the survivors of the attack on Minneapolis that claimed almost 85,000 lives earlier this year. He was right in the center of the destruction and describes a hellscape of wind and flying debris. “I saw a woman come apart right in front of me,” he recounts, his hands trembling. “I’ve never seen anything like that before, never, not even in movies.”
Brendan credits his survival to “sheer luck,” and he is not alone. Several of the more outspoken survivors of the attack have offered similar tales of horrific death, each more gory than the last. But they all have one thing in common: each survivor saw the figure of a man moving confidently through the destruction.
“I guess it could have been a woman,” says George Williams, another Sutton resident and neighbor of Brendan Peterson. “But anyway, it looked like a person. Eeriest thing I’ve ever seen.”
The disasters are being classified as “attacks” by the U.S. government, but the perpetrators have not yet been identified. Theories have surfaced on the internet, ranging from the plausible (terrorists, agents of hostile foreign governments) to the downright absurd (aliens, a wrathful divine being).
“He was hard to see, though,” Brendan clarifies later, referring to the figure he saw during the Minneapolis attack. “Dark from head to toe. I’m not crazy. I saw what I saw.”
3
THE MAYOR’S SPEECH was a collection of trite phrases about moving on from grief and the triumph of good over evil and honoring the dead. Halfway through, Ines leaned over to whisper a quote from Friday Night Lights—“Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose”—and Sloane had to cover her mouth so no one in the crowd could tell that she was laughing. Albie faked a coughing fit, and Esther elbowed Ines in the ribs. Matt schooled his face into a serious expression. For just a moment, Sloane felt like she had gotten something back.
Cameras flashed everywhere as the speech concluded, and the crowd applauded. Sloane joined them, clapping until her palms started to itch. Next came a series of firm handshakes, and finally, it was time for the Chosen Ones to bless the Ten Years Monument with their holy footsteps or whatever the hell Mayor Clayton had said about it. Sloane wondered if she could use that as an excuse to take off her shoes, because they were pinching her toes. Surely you couldn’t bless something with uncomfortable high heels on.
The land around the metal box had been paved with concrete. Sloane walked down the steps of the stage and felt the warmth of it through the soles of her shoes. She felt like she was standing on the surface of a gray sea, the monument a bronze island one hundred yards ahead of her. It was the only spot of warm light in the midst of desolation—ethereal, mirage-like. Staring at it, she was surprised to find tears in her eyes. In time, the bronze would age, its luster giving way to flat green tarnish. Their memory of what happened would flatten, too, and become dull, and the monument would be forgotten, something for school field trips and bus tours for the history-minded.
And she would tarnish too. Always famous but always fading, the way old movie stars were, carrying ghosts of their younger selves in their faces.
It was a strange thing, to know with certainty that you had peaked.
She walked in Albie’s wake to the box, the others at her back. She couldn’t help but look across the river to where Matt had stood during their last stand, the Golden Bough held aloft, casting supernatural light on his face. One of a handful of moments in which she had fallen in love with him.
There was a narrow opening in the wall for people to step inside, and Albie went straight through it. Ines was about to follow him in, but Sloane stopped her with a hand. “Let’s give him a second,” she said.
They all fit together in different ways, knew different pieces of each other best. Esther knew how to make Albie laugh, Ines could almost read his mind, and Matt knew how to get him to talk. But Sloane was the Albie expert on his bad days, and there was no way today wasn’t one of them.
“This thing is totally going to get peed on,” Ines said.
“You don’t need to fill every silence,” Matt said.
“I’m gonna go in and see if he’s okay,” Sloane said. “Give me a minute or two.”
Matt said, “Sure.”
“Yeah, it’ll give Esther time to figure out the right