World After

19

WITHOUT THINKING, we all look up. At first, I’m not even sure why I do it.

Then I realize that there’s a buzzing coming from the sky. So low that it’s barely audible.

But it’s growing louder.

Through the gaps in the trees, I can see a dark blotch in the twilight sky. It grows closer at an alarming rate.

The buzzing stays low, just enough to feel it in your bones rather than hear it. It’s an ominous sound, like something recognizable at a primal level, a deeply buried unconscious fear turned into sound.

Before I can identify it, people turn and run.

No one screams or shouts or calls out to anyone. People just silently and desperately run.

The panic is contagious. The men holding my mom let go and join the stampede. Almost immediately after, the guys holding my sister release their ropes and run as well.

Paige pants, staring up at the sky. She looks mesmerized.

“Run!” I yell. That breaks her spell.

My sister turns and runs the other direction, away from the Resistance camp. She runs deeper into the grove with her ropes trailing in the dirt like snakes slithering in the shadows after her.

Mom glances at me. Blood trickles from her cut eye. Even in this light, I can see a bruise beginning to form.

After the briefest of hesitations, my mother chases my sister into the trees.

I stand frozen as the buzzing gets louder. Do I go after them or run back to safety?

The decision is made for me when the dark cloud gets close enough for me to make out individual shapes.

Winged men with scorpion tails.

Dozens of them darkening the sky. They’re flying low and getting lower.

There must have been another batch of them or several other batches outside the aerie.

I run.

I sprint away from them, which has me running toward the school like everyone else. I’m the last one of the bunch, so I’m an easy target.

A scorpion swoops down and lands in front of me.

Unlike the ones I saw at the aerie, this one is fully baked, complete with shaggy hair and teeth that have matured into lion’s fangs. Its arms and legs look disturbingly human except that its thighs and upper arms are extra beefy. Its body, at first glance, is human, but the belly and chest look a little like a cross between defined abs and the sectioned underbellies of grasshoppers.

The teeth are so large the beast can’t seem to close its mouth and drool drips from its lips. It growls at me and rears its fat scorpion tail above its head.

Fear grips me in a way that’s never happened before.

It’s as if I’m reliving the scorpion attack in the aerie basement. My neck becomes hypersensitive, almost twitching in expectation of a stinger jabbing into it.

Another scorpion lands near me. This one has needle-sharp teeth that it bares as it hisses.

I’m trapped.

I snatch off the stuffed bear and pull out my sword. It feels less clumsy in my hand than it did before but that’s as far as my confidence will go.

Gunshots go off but mostly the night is filled with the sound of the thunderous roar of wings and the high-pitched screams of people.

I barely have time to put myself in the ready stance that I learned in my dream before one of the monsters leaps for me.

I swing my blade at a forty-five degree angle, meaning to slice into the juncture of its neck and shoulder. Instead, I slice through its stinger as it whips toward me.

The monster screams, a disturbingly human sound coming out of its fang-filled mouth.

There’s no time to finish it off because the second one thrusts its stinger at me.

I shut my eyes and swing wildly in my panic. It’s all I can do to keep the memories of being stung from freezing me up completely.

Luckily, my sword has no such issues. The glee rolling off it is unmistakable. It adjusts itself to the right angle. It’s feather light on the upswing and lead heavy on the downswing.

When I open my eyes, the second scorpion is bleeding on the ground, its tail twitching. The first one is gone, probably having flown away to nurse its injury or to die in peace.

I’m the only living thing standing in my part of the grove. I slide into the shadow of the nearest tree, trying to calm my breathing.

The scorpions are still landing, but not near me. They’re attracted to the mass of people who are logjammed at the fence.

They grab people and sting them repeatedly from different angles, almost as if practicing or maybe just enjoying it. Even when they latch on to their victims with their mouths to suck them dry, other scorpions come and sting the same victims.

People scream and shove each other at the fence, trying to climb over it. They spread out to try to get to a place where they can jump the fence, but they get picked off by the scorpions, too.

The few who make it to the other side seem to be okay. The scorpions are busy stinging the ones in the grove, like lazy predators, and don’t pay attention to the ones who manage to get out.

When the victims slide to the ground, the scorpions begin sucking. By the time everyone is either slumped against the fence or running into the school building across the street, the scorpions have lost interest. They take off into the air and swirl like a cloud of insects before they disappear into the darkening sky.

Something rustles behind me, and I spin with my sword ready.

It’s Mom shambling toward me.

We are the only people moving on this side of the fence. Everyone else looks dead. I continue to hide in the shadows anyway in case the scorpions come back, but everything remains silent and still.

My mother stumbles past me. “She’s gone. I lost her.” Tears shine on her bloody face. She staggers toward the fence, ignoring the fallen people.

“I’m fine, Mom. Thanks for asking.” I grab the bear and wipe the blood off the sword with its chiffon skirt. “Are you okay? How did you survive?”

“Of course you’re fine.” She keeps walking. “You’re the devil’s bride and these are his creatures.”

I slip the blade into the scabbard and put the bear back on top. “I’m not the devil’s bride.”

“He carried you out of the fire and is letting you visit us from the dead. Who else would have those privileges except his bride?”

She sees me once in a guy’s arms and she has us married already. I wonder what Raffe would think of my mom being his mother-in-law. “Did you see where Paige went?”

“Gone.” Her voice breaks. “I lost her in the woods.” My reaction to that would have been so simple last week. Tonight, though, I don’t know if I’m panicked or relieved. Maybe both.

“Did you hide from the scorpion?” I ask. “How did you survive?” No answer.

If someone told me that moms have magical powers, I’d have no trouble believing that. It doesn’t even surprise me much that she somehow survived.

I follow her to the fence. Along the way, I walk past the victims lying in uncomfortable and unnatural positions. Although they’re no longer being attacked, they continue to shrivel and dry like jerky. The grove looks like a battlefield with people strewn all over it.

I want to reassure the victims that they’ll come out of it, that they’ll be okay. But with the viciousness of the attack, I’m not sure that they will.

A couple of scorpion bodies lie among the victims on the field. One shot in the stomach, one shot in the head.

Mom scans through the victims as if she’s looking for someone. She picks the one with the most horrified, contorted expression frozen on his face and tugs him to a section of the fence that’s been trampled.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“An offering,” she says, laboriously dragging the poor guy. “We need to find Paige so we need an offering.”

“You’re creeping me out, Mom.” A waste of breath.

As if she knows better than to ask for my help, she heaves the man up against a fence pole. He slides back down in a heap.

I want to stop her, but when she gets a crazy project in her head, nothing on earth will stop her.

Night is starting to fall. The cloud of scorpions is getting farther away, and there’s not a single stray one in the sky.

The thought of wandering around the grove in the dark looking for my low-demon sister is not my idea of a good time. But she can’t be left roaming by herself, for all kinds of reasons. And it’ll be much better if I find her than if the frightened Resistance people find her.

So I leave my mother to do whatever she is doing and return to the shadows of the grove.