As Bobbie offered her desperate face to the dying bright heart of the sky, Michael realized: she was praying.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Soldier! Drive the ’Vee!”
Startled, Michael looked up. The captain’s silhouette stood on the roof.
“Move us!” The captain slapped a clip into the mounted weapon, tugging back the slide. Dozens of blinded Bellows, after all, were gathering, their shadows scrawling out in the square, remaking the world in their images.
Michael numb-nodded, got in the car.
How long does it take to become a Bellow? He’d never actually seen it happen. And Bobbie’s bite was small, barely bleeding, which had to help, right? Would the change take an hour? A day? He thought back to the first infected people he’d seen on Halloween. Just move, Michael! He sat down.
“How did they know to tear out their eyes?” Hank was asking Holly, like she would Google it.
Where was Michael going to drive them? Just get Bobbie to the Capitol, then figure out what to do. ’Cause if you tell the captain, right now, that she got bit, he’s so freaking “tough” that he’ll just leave her.
And what exactly do you think you can do to help her?!
I don’t know—I’ll figure it out!—I know I can. Maybe the soldiers will have a cure. Maybe we can just amputate her leg. Horrible but it might work, if Bobbie didn’t lose too much bloo—
Feel—
“Faris, take us home, goddamn it!” boomed the voice above him.
Michael cranked down the window, answered, “I don’t know the way!”
And from the back:
“Bridge, left, left, right, left”—a sniffle—Shit!—“right, right, movies,” said Patrick.
“It’ll be reversed going back, though,” Michael said.
“So do it!” Hank squealed.
And Patrick began to reply with the correct reversed directions, but Michael spoke over him: “Bub, sit up here, Bobbie can fix her harness by herself this time, stop trying to help her!”
All at once:
“Go—”
“Faris, drive—”
“MOVE—US—OUT—”
Have to go, oh fug, bad bad bad, Patrick be careful!
Michael ignited the engine, wheeled a wide arc, turned the correct direction. To the sounds of screams, arms of Bellows swished in through his open window, through the open doors in the rear.
The mounted weapon above their heads, manned by Captain Jopek, roared doom.
Bellows in the headlights were spun from their shoes. Spent copper shells cascaded across the windshield.
“Go right?” Michael called to the back of the car—not because he had forgotten the directions, but because he did not know if the screams included one of pain from Patrick.
“Left, retard!” Hank cried, slamming the double doors closed.
“Right,” Patrick sniffled.
Michael told him, “Ten points!” thought again, How long does it take to change into a Bellow?, swerved to the right and everyone screamed, like riders of a roller coaster that has begun to tilt homicidally from the tracks.
The new road was filled with twice as many Bellows.
Didn’t matter. The captain unleashed fury like chains of fire, shot out land mines that raised roaring towers. The monsters flew, flipped into gutters, splashed through dusk-filled storefront glass and into cars, whose alarms went REEEE! And the only Bellows Michael had to avoid lay already dead on the ground.
Michael felt a powerful, frightening love for the captain. He looked in the rearview; Bobbie was nodding off, Patrick clinging to her, trying to shake her awake.
“Up here, Patrick!” Not loud enough, Patrick didn’t hear.
Suddenly, Hank stood and pointed out the windshield. “Plaaaaane!” he screamed.
The sight through the windshield was so huge, so surreal, that at first its danger didn’t register.
An airplane.
It was a jetliner, enormous, and it had used the street as a landing strip. Its nose had ruptured the concrete. Only one wing was visible, for half the plane was inside a gray building. It was the plane that had brought Bobbie to Charleston. One hundred souls, fallen from the sky; welcome to your final destination.
The visible wing was coming like a brilliant guillotine.
Michael swung the wheel wildly, knowing even as he did that it was too late.
The great steel of the wing came whistling, and struck. The car bucked wildly on its shocks. Friction drew sparks in a fat line down the edge of the car, the shriek hideous and bright.
The captain’s voice, from above, growled, “Switch.” Combat boots materialized in Michael’s window, pushing him to the passenger seat as the captain monkeyed from the roof into the driver’s seat. He took the wheel and looked at Michael.
“Goddamn near threw me, you dumb asshole,” said the captain.
Michael nodded. Just take us home. Just make everything work. Why had he not told the captain about Bobbie? Just then, he