World After (Penryn & the End of Days #2)(16)
Author: Susan Ee

I slide into the passenger seat.

“Sorry,” says Clara as she slips into the driver’s seat.

I nod.

And that’s the end of that ugly topic.

She turns on the engine and we head north again slowly toward San Francisco.

“Why are you here, Clara? My mom and I aren’t exactly the best traveling mates.”

She drives in silence for a while. “I may have lost faith in humanity. Maybe they’re right to exterminate us.”

“What does that have to do with you traveling with us?”

“You’re a hero. I’m hoping you’ll restore my faith and show me that we’re worth saving.”

“I am so not a hero.”

“You saved my life back at the aerie. By definition, you’re my hero.”

“I left you in a basement to die.”

“You broke me out of the grasp of a living horror when I thought all hope was gone. You gave me the opportunity to crawl back to life when no one else could.”

She glances over at me, her eyes shining in the dark. “You’re a hero, Penryn, whether you like it or not.”

Chpater 26

MY MOTHER mutters nonstop at the receiver. Her voice turns into a cadence, and it creeps me out that it’s the same cadence as when she prays. Because this time, she’s addressing the devil.

It’s slow going weaving through dead cars in the dark but we manage. We follow the same route that Raffe and I had when we drove into the city. Only this time, there’s no one on the road. No refugees, no twelve-year-olds driving cars, no tent cities. Just mile after mile of empty streets, newspapers tumbling along the sidewalks, and abandoned cell phones crunching under our tires.

Where are the people? Are they hiding out behind the dark windows of the buildings? Even after the aerie attack, I can’t imagine that everyone left the city.

I find myself stroking the soft fur of the stuffed bear. There’s something especially eerie about the deserted city streets and something especially reassuring about having a kick-ass sword hanging around my shoulders, even if it is disguised as a stuffed toy.

In a couple of hours, we find ourselves working our way toward the piers.

We crest a hill in the dead of night. San Francisco should be a city bustling with sparkling lights, motion, and noise. I used to look forward to and dread coming here at the same time because of all the sensory overload. I almost always got lost wandering around the windy streets the few times I visited with friends or my dad.

Now, it’s a wasteland.

The waning moon drips some light onto overturned trash cans and scurrying rats, but the city is so sooty from the raging fires during the Great Attack that it absorbs more light than seems possible. The once-beautiful city has become a nightmare landscape.

Mom surveys the land with a jaded eye. It’s as if she always knew it would be like this. As if she had seen things like this her whole life.

But even she takes in a breath at the sight of Alcatraz Island.

Alcatraz is notorious for being the jail that held the most infamous criminals. It sits in the bay, glowing dimly under the moonlight reflecting off the water.

It must have its own generator that someone has fired up. The Alcatraz lights aren’t pinpoints of welcoming sparkles. Instead, there’s a dull, heavy glow that permeates the island, just enough for it to be visible in the dark bay.

And just bright enough for us to see the swarm of unnaturally shaped creatures swirling in the air above it.

Mom glances at the blinking on her receiver. She points to Alcatraz.

“There,” she says. “Paige is there.”

Great. How did she get all the way over here in such a short time? Can she really run that fast, or did someone drive or fly her there?

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly.

At least the angels didn’t have the sense of humor to take over the neighboring Angel Island instead. That’s something Raffe probably would have done if he had been in charge.

Clara parks our car at a random angle on the street, trying to blend in. I grab the binoculars as we get out. We’re on Pier 39 near Fisherman’s Wharf. In the World Before, it was a major tourist attraction crammed full of T-shirt shops, candy stores, and open fish markets.

“My girls used to love this place,” says Clara. “Every Sunday we’d come here for lunch. The girls thought it was such a treat to eat clam chowder in a bread bowl and watch the sea lions. This place was like happiness in a bottle for them.” She gazes out with a bittersweet look in her eyes.

The sea lions are still here, at least. I can hear them barking somewhere near the water. They’re the only things familiar, though.

The docks are skewed and broken like toothpick structures. Many of the buildings have collapsed into piles of driftwood. It looks like the fires didn’t reach this area but the angry water sure did.

The fierce surf from the worldwide tsunamis was dampened before reaching into the bay, but that didn’t stop the damage. It only kept this part of the city from being swamped and utterly destroyed.

There’s a ship lying on its side on the street. Another one sticks out from the roof of a demolished building.

Splinters the size of redwood trees are everywhere. Too bad angels aren’t killed like vampires. We could lure them here and have a field day.

There’s a surprisingly intact cruise liner docked in the water. I want to run over, take it across to the island, and yell out for Paige. Instead, I huddle behind a pile of broken crates where I can see but not be seen.

I peer through the binoculars at Alcatraz.

The things swirling in the night sky above the island are too dark to see in detail, but I can make out their silhouettes against the moonlit sky.

The shapes of men.

Wings.

Fat scorpion tails.

Chpater 27

WHAT AT FIRST looked like a chaotic swarm turns out to be an ordered flight pattern.

Sort of.

Most of the scorpions follow an angel as he rises, then banks, then dives. The scorpions follow him around like baby birds. Most of them, anyway.

Some lag so far behind that they almost get in the angel’s way as he goes through his flight routine. And it is a routine. He repeats his flight pattern to stay near the island. He varies it here and there but it’s mostly a predictable pattern.

If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s teaching them to fly.

Baby birds are taught to fly and baby dolphins are taught to breathe air. Maybe baby monsters need to be taught how to be monster-like. Usually, babies are taught by their mothers, but these things don’t have mothers.

The angel is doing a poor job of teaching, though. Several of the scorpions are struggling. Even I can see that a few of them are flapping their wings too fast. They’re not hummingbirds and they’re likely to tire out or give themselves a heart attack, assuming they have a heart.

One of them falls right into the water. It flounders there, screeching.

Another scorpion swings down too low to the fallen one. I can’t tell which scorpion grabs which—whether the one in the air tries to help its buddy or the one in the water grabs the one in the air—but either way, the second one splashes into the water, too.

They thrash and try to climb on top of each other. Each fights for a few more seconds of air by trying to be the one standing on the other. But the winner only gets enough air for one final screech before they both sink.

The first time I saw these things in the aerie basement, they were suspended in tubes of liquid. But I guess they must have had some sort of umbilical cord, or they changed when they were “born,” because now they’re clearly drowning.

Footsteps make me spin and crouch lower. Mom and Clara hunker down beside me behind a broken crate.

There are so many shadows along the pier’s old shopping area that an army could be marching toward us and I wouldn’t see them. We huddle deeper into the darkness.

More footsteps. Running now.

People dart in and out of the shadows and dash into the open where the moonlight exposes them. A small stampede of people desperately running from something.

A couple of them glance behind them with a look of terror as they run.

Aside from their pounding feet on the buckled wooden planks, they don’t make any other noise. No screaming, no calling out to each other.

Even when a woman falls, obviously twisting an ankle, she makes no noise other than the soft thud of her impact. Her face contorts in pain and terror but no sound comes out of her mouth. She gets up and hobbles as fast as she can in a hop-run, frantically trying to keep up with the rest of the stampede.

Their panic echoes in my chest. I have the urge to run even though I have no idea what they’re running from.

Just as my leg twitches from indecision, the things chasing the crowd come around the corner.

There are three of them. Two scorpions hover low to the ground, buzzing on their insect wings. In the center limps an angel who looks like he’s been on steroids.

The huge angel has snowy wings.

Raffe’s wings.

Beliel.

Chpater 28

EVEN IN this dangerous situation, my heart twists at seeing Raffe’s beautiful wings on the demon Beliel.

The last time I saw Beliel, he was limping with an injured wing. Someone must have sewn the wing back into place on him after Raffe ripped the stitches. Must be nice to have evil doctors on hand. Beliel’s limp is noticeable but not nearly as bad as it was when Raffe chased him at the airport.

He also has fresh bandages wrapped around his stomach where Raffe sliced him with his sword the first time I met him. It’s good to see more evidence that angel sword wounds don’t speed-heal like other wounds, just like Raffe said.

The scorpions fly leisurely, swinging back and forth, dipping low enough to look into the windows. One smashes a window—probably the last intact window on the pier.

The shattering noise is immediately followed by a panicked shriek. A family with kids darts out of the shop’s door and joins the group running from the monsters.

There’s something about the way the scorpions are moving that raises red flags in my head. They’re not chasing to catch.

They’re flushing out prey.

Before my mind can form the word “trap,” lights blaze on and a fishing net drops from the sky.

That’s when the screams start.

One, two, five fishing nets, as big as house tents, fall from the dark sky.

Darker shadows dive down from above. They land on all fours, scuttling along the ground like real scorpions before standing up on human-shaped legs.

Two of them actually slam into the broken dock face-first, as if they haven’t quite got the hang of landing yet. One of them shrieks its fury at the trapped people, showing a mouth full of lion’s teeth. It viciously yanks the edge of the net, making it whip into people’s ankles.