”
Trish steps forward to her sister, takes her hand tenderly, strokes it once, and then releases her fingers. “I guess that means she’s okay,” I say.
“Guess so,” Laney says, a shadow of a smile forming on her lips. I smile, too, because, well, sometimes just being alive is something to smile about. Laney’s hand is still on my elbow, and we seem to notice it at the same time. A flash of embarrassment crosses her face, but she hides it quickly, removing her hand and patting my arm firmly. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she says stiffly.
My smile vanishes when, over her shoulder, I see a body. “Tillman!” I say, pushing past her toward my friend, who’s sprawled out flat on his back, unmoving, Hex lapping at his chin.
When I reach him his eyes are open and he’s staring, unblinking, at the gray haze swirling above us. “Tillman?” I say again, scanning his body for injuries. “You okay?”
He blinks and finally seems to notice me. “Yeah,” he says. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
~~~
Tillman Huckle won’t go with us, but he did agree to leave town, just in case another missile is sent by whoever is shooting off the missiles.
“Are you sure?” I ask my friend. “You wouldn’t be alone anymore.” I help him load another crate of magical weapons into a white van that he’s managed to rig to run on solar power captured through large purple-black panels on the roof.
“Look, I appreciate the offer, but I’m okay. I’ve got witch hunters to supply, video games to play—”
“Ramen noodles to eat?” I interrupt.
“Exactly. Someone’s got to keep the high-sodium food industry booming.”
I laugh and shake his hand, turning to Laney and Trish, who come up behind us carrying some of Tillman’s food supplies. “We should go. We can’t risk another bombing happening while we’re still here.”
“What’s the risk?” Huckle says. “With that little lady over there”—he points to Trish who just stares at him—“they could send a whole fleet of missiles and she’d just blow them out of the sky.”
“She didn’t do—” Laney starts to say, but I cut her off.
“Thanks, Tillman, for everything.”
He waves me off. “You and your friends saved my life, in more ways than one. I have a little thank you gift for you.” He hands me a large cardboard box. “I’m hoping what we’ve just been through is the storm before the calm, but just in case…well, I wanted you to have these. Don’t open it until you’re safely on your way.”
Laney and I exchange a curious glance, but all I say is, “Thanks. Hope we see you around. Take care of yourself.”
“You, too. Don’t be a ranger.”
“Don’t you mean ‘stranger’?” Laney says, but Huckle’s already climbed into the van and slammed the door shut. With a low hum, the van starts, but not before vanishing as if it was never there.
Laney gasps. “Where’d it go?”
But I don’t have to answer her question as a cloud of dust swarms past us, heading south, to where Tillman earlier told us “the action is.”
“Even his van is magged-up,” Laney mutters.
Silently, I wish him luck, which is practically the only thing any of us have left in this world.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Although I know we have to talk about what happened at some point, I’m not ready for it, and I know Laney’s in no hurry, so we stay mostly silent, following Trish’s lead as we make our way north on I-79, beginning the—according to my map—thirty mile trek to Pittsburgh.
Of all of us, Hex is the most vocal, barking at everything: at parked cars; at a pair of dirty old boots that are, remarkably, standing upright in the middle of the highway, like its owner stepped right out of them and kept walking; at a group of sparrows hopping along the median, pecking at the brown grass in search of food.
At one point he barks at me for about ten minutes for no apparent reason. Sometimes I think he’s the smartest dog in the world, and other times, well, I think maybe I should have gone with a magical cat.
Finally, I can’t hold my tongue any longer, so I say, “Who do you think is shooting off the missiles?”
Laney shoots me a look that almost contains missiles, and says, “This isn’t some backend way of starting a conversation about…”—she gestures to her sister—“…is it?”
“No,” I say, shrugging innocently. “I’m just a little concerned that the last two cities we’ve been in have been blown up by someone.”
“A. Only the first one was blown up. Trish saved the second one. Actually, scratch that last part,” she adds hastily. “What happened with my sister isn’t up for discussion, you hear me?”
“What’s B?” I ask, letting it go.
“What?”
“You said ‘A.’ What’s B?”
“Uhh…” She scratches her head, trying to remember. “Oh yeah. B is that we already talked about this. Who in the good old U.S. of A could possibly have missiles? Only the military. So that means the government and army is operating in some form or another. Which is a good thing, right?”
“Not if they’re trying to blow us up,” I say.
“You really think they care about us?” she asks. Hex barks a resounding “No!” Or is it a “Yes!”? “Carter, I know you think you’
re this badass witch hunter that everyone wants to get their hands on, but—”
“Those witches said the Necros put a bounty on my head,” I point out.
“True,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean the government wants you, too. Those things can’t possibly be linked.”
“Then why the missiles?” I ask, reverting back to a different form of my original question.
“To kill large groups of witches,” Laney says, which makes sense. “There were a ton of Necros in Waynesburg and a whole gang of Pyros running Washington.”
“The Pyros were already dead,” I say.
“But maybe the government didn’t know that,” Laney says, cocking an eyebrow. “Maybe they got intel a day or two earlier and by the time they launched their missile it was stale. But they don’t really care because they’ll probably kill a few witches either way.”
“Intel from whom?” I ask, churning through the possibilities. Other witch hunters, military spies, poor farmers…
“Who knows, who cares,” Laney says with a shrug. “They might’ve even already known the Pyros were dead. A clean missile strike to clean up the mess.”
“Without regard to potential human survivors?” I say.
“Since when has the military worried much about civilians in a warzone? If the target is a high enough priority, innocents be damned.”
I don’t have a question or an argument in response to that. War is hell, and no one is completely innocent in times like these.
“You know,” I say, “we’ve got to talk about how we’re still alive at some point.” Trish, for once, isn’t staring at us as we talk.
“Yeah, I know,” Laney says, averting her eyes, aiming them straight ahead. “Want me to help carry that box?”
A classic attempt to change the subject. I let it slide. The box is getting heavy, but my arms are far from tired. “In a few miles we can trade,” I say.
“What do you think is in it?” Laney asks.
“Knowing Huckle,” I say, “a whole lot of cool stuff.”