[Anh Ngữ] World After (Penryn & the End of Days #2) - Susan Ee (English)
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World After (Penryn & the End of Days #2)
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Fantasy thriller
Chap 1:
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Fantasy thriller
Chap 1:
EVERYONETHINKS I’m dead.
I lie with my head on my mother’s lap in the open bed of a large truck. The dawn light etches the grief lines on my mom’s face while the rumble of the engines vibrates through my limp body. We’re part of the Resistance caravan. Half a dozen military trucks, vans, and SUVs weave through dead cars away from San Francisco. On the horizon behind us, the angels’ aerie still smolders in flames after the Resistance strike.
Newspapers cover shop windows along the road, making a corridor of reminders of the Great Attack. I don’t need to read the papers to know what they say. Everyone was plastered to the news during the early days when reporters were still reporting.
PARIS IN FLAMES, NEW YORK FLOODED, MOSCOW DESTROYED
WHO SHOT GABRIEL, THE MESSENGER OF GOD?
ANGELS TOO AGILE FOR MISSILES
NATIONAL LEADERS SCATTERED AND LOST
THE END OF DAYS
We drive by three bald people wrapped in gray sheets. They’re taping up the stained and crumpled fliers of one of the apocalypse cults. Between the street gangs, the cults, and the Resistance, I wonder how long it will be before everyone is part of one group or another. Even the end of the world can’t keep us from wanting to belong, I guess.
The cult members pause on the sidewalk to watch us pass in our crowded truck.
As a family, we must look tiny—just a scared mom, a dark-haired teenager, and a seven-year-old girl sitting in a truck bed full of armed men. At any other time, we would have been sheep in the company of wolves. But now, we have what people might call “presence.”
Some of the men in our caravan wear camouflage and hold rifles. Some man machine guns still aimed at the sky. Some are fresh off the streets with homemade gang tattoos made of self-inflicted burns that mark their kills.
Yet these men huddle away from us to keep a safe distance.
My mom continues to rock back and forth as she has for the last hour since we left the exploding aerie, chanting in her own version of speaking in tongues. Her voice rises and falls as if she’s having a fierce argument with God. Or maybe the devil.
A tear drops off her chin and lands on my forehead, and I know her heart is breaking. It’s breaking for me, her seventeen-year-old daughter, whose job was to look out for the family.
As far as she knows, I’m just a lifeless body brought to her by the devil. She’ll probably never be able to blot out the image of me lying limp in Raffe’s arms with his demon wings backlit by flames.
I wonder what she’d think if someone told her that Raffe was actually an angel who’s been tricked into having demon wings. Would that be any stranger than being told that I’m not actually dead but just stung into a weird paralysis by a scorpion-angel monster? She’d probably think that person was as crazy as she is.
My baby sister sits at my feet seemingly frozen. Her eyes stare blankly and her back is perfectly straight despite the weaving of the truck. It’s as if Paige has shut herself off.
The tough men in the truck keep stealing glances at her like little boys peeking over their blankets. She looks like a bruised, stitched-up doll from a nightmare. I hate to think about what might have happened to her to make her like this. A part of me wishes I knew more but a part of me is glad I don’t.
I take a big breath. I’ll have to get up sooner or later. I don’t have a choice but to face the world. I’m fully thawed now. I doubt if I could fight or anything, but as far as I can tell, I should be able to move.
I sit up.
I guess if I’d really thought things through, I would have been prepared for the screams.
Chief among the screamers is my mother. Her muscles stiffen in sheer terror, her eyes impossibly wide.
“It’s okay,” I say. “It’s all right.” My words are slurred, but I’m grateful I don’t sound like a zombie.
It would be funny except for a sobering thought that pops into my head: We now live in a world where someone like me could be killed for being a freak.
I put my hands out in a calming gesture. I say something to try to reassure them, but it gets lost in the screams. Panic in a small area like a truck bed is contagious, apparently.
The other refugees crush against each other as they press toward the rear of the truck. Some of them look prepared to jump out of the moving vehicle.
A soldier with greasy pimples aims his rifle at me, gripping it like he’s about to make his first, horrifying kill.
I totally underestimated the level of primal fear swirling around us. They’ve lost everything: their families, their security, their God.
And now, a reanimated corpse is reaching for them.
“I am okay,” I say slowly with as much clarity as I can. I hold the soldier’s gaze, intent on convincing him there’s nothing supernatural going on. “I’m alive.”
There’s a moment when I’m not sure if they’ll relax or toss me out of the truck with a blaze of gunfire. I still have Raffe’s sword strapped to my back, mostly hidden under my jacket. That gives me some comfort, even though it obviously can’t stop bullets.
“Come on.” I keep my voice gentle and my movements very slow. “I was just knocked out. That’s all.”
“You were dead,” says the pale soldier, who doesn’t look a day older than me.
Someone bangs on the truck’s roof.
We all jump, and I’m lucky the soldier doesn’t accidentally pull his trigger.
The rear window slides open and Dee’s head sticks through. He’d look stern except that it’s hard to take him too seriously with his red hair and little-boy freckles. “Hey! Back off from the dead girl. She’s Resistance property.”
“Yeah,” says his twin brother Dum from inside the cab. “We need her for autopsies and stuff. You think girls killed by demon princes are easy to find?” As usual, I can’t tell the twins apart, so I randomly assign Dee for one and Dum for the other.
“No killing the dead girl,” says Dee. “I’m talking to you, Soldier.” He points to the guy with the rifle and glares at him. You’d think that looking like a set of strung-out Ronald McDonalds with nicknames like Tweedledee and Tweedledum would strip them of all authority. But somehow, these guys seem to have a talent for going from joking to deadly in a heartbeat.
At least, I hope they’re joking about the autopsy.
The truck stops in a parking lot. That takes the attention off me as we all look around.
The adobe-style building in front of us is familiar. It’s not my school but it is a school that I’ve seen lots of times. It’s Palo Alto’s high school, affectionately known as Paly High.
Half a dozen trucks and SUVs stop in the parking lot. The soldier still keeps an eye on me, but he lowers his rifle to a 45-degree angle.
A lot of people stare at us as the rest of the small caravan stops in the parking lot. They all saw me in the arms of the demon-winged creature that was actually Raffe, and they all thought I was dead. I feel self-conscious so I sit down on the bench beside my sister.
One of the men reaches to touch my arm. Maybe he wants to see if I’m warm like the living or cold like the dead.
My sister’s face changes instantly from a blank slate to a growling animal as she snaps at the man. Her razor-grafted teeth flash as she moves, emphasizing the threat.
As soon as the man backs off, she goes back to her blank expression and doll-like stance.
The man stares, looking back and forth between us for clues to questions I can’t answer. Everyone in the parking lot saw what just happened, and they all stare at us too.
Welcome to the freak show.
I lie with my head on my mother’s lap in the open bed of a large truck. The dawn light etches the grief lines on my mom’s face while the rumble of the engines vibrates through my limp body. We’re part of the Resistance caravan. Half a dozen military trucks, vans, and SUVs weave through dead cars away from San Francisco. On the horizon behind us, the angels’ aerie still smolders in flames after the Resistance strike.
Newspapers cover shop windows along the road, making a corridor of reminders of the Great Attack. I don’t need to read the papers to know what they say. Everyone was plastered to the news during the early days when reporters were still reporting.
PARIS IN FLAMES, NEW YORK FLOODED, MOSCOW DESTROYED
WHO SHOT GABRIEL, THE MESSENGER OF GOD?
ANGELS TOO AGILE FOR MISSILES
NATIONAL LEADERS SCATTERED AND LOST
THE END OF DAYS
We drive by three bald people wrapped in gray sheets. They’re taping up the stained and crumpled fliers of one of the apocalypse cults. Between the street gangs, the cults, and the Resistance, I wonder how long it will be before everyone is part of one group or another. Even the end of the world can’t keep us from wanting to belong, I guess.
The cult members pause on the sidewalk to watch us pass in our crowded truck.
As a family, we must look tiny—just a scared mom, a dark-haired teenager, and a seven-year-old girl sitting in a truck bed full of armed men. At any other time, we would have been sheep in the company of wolves. But now, we have what people might call “presence.”
Some of the men in our caravan wear camouflage and hold rifles. Some man machine guns still aimed at the sky. Some are fresh off the streets with homemade gang tattoos made of self-inflicted burns that mark their kills.
Yet these men huddle away from us to keep a safe distance.
My mom continues to rock back and forth as she has for the last hour since we left the exploding aerie, chanting in her own version of speaking in tongues. Her voice rises and falls as if she’s having a fierce argument with God. Or maybe the devil.
A tear drops off her chin and lands on my forehead, and I know her heart is breaking. It’s breaking for me, her seventeen-year-old daughter, whose job was to look out for the family.
As far as she knows, I’m just a lifeless body brought to her by the devil. She’ll probably never be able to blot out the image of me lying limp in Raffe’s arms with his demon wings backlit by flames.
I wonder what she’d think if someone told her that Raffe was actually an angel who’s been tricked into having demon wings. Would that be any stranger than being told that I’m not actually dead but just stung into a weird paralysis by a scorpion-angel monster? She’d probably think that person was as crazy as she is.
My baby sister sits at my feet seemingly frozen. Her eyes stare blankly and her back is perfectly straight despite the weaving of the truck. It’s as if Paige has shut herself off.
The tough men in the truck keep stealing glances at her like little boys peeking over their blankets. She looks like a bruised, stitched-up doll from a nightmare. I hate to think about what might have happened to her to make her like this. A part of me wishes I knew more but a part of me is glad I don’t.
I take a big breath. I’ll have to get up sooner or later. I don’t have a choice but to face the world. I’m fully thawed now. I doubt if I could fight or anything, but as far as I can tell, I should be able to move.
I sit up.
I guess if I’d really thought things through, I would have been prepared for the screams.
Chief among the screamers is my mother. Her muscles stiffen in sheer terror, her eyes impossibly wide.
“It’s okay,” I say. “It’s all right.” My words are slurred, but I’m grateful I don’t sound like a zombie.
It would be funny except for a sobering thought that pops into my head: We now live in a world where someone like me could be killed for being a freak.
I put my hands out in a calming gesture. I say something to try to reassure them, but it gets lost in the screams. Panic in a small area like a truck bed is contagious, apparently.
The other refugees crush against each other as they press toward the rear of the truck. Some of them look prepared to jump out of the moving vehicle.
A soldier with greasy pimples aims his rifle at me, gripping it like he’s about to make his first, horrifying kill.
I totally underestimated the level of primal fear swirling around us. They’ve lost everything: their families, their security, their God.
And now, a reanimated corpse is reaching for them.
“I am okay,” I say slowly with as much clarity as I can. I hold the soldier’s gaze, intent on convincing him there’s nothing supernatural going on. “I’m alive.”
There’s a moment when I’m not sure if they’ll relax or toss me out of the truck with a blaze of gunfire. I still have Raffe’s sword strapped to my back, mostly hidden under my jacket. That gives me some comfort, even though it obviously can’t stop bullets.
“Come on.” I keep my voice gentle and my movements very slow. “I was just knocked out. That’s all.”
“You were dead,” says the pale soldier, who doesn’t look a day older than me.
Someone bangs on the truck’s roof.
We all jump, and I’m lucky the soldier doesn’t accidentally pull his trigger.
The rear window slides open and Dee’s head sticks through. He’d look stern except that it’s hard to take him too seriously with his red hair and little-boy freckles. “Hey! Back off from the dead girl. She’s Resistance property.”
“Yeah,” says his twin brother Dum from inside the cab. “We need her for autopsies and stuff. You think girls killed by demon princes are easy to find?” As usual, I can’t tell the twins apart, so I randomly assign Dee for one and Dum for the other.
“No killing the dead girl,” says Dee. “I’m talking to you, Soldier.” He points to the guy with the rifle and glares at him. You’d think that looking like a set of strung-out Ronald McDonalds with nicknames like Tweedledee and Tweedledum would strip them of all authority. But somehow, these guys seem to have a talent for going from joking to deadly in a heartbeat.
At least, I hope they’re joking about the autopsy.
The truck stops in a parking lot. That takes the attention off me as we all look around.
The adobe-style building in front of us is familiar. It’s not my school but it is a school that I’ve seen lots of times. It’s Palo Alto’s high school, affectionately known as Paly High.
Half a dozen trucks and SUVs stop in the parking lot. The soldier still keeps an eye on me, but he lowers his rifle to a 45-degree angle.
A lot of people stare at us as the rest of the small caravan stops in the parking lot. They all saw me in the arms of the demon-winged creature that was actually Raffe, and they all thought I was dead. I feel self-conscious so I sit down on the bench beside my sister.
One of the men reaches to touch my arm. Maybe he wants to see if I’m warm like the living or cold like the dead.
My sister’s face changes instantly from a blank slate to a growling animal as she snaps at the man. Her razor-grafted teeth flash as she moves, emphasizing the threat.
As soon as the man backs off, she goes back to her blank expression and doll-like stance.
The man stares, looking back and forth between us for clues to questions I can’t answer. Everyone in the parking lot saw what just happened, and they all stare at us too.
Welcome to the freak show.
World After (Penryn & the End of Days #2)
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Fantasy thriller
Chap 2:
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Fantasy thriller
Chap 2:
PAIGEANDI are used to being stared at. I would just ignore it while Paige always smiled at the gawkers from her wheelchair. They almost always smiled back. Paige’s charm was hard to resist.
Once upon a time.
Our mother starts speaking in tongues again. This time she’s looking at me while she chants, as if she’s praying to me. The guttural almost-words coming from her throat dominate the hushed noises of the crowd. Leave it to Mom to add a serious dose of creepiness even in the smoky light of day.
“All right, let’s move out,” says Obi in a strong voice. He’s at least six feet tall, with broad shoulders and a muscular body, but it’s his commanding presence and confidence that set him apart as the leader of the Resistance. Everyone watches and listens as he walks by the various trucks and SUVs, looking like a real military commander in a war zone. “Clear the trucks and head into the building. Stay out of the open sky as much as possible.”
That breaks the mood and people start hopping off the trucks. The people in our truck push and shove each other in their rush to get away from us.
“Drivers,” calls Obi. “When the trucks are cleared, spread out your vehicles and park them within easy reach. Hide them among the dead traffic or somewhere that’s hard to see from above.” He walks through the river of refugees and soldiers, giving purpose and direction to people who would otherwise be lost.
“I don’t want any signs that this area is occupied. Nothing is to be cleared or dumped within a one-mile radius.” Obi pauses when he sees Dee and Dum standing side by side, staring at us.
“Gentlemen,” says Obi. Dee and Dum break out of their trance and look over at Obi. “Please show the new recruits where to go and what to do.”
“Right,” says Dee, giving Obi a little-boy salute with a little-boy smile.
“Newbies!” calls Dum. “Anyone who doesn’t know what they’re supposed to do, follow us.”
“Step right up, folks,” says Dee.
I guess that’s us. I get up stiffly and reach automatically for my sister, but I stop before I touch her as if a part of me believes she’s a dangerous animal. “Come on, Paige.”
I’m not sure what I’ll do if she doesn’t move. But she gets up and follows me. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to seeing her stand on her own legs.
Mom follows too. She doesn’t stop chanting, though. If anything, it’s louder and more fervent than before.
We all step into the flow of newcomers following the twins.
Dum walks backwards, talking to us. “We’re going back to high school where our survival instincts are at their finest.”
“If you get the urge to graffiti the walls or beat up your old math teacher,” says Dee, “do it where the birds can’t see you.”
We walk by the main adobe building. From the street, the school looks deceptively small. Behind the main building, though, there’s a whole campus of modern buildings connected by covered walkways.
“If any of you are injured, take a seat in this fine classroom.” Dee opens up the nearest door and peeks in. It’s a classroom with a life-sized skeleton hanging on a stand. “Bones will keep you company while you wait for the doctor.”
“And if any of you are doctors,” says Dum, “your patients are waiting for you.”
“Is this all of us?” I ask. “We’re the only survivors?”
Dee looks over at Dum. “Are zombie girls allowed to talk?”
“If they’re cute and willing to do zombie-girl mud fights.”
“Duuude. Right on.”
“That’s a disgusting image.” I give them a sideways look but I’m secretly glad they’re not freaked out about me coming back from the dead.
“It’s not like we’d pick the decayed ones, Penryn. Just ones like you, fresh from the dead.”
“Only, with ripped clothes and stuff.”
“And hungry for breeeeasts.”
“He means brains.”
“That’s exactly what I meant.”
“Could you please answer the question?” asks a guy wearing glasses that are completely free of cracks. He doesn’t look like he’s in a joking mood.
“Right,” says Dee getting all serious. “This is our rendezvous point. The others will meet us here.”
We keep walking in the weak sunshine, and the guy with the glasses ends up in the back of the group.
Dum leans over to Dee and whispers loud enough for me to hear, “How much you want to
that that guy will be the first in line to on the zombie-girl fight?”
They exchange grins and wiggle their eyebrows at each other.
October winds seep through my blouse and I can’t help looking up at the overcast sky for a particular angel with bat-shaped wings and a corny sense of humor. I swipe my foot at the overgrown grass and make myself look away.
The class windows are full of posters and notices about college entrance requirements. Another window displays shelves of student art. Clay, wood, and papier mâché figurines of all colors and styles cover every inch of shelf space. Some of them are so good that it makes me sad that these kids won’t be making art again for a long, long time.
As we move through the school, the twins are careful to stay behind my family. I fall back, thinking it’s not a bad idea to have Paige in front where I can keep an eye on her. She walks stiffly as if she’s still not used to her legs. I’m not used to seeing her like this either, and I can’t stop staring at the crude stitches all over her body that make her look like a voodoo doll.
“So that’s your sister?” asks Dee in a quiet voice.
“Yeah.”
“The one you risked your life for?”
“Yeah.”
The twins nod politely in that automatic way that people do when they don’t want to say something insulting.
“Your family any better?” I ask.
Dee and Dum look at each other, assessing.
“Nah,” says Dee.
“Not really,” says Dum at the same time.
OURNEW home is a history class. The walls are filled with timelines and posters of the story of humanity. Mesopotamia, the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Ottoman Empire, the Ming Dynasty. And the Black Death.
My history teacher said that the Black Death wiped out thirty to sixty percent of Europe’s population. He asked us to imagine what it’d be like to have sixty percent of your world dead. I couldn’t imagine it at the time. It seemed so unreal.
In weird contrast, dominating all of these ancient history posters is a picture of an astronaut on the moon with blue Earth rising behind him. Every time I see our ball of blue and white in space, I think it must be the most beautiful world in the universe.
But that seems unreal now, too.
Outside, more trucks rumble into the parking lot. I walk over to the window as Mom starts pushing desks and chairs to one side. I peek outside to see one of the twins leading the dazed newcomers into the school like the Pied Piper.
Behind me, my little sister says, “Hungry.”
I stiffen and stuff all kinds of ugliness into the vault in my head.
I see a reflection of Paige in the window. In the blurry otherworld of that image, she looks up at Mom like any other kid expecting dinner. But in the warped glass, her head is distorted, magnifying her stitches and lengthening her razor-grafted teeth.
Mom bends down and strokes her baby’s hair. She begins humming her haunting apology song.
Once upon a time.
Our mother starts speaking in tongues again. This time she’s looking at me while she chants, as if she’s praying to me. The guttural almost-words coming from her throat dominate the hushed noises of the crowd. Leave it to Mom to add a serious dose of creepiness even in the smoky light of day.
“All right, let’s move out,” says Obi in a strong voice. He’s at least six feet tall, with broad shoulders and a muscular body, but it’s his commanding presence and confidence that set him apart as the leader of the Resistance. Everyone watches and listens as he walks by the various trucks and SUVs, looking like a real military commander in a war zone. “Clear the trucks and head into the building. Stay out of the open sky as much as possible.”
That breaks the mood and people start hopping off the trucks. The people in our truck push and shove each other in their rush to get away from us.
“Drivers,” calls Obi. “When the trucks are cleared, spread out your vehicles and park them within easy reach. Hide them among the dead traffic or somewhere that’s hard to see from above.” He walks through the river of refugees and soldiers, giving purpose and direction to people who would otherwise be lost.
“I don’t want any signs that this area is occupied. Nothing is to be cleared or dumped within a one-mile radius.” Obi pauses when he sees Dee and Dum standing side by side, staring at us.
“Gentlemen,” says Obi. Dee and Dum break out of their trance and look over at Obi. “Please show the new recruits where to go and what to do.”
“Right,” says Dee, giving Obi a little-boy salute with a little-boy smile.
“Newbies!” calls Dum. “Anyone who doesn’t know what they’re supposed to do, follow us.”
“Step right up, folks,” says Dee.
I guess that’s us. I get up stiffly and reach automatically for my sister, but I stop before I touch her as if a part of me believes she’s a dangerous animal. “Come on, Paige.”
I’m not sure what I’ll do if she doesn’t move. But she gets up and follows me. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to seeing her stand on her own legs.
Mom follows too. She doesn’t stop chanting, though. If anything, it’s louder and more fervent than before.
We all step into the flow of newcomers following the twins.
Dum walks backwards, talking to us. “We’re going back to high school where our survival instincts are at their finest.”
“If you get the urge to graffiti the walls or beat up your old math teacher,” says Dee, “do it where the birds can’t see you.”
We walk by the main adobe building. From the street, the school looks deceptively small. Behind the main building, though, there’s a whole campus of modern buildings connected by covered walkways.
“If any of you are injured, take a seat in this fine classroom.” Dee opens up the nearest door and peeks in. It’s a classroom with a life-sized skeleton hanging on a stand. “Bones will keep you company while you wait for the doctor.”
“And if any of you are doctors,” says Dum, “your patients are waiting for you.”
“Is this all of us?” I ask. “We’re the only survivors?”
Dee looks over at Dum. “Are zombie girls allowed to talk?”
“If they’re cute and willing to do zombie-girl mud fights.”
“Duuude. Right on.”
“That’s a disgusting image.” I give them a sideways look but I’m secretly glad they’re not freaked out about me coming back from the dead.
“It’s not like we’d pick the decayed ones, Penryn. Just ones like you, fresh from the dead.”
“Only, with ripped clothes and stuff.”
“And hungry for breeeeasts.”
“He means brains.”
“That’s exactly what I meant.”
“Could you please answer the question?” asks a guy wearing glasses that are completely free of cracks. He doesn’t look like he’s in a joking mood.
“Right,” says Dee getting all serious. “This is our rendezvous point. The others will meet us here.”
We keep walking in the weak sunshine, and the guy with the glasses ends up in the back of the group.
Dum leans over to Dee and whispers loud enough for me to hear, “How much you want to
that that guy will be the first in line to on the zombie-girl fight?”They exchange grins and wiggle their eyebrows at each other.
October winds seep through my blouse and I can’t help looking up at the overcast sky for a particular angel with bat-shaped wings and a corny sense of humor. I swipe my foot at the overgrown grass and make myself look away.
The class windows are full of posters and notices about college entrance requirements. Another window displays shelves of student art. Clay, wood, and papier mâché figurines of all colors and styles cover every inch of shelf space. Some of them are so good that it makes me sad that these kids won’t be making art again for a long, long time.
As we move through the school, the twins are careful to stay behind my family. I fall back, thinking it’s not a bad idea to have Paige in front where I can keep an eye on her. She walks stiffly as if she’s still not used to her legs. I’m not used to seeing her like this either, and I can’t stop staring at the crude stitches all over her body that make her look like a voodoo doll.
“So that’s your sister?” asks Dee in a quiet voice.
“Yeah.”
“The one you risked your life for?”
“Yeah.”
The twins nod politely in that automatic way that people do when they don’t want to say something insulting.
“Your family any better?” I ask.
Dee and Dum look at each other, assessing.
“Nah,” says Dee.
“Not really,” says Dum at the same time.
OURNEW home is a history class. The walls are filled with timelines and posters of the story of humanity. Mesopotamia, the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Ottoman Empire, the Ming Dynasty. And the Black Death.
My history teacher said that the Black Death wiped out thirty to sixty percent of Europe’s population. He asked us to imagine what it’d be like to have sixty percent of your world dead. I couldn’t imagine it at the time. It seemed so unreal.
In weird contrast, dominating all of these ancient history posters is a picture of an astronaut on the moon with blue Earth rising behind him. Every time I see our ball of blue and white in space, I think it must be the most beautiful world in the universe.
But that seems unreal now, too.
Outside, more trucks rumble into the parking lot. I walk over to the window as Mom starts pushing desks and chairs to one side. I peek outside to see one of the twins leading the dazed newcomers into the school like the Pied Piper.
Behind me, my little sister says, “Hungry.”
I stiffen and stuff all kinds of ugliness into the vault in my head.
I see a reflection of Paige in the window. In the blurry otherworld of that image, she looks up at Mom like any other kid expecting dinner. But in the warped glass, her head is distorted, magnifying her stitches and lengthening her razor-grafted teeth.
Mom bends down and strokes her baby’s hair. She begins humming her haunting apology song.
World After (Penryn & the End of Days #2)
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Fantasy thriller
Chap 3:
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Fantasy thriller
Chap 3:
ISETTLE onto a cot by the corner. Lying with my back against the wall, I can see the entire room by moonlight.
My baby sister lies on a cot against the wall across from me. Paige looks tiny under her blanket beneath the posters of larger-than-life historical figures. Confucius, Florence Nightingale, Gandhi, Helen Keller, the Dalai Lama.
Would she have turned out like them if we weren’t in the World After?
My mother sits cross-legged by Paige’s cot, humming her melody. We’ve tried giving my sister the two things I could get from the disorganized mess in the cafeteria that is supposed to turn into a kitchen by morning. But she couldn’t hold down either the canned soup or the protein bar.
I shift my weight on the canvas cot, trying to find a position where my sword hilt won’t jab into my ribs. Having it on me is the best way to keep anyone from trying to pick it up and finding out that I’m the only one who can lift it. The last thing I need is having to explain how I ended up with an angel sword.
Sleeping with a weapon has nothing to do with my sister being in the room. Nothing at all.
Nor does it have anything to do with Raffe. It’s not like the sword is my only memento of my time with him. I have plenty of cuts and bruises to remind me of the days I spent with my enemy angel.
Who I’ll probably never see again.
So far, no one has asked about him. I guess it’s more common than not to have your group break up these days.
I shut down that thought and close my eyes.
My sister moans again over my mom’s humming.
“Go to sleep, Paige,” I say. To my surprise, her breathing relaxes and she settles down. I take a deep breath and close my eyes.
My mother’s melody fades into oblivion.
IDREAM that I am in the forest where the massacre happened. I am just outside the old Resistance camp where soldiers died trying to defend themselves against low demons.
Blood drips off the branches and plops onto the dead leaves like raindrops. In my dream, none of the bodies that should be here are here and neither are the terrified soldiers who huddled together back-to-back with their rifles facing outward.
It’s just a clearing dripping in blood.
In the center stands Paige.
She wears an old-fashioned flower-print dress, like the ones those girls hanging on the tree wore. Her hair is drenched in blood and so is her dress. I’m not sure which is harder to look at, the blood or the bruised stitches crisscrossing her face.
She lifts her arms toward me as if waiting for me to pick her up even though she’s seven years old now.
I’m pretty sure my sister was not part of the massacre but here she is anyway. Somewhere in the forest, my mother says, “Look into her eyes. They’re the same as they’ve always been.”
But I can’t. I can’t look at her at all. Her eyes aren’t the same. They can’t be.
I turn and run from her.
Tears stream down my face and I call out into the woods away from the girl behind me. “Paige!” My voice cracks. “I’m coming. Hang on. I’ll be there soon.”
But the only sign of my sister is the crunching of the dead leaves as the new Paige shadows me through the woods.
My baby sister lies on a cot against the wall across from me. Paige looks tiny under her blanket beneath the posters of larger-than-life historical figures. Confucius, Florence Nightingale, Gandhi, Helen Keller, the Dalai Lama.
Would she have turned out like them if we weren’t in the World After?
My mother sits cross-legged by Paige’s cot, humming her melody. We’ve tried giving my sister the two things I could get from the disorganized mess in the cafeteria that is supposed to turn into a kitchen by morning. But she couldn’t hold down either the canned soup or the protein bar.
I shift my weight on the canvas cot, trying to find a position where my sword hilt won’t jab into my ribs. Having it on me is the best way to keep anyone from trying to pick it up and finding out that I’m the only one who can lift it. The last thing I need is having to explain how I ended up with an angel sword.
Sleeping with a weapon has nothing to do with my sister being in the room. Nothing at all.
Nor does it have anything to do with Raffe. It’s not like the sword is my only memento of my time with him. I have plenty of cuts and bruises to remind me of the days I spent with my enemy angel.
Who I’ll probably never see again.
So far, no one has asked about him. I guess it’s more common than not to have your group break up these days.
I shut down that thought and close my eyes.
My sister moans again over my mom’s humming.
“Go to sleep, Paige,” I say. To my surprise, her breathing relaxes and she settles down. I take a deep breath and close my eyes.
My mother’s melody fades into oblivion.
IDREAM that I am in the forest where the massacre happened. I am just outside the old Resistance camp where soldiers died trying to defend themselves against low demons.
Blood drips off the branches and plops onto the dead leaves like raindrops. In my dream, none of the bodies that should be here are here and neither are the terrified soldiers who huddled together back-to-back with their rifles facing outward.
It’s just a clearing dripping in blood.
In the center stands Paige.
She wears an old-fashioned flower-print dress, like the ones those girls hanging on the tree wore. Her hair is drenched in blood and so is her dress. I’m not sure which is harder to look at, the blood or the bruised stitches crisscrossing her face.
She lifts her arms toward me as if waiting for me to pick her up even though she’s seven years old now.
I’m pretty sure my sister was not part of the massacre but here she is anyway. Somewhere in the forest, my mother says, “Look into her eyes. They’re the same as they’ve always been.”
But I can’t. I can’t look at her at all. Her eyes aren’t the same. They can’t be.
I turn and run from her.
Tears stream down my face and I call out into the woods away from the girl behind me. “Paige!” My voice cracks. “I’m coming. Hang on. I’ll be there soon.”
But the only sign of my sister is the crunching of the dead leaves as the new Paige shadows me through the woods.
World After (Penryn & the End of Days #2)
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Fantasy thriller
Chap 4:
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Fantasy thriller
Chap 4:
IWAKE to my mom scraping something out of her sweater pocket. She puts it onto the windowsill where morning light filters through. It’s yellow-brown goo and crushed eggshells. She’s quite careful about it, trying to get every yucky drop onto the sill.
Paige breathes evenly, sounding like she’ll be knocked out for some time. I try to shake off the last of my dream, but wisps of it stay with me.
Someone knocks on the door.
The door opens and the freckled face of one of the twins peeks into our classroom. I don’t know which one so I just think of him as Dee-Dum. His nose wrinkles in distaste when he smells the rotten eggs.
“Obi wants to see you. He’s got some questions.”
“Great,” I say drowsily.
“Come on. It’ll be fun.” He throws me an overly bright smile.
“What if I don’t want to go?”
“I like you, kid,” he says. “You’re a rebel.” He leans against the doorframe and nods his approval. “But to be honest, no one has the obligation to feed you, house you, protect you, be nice to you, treat you like a human being—”
“Okay, okay. I get it.” I drag myself out of bed, glad that I slept in a T-shirt and shorts. My sword thuds onto the floor. I had forgotten that I had it with me under the blanket.
“Shh! You’ll wake Paige,” whispers my mother.
Paige’s eyes open instantly. She lies there like the dead, staring at the ceiling.
“Nice sword,” Dee-Dum says too casually.
Alarm bells go off in my head. “Almost as good as a cow prodder.” I half-expect Mom to zap her prodder at him, but it hangs innocently on her cot frame.
More guilt hits me as I realize how glad I am that Mom has the prodder in case she needs to defend herself from… people.
More than half the people here are carrying some kind of makeshift weapon. The sword is one of the better ones, and I’m glad I don’t have to explain why I’m carrying it. But there’s something about a sword that seems to catch more attention than I like. I pick it up and strap it across my shoulder to discourage him from trying to play with it.
“Got a name for her?” asks Dee-Dum.
“Who?”
“Your sword.” He says it the way I might say Duh.
“Oh, please. Not you too.” I pick through the random assortment of clothes my mom collected last night. She also came back with a bunch of empty soda bottles and other junk from who knows where, but I leave that pile alone.
“I used to know a guy who had a katana.”
“A what?”
“A Japanese samurai sword. Gorgeous.” He clutches his heart like he’s in love. “He called it the Sword of Light. I would have sold my grandmother into slavery for that.”
I nod like that’s a given.
“Can I name your sword?”
“No.” I pull out a pair of jeans that might fit and one sock.
“Why not?”
“Already has a name.” I continue digging through the pile for a matching sock.
“What is it?”
“Pooky Bear.”
His friendly face suddenly becomes serious. “You’re naming your collector’s-item, kick-ass sword that’s made to maim and kill, specifically designed to bring your ginormous enemies to their knees and hear the lamentation of their women—Pooky Bear?”
“Yeah, you like it?”
“Even joking about that is a crime against nature. You know that, right? I’m trying desperately not to make an anti-girl comment right now, but you’re making it pretty hard.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” I shrug. “I might call it Toto or Flossy instead. What do you think?”
He looks at me like I’m nuttier than my mom. “Am I mistaken? Do you actually have a purse dog in that scabbard?”
“Oh, I wonder if I can find a pink sheath for Pooky Bear. Maybe with little rhinestones? What? Too much?”
He walks out shaking his head.
He’s just too easy to tease. I take my time changing and getting ready before following Dee-Dum out the door.
The hallway feels as crowded as the Oakland coliseum during the World Series.
A pair of middle-aged men exchange a feather for a prescription bottle of pills. I guess this is the World After’s version of a drug deal. Another shows off what looks like a little finger, then snatches it back as a guy reaches for it. They begin whisper-arguing.
A pair of women walk by huddled over a few cans of soup as if they held a pot of gold in their arms. They scan everyone nervously as they weave through the hallway. Next to the main door, a couple of people with freshly shaved heads tape up apocalypse cult fliers.
Outside, the overgrown lawn is eerily deserted with trash blowing in the wind. Anyone who looks down from the sky would assume this building is just as abandoned as any other.
Dee-Dum tells me that it’s already a big joke that the Resistance upper echelon has taken over the teachers’ lounge and that Obi has taken the principal’s office. We walk across the school grounds to Obi’s mission-style adobe building, staying on the covered walkway even if it means going the long way around.
The lobby and halls of the main building are even busier than mine but the people here look like they have a purpose. A guy rushes down the hallway dragging cables behind him. Several people move desks and chairs from one room to another.
A teenage kid pushes a cart piled with sandwiches and pitchers of water. As it rolls by, people grab the food and drinks as if they have the right to meal delivery if they work in this building.
Dee-Dum picks up a couple of sandwiches and hands one to me. Just like that, I’m part of the in-crowd.
I gobble up my breakfast before someone points out that I don’t belong here. But I almost choke on a mouthful when I notice something.
The gun barrels in this building are extra long. They look like the silencers you see assassins screwing onto their rifles in movies.
If we’re attacked by angels, noise won’t matter because the angels will already know where we are. But if we’re shooting each other…
The food in my mouth suddenly tastes like cold, slimy Spam and rock-hard bread instead of the delicious treat it was a moment ago.
Dee-Dum pushes through a door.
“—screwup,” says a male voice from inside the room.
Several rows of people sit in front of computers, totally immersed in their displays. I haven’t seen anything like this since before the attack. Some of them are quite a sight with their glasses clashing with their devil-horn gang tattoos.
More people are setting up computers in the back rows and rolling large TVs in front of the chalkboard. It looks like the Resistance has figured out how to get a steady power source, at least for one room.
In the center of all the activity is Obi. A line of people follows him around, waiting for his approval on something. Several people in the room seem to have one eye on him and one eye on something else.
Boden stands beside him. His nose is still swollen and bruised from our little schoolyard fight a few days ago. Maybe next time he’ll talk to people like they’re human beings instead of bullying them, even if they are petite girls like me who seem like easy targets.
“It was an adjustment in plans, not a screwup,” says Boden. “And no way in hell was it a ‘treason against humanity.’ How many times do I have to explain this?”
Amazingly, there’s a basket of candy bars by the door. Dee-Dum grabs two and hands one to me. When I feel the Snickers bar in my hand, I know I’m in the inner sanctum.
“Jumping the gun is not an adjustment in plans, Boden,” says Obi as he looks at a document handed to him by a crusty soldier-type. “We can’t execute a military strategy by letting a foot soldier decide the timing just because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut and spilled all the details. Every street pilgrim and hotel whore knew about it.”
“But it wasn’t—”
“Your fault,” says Obi. “I know. You’ve said it ad nauseam.” Obi glances my way as he listens to the next one in line.
After a moment of fantasizing about the taste of the candy bar, I slip it into my jacket pocket. Maybe I can entice Paige to eat it.
“You’re dismissed for now, Boden.” Obi motions for me to come in.
Boden gives me a snarl as we pass each other.
Obi grins at me. The woman who’s next in line looks over and eyes me with more than professional curiosity.
“Good to see you alive, Penryn,” says Obi.
“Good to be alive,” I say. “Are we having movie nights?”
“We’re setting up a remote surveillance system around the Bay Area,” says Obi. “It pays to have so many geniuses in the Valley who can make the impossible possible again.”
Someone in the last row calls out, “Camera twenty-five is online.” The other programmers continue to tap on their computers but I can feel their excitement.
“What are you looking for?” I ask.
“Anything interesting,” says Obi.
“I got something!” a programmer in the back yells out. “Angels in Sunnyvale on Lawrence Expressway.”
“Put it on the front screen,” says Obi.
One of the large TV screens at the front of the classroom comes on.
World After (Penryn & the End of Days #2)
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Fantasy thriller
Chap 5:
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Fantasy thriller
Chap 5:
THETV lights up.
An angel with blue wings stalks through the rubble of an abandoned street. The road has a giant crack zigzagging down the center with one side higher than the other.
Another angel lands behind the first, then two others. They look around, then walk off-screen.
“Can you turn the camera?”
“Not this one, sorry.”
“Got another one!” says a programmer to my right. “This one’s at SFO.” I always wondered how they got SFO from San Francisco International Airport.
“Put it on screen,” says Obi.
Another TV comes alive in front of the chalkboard.
An angel rushes in a half-limp, half-run along a field of asphalt. One white wing is off-kilter and dragging behind him.
“We got ourselves a lame bird,” says someone behind me. He sounds excited.
“What’s he running from?” asks Obi almost to himself.
The camera has trouble with its picture. It keeps switching from too bright to too dark. It settles on adjusting the lighting to the bright background, making the details of the angel dark and hard to see.
As he gets closer, though, he turns to see whatever is chasing him, giving us a good look at his face.
It’s Beliel, the demon who stole Raffe’s wings. He’s in bad shape. I wonder what happened?
Only one of his stolen wings seems functional. It keeps opening and closing as though reflexively trying to fly while the other wing drags in the dust. I hate to see Raffe’s gorgeous wings abused like that, and I try not to think of the abuse they took on my own watch.
There’s something wrong with Beliel’s knee. He limps and favors it even as he tries to run. He’s moving faster than any injured human could, but I’m guessing that it’s still less than half his normal speed.
Even from this distance, I can see a vivid red stain seeping through his white pants just above his boots. Funny that the demon has taken to wearing white, probably since he got his new wings.
As he nears the camera, he turns his head again to look behind him. There’s the familiar sneer. Arrogant, angry, but this time, with more than a touch of fear.
“What’s he scared of?” Obi asks the question that I’m wondering.
Beliel limps out of the frame, leaving only a cross-section of the empty runway.
“Can we see what’s behind him?” asks Obi.
“That’s as far as the camera will turn.”
A few seconds tick by, and it feels like the room is holding its breath.
Then Beliel’s pursuer shows up on the screen in all his glory.
Demonic wings spread out above his head. Light glints off the curved hooks, sliding down the edge of his wings as he stalks his prey.
“Jesus H. Christ,” says someone behind me.
The pursuer seems to be in no rush, almost as if he’s savoring the moment. His head is down, with his wings shading his face, making the details even harder to see than Beliel’s. And unlike Beliel, he doesn’t turn his head to give us a good look at his face.
But I know him. Even with his new demon wings, I know him.
It’s Raffe.
Everything about him—his pace, his arched wings, his shaded face—is the perfect nightmare image of the devil stalking his prey.
Even though I’m sure it’s Raffe, my heart stutters with fear at the sight of him.
This is not the Raffe I’ve come to know.
Does Obi recognize him as the guy who was with me when we first came to the Resistance camp?
I’m guessing not. I’m not sure I would have recognized Raffe if I hadn’t known about his new wings, even though every feature of his face and body has been burned into my memory.
Obi turns to his men. “We’ve hit the jackpot! A lame angel and a demon. I want a hunting party on its way to the airport in two minutes!”
The twins are moving before the order is given. “We’re on it,” they say in unison as they run out the door.
“Go! Go! Go!” I’ve never seen Obi so excited.
Obi pauses at the doorway to say, “Penryn, join us. You’re the only one who’s been near a demon.” Everyone still thinks a demon carried me to my family when I was seemingly dead.
I shut my mouth before I can say that I don’t know anything. I run to catch up to the group stampeding down the hallway.
An angel with blue wings stalks through the rubble of an abandoned street. The road has a giant crack zigzagging down the center with one side higher than the other.
Another angel lands behind the first, then two others. They look around, then walk off-screen.
“Can you turn the camera?”
“Not this one, sorry.”
“Got another one!” says a programmer to my right. “This one’s at SFO.” I always wondered how they got SFO from San Francisco International Airport.
“Put it on screen,” says Obi.
Another TV comes alive in front of the chalkboard.
An angel rushes in a half-limp, half-run along a field of asphalt. One white wing is off-kilter and dragging behind him.
“We got ourselves a lame bird,” says someone behind me. He sounds excited.
“What’s he running from?” asks Obi almost to himself.
The camera has trouble with its picture. It keeps switching from too bright to too dark. It settles on adjusting the lighting to the bright background, making the details of the angel dark and hard to see.
As he gets closer, though, he turns to see whatever is chasing him, giving us a good look at his face.
It’s Beliel, the demon who stole Raffe’s wings. He’s in bad shape. I wonder what happened?
Only one of his stolen wings seems functional. It keeps opening and closing as though reflexively trying to fly while the other wing drags in the dust. I hate to see Raffe’s gorgeous wings abused like that, and I try not to think of the abuse they took on my own watch.
There’s something wrong with Beliel’s knee. He limps and favors it even as he tries to run. He’s moving faster than any injured human could, but I’m guessing that it’s still less than half his normal speed.
Even from this distance, I can see a vivid red stain seeping through his white pants just above his boots. Funny that the demon has taken to wearing white, probably since he got his new wings.
As he nears the camera, he turns his head again to look behind him. There’s the familiar sneer. Arrogant, angry, but this time, with more than a touch of fear.
“What’s he scared of?” Obi asks the question that I’m wondering.
Beliel limps out of the frame, leaving only a cross-section of the empty runway.
“Can we see what’s behind him?” asks Obi.
“That’s as far as the camera will turn.”
A few seconds tick by, and it feels like the room is holding its breath.
Then Beliel’s pursuer shows up on the screen in all his glory.
Demonic wings spread out above his head. Light glints off the curved hooks, sliding down the edge of his wings as he stalks his prey.
“Jesus H. Christ,” says someone behind me.
The pursuer seems to be in no rush, almost as if he’s savoring the moment. His head is down, with his wings shading his face, making the details even harder to see than Beliel’s. And unlike Beliel, he doesn’t turn his head to give us a good look at his face.
But I know him. Even with his new demon wings, I know him.
It’s Raffe.
Everything about him—his pace, his arched wings, his shaded face—is the perfect nightmare image of the devil stalking his prey.
Even though I’m sure it’s Raffe, my heart stutters with fear at the sight of him.
This is not the Raffe I’ve come to know.
Does Obi recognize him as the guy who was with me when we first came to the Resistance camp?
I’m guessing not. I’m not sure I would have recognized Raffe if I hadn’t known about his new wings, even though every feature of his face and body has been burned into my memory.
Obi turns to his men. “We’ve hit the jackpot! A lame angel and a demon. I want a hunting party on its way to the airport in two minutes!”
The twins are moving before the order is given. “We’re on it,” they say in unison as they run out the door.
“Go! Go! Go!” I’ve never seen Obi so excited.
Obi pauses at the doorway to say, “Penryn, join us. You’re the only one who’s been near a demon.” Everyone still thinks a demon carried me to my family when I was seemingly dead.
I shut my mouth before I can say that I don’t know anything. I run to catch up to the group stampeding down the hallway.
World After (Penryn & the End of Days #2)
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Fantasy thriller
Chap 6:
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Fantasy thriller
Chap 6:
SAN FRANCISCO International Airport used to be about twenty minutes north of Palo Alto if there was no traffic. Of course, the highway is clogged now and driving sixty miles an hour is no longer feasible nor a good idea. But no one seems to have told Dee-Dum that. He takes open side roads in our SUV, weaving through abandoned cars and thumping over sidewalks like a drunken race-car driver.
“I’m gonna be sick,” I say.
“I’m ordering you not to,” says Obi.
“Ah, don’t say that,” says Dee-Dum. “She’s a born rebel. She’ll puke just to make a point.”
“You’re here for a reason, Penryn,” says Obi. “And throwing up in my car is not part of it. Buck up, Soldier.”
“I’m not your soldier.”
“Not yet,” says Obi with a wide grin. “Why don’t you fill us in on what happened at the aerie? Tell us everything you saw and heard, even if you think it won’t be helpful.”
“And if you have to get sick,” says Dee-Dum, “shoot for Obi’s direction, not mine.”
I end up telling them almost everything I saw. I leave out all things Raffe, but I tell them about the endless angel party at the aerie with champagne and hors d’oeuvres, costumes, servants, and the sheer decadence of it all. Then I tell them about the scorpion-angel fetuses in the basement lab, and the people being fed to the scorpions.
I hesitate to tell them about the experiments on the kids. Will they put two and two together and suspect that these kids might be the low demons who were tearing people apart on the roads? Will they suspect that Paige might be one of them? I’m not sure what to do, but I end up telling them in vague terms that kids have been operated on.
“So your sister, is she all right?” asks Obi.
“Yes, I’m sure she’ll be back to herself soon.” I say this without hesitation. Of course she’s all right. What else can she be? What choice do we have? I try to radiate confidence through my voice despite the worry that gnaws at me.
“Tell us more about these scorpion angels,” says our other passenger. He has wavy hair, glasses, and rich brown skin. He has the air of a scholar who’s getting his geek on over a favorite topic.
In my relief to change the subject from Paige, I tell them every detail I can recall. Their size, their dragonfly wings, their total lack of uniformity that’s so unlike lab specimens you see in the movies. How some of them seemed embryonic but others looked nearly fully formed. I tell him about the people trapped in the tanks with them, getting their lives sucked out of them.
When I finish, there’s a pause as everyone absorbs my tale.
Just as I think this question-and-answer session will be easy, they ask about the demon who carried me and dropped me off at the Resistance rescue truck during the aerie attack. I have no idea what to say so my answer to all their questions is, “I don’t know. I was unconscious.”
Despite that, I’m surprised at how many questions they ask about “the demon.”
Was he the devil? Did he say anything about what he was doing there? Where did you meet him? Do you know where he went? Why did he drop you off with us?
“I don’t know,” I say for the umpteenth time. “I was unconscious.”
“Can you reach him again?”
That last question squeezes my heart a little. “No.”
Dee-Dum does a quick U-turn to avoid a backed-up side road.
“Anything else you’d like to tell us?” asks Obi.
“No.”
“Thank you,” says Obi. He turns to look at the other passenger. “Sanjay, your turn. I hear you have a theory about the angels that you want to share with us?”
“Yes,” says the scholar holding up a map of the world. “I think that most of the killing during the Great Attack could have been incidental. Sort of a side effect of the angels coming here. My hypothesis is that when a couple of them enter our world, it’s a local phenomenon.”
Sanjay pricks a pin through the map. “A hole in our world is created which lets them come in. It probably causes some kind of local weather disturbance but nothing too dramatic. But when an entire legion comes through, this is what happens.”
He punches a screwdriver into the paper. The handle and his hand also go through, tearing the map.
“My theory is that the world rips when they invade. This is what triggered the earthquakes, the tsunamis, the weather disturbances—everything catastrophic that caused the majority of the damage and deaths.” Thunder rolls through the gray sky as if to agree with him.
“It wasn’t the angels themselves who controlled nature when they invaded,” says Sanjay. “That’s why they didn’t create a giant tsunami to swallow us up when we attacked the aerie. They can’t. They are living, breathing creatures just like us. They may have abilities we don’t have, but they’re not godlike.”
“You’re telling us that they killed this many people and they weren’t even trying?”
Sanjay rakes his fingers through his thick hair. “Well, they did kill a bunch of people after we killed their leader, but they may not be as all-powerful as we initially thought. Of course, I have no proof. It’s just a theory that fits what little we know. But if you guys can bring back some bodies for us to study, we may be able to shed some light on this.”
“Want me to confiscate some angel parts from the hallways?” asks Dee-Dum.
I don’t joke about how he and his brother are probably dealing in angel parts, just in case it’s true.
“There’s no guarantee any of those parts are authentic,” says Sanjay. “In fact, I’d be surprised if any of them are. Besides, it would be much more helpful to study an entire body.” The shreds of the paper depicting our world lie drooping on Sanjay’s lap.
“Cross your fingers,” says Obi. “If we’re lucky, we might be able to bring you some live ones.”
I feel a flutter of unease. But I tell myself that they won’t capture Raffe. They can’t. He’ll be all right.
The two-way radio on the dash comes alive and a voice says, “Something’s going on at the old aerie.”
Obi grabs the handset and asks, “What kind of something?”
“Angels in the air. Too many to hunt.”
Obi takes a pair of binoculars from the glove compartment and looks toward the city. In most places he wouldn’t have a clear view, but we’re near the water so he has a shot at seeing something.
“What are they up to?” asks Dee-Dum.
“No idea,” says Obi looking through the binoculars. “There are a lot of them, though. Something interesting is going on.”
“We’re halfway to the city already,” says Dee-Dum.
“He said there were too many to capture,” says Sanjay sounding nervous.
“True,” says Obi. “But it’s a chance to find out what they’re doing. And you wanted angel bodies to study. The aerie will be the best place to find them.”
“I think it’s gotta be one place or the other, boss,” says Dee-Dum. “If we go to the airport, it’ll
take everyone we’ve got to bag our targets, assuming they’re still there.”
Obi sighs, seeming reluctant. He speaks into the radio. “Change of plans. All vehicles head to the old aerie. Approach with extreme caution. Repeat, approach with extreme caution. Hostiles have been sighted. This is now an observation mission. But if you get the chance, bring back a bird specimen. Dead or alive.”
“I’m gonna be sick,” I say.
“I’m ordering you not to,” says Obi.
“Ah, don’t say that,” says Dee-Dum. “She’s a born rebel. She’ll puke just to make a point.”
“You’re here for a reason, Penryn,” says Obi. “And throwing up in my car is not part of it. Buck up, Soldier.”
“I’m not your soldier.”
“Not yet,” says Obi with a wide grin. “Why don’t you fill us in on what happened at the aerie? Tell us everything you saw and heard, even if you think it won’t be helpful.”
“And if you have to get sick,” says Dee-Dum, “shoot for Obi’s direction, not mine.”
I end up telling them almost everything I saw. I leave out all things Raffe, but I tell them about the endless angel party at the aerie with champagne and hors d’oeuvres, costumes, servants, and the sheer decadence of it all. Then I tell them about the scorpion-angel fetuses in the basement lab, and the people being fed to the scorpions.
I hesitate to tell them about the experiments on the kids. Will they put two and two together and suspect that these kids might be the low demons who were tearing people apart on the roads? Will they suspect that Paige might be one of them? I’m not sure what to do, but I end up telling them in vague terms that kids have been operated on.
“So your sister, is she all right?” asks Obi.
“Yes, I’m sure she’ll be back to herself soon.” I say this without hesitation. Of course she’s all right. What else can she be? What choice do we have? I try to radiate confidence through my voice despite the worry that gnaws at me.
“Tell us more about these scorpion angels,” says our other passenger. He has wavy hair, glasses, and rich brown skin. He has the air of a scholar who’s getting his geek on over a favorite topic.
In my relief to change the subject from Paige, I tell them every detail I can recall. Their size, their dragonfly wings, their total lack of uniformity that’s so unlike lab specimens you see in the movies. How some of them seemed embryonic but others looked nearly fully formed. I tell him about the people trapped in the tanks with them, getting their lives sucked out of them.
When I finish, there’s a pause as everyone absorbs my tale.
Just as I think this question-and-answer session will be easy, they ask about the demon who carried me and dropped me off at the Resistance rescue truck during the aerie attack. I have no idea what to say so my answer to all their questions is, “I don’t know. I was unconscious.”
Despite that, I’m surprised at how many questions they ask about “the demon.”
Was he the devil? Did he say anything about what he was doing there? Where did you meet him? Do you know where he went? Why did he drop you off with us?
“I don’t know,” I say for the umpteenth time. “I was unconscious.”
“Can you reach him again?”
That last question squeezes my heart a little. “No.”
Dee-Dum does a quick U-turn to avoid a backed-up side road.
“Anything else you’d like to tell us?” asks Obi.
“No.”
“Thank you,” says Obi. He turns to look at the other passenger. “Sanjay, your turn. I hear you have a theory about the angels that you want to share with us?”
“Yes,” says the scholar holding up a map of the world. “I think that most of the killing during the Great Attack could have been incidental. Sort of a side effect of the angels coming here. My hypothesis is that when a couple of them enter our world, it’s a local phenomenon.”
Sanjay pricks a pin through the map. “A hole in our world is created which lets them come in. It probably causes some kind of local weather disturbance but nothing too dramatic. But when an entire legion comes through, this is what happens.”
He punches a screwdriver into the paper. The handle and his hand also go through, tearing the map.
“My theory is that the world rips when they invade. This is what triggered the earthquakes, the tsunamis, the weather disturbances—everything catastrophic that caused the majority of the damage and deaths.” Thunder rolls through the gray sky as if to agree with him.
“It wasn’t the angels themselves who controlled nature when they invaded,” says Sanjay. “That’s why they didn’t create a giant tsunami to swallow us up when we attacked the aerie. They can’t. They are living, breathing creatures just like us. They may have abilities we don’t have, but they’re not godlike.”
“You’re telling us that they killed this many people and they weren’t even trying?”
Sanjay rakes his fingers through his thick hair. “Well, they did kill a bunch of people after we killed their leader, but they may not be as all-powerful as we initially thought. Of course, I have no proof. It’s just a theory that fits what little we know. But if you guys can bring back some bodies for us to study, we may be able to shed some light on this.”
“Want me to confiscate some angel parts from the hallways?” asks Dee-Dum.
I don’t joke about how he and his brother are probably dealing in angel parts, just in case it’s true.
“There’s no guarantee any of those parts are authentic,” says Sanjay. “In fact, I’d be surprised if any of them are. Besides, it would be much more helpful to study an entire body.” The shreds of the paper depicting our world lie drooping on Sanjay’s lap.
“Cross your fingers,” says Obi. “If we’re lucky, we might be able to bring you some live ones.”
I feel a flutter of unease. But I tell myself that they won’t capture Raffe. They can’t. He’ll be all right.
The two-way radio on the dash comes alive and a voice says, “Something’s going on at the old aerie.”
Obi grabs the handset and asks, “What kind of something?”
“Angels in the air. Too many to hunt.”
Obi takes a pair of binoculars from the glove compartment and looks toward the city. In most places he wouldn’t have a clear view, but we’re near the water so he has a shot at seeing something.
“What are they up to?” asks Dee-Dum.
“No idea,” says Obi looking through the binoculars. “There are a lot of them, though. Something interesting is going on.”
“We’re halfway to the city already,” says Dee-Dum.
“He said there were too many to capture,” says Sanjay sounding nervous.
“True,” says Obi. “But it’s a chance to find out what they’re doing. And you wanted angel bodies to study. The aerie will be the best place to find them.”
“I think it’s gotta be one place or the other, boss,” says Dee-Dum. “If we go to the airport, it’ll
take everyone we’ve got to bag our targets, assuming they’re still there.”
Obi sighs, seeming reluctant. He speaks into the radio. “Change of plans. All vehicles head to the old aerie. Approach with extreme caution. Repeat, approach with extreme caution. Hostiles have been sighted. This is now an observation mission. But if you get the chance, bring back a bird specimen. Dead or alive.”
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World After (Penryn & the End of Days #2)
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Fantasy thriller
Chap 7:
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Fantasy thriller
Chap 7:
THE ICY rain pelts my face as we race through abandoned cars in a sea of junk. Well, racing is a strong word for an SUV rolling at thirty miles an hour, but these days that speed is neck-breaking—literally, since I’m perched on the window and hanging on for dear life.
“Tank at two o’clock,” I call out.
“Tank? Seriously?” asks Dee-Dum. He strains his neck to see above the debris cluttering the road. He sounds excited even though we both know that the angels would hear a tank from miles away.
“I kid you not. Looks dead.” My rain-soaked hair drips down my neck and traces a finger of ice down my back. It’s a light rain, as most San Francisco rains are, but enough to seep through everything. The wet chill freezes my hands and it’s hard to hang onto the grab-handle.
“Bus at twelve o’clock,” I say.
“Yeah, that I can see.”
The bus lies on its side. I briefly wonder if it got tilted by one of the earthquakes that shook the world when the angels came, or if it was picked up and tossed by avenging angels when the Resistance hit their aerie. My guess is that it was tossed, since there’s a long crater in the road near the bus with an upside-down Hummer in it.
“Uh, giant crater—” Before I can finish my sentence, Dee-Dum swerves the car. I hang on tight as I’m pitched to the right. For a moment, I think I’m going to smash into the asphalt face-first.
He does a crazy zigzag maneuver before he straightens the car.
“A little forewarning would be nice,” says Dee-Dum in a singsong voice.
“A little smoother driving would be nicer,” I say mimicking his tone. The hard metal of the car door presses against my thighs, bruising my muscles as we bump onto the sidewalk.
As if that isn’t bad enough, I haven’t seen a single hint of batwings attached to an Adonis-like body anywhere along the way. Not that I expected to see Raffe.
“That’s it. Glasses or no, it’s Sanjay’s turn.” I slide down from my perch and sink into the back seat as Sanjay climbs up to sit in the open window on his side.
We’re approaching the Financial District from a different direction than Raffe and I had a couple of days ago. This part of town looks like it wasn’t the nicest part to begin with, but a few buildings still stand with only their edges singed.
Colorful beads are splashed over the sidewalk in front of a store with a sign reading Beads and Feathers. But there’s not a single feather in sight. The bounty that someone has put out for angel parts must still going strong. I wonder if all the chickens and pigeons have been plucked? Their feathers might be worth more than their meat if they could be passed off as angel feathers.
My stomach feels full of ice as we near the disaster zone that was once the Financial District. The area is deserted now, with not even scavengers looking for bits of usable supplies or scraps of food.
“Where is everybody?”
The Financial District still stands, or at least a few blocks of it does. In the center, there’s a gaping hole in the skyline where the aerie used to be. A couple of months ago, it was a high-end, Art-Deco hotel. Then the angels took over and turned it into their aerie. Now it’s just a pile of rubble from when the Resistance crashed a truck full of explosives into it.
“Oh, that’s not good,” says Dee-Dum, looking up into the sky.
I see it the same time he does.
A funnel of angels swirls from the place where the aerie used to be.
“What are they doing here?” I whisper.
Dee-Dum pulls the SUV over and turns off the engine. Without a word, he takes two pairs of binoculars out of the glove compartment and hands one to me. Obi already has his so I guess I’m supposed to share mine with Sanjay.
Obi grabs his rifle and gets out. I follow with my heart pounding in my chest.
I worry that the angels heard our engines, but they continue to fly without looking toward us. We zigzag on foot from car to car toward the old aerie. It doesn’t seem to occur to Obi or Dee-Dum to run away.
An angel with snowy white wings takes off into the blanket of clouds. My eyes follow him even though I know Raffe doesn’t have those wings any more.
As we near the destroyed building that was once their aerie, everything is covered in dust. The pulverized concrete fell all over the cars, the streets, and the dead bodies. Cars lie strewn upside down and sideways on the sidewalks, on top of other cars, and partway embedded in nearby buildings.
Our feet crunch over broken concrete as we dart between the cars and debris. The angels were not pleased about the attack in the middle of their party, and they left the scene the way a child would leave a Lego town after a tantrum.
There are bodies lying in the street and they’re all human. I get the sick feeling that the attack didn’t do as much damage to the angels as we had initially thought. Where are the angel bodies?
I glance over at Dee-Dum and see from his eyes that he’s wondering the same thing. We pause close enough to see what’s going on.
The old aerie is just a pile of broken boulders and bent rebar. The steel rods that used to support the high-rise hotel now stand broken and exposed like bloodstained bones.
I expected the aerie to be a mountain of rubble. Instead, the rubble is spread everywhere.
The place is swarming with angels.
Winged bodies lie haphazardly in the wreckage while some are arranged in a row on the asphalt. Angels dig up enormous boulders and toss them away from what was once the aerie. A few of them drag angel bodies and line them up on the road.
My heart is racing so hard I swear I have to swallow to keep it from galloping out of my mouth.
A warrior with spotted wings walks out of one of the nearby buildings with a bucket in each hand, sloshing water with every step. He kicks the nearest body.
The supposedly dead angel groans and starts to move.
The warrior tosses water onto the bodies in the street. They were wet from the drizzle anyway but now they’re soaked.
As soon as the bodies get splashed, they begin to move.
“Tank at two o’clock,” I call out.
“Tank? Seriously?” asks Dee-Dum. He strains his neck to see above the debris cluttering the road. He sounds excited even though we both know that the angels would hear a tank from miles away.
“I kid you not. Looks dead.” My rain-soaked hair drips down my neck and traces a finger of ice down my back. It’s a light rain, as most San Francisco rains are, but enough to seep through everything. The wet chill freezes my hands and it’s hard to hang onto the grab-handle.
“Bus at twelve o’clock,” I say.
“Yeah, that I can see.”
The bus lies on its side. I briefly wonder if it got tilted by one of the earthquakes that shook the world when the angels came, or if it was picked up and tossed by avenging angels when the Resistance hit their aerie. My guess is that it was tossed, since there’s a long crater in the road near the bus with an upside-down Hummer in it.
“Uh, giant crater—” Before I can finish my sentence, Dee-Dum swerves the car. I hang on tight as I’m pitched to the right. For a moment, I think I’m going to smash into the asphalt face-first.
He does a crazy zigzag maneuver before he straightens the car.
“A little forewarning would be nice,” says Dee-Dum in a singsong voice.
“A little smoother driving would be nicer,” I say mimicking his tone. The hard metal of the car door presses against my thighs, bruising my muscles as we bump onto the sidewalk.
As if that isn’t bad enough, I haven’t seen a single hint of batwings attached to an Adonis-like body anywhere along the way. Not that I expected to see Raffe.
“That’s it. Glasses or no, it’s Sanjay’s turn.” I slide down from my perch and sink into the back seat as Sanjay climbs up to sit in the open window on his side.
We’re approaching the Financial District from a different direction than Raffe and I had a couple of days ago. This part of town looks like it wasn’t the nicest part to begin with, but a few buildings still stand with only their edges singed.
Colorful beads are splashed over the sidewalk in front of a store with a sign reading Beads and Feathers. But there’s not a single feather in sight. The bounty that someone has put out for angel parts must still going strong. I wonder if all the chickens and pigeons have been plucked? Their feathers might be worth more than their meat if they could be passed off as angel feathers.
My stomach feels full of ice as we near the disaster zone that was once the Financial District. The area is deserted now, with not even scavengers looking for bits of usable supplies or scraps of food.
“Where is everybody?”
The Financial District still stands, or at least a few blocks of it does. In the center, there’s a gaping hole in the skyline where the aerie used to be. A couple of months ago, it was a high-end, Art-Deco hotel. Then the angels took over and turned it into their aerie. Now it’s just a pile of rubble from when the Resistance crashed a truck full of explosives into it.
“Oh, that’s not good,” says Dee-Dum, looking up into the sky.
I see it the same time he does.
A funnel of angels swirls from the place where the aerie used to be.
“What are they doing here?” I whisper.
Dee-Dum pulls the SUV over and turns off the engine. Without a word, he takes two pairs of binoculars out of the glove compartment and hands one to me. Obi already has his so I guess I’m supposed to share mine with Sanjay.
Obi grabs his rifle and gets out. I follow with my heart pounding in my chest.
I worry that the angels heard our engines, but they continue to fly without looking toward us. We zigzag on foot from car to car toward the old aerie. It doesn’t seem to occur to Obi or Dee-Dum to run away.
An angel with snowy white wings takes off into the blanket of clouds. My eyes follow him even though I know Raffe doesn’t have those wings any more.
As we near the destroyed building that was once their aerie, everything is covered in dust. The pulverized concrete fell all over the cars, the streets, and the dead bodies. Cars lie strewn upside down and sideways on the sidewalks, on top of other cars, and partway embedded in nearby buildings.
Our feet crunch over broken concrete as we dart between the cars and debris. The angels were not pleased about the attack in the middle of their party, and they left the scene the way a child would leave a Lego town after a tantrum.
There are bodies lying in the street and they’re all human. I get the sick feeling that the attack didn’t do as much damage to the angels as we had initially thought. Where are the angel bodies?
I glance over at Dee-Dum and see from his eyes that he’s wondering the same thing. We pause close enough to see what’s going on.
The old aerie is just a pile of broken boulders and bent rebar. The steel rods that used to support the high-rise hotel now stand broken and exposed like bloodstained bones.
I expected the aerie to be a mountain of rubble. Instead, the rubble is spread everywhere.
The place is swarming with angels.
Winged bodies lie haphazardly in the wreckage while some are arranged in a row on the asphalt. Angels dig up enormous boulders and toss them away from what was once the aerie. A few of them drag angel bodies and line them up on the road.
My heart is racing so hard I swear I have to swallow to keep it from galloping out of my mouth.
A warrior with spotted wings walks out of one of the nearby buildings with a bucket in each hand, sloshing water with every step. He kicks the nearest body.
The supposedly dead angel groans and starts to move.
The warrior tosses water onto the bodies in the street. They were wet from the drizzle anyway but now they’re soaked.
As soon as the bodies get splashed, they begin to move.
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World After (Penryn & the End of Days #2)
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Fantasy thriller
Chap 8:
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Fantasy thriller
Chap 8:
“WHAT THE—” says Sanjay, too startled to remember to be quiet.
A couple of the angels lying on the asphalt immediately resurrect and vigorously shake the drops out of their hair like dogs. The others groan and move sluggishly as if the morning alarm went off sooner than expected.
Some of them are clearly shot up with bullets. Their wounds have ugly entry points and even uglier exit points that look like raw hamburger flowers.
The warrior with spotted wings grabs his other bucket and tosses the water onto the rest of the “bodies.” He also kicks a few of the wounded still lying on the asphalt.
“Get up, maggots! What do you think this is? Naptime? You’re an embarrassment.”
Apparently, Sanjay’s not the only one who forgot to be quiet because one of the angels grabs a chunk of broken concrete and throws it at a car the way someone might throw a stone at a rat. And just like rats, two of our men scamper out of the way as it smashes into the car that they were hiding behind.
A couple of other angels grab chunks of broken fixtures and rebar and throw them at us. I barely have time to dive to the sidewalk as the car windows shatter.
I jump up and run so hard I’m hyperventilating by the time I hide in the doorway of a building. I peek at the angels. They’re not chasing us any more than we would chase rats in a garbage dump.
Obi and Dee-Dum see me from their hiding place behind a truck and sprint to my doorway. We huddle and peek through our binoculars.
A group of angels digs into the center of the rubble, tossing debris left and right. As they find bodies, they leave the dead humans and pull out limp angels who might wake at any moment.
The angels doing the digging are larger than the ones who are being dug out. The big ones carry swords around their waists, which I assume means that they are warriors. From what I can see, all the victims are smaller and don’t carry swords.
Now that I think about it, just how many warriors did I see at the aerie when Raffe and I walked through it? There were the guards. A few in the hallways. And that table full of warriors where that scumbag Josiah the albino stood. Aside from them, no one else carried swords. Did they bring administrators and other non-fighting types to our world? Cooks? Medics? And if so, where were the warriors when the aerie was attacked?
I groan out loud.
“What?” mouths Obi.
I try to figure out how to talk to them without being overheard. Dee-Dum must have an idea of what I want because he pulls out a pad of paper and a pencil and hands it to me.
I write, “How many warrior angels did you see at the aerie last night?”
Dee-Dum shakes his head and puts his thumb and forefinger only an inch apart, telling me very few.
He glances over at the angels and I can see understanding dawning in his face. He writes, “More here now than during our strike.”
“Maybe they were on a mission?”
He nods.
By sheer luck, it looks like the Resistance hit the aerie when almost all the fighters were gone. No wonder so many of the angels went down without a proper fight. I remember the chaos in the foyer as both humans and angels ran in every direction at the beginning of the attack. There were angels who ran out into the machine-gun fire to try to take flight. I thought it was sheer daredevil behavior but maybe it was simply inexperience and panic.
Still, even the civilian angels were a force to be reckoned with as they grabbed Resistance trucks, tossed soldiers, and crushed the frantic crowds.
Now, some of the angels lying on the asphalt look seriously injured. Some of them are so badly off that they can’t fly on their own. The warriors yank them by their arms as if annoyed and fly them out.
None of them are dead as far as I can see.
Obi’s expression shows that he’s beginning to understand their healing powers. I told them during the question-and-answer session that angels could heal even from things that would kill a human, but it looks like Obi’s only now beginning to believe it.
When the warriors dig down to ground level, the one in charge signals, and more than half the remaining angels take their injured and fly off. The remaining angels look resentful as they dig. I suspect warriors don’t like to do menial labor.
Although I can’t see into the pit they’re digging, I can hear screeches. I recognize the noise from the thing that attacked and paralyzed me in the aerie basement. There are still a few scorpion fetuses alive down there.
The warrior in charge pulls out his sword and jumps in.
A scorpion screeches. From the sound of it, it’s being skewered.
A couple of the angels lying on the asphalt immediately resurrect and vigorously shake the drops out of their hair like dogs. The others groan and move sluggishly as if the morning alarm went off sooner than expected.
Some of them are clearly shot up with bullets. Their wounds have ugly entry points and even uglier exit points that look like raw hamburger flowers.
The warrior with spotted wings grabs his other bucket and tosses the water onto the rest of the “bodies.” He also kicks a few of the wounded still lying on the asphalt.
“Get up, maggots! What do you think this is? Naptime? You’re an embarrassment.”
Apparently, Sanjay’s not the only one who forgot to be quiet because one of the angels grabs a chunk of broken concrete and throws it at a car the way someone might throw a stone at a rat. And just like rats, two of our men scamper out of the way as it smashes into the car that they were hiding behind.
A couple of other angels grab chunks of broken fixtures and rebar and throw them at us. I barely have time to dive to the sidewalk as the car windows shatter.
I jump up and run so hard I’m hyperventilating by the time I hide in the doorway of a building. I peek at the angels. They’re not chasing us any more than we would chase rats in a garbage dump.
Obi and Dee-Dum see me from their hiding place behind a truck and sprint to my doorway. We huddle and peek through our binoculars.
A group of angels digs into the center of the rubble, tossing debris left and right. As they find bodies, they leave the dead humans and pull out limp angels who might wake at any moment.
The angels doing the digging are larger than the ones who are being dug out. The big ones carry swords around their waists, which I assume means that they are warriors. From what I can see, all the victims are smaller and don’t carry swords.
Now that I think about it, just how many warriors did I see at the aerie when Raffe and I walked through it? There were the guards. A few in the hallways. And that table full of warriors where that scumbag Josiah the albino stood. Aside from them, no one else carried swords. Did they bring administrators and other non-fighting types to our world? Cooks? Medics? And if so, where were the warriors when the aerie was attacked?
I groan out loud.
“What?” mouths Obi.
I try to figure out how to talk to them without being overheard. Dee-Dum must have an idea of what I want because he pulls out a pad of paper and a pencil and hands it to me.
I write, “How many warrior angels did you see at the aerie last night?”
Dee-Dum shakes his head and puts his thumb and forefinger only an inch apart, telling me very few.
He glances over at the angels and I can see understanding dawning in his face. He writes, “More here now than during our strike.”
“Maybe they were on a mission?”
He nods.
By sheer luck, it looks like the Resistance hit the aerie when almost all the fighters were gone. No wonder so many of the angels went down without a proper fight. I remember the chaos in the foyer as both humans and angels ran in every direction at the beginning of the attack. There were angels who ran out into the machine-gun fire to try to take flight. I thought it was sheer daredevil behavior but maybe it was simply inexperience and panic.
Still, even the civilian angels were a force to be reckoned with as they grabbed Resistance trucks, tossed soldiers, and crushed the frantic crowds.
Now, some of the angels lying on the asphalt look seriously injured. Some of them are so badly off that they can’t fly on their own. The warriors yank them by their arms as if annoyed and fly them out.
None of them are dead as far as I can see.
Obi’s expression shows that he’s beginning to understand their healing powers. I told them during the question-and-answer session that angels could heal even from things that would kill a human, but it looks like Obi’s only now beginning to believe it.
When the warriors dig down to ground level, the one in charge signals, and more than half the remaining angels take their injured and fly off. The remaining angels look resentful as they dig. I suspect warriors don’t like to do menial labor.
Although I can’t see into the pit they’re digging, I can hear screeches. I recognize the noise from the thing that attacked and paralyzed me in the aerie basement. There are still a few scorpion fetuses alive down there.
The warrior in charge pulls out his sword and jumps in.
A scorpion screeches. From the sound of it, it’s being skewered.
World After (Penryn & the End of Days #2)
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Fantasy thriller
Chap 9:
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Fantasy thriller
Chap 9:
IT’S NOT long before the streets are quiet. There weren’t many surviving scorpions to begin with but now, I’m willing to there are none.
Masculine bodies burst out of the pit and disappear into the cloud cover. One of them carries a limp angel, the only one I’ve seen who looks dead.
Somewhere, far away, thunder rumbles. The wind whistles through the corridor of buildings.
We wait until it seems safe to get up and take a closer look. I’d be shocked if there’s even a skin sample of the angels that we could bring back.
We approach the rubble, staying hidden as much as possible even though the coast seems clear.
We’re a stone’s throw away from the smoking wreckage when a boulder of concrete clanks down the side of the rubble pile. I freeze, eyes and ears alert.
Another piece falls and rolls into a tiny landslide.
Something is coming up from the rubble basement. We all take cover behind cars, watching carefully.
More rock-sized debris falls and it’s some time before hands reach up to the top of the rubble. A head emerges. At first, I think it’s some kind of demon that tunneled out from hell. But then, the creature pulls the rest of itself up, trembling and wheezing the entire time.
It’s an old woman.
But I’ve never seen anything like her. She’s shriveled, frail, and bony. Most striking of all, her skin is so dry it looks like beef jerky.
Dee-Dum and I look at each other, both wondering what she’s doing in there. She climbs up onto the peak and begins a shaky trek along the debris pile, moving as if she has arthritis.
She wears a tattered lab coat that’s five sizes too big for her. It’s so stained with dirt and rust-colored blotches that it’s hard to believe it was ever white. She holds it closed as she gingerly steps across the rubble, looking as if she’s holding herself together.
The wind blows her hair in her face and she tosses her head to get it out of the way. There’s something odd about both her full hair and that gesture. It takes me a minute to figure out what it is.
When was the last time I saw an old woman toss her head to get her hair away from her face? And her hair is dark all the way to her scalp even though the latest post-apocalyptic fashion for older women is at least an inch of gray roots.
She freezes like a frightened animal and looks up at us as we emerge from behind the cars. Even with her dried-up face, there’s something familiar about her that’s nagging me.
Then a memory tickles my mind.
An image of two little kids hanging onto the fence, watching their mom walk toward the aerie. Their mom turning around to blow a goodbye kiss.
She ended up as dinner in the fetus tank of one of the scorpion angels. I broke her tank with my sword and left her there to fend for herself because I couldn’t drag her out.
She’s alive.
Only, she looks like she has aged fifty years. Her once beautiful eyes have sunk into her face. Her cheeks are so lean I can almost see the skeleton beneath them. Her hands are talons covered in thin skin.
She scrambles away in abject terror as she sees us getting up from our hiding places. She’s almost on all fours as she runs off, and my heart breaks to remember her health and beauty before the monsters got to her. She can’t get very far in her condition, and she hides, trembling, behind a post-office box.
She’s a tiny slip of a thing, but she’s a survivor and I have to respect that. She deserves to get away from the place where she was buried alive, and she’ll need energy for that. I dig through my pockets and feel the Snickers bar. I root around to see if there’s something less valuable but find nothing.
I take a few steps toward the poor thing as she cringes in her hiding place.
My sister has more experience with this kind of thing than I do. But I guess I’ve learned a thing or two from watching Paige befriend all those abandoned cats and damaged kids. I put the candy bar on the road where the lady can see it, then take a few steps back to give her some safe space.
There’s a moment when the woman watches me like a beaten animal. Then she snatches the candy bar faster than I would have given her credit for. She tears off the wrapper in a split second and stuffs the candy in her mouth. Her strained face relaxes as she tastes the nutty, sweet flavor from the World Before.
“My kids, my husband,” she says in a hoarse voice. “Where did everybody go?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “But a lot of people ended up at the Resistance camp. They might be there.”
“What Resistance camp?”
“It’s the Resistance who attacked the angels. People are gathering to join them.”
She blinks at me. “I remember you. You died.”
“Neither of us died,” I say.
“I did,” she says. “And I went to hell.” She wraps her thin arms around herself again.
I don’t know what to say. What difference does it make if she actually died or not? She certainly lived through hell and she looks it.
Sanjay walks up to us like he’s approaching a stray cat. “What’s your name?”
She glances at me for reassurance. I nod.
“Clara.”
“I’m Sanjay. What happened to you?”
She looks at her jerkied hand. “I got sucked dry by a monster.”
“What monster?” Sanjay asks.
“The scorpion angels I told you about,” I say.
“The hell doctor said I could go free if I led him to my little girls,” she says with her parched voice. “But I wouldn’t give them up. He said the monster would liquefy my insides and drink them. Said the mature ones wouldn’t go all the way and kill if they could help it, but the developing ones would.”
Clara starts shaking. “He said it would be the most excruciating thing I could imagine.” She shuts her eyes as if trying to keep tears back. “Thank God I didn’t believe him.” Her voice sounds choked. “Thank God I didn’t know any better.” She starts crying in dry heaves as if all the fluid actually was sucked out of her.
“You didn’t give up your children and you’re alive,” I say. “That’s all that matters.”
She puts her trembling hand on my arm, then turns to Sanjay. “The monster was killing me. And out of nowhere, she came and rescued me.”
Sanjay looks at me with new respect. I worry about her telling him about Raffe, but it turns out she passed out in the basement as soon as she saw me get stung by a scorpion, so she doesn’t remember much.
Clara’s plight eats away at me like acid as we pick through the debris. Sanjay sits on the sidewalk beside her, talking gently with her and taking notes. Comforting someone like her is the kind of thing my sister would have done in the World Before.
We find a couple of crushed scorpions, but we find nothing of the angels themselves. Not a drop of blood or a scrape of skin that might help us learn something about them.
“One little nuke,” says Dum, picking through the rubble. “That’s all I ask. I’m not greedy.”
“Yeah, that and the detonation keys,” says Dee, kicking over a boulder of concrete. He sounds disgusted. “Seriously, did they really have to hide the nukes from the rest of us? It’s not like we would have played with it like a toy and blown up a pasture full of cows or something.”
“Oh, man,” says Dum. “That would have been so awesome. Can you imagine? Boom!” He mimes a mushroom cloud. “Moo!”
Dee gives him a long-suffering look. “You are such a child. You can’t just waste a nuke like that. You gotta figure out a way to control the trajectory so that when the bomb goes off, it shoots the radioactive cows into your enemies.”
“Right on,” says Dum. “Squash some, infect the others.”
“Of course, you have to put the cows on ground zero’s perimeter, close enough so they’ll rocket out, but far enough away that they won’t turn into radioactive dust,” says Dee. “I’m sure, with a little practice, we could get the cows aimed just right.”
“I heard the Israelis nuked the angels. Blew them right out of the sky,” says Dum.
“That’s a lie,” says Dee. “No one would blow up their entire country in the hope that a few angels might be in the air when you did it. It’s just not responsible nuke behavior.”
“Unlike nuclear cow missiles,” says Dum.
“Exactly.”
“Besides,” says Dum. “They might turn into radioactive anti-superheroes for all we know. Maybe they’d just absorb the radioactivity and shoot it back at us.”
“They’re not superheroes, you idiot,” says Dee. “They’re just people who can, you know, fly. They’ll explode into smithereens just like anybody else.”
“Then how come there are no angel bodies here?” asks Dum. We stand in the middle of the debris, looking at the hole that goes down into what used to be the basement.
Broken human bodies lie scattered across the debris but none of them have wings.
The wind picks up, pelting us with cold drizzle.
“They couldn’t just have been injured, not with that many bullets and the building collapsing,” says one of the guys who came in another car. “Could they?”
We all look at each other, not wanting to say what we’re thinking.
“They took some bodies away,” says Dee.
“Yeah,” says Dum, “but they could just be unconscious for all we know.”
“There’s got to be a dead angel around here,” says Dee, lifting a concrete chunk and looking beneath it.
“Agreed. There has to be something.”
But there isn’t.
there are none.Masculine bodies burst out of the pit and disappear into the cloud cover. One of them carries a limp angel, the only one I’ve seen who looks dead.
Somewhere, far away, thunder rumbles. The wind whistles through the corridor of buildings.
We wait until it seems safe to get up and take a closer look. I’d be shocked if there’s even a skin sample of the angels that we could bring back.
We approach the rubble, staying hidden as much as possible even though the coast seems clear.
We’re a stone’s throw away from the smoking wreckage when a boulder of concrete clanks down the side of the rubble pile. I freeze, eyes and ears alert.
Another piece falls and rolls into a tiny landslide.
Something is coming up from the rubble basement. We all take cover behind cars, watching carefully.
More rock-sized debris falls and it’s some time before hands reach up to the top of the rubble. A head emerges. At first, I think it’s some kind of demon that tunneled out from hell. But then, the creature pulls the rest of itself up, trembling and wheezing the entire time.
It’s an old woman.
But I’ve never seen anything like her. She’s shriveled, frail, and bony. Most striking of all, her skin is so dry it looks like beef jerky.
Dee-Dum and I look at each other, both wondering what she’s doing in there. She climbs up onto the peak and begins a shaky trek along the debris pile, moving as if she has arthritis.
She wears a tattered lab coat that’s five sizes too big for her. It’s so stained with dirt and rust-colored blotches that it’s hard to believe it was ever white. She holds it closed as she gingerly steps across the rubble, looking as if she’s holding herself together.
The wind blows her hair in her face and she tosses her head to get it out of the way. There’s something odd about both her full hair and that gesture. It takes me a minute to figure out what it is.
When was the last time I saw an old woman toss her head to get her hair away from her face? And her hair is dark all the way to her scalp even though the latest post-apocalyptic fashion for older women is at least an inch of gray roots.
She freezes like a frightened animal and looks up at us as we emerge from behind the cars. Even with her dried-up face, there’s something familiar about her that’s nagging me.
Then a memory tickles my mind.
An image of two little kids hanging onto the fence, watching their mom walk toward the aerie. Their mom turning around to blow a goodbye kiss.
She ended up as dinner in the fetus tank of one of the scorpion angels. I broke her tank with my sword and left her there to fend for herself because I couldn’t drag her out.
She’s alive.
Only, she looks like she has aged fifty years. Her once beautiful eyes have sunk into her face. Her cheeks are so lean I can almost see the skeleton beneath them. Her hands are talons covered in thin skin.
She scrambles away in abject terror as she sees us getting up from our hiding places. She’s almost on all fours as she runs off, and my heart breaks to remember her health and beauty before the monsters got to her. She can’t get very far in her condition, and she hides, trembling, behind a post-office box.
She’s a tiny slip of a thing, but she’s a survivor and I have to respect that. She deserves to get away from the place where she was buried alive, and she’ll need energy for that. I dig through my pockets and feel the Snickers bar. I root around to see if there’s something less valuable but find nothing.
I take a few steps toward the poor thing as she cringes in her hiding place.
My sister has more experience with this kind of thing than I do. But I guess I’ve learned a thing or two from watching Paige befriend all those abandoned cats and damaged kids. I put the candy bar on the road where the lady can see it, then take a few steps back to give her some safe space.
There’s a moment when the woman watches me like a beaten animal. Then she snatches the candy bar faster than I would have given her credit for. She tears off the wrapper in a split second and stuffs the candy in her mouth. Her strained face relaxes as she tastes the nutty, sweet flavor from the World Before.
“My kids, my husband,” she says in a hoarse voice. “Where did everybody go?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “But a lot of people ended up at the Resistance camp. They might be there.”
“What Resistance camp?”
“It’s the Resistance who attacked the angels. People are gathering to join them.”
She blinks at me. “I remember you. You died.”
“Neither of us died,” I say.
“I did,” she says. “And I went to hell.” She wraps her thin arms around herself again.
I don’t know what to say. What difference does it make if she actually died or not? She certainly lived through hell and she looks it.
Sanjay walks up to us like he’s approaching a stray cat. “What’s your name?”
She glances at me for reassurance. I nod.
“Clara.”
“I’m Sanjay. What happened to you?”
She looks at her jerkied hand. “I got sucked dry by a monster.”
“What monster?” Sanjay asks.
“The scorpion angels I told you about,” I say.
“The hell doctor said I could go free if I led him to my little girls,” she says with her parched voice. “But I wouldn’t give them up. He said the monster would liquefy my insides and drink them. Said the mature ones wouldn’t go all the way and kill if they could help it, but the developing ones would.”
Clara starts shaking. “He said it would be the most excruciating thing I could imagine.” She shuts her eyes as if trying to keep tears back. “Thank God I didn’t believe him.” Her voice sounds choked. “Thank God I didn’t know any better.” She starts crying in dry heaves as if all the fluid actually was sucked out of her.
“You didn’t give up your children and you’re alive,” I say. “That’s all that matters.”
She puts her trembling hand on my arm, then turns to Sanjay. “The monster was killing me. And out of nowhere, she came and rescued me.”
Sanjay looks at me with new respect. I worry about her telling him about Raffe, but it turns out she passed out in the basement as soon as she saw me get stung by a scorpion, so she doesn’t remember much.
Clara’s plight eats away at me like acid as we pick through the debris. Sanjay sits on the sidewalk beside her, talking gently with her and taking notes. Comforting someone like her is the kind of thing my sister would have done in the World Before.
We find a couple of crushed scorpions, but we find nothing of the angels themselves. Not a drop of blood or a scrape of skin that might help us learn something about them.
“One little nuke,” says Dum, picking through the rubble. “That’s all I ask. I’m not greedy.”
“Yeah, that and the detonation keys,” says Dee, kicking over a boulder of concrete. He sounds disgusted. “Seriously, did they really have to hide the nukes from the rest of us? It’s not like we would have played with it like a toy and blown up a pasture full of cows or something.”
“Oh, man,” says Dum. “That would have been so awesome. Can you imagine? Boom!” He mimes a mushroom cloud. “Moo!”
Dee gives him a long-suffering look. “You are such a child. You can’t just waste a nuke like that. You gotta figure out a way to control the trajectory so that when the bomb goes off, it shoots the radioactive cows into your enemies.”
“Right on,” says Dum. “Squash some, infect the others.”
“Of course, you have to put the cows on ground zero’s perimeter, close enough so they’ll rocket out, but far enough away that they won’t turn into radioactive dust,” says Dee. “I’m sure, with a little practice, we could get the cows aimed just right.”
“I heard the Israelis nuked the angels. Blew them right out of the sky,” says Dum.
“That’s a lie,” says Dee. “No one would blow up their entire country in the hope that a few angels might be in the air when you did it. It’s just not responsible nuke behavior.”
“Unlike nuclear cow missiles,” says Dum.
“Exactly.”
“Besides,” says Dum. “They might turn into radioactive anti-superheroes for all we know. Maybe they’d just absorb the radioactivity and shoot it back at us.”
“They’re not superheroes, you idiot,” says Dee. “They’re just people who can, you know, fly. They’ll explode into smithereens just like anybody else.”
“Then how come there are no angel bodies here?” asks Dum. We stand in the middle of the debris, looking at the hole that goes down into what used to be the basement.
Broken human bodies lie scattered across the debris but none of them have wings.
The wind picks up, pelting us with cold drizzle.
“They couldn’t just have been injured, not with that many bullets and the building collapsing,” says one of the guys who came in another car. “Could they?”
We all look at each other, not wanting to say what we’re thinking.
“They took some bodies away,” says Dee.
“Yeah,” says Dum, “but they could just be unconscious for all we know.”
“There’s got to be a dead angel around here,” says Dee, lifting a concrete chunk and looking beneath it.
“Agreed. There has to be something.”
But there isn’t.