World After (5 page)

“W
HAT
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.

I
T
’
S
NOT
long before the streets are quiet. There weren’t many surviving scorpions to begin with but now, I’m willing to bet 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.”