The wrath of monsters, p.18
The Wrath of Monsters, page 18
“Can you add audio from the cockpit?” General Lovelace asks.
“Yes, ma’am.” The lieutenant brings up a smaller window next to the video and presses the play button. Then, he opens up a menu on the video player that decreases the rotor noise. A few seconds later, voices are audible.
“Do you see that? What the hell are those things? People?” A female voice.
The might-be faeries continue darting in the distance.
“I think those are people. People with wings.” A man’s voice.
“What kind of people have wings?”
One of the shapes breaks off from the group, quickly closing the distance.
“You don’t think it could be those…faeries? You know, what those kids testified about.”
“I don’t know. I’m taking us in closer. Wait a minute…are they glowing orange?”
There’s a bright flare.
“Watch out!”
The video jerks as the chopper makes an extreme maneuver. Still, I see the distinctive fireball hurling toward the helicopter with remarkable speed and accuracy. There is an explosion and the video ends.
Haji is the first to speak in a stuttering voice. “Those were faeries.”
General Lovelace looks at Radcliffe for confirmation.
“I concur,” he says.
I look around at everyone. “We have to go there. Like right now.” Lovelace raises a skeptical eyebrow. “This is confirmation the faeries are on the Big Island. Bria is probably there. We have to rescue her and stop whatever the faeries are doing.”
“Damn right,” Dalia says, pink hair bobbing.
“We must,” Haji says.
Radcliffe looks to the general. “Can you provide us with surreptitious transportation? I fear if I reveal my dragon form and”—he gestures toward me—“Allison transforms into a skaag, we will reveal ourselves to the enemy.”
“I can arrange a C-130 to get you to the island.” The laser pointer highlights the southern tip of the Big Island. “There is a civilian airfield here. It’s large enough for a C-130 to land and take off. To minimize the chance of the enemy detecting the infiltration, the operation will take place at night.”
I nod and Radcliff says, “Excellent.”
The general continues. “We’ve had spotty contact with an infantry squad that has access to ground transportation. We will arrange to have the squad meet you at the airfield and provide transport to Mauna Kea.”
Chapter 29
We are escorted to the station’s nearly empty chow hall by a nervous army specialist. The hall is a large, plain room with a breakfast buffet along one wall. In the center of the opposite wall is a flat-screen TV tuned to a 24-hour news station. The anchor states that the president will address the nation about the power outage within the next half hour. Open windows allow a gentle breeze to cool the room, carrying the ocean’s briny scent.
My stomach growls as I hunt the buffet for anything vaguely resembling the savory chicken sausages that are my staple. All I find are scrambled eggs, hashbrowns, and unappealing breakfast meats, but nevertheless, the greasy aromas set my mouth salivating.
Haji piles his plate with eggs and every side of meat available. Dalia eyes the food skeptically, finally opting for fruit and a small single-serving yogurt. My rumbling tummy painfully twists, reminding me I’ve hardly eaten anything for the past two days. I put several breakfast sausages glistening with fat on a plate. Against my better judgment, I fill a ceramic mug with coffee from an insulated carafe. The black brew steams and smells ambrosial.
Tentatively, I take a sip of coffee and nearly spit it out, tongue smarting. They got the hot part right. I blow across the java, then try it again. My eyebrows and lips perk up. Decent coffee. After another blow across the steaming liquid, I take a second sip. Better than decent. It’s damn good.
“Make sure you grab some coffee,” I tell Dad, who waits on a toaster to brown a bagel.
“Come here.” Dad offers me a mug. I can tell by the smell it brims with the tea meant to keep my dreams bay. “Any more dreams?”
“Nada,” I lie. I don’t want to discuss my dreams on the plane with anyone right now. “No worries.” I pick up the mug and sip the tea, finding the fluid lukewarm. I chug the rest, hoping the dosage will stave off more nightmares.
“Good.” Dad nods toward Haji. “Your friend is improving. Like I said he would.”
“So far so good.” I stride back to the coffee carafe.
I fill a second mug with coffee for Dalia, then join my friends at a long table. I sit next to Dalia, across from Dr. Radcliffe, which means I am within the glowing luminescence of his draconic abdomen. Haji sits on the other side of my bestie, attacking his food with gusto.
“His appetite is back, at least,” I whisper to Dalia and set a mug of steaming coffee next to her. She looks at the brew and shoots me a questioning glance. At normal volume I say, “It’s good.” I slurp from my mug. “Better than good, honestly. Watch out, it’s hot.”
Dalia picks up the mug and, after blowing across the fluid, has a taste. “Wow. No joke.”
Dad joins us, sitting next to Dr. Radcliffe.
I bite down on a rubbery sausage. Lukewarm oil flavored with salt and other spices squirts into my mouth. The meat tastes like what it is, overly processed pork, and I nearly spit it out in disgust.
“That good?” Dad says between bites of bright yellow scrambled egg and bagel.
I choke down the meat, battling my gag reflex the entire time. “I can name a thousand things that taste better off the top of my head.”
“I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” Haji says. “This food is a grand slam.”
We fall silent as the newsreader on the twenty-four-hour news channel announces the presidential address is about to begin. Everyone turns to face the television except for Haji, who shovels a final forkful of egg into his mouth before leaving the table for the buffet.
The program cuts from the newsroom to a lectern decorated with the presidential seal before a red-carpeted hallway. The president enters the frame from the left and faces the cameras, her expression as forbidding as an undertaker’s.
Her tone is equally grim. “My fellow Americans, yesterday at—”
Without preamble, the power goes out. I glance around the chow hall, half expecting the power to come back on at any second. If anything, the handful of soldiers sprinkled around the room eating their breakfast look more surprised than my crew and me. I bite down on my lower lip, a sinking feeling in my gut. This isn’t a brownout. This is a blackout. On a military installation. Again. This can’t be good. Inside me, the sleeper undulates, disturbed by my heightened tension.
Haji returns from the buffet and sets his plate, heaping with eggs, bacon, and potatoes, on the table. He looks overhead at the light fixtures. “Did the power go out?”
“Ummm, yeah,” Dalia says.
Haji shrugs, sits down, and commences eating.
Radcliffe glances at Dad. “Did you sense anything?”
Dad shakes his head in the negative. “Maybe it’s a run-of-the-mill power outage.”
I point out the window to the pristine blue sky. “What would cause a power outage? The weather is perfect.”
“I did not sense anything either,” Radcliffe says. “For now, I suggest we finish our meal and assume the power will be restored.”
“I don’t know about that.” Dalia holds up her phone. “Dead as a doornail.”
Everyone else’s personal electronics are as dead as Dalia’s phone.
“Perhaps we’ll fly to the Big Island under our own power after all,” Dr. Radcliffe says.
After everyone finishes eating, all the electronics are still dead, so we head outside and after asking for directions, make our way to the beach beyond the runway. The drone of diesel generators resounds from all over the base, but from appearances, the power is out for the most part. A C-130 Hercules is cockeyed on the runway with a score of people in uniform milling around it.
I stop at the edge of the green grass before it gives way to the red dirt. The same bloody red as from my latest dream.
Dalia skips past me onto the sand. “Come on! What are you waiting for?”
Haji trails behind her moving faster than I’ve seen him go in some time. He grins and waves for me to follow. I hope nothing bad happens to them on the Big Island, but I can’t shake the sinking feeling that my dream was a premonition.
Taking a deep breath, I ignore the bloody earth and march onward toward the ocean. The dirt gives way to tan sand and tropical ground cover. A handful of palm trees arrayed in a neat row mark the beginning of the beach proper, a long narrow strip of sand approximately the length of the airstrip, terminating to the right at a headland replete with outbuildings associated with the military installation and to the left a rocky outcrop.
Haji and Dalia already bathe their feet in the blue vastness I can hardly believe is the Pacific Ocean. The sun is uncomfortably warm, combined with the humidity, causing me to sweat. The contrast with the beaches of Washington is astounding. Biting wind, slashing rain, and water so cold it can cause hypothermia are what I associate with the ocean at home.
I kick off my sneakers and run for the cerulean water, but my muscles seize up, and only my preternatural reflexes keep me from falling face-first into the sand. The fear permeating my body and mind is not mine. It’s the sleeper’s.
Leave me alone. This is my body. Not yours.
In response, images of me almost drowning as a skaag flood my mind until the tropical beach before me becomes as clouded as a wilderness beach on Washington’s coast. I gasp for air and flail my arms. My lungs burn. I taste salt on my tongue as icy water fills my mouth and rushes down my throat.
As a skaag I can’t hold my breath or swim.
But I’m not a skaag. I’m human.
Leave me alone.
Our wills crash together like battling bulls. If it was the battle of wills alone, I might’ve won. But the sleeper’s fear of water is primordial down to the cellular level. We come to an uneasy truce. I sit on the beach and watch the waves. As long as I don’t try to approach the water, the sleeper remains calm and keeps the fear at bay.
I don’t like the sleeper’s hold over me. After the skirmish at the military base, I thought our roles were set. I was in the driver’s seat, and the sleeper was a passenger. Maybe a copilot? But I was the pilot. I was in charge—no ifs, ands, or buts. Now I’m not so sure.
After about an hour at the beach, we’re summoned back to the general’s presence in the command center by a squad of soldiers. Inside the command center, men and women in uniform work quietly to resuscitate computer equipment without avail. Lovelace leads us to a table with the map of the Hawaiian Islands and the surrounding ocean. On the table is a large, softly crackling radio, complete with a mic. The contraption looks like it could’ve been ripped straight from a 1950s sci-fi movie. The power cord is connected to an extension cord from a rumbling gas generator sitting on a table next to the now-open floor-to-ceiling window.
“Any idea what caused everything requiring power to fail this time?” The general stares at Dr. Radcliffe and my dad in turn.
“We detected no magic,” Dr. Radcliffe replies and Dad nods.
Lovelace shakes her head in exasperation. “From what we’ve been able to determine, an EMP device was detonated on the Big Island. Everything with an electronic circuit was fried. Fortunately, this relic was stored inside an EMP bag.” General Lovelace points to the radio on the table. She picks up the mic, depressing a button on its side. “Lieutenant Gilmore, do you read me?”
Lovelace releases the button, and the static returns. About fifteen seconds later, a voice comes from the speaker. “Loud and clear, general.”
“Is he on the Big Island?” My pulse thrums with excitement.
Lovelace nods. “Listen up, lieutenant. Our guests are with me. The C-130 is a no-go after the EMP.” The general leans over the map, indicating a point of land on the southeast coast of Maui with an extended finger. “Fortunately, I have some Force Reconnaissance, who can help get them to the Big Island undetected. Here’s the plan.”
Chapter 30
I stand on a beach next to Dalia, the bitter aftertaste of the tea that is supposed to hold back my nightmares still on my tongue. I had downed it earlier in the evening before our nighttime excursion. With any luck, we’ll soon close the slipstream, and Dad will be able to free me from the mysterious magic causing the nightmares. Wishful thinking, I know.
Ahead of us, a squad of six marines charges toward the crashing waves carrying a black zodiac with an enormous outboard engine. The sound of the surf sets the sleeper stirring within me, and my heart pounds so hard I swear my sternum rattles.
I’m in control.
Me.
Not the sleeper.
“Are you okay with this?” Dalia whispers. “When we went down to the water by the base, you didn’t come. Is it…the skaag?”
“I’ll be fine.”
Dalia takes my hand, fingers unballing a fist I hadn’t realized I made.
“You’ll do great. No worries.”
The marines lower the raft into the choppy water. Haji and the adults stand behind us, the light of Radcliffe’s dragon form painting the sand in golden light. The only other light on Maui’s Kamanawa Point is from the stars and the moon, partially obscured by high wispy clouds. The last remnant of the day is a purple tinge to the clouds barely visible with my prosthetics. Even with my superior vision, I can’t see the Big Island from the beach. The Maui Strait, thirty forbidding miles of dark, deep water, separates us from our destination.
The squad leader issues a terse command for us to scramble aboard the zodiac.
Dalia squeezes my hand. “I’ll go first. Follow right behind me.”
My bestie enters the water and is swept off her feet by a wave she probably didn’t see. My heart thunders into my throat. I intend to rush to her and catch her before she falls, but I remain rooted with the sleeper coiling inside me. Luckily, a marine catches her around the waist and heaves her over the raft’s side.
Damn you, I curse the sleeper and receive no response.
Haji brushes past me, seemingly eager to climb aboard. He looks over his shoulder as the surf inundates his feet. His thin lips move, but he doesn’t say a word. His eyes are cavernously sunken in the dim light. He shouldn’t be here, nor should Dalia for that matter. I clench my jaw until my teeth almost crack. I’m such a fool for allowing them to come.
Haji boards the zodiac without incident.
Near the craft’s stern, the squad leader waves to us. “Come on. Double time!”
A hand resting against my shoulder startles me. I should’ve expected Dr. Radcliffe to be beside me from the glimmering radiance of his dragon form.
“I understand you are fearful,” Radcliffe murmurs. “Do not be. Always remember that you can swim while human.”
I understand that, but the sleeper either doesn’t or doesn’t care. I’m not sure which.
The one-time university professor scampers onto the boat with an agility that belies his aged appearance. Several marines exchange impressed looks, but they should know better. Radcliffe is a dragon, and his humanoid form is a façade. His dragon form overflows the raft, bathing everyone in light only I can see.
“Hurry up,” the squad leader calls again.
I try to force myself toward the inky blackness of the Pacific Ocean, but to no avail. The half-skaag’s fear is sour against my tongue.
Dad stands beside me, squinting against the darkness, and takes my hand. “It’s okay, Allison. I won’t let anything happen to you. You can trust me. The skaag can trust me.”
He strides toward the water, our arms extending. I want to go with him, but the sleeper is having none of it, refusing to budge one millimeter. Dad stops and throws me a reassuring smile over his shoulder.
I need to do this. I’ll be in a boat, not the water.
To my surprise, when Dad moves toward the ocean again, I follow—my gait is jittery and halting, but I’m moving. The sleeper is still fearful, but for some reason the beast trusts him. Maybe because I do? Or the sleeper understands my mother, a full-fledged skaag, trusts him? I don’t know, but I can approach the water and don’t retreat even when the surf runs over my feet.
Once I’m close enough to board the zodiac, I’m out of the water like it’s boiling, pulling Dad along behind me. We cram together like sardines in the raft that must be filled well past its maximum capacity. The marines push the craft farther into the waves, then haul themselves aboard, packing us in even tighter. A marine in the stern lowers an outsized outboard engine into the water.
He fiddles with the engine. I fear it might not start up, and we’ll be forced to fly to the Big Island after all, but then the engine rumbles to life, and soon the craft bounces over the water.
****
In less than an hour, the Big Island looms on the horizon, dark and foreboding. Deep in my bowels, the sleeper is a knot of quivering anxiety. I battle nausea and taste bile in the back of my mouth. The air temperature drops out on the open water, and the wind shear is downright cold. Dalia and I sit pressed shoulder to shoulder as close to the center of the craft as we can in a futile attempt to stay warm and dry. Occasionally ocean spray from the ship’s hull thumping into a wave splashes us. To call the journey miserable is the understatement of the decade.
Dad’s face takes on a sickly greenish hue. As far as I can tell, he keeps his eyes clenched shut and his arms around his midsection the entire time. Unsurprisingly, Dr. Radcliffe appears indifferent to the wild ride. His draconic head lifts skyward as if he admires the constellations peeking out from breaks in the cloud cover.
Haji takes every crash over the choppy sea with an enormous smile, whooping when a huge wave makes the craft feel like a roller coaster. Eventually, one of the marines politely but firmly tells him to keep his lips zipped. I can almost believe Haji is back to the way he was before Golden Shoal, before The Incident. But I can’t shake the feeling that what I’m observing is a façade ready to crack and shatter when put under stress.
