Talker 25 Page 5

  I often asked him how we could be related—him looking like a sunburned child of mischief, complete with nose freckles and red cheeks; me having Mom’s darker features, never wanting a strand out of place, a color uncoordinated. Him always acting the fool; me thinking humor inappropriate in a world with dragons.

  I run my fingertip along the freckles up to his forehead. Something Mom used to do. When we were younger and afraid—me of the dragons, Sam of things that didn’t exist—we’d crawl into our parents’ bed. She’d go to Sam first and trace a slow line from his chin, telling him how closet goblins only came after boys who didn’t eat their vegetables. Then Dad would tickle him into forgetfulness as Mom turned to comfort me.

  Her soft voice would send me into a dreamy fog where I didn’t have to worry about dragon shelter drills, visiting friends at the hospital, our house burning down. She somehow made the world seem safe, like we weren’t in the middle of some never-ending nightmare.

  Then I turned thirteen, decided I was no longer Mel Mel, and stopped running to their bedroom. Acted like dragons didn’t scare me anymore, like Mom’s salvage missions and Dad’s research were nothing out of the ordinary. Anyway, the war was over. And even if a few dragons roamed free, Arlington was protected, never victimized by dragons because of its exemplary defense system.

  Until she became another black cross in Arlington National Cemetery, Sam never stopped seeking her comfort. Must have known something I didn’t. Still does. I thought Mom’s death would hit him harder than me, but after we put her in the ground, he moved forward with life, figured out how to be happy in a world with dragons, in a world without Mom.

  As I watch Sam sleep, a different sort of jealousy surfaces, and unexpected relief washes over me. I hurt my brother today, could have killed him, but he’s stronger than I am and will survive my weakness, will probably brag about it the first chance he gets. I smile, press my hand to his cheek, feeling his warmth, his vitality.

  “He needs a haircut, doesn’t he?” Dad says from behind me.

  “Mom wouldn’t like it, but it suits him.” I reach up and squeeze my father’s hand.

  I’m holding on to my father, looking at my brother, trying my best not to think about anything else, when Trish calls.

  “Do you want me to talk to her?” Dad asks.

  I shake my head and step from the room. “Hello?”

  “Mel, thank god. Where are you?”

  “At the medical tent.”

  “Sam?”

  “He’s okay. Smoke inhalation, but they say he’ll be fine.”

  “You want me to come give him a kiss?”

  I grin. “That would probably wake him up fast, but they want him to sleep a little longer. Where are you?”

  “They let us out of the shelter, but they’re not letting us out of school. A-Bs are walking the halls, making sure we’re good little brats. They shut down the vid windows and cut off net access. They wanted to kill our phones, too, but Keith convinced them not to. I can’t reach my mom, Mel.”

  “I’m sure she’s fine.” I try to adopt Dad’s neutral tone, but I’m no good at it.

  “What is it, Mel? Remember what we promised each other.”

  “It’s nothing, Trish. I don’t—”

  “Shit, there’s someone coming.”

  The line goes dead.

  I’m about to pull back Sam’s curtain, but a nearby voice stays my hand.

  “Don’t you touch her.”

  The voice is familiar, but I can’t place it. I lean over, peep through the slit between curtain and pole.

  “Son, this will go a whole lot better for you if you cooperate. It’s no use struggling,” says the A-B who let me in. He and a black-suited man flank a pale woman laid out on a gurney. Aside from the sheet covering her torso and thighs, she appears naked. Her silver-and-black hair falls in waves to her hips. She looks strangely beautiful.

  “Please don’t take her.” I shut one eye, cock my head, trying to get a better view, but all I see is a tanned leg, the beginnings of a hospital gown, and an arm cuffed to a chair.

  “Tell me where the rest of your group is and I’ll make sure she gets a funeral,” Blacksuit says. He motions to the soldier, who rolls the gurney toward the curtain.

  “Hey, Trish, hold up,” I say into the silent phone, then wave to the soldier as he emerges from the room. “She going to be okay?”

  Head shake. “How’s your brother?”

  “Good.” I study the woman’s face. “What happened to her?”

  “Found her”—he nods toward the curtain—“and her son at Dragon Hole. A strange lot.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She was dressed like Amelia Earhart and her kid was wearing this Euro punk rocker getup.” He shakes his head. “I’ll never understand dragon riders.”

  The voice, the overdramatic farmboy words, the beauty of the dead mother.

  “He’s an insurgent?”

  “So says the D-man.” He hooks a thumb at the curtain. “Ask me, he’s a few acorns short of a tree. It’s too bad you kids had to grow up in this world.” He draws the sheet over the woman’s face. “Glad your brother’s okay.”

  I peek in on my way back to Sam. The D-man is on the phone, but not saying anything. I nudge back the curtain an inch. The clink of rings sliding on rod echoes loud in my ears, but he doesn’t notice.

  James does. Those blue eyes watch me from a face blackened by smoke and haunted with grief. I swore if I ever saw him again, he would regret it. But now I can only think of the terrible bond we share.

  The curtain rattles above me.

  “Protect the children.” The words come from my head. Sounds like Trish, but a bit deeper. Just like the last time atop Dragon Hill. Am I completely batshit—

  The earth rumbles. The D-man pockets his phone. He looks at James, then to the curtain, his eyes widening when they find me.

  “You’re that—”

  A sharp jolt sends him sideways. He clutches at a trembling tent pole.

  “You need to get out . . .,” James says, but the rest of his words are swallowed by an explosion of dragon sirens.

  The Blues are on the rampage.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  8

  Fissures rush through the tent, vicious subterranean claws that shred anything in their path. They come fast and straight, and when the tendrils of cracking earth reach me, they shift course and accelerate toward the D-man.

  A section of asphalt shoots up through the canvas beneath his feet. He surfs the undulating chunk until a secondary tremor tips it over and he slams to the ground. The pole he clung to moments before crashes onto his head.

  “Get out of here, Melissa,” James shouts above the blaring sirens. “It’s the Blues. They can’t control it much longer—”

  “Then you’d better shut up, farmboy, and tell me where the keys are.”

  He nods at the BoDA agent. “Left pants pocket.”

  I drop and crawl over. The agent groans when I roll him onto his side. His eyes are closed; blood pours from his scalp; a splinter of bone protrudes through his left pant leg. Biting my lip to keep from gagging, I fish through his pocket until I find the keys.

  I’m lurching toward James when I hear Dad shouting my name. He sounds miles away, but when I pull back the curtain, he’s on the other side of the corridor, no more than ten feet from me. Sam’s slung over his shoulder. My brother’s eyes blink open. He gives me a dopey smile and a gleeful wave.

  I steady myself against the worsening tremors and struggle to my feet. “In here, Dad.”

  He spins around. “Come on!”

  A nurse flashes past him, pistol in hand, and I’m suddenly aware of the patter of gunfire. Sounds like heavy rain, and it’s coming closer, along with the thunder of the dragon stampede.

  “Go, Dad. Get Sam out of here. I’m comi
ng!” I yell.

  He looks at the agent, at the keys clutched in my hand. “What are you doing?”

  Poles clatter to the ground. Sections of tent collapse. Dad stumbles sideways and collides with a gurney, nearly dropping Sam.

  “Get out of here, Melissa!” James urges.

  “Sam needs you, Dad. Go!” He doesn’t move. “Mom was right about the dragons. They’re not here to hurt us. And they’re not going to hurt me.”

  Dad glances toward the exit. “You know where to meet us?”

  When we’re not running dragon shelter drills, we’re learning evac routes. “At Henley’s farm. Bet I’ll beat you there.”

  “You better, Melissa Anne. Love you.” Then he and Sam are gone.

  With the earth pitching me around, it takes a couple of tries to insert the key into the cuffs securing James’s hand. The latch clicks, the world shifts, I’m thrown sideways onto his lap.

  He sets me on my feet, wraps an arm around my waist. Leaning on each other, we crouch-walk forward, the ground shaking every which way. We’re almost to the curtain when I hear the groan behind me.

  I hesitate.

  Another groan. I glance back. The D-man’s sprawled on a slab of asphalt that’s going crimson with blood. Even with our help, there’s no guarantee he’ll survive. But without it, he doesn’t have a chance.

  “Help me get him.”

  James tenses. “No.”

  “He’ll die if we don’t help him.”

  “Good.”

  A tremor erupts beneath us, knocking over chairs, a cot, and the EKG machine. I stagger.

  James offers me his hand. “Come on, Melissa, before it’s too late.”

  “I’m not leaving him.” I maneuver my way around fallen medical equipment, a couple of poles rolling to the earthquake’s chant, and chunks of street poking through the tent floor.

  The man’s eyes open when I grab his jacket collar. Panic, confusion, anger cross his face. He reaches for his gun. His eyes dart from me to James, and the panic and confusion disappear.

  He pulls his gun in one quick motion.

  I kick at his hand, but the earth gives beneath me and I lose my balance.

  I collide with something, or maybe it collides with me. I laugh but can’t be sure because I can’t hear, and this makes me laugh more. It suddenly seems quite funny, quite ridiculous, all of this. Terrible, but hilarious how bad things have gone, like one of Sam’s twisted dreams.

  Yes, it must be, because this can’t be real. Why would my vision be narrowing on that hot farmboy in the hospital gown? Why would the numbness spreading through my shoulder feel so wonderful? I glance down. Red everywhere. My favorite shirt ruined by blood. Mine? Must be a dream because I think I’d remember being shot.

  Now I’m falling and spinning, a drunk ballerina on a shifting tectonic stage. The dream boy catches me in his arms, scoops me up. I blink, and we’re in the remnants of the corridor. Medical equipment everywhere. A couple bodies, too. Everything vibrating to the earth’s rumble.

  The tent’s disintegrating, the ground’s splitting into a chasm. Dream boy jumps out of the way as a gurney goes tumbling by. He leaps from perch to precarious perch, somehow dodging the arsenal of growing debris.

  And then we’re out in the open, where All-Blacks are retreating toward us, hiding behind broken homes and abandoned vehicles to fire their weapons at the spectacular blue wall emerging from Mason-Kline’s smoky center. The dragons move like a tornado, blind and wild and full of destruction. At the front is Old Man Blue.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “She’s protecting the children,” James says. His voice sounds a mile away.

  I look up at him and see a red dragon swooping toward us. At least a dozen more reds plunge in and out of the clouds. Jets follow close behind. Explosions and geysers of flame illuminate the heavens.

  A-Bs turn their weapons on the diving dragon. It roasts them. As the Red comes closer, I spot the rider atop it. He aims his rocket launcher at a unit of A-Bs and fires.

  The dragon hovers a few feet overhead, its airplane wide wings flapping a slow beat. A rope ladder unrolls down its side and comes to a stop a few inches from our heads. James tightens his hold on me and loops his other arm around the ladder’s bottom rung. He yanks once. We spin about, and then we’re gliding from the fiery devastation that’s overtaken Mason-Kline.

  I lift my head, close my eyes, and let the rushing wind carry me from this nightmare. It cascades over me, its soft touch tickling my skin. I unwrap my arms from the farmboy’s neck and arch back. I am a bird skimming across a lake. My wing tips skip along the water’s surface.

  But the ride ends too soon, and when I open my eyes, the lake has become a cornfield, and I am nothing but a wingless girl in a bloody blue shirt. The Red lies a dozen yards away, munching on cornstalks.

  The rider shimmies down the ladder, hurries over. Wearing a black trench coat, a fitted black cap with a chin strap, massive goggles, thick leather gloves, and a red bandana over an oxygen mask, he resembles a cross between a mad scientist and a stagecoach bandit.

  He looks familiar—a sudden dizziness takes me, and a burst of agony ignites in my shoulder. My legs give out.

  I start to fall, but James catches me. A black halo forms around his head, and soon there’s nothing but him and me. He says something. I try to tell him I can’t hear, but words won’t come. He presses a finger to my lips.

  Then another set of arms is beneath me, and a new face hovers in my closing tunnel of sight. The goggles are on his cap now, greasy tufts of hair protruding everywhere. Preston Williams’s beady eyes gaze into mine.

  “This day’s been totally Jedi, huh, Callahan?” he says, and then everything goes dark.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  9

  I awaken to groans, growls, and the dull buzz of a generator. I’m on a cot in some sort of large crate. A low-power light hangs in the corner, a red glow seeps through the gaps between slats. I lurch up. Pain burns through my shoulder, and I scream.

  I’m in a hospital gown; my gunshot wound’s bandaged. An IV in my hand connects to a bag of clear liquid. Maybe Preston dropped me off at the clinic, which must have lost power in the attack, hence the generator. Maybe I’m in a crate because there wasn’t enough room in the building. Maybe that red glow and those growls belong to downed dragons awaiting transport to the Fort Riley dragattoir.

  I hold on to those maybes as long as I can, but any hope that I’m somewhere normal disintegrates when the wall in front of me swings back on a hinge. I’m in a stadium of a cave filled with reds and their riders.

  A middle-aged woman steps inside, introduces herself as Gretchen. She takes my pulse, unwinds the bandage around my shoulder. I barely notice, my attention fixed on the surreal world beyond the crate.

  Most of the dragons lie slumped on the right side of the cave. Several leak blood through gauze-wrapped injuries; a few nurse bullet-riddled wings; one licks the stump of a lost tail. Rows of cots occupied by bruised and bloodied humans form a square on the opposite side of the cave. One of the men checking on the wounded comes our way.

  Keith.

  I blink several times, sure that I’m mistaken.

  “You’re an insurgent,” I mumble as he enters the crate.

  He shuts the wall behind him. “How are you feeling?”

  Confused. Betrayed.

  “No signs of infection,” Gretchen says. I look at her as she redresses my wound. Wrinkles and scars adorn an already weathered face. A livid gash, recently stitched, runs the length of her forehead.

  I chew at my lip. “Dad . . . Sam. Are they okay?”

  “Your brother’s fine,” Keith says. “He’s with your aunt and uncle in Michigan.”

  His words take awhile to register. “Why isn’t he with Dad?”

  “Your father was injured pret
ty badly.” Keith lays a hand on my good shoulder. I shrink away. “He broke his neck, Melissa. He went into surgery before I left.”

  “I need to see him,” I say, reaching for the IV in my hand.

  Gretchen intervenes. “You need to rest.”

  I glare at him. “Don’t suppose I can call?”

  Keith shakes his head. “We’re in the evac territories. Even if we got a signal, it’d be too dangerous.”

  Too dangerous? I almost laugh. “When can I leave?”

  “You’re hurt,” he says. “And you’re flagged in the government system.”

  “It was just a prank—” I can’t believe this. “Preston set me up. And you did, too. Why?”

  “That wasn’t us.”

  “Why are you doing this, Keith? I thought you were my friend.”

  “I am your friend. I—”

  A thunderous rumble interrupts him. The crate trembles; the glow through the slats intensifies. Mostly Red, but some Silver, too. More dragons. I can feel them milling about, hear their deep-throated groans and higher-pitched mewls.

  The rumble subsides, enough for me to hear people someone shouting for a stretcher. Keith glances at me.

  “Go, I’m fine.” I’m not sure that’s true. I’m not sure I’ll ever be fine again.

  Keith nods, opens the crate.

  James is striding toward us, cast in the brilliant light of the silver dragon that prances after him. I cringe. The thing glows twice as bright as any other dragon in the cave.

  A dozen more reds crowd the floor. Most are dim. Several are bleeding. One flickers like a faulty lightbulb.

  Their riders aren’t in much better shape. Several stagger down their ladders; a few lie hunched over, too injured to dismount. The insurgents offer aid with the calm proficiency of people well practiced in the art of war. Or at least its aftermath.

  A pair of men rush by, Preston laid out on the stretcher they carry. Blood streaks his face, some of it fresh. His eyes are closed, but I see him give a weak thumbs-up to somebody before he disappears from view.

  Keith hugs James. “How’d it go?”

  “We got the kids at Rez Three into the evac tunnels, but the army met us at Four,” James says. He hooks at thumb at the Silver. “We were able to recover her. The others returned to Cave Eight to resupply . . .”