Talker 25 (12 page)

“What’s happening?” he asks as Vestia grabs hold of James and sets him on her back, then launches into the air.

“The children . . . the children,” James shouts, his voice cracking. “They found the hideouts. They’re killing them. They’re killing the children.”

We climb aboard Marrick and take flight. Faster and faster we go. Terrifying and brilliant. This must be what it’s like to ride a comet.

Keith flips on the radio clipped to his belt. Dragon roars echo from the speaker. “Flash protocol. Converge on alpha location. I’ll meet you in the air.”

In a matter of minutes, we’re back at the cave. The Reds are in fits and the Silver’s crying up a storm, but none of that compares to the agonizing wails playing inside my head.

Keith helps me down, then looks to James, who’s got a machine gun strapped across his chest. “No, James.”

“It’s not your call, Keith.” He waves at the Reds. “We’re going. Don’t try to stop us.”

Keith tenses, but nods. “Okay, you better get your head straight.”

“We’re all coming,” Preston says. “They need us.”

“The injured stay behind,” Keith says.

Preston unwraps the bandage from his head. Old blood stains his brow. “I’m not injured.”

“I’m not injured,” somebody else calls.

“I’m not injured.”

Keith holds up a hand before everybody can discard their slings and bandages. “Fine, none of you are injured. And you better damn well stay that way. Follow my orders, know your limits. Preston . . .” He moves aside.

Preston steps forward. “What are all you slackers waiting for? Let’s get our Jedi on!”

It’s a motley crew, half the riders too wounded to walk straight. Except for Vestia, Syren, and a few others, the dragons aren’t in much better shape. Despite their handicaps, they ready themselves for war with quick precision. Saddles get hoisted onto backs, sometimes by winches, sometimes by other dragons. Harnesses and quivers full of missiles get hung around necks. Saddlebags are loaded with oxygen packs, grenades, and rocket launchers.

Within minutes, they’re ready to fly.

Keith kisses my forehead. “We’ll be back before you know it.”

“You take care of her for us, okay?” James says. I turn to find him staring at me. The Silver cowers behind him.

“You better come back, farmboy. Don’t do anything crazy.”

“I won’t,” he says, though his eyes suggest otherwise. He gives me a quick hug. “Let’s fly, Grunts! No mercy!”

They mount their Reds and disappear into the night, leaving me alone in a cave with Gretchen, a few of the more seriously injured insurgents, and an anxious baby dragon whose screams soon overshadow the ones inside my head.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

I
mark time by pacing the cave’s perimeter, chewing my lip, clenching and unclenching my fists. I pause at the entrance, step onto the ledge, and peer into the darkness, where there’s nothing to see but imaginary shadows in a black abyss. When the cold and fear become too much, I return to the fire.

The Silver follows me. If I don’t acknowledge her every few minutes with a smile, a touch, or preferably my voice, she starts crying again. I focus on the dragons inside my head, or the lack thereof. This worries me. My attempts to contact Vestia and the other Reds go unanswered, which worries me more.

Every couple of laps, I ask Gretchen if she’s heard anything. No. But she’s got orders to remain off the airwaves. A couple hours in, she breaks the radio silence. Static. “They
must be out of range,” she assures me, but keeps the radio on after that.

I bandy names with my dragon tagalong. Tiny headshakes for Little Blue Eyes and Baby Silver. Shiny Lizard and Annoying Sasquatch result in frosty huffs. Smaug and Saphira draw blank stares. Two laps and fifty names later, I settle on Baby, promising her I’ll think of something better before sunrise.

Dawn comes without inspiration or hope. I’m on lap sixty, maybe sixty-one—legs numb, lower lip chewed raw, hands stuck in fists—when the shadows outside turn real and begin to take shape. I move to the ledge, sit on the log, stroke Baby’s head as she lies beside me.

Morning fingers of orange-blue light drag the curtain of night back to reveal the pristine landscape. Staggering mountain peaks high above, snow-capped evergreens far below. One way in, one way out. And whoever doesn’t have a dragon is screwed.

Baby nudges me, nods toward the horizon. “See something?” I ask.

She shakes her head, flaps her wings.

“You want to fly? Go on. Just don’t go too far.”

She snorts, rises, and rushes back into the cave. Moments later she returns with a saddle in her mouth.

My flights last night left me queasy, but maybe it won’t be
so bad if I’m driving. It would be nice to impress James, or at least show him I won’t go green in the face forever. Most important, it will help keep my mind off the fact that they aren’t back.

It takes me a couple tries to figure out how to use the winch, a couple more to get Baby’s saddle cinched right. I throw on goggles and a jacket, then climb aboard. Her silver scales radiate coolness, but somehow I’m warmer atop her than I was by the fire. She gives a rumbling purr, flutters her wings with increasing vigor. On the fifth beat, we push forward out of the cave.

Stone and snow disappear, and there’s nothing but sky around us. Baby banks left and right in slow, gentle arcs. She barely uses her wings, allows the wind currents to carry us in wide loops from one valley to the next.

She’s careful, never turning fast or rising sharply. We learn each other’s rhythms in a matter of minutes. It scares me how easy this is. Soon I’m ready to kick my dragon-rider training up a level, and there’s something in the way she keeps glancing back at me that tells me she is, too.

I tighten my grip on the reins. “Come on, Baby, let’s see what you got.”

With a gleeful snort, she slingshots forward. Dives fast. Shoots up. Banks hard left. Right. Faster and faster, she follows the track of an imaginary roller coaster. Trees,
mountains, sky mix together in a blur of greens, grays, and blues.

We twirl into a sharp climb. Over the mountaintops. Higher still, almost vertical, into the clouds. Nausea swells in my stomach, blood rushes my head. Skin tingling, vision narrowing, sickness coming, I can’t stop laughing, drinking this wild air.

She arcs over, rockets down, blisters through sparse clouds, races toward a sprawling landscape of miniature trees and hills. The earth grows larger, my stomach flips inside out. Wind floods my lungs, stings my face. Each time I blink, the fast-approaching world darkens further; fuzzy amorphous stars replace trees; jagged black spots replace hills.

Baby swoops out of the dive. I tilt over, almost fall, and vomit into the valley, which could be a foot away or a thousand. The thrum of her purr subsides. She slows to a flying crawl.

At some point later, when three dimensions become tolerable, my focus returns. And it’s cold. Frigid. I press tight to Baby, but whatever warmth she had is gone.

A thunderclap shakes the sky. I glance over my shoulder. Clouds hover above the rim of a nearby mountain, but none of them look like storm bringers.

“We should go back.” I look for landmarks, but after our vomit-comet ride, I’m lost. “You gotta lead us home, Baby. And promise not to tell James about this.”

She makes a right turn, and her body warms enough to quell my shivers. Pumping her wings every few minutes to maintain altitude, she glides toward a gap between two shorter peaks. The pitter-patter of invisible rain intensifies as we come closer.

I hear a sharp whistle, followed by an explosion. Both came from the mountain bowl. Not from the sky. Not thunder. At the far end, snow and boulders avalanche into the valley. Behind the clamor of tumbling stone, the wind hums, rhythmic and distinct.

I jerk at the reins. Baby jolts, swerves, almost crashes as her wings scrape snow from the mountainside.

“Climb!” She screeches once, but obeys.

When we’re near a peak, my breaths shallow and stabbing, I urge her to an outcropping that affords us an unimpeded view of the bowl. Ten helicopters hover in attack position around a cave. Rubble obscures what’s left of several surrounding caves.

A dragon screams, but I can’t tell if it’s real or in my head. Orange bursts pulse at the cave’s entrance. The scream intensifies.

Baby skitters along the ledge. Her scaled skin turns colder. Slivers of liquid ice shoot from her nose.

“We need to leave,” I whisper through chattering teeth.

She claws the snowy rock, snorts more ice daggers, but as
the screams die, she settles and some of her heat returns. Not much, but enough for me to feel my toes again.

Several figures appear at the cave’s mouth. One of them waves at the nearest helicopter. Three of them look like they’re carrying weapons. Not like soldiers carrying guns. More like headsmen wielding axes.

“Come on, Baby, let’s go.”

But her gaze, like mine, is fixed on the dozen men dragging a large net from the cave. The gunship’s side doors open. Hooks are lowered, nets attached. The chopper lists beneath the weight, but soon the cargo’s loaded, still glowing, and I’m absurdly reminded of chickens, even though I’ve never seen one get its head cut off.

Two other helicopters retrieve the soldiers. I watch until the last man saunters aboard. No gurneys, no rush, nobody injured. Not a battle. A slaughter. As the two transports move away, my breaths come faster, sharper; my chest constricts.

“Let’s go.”

I meant for us to retreat, to hide, but Baby launches herself at the nearest helicopter with a sky-shattering howl, followed by a ferocious blast of ice. The gunship makes half a revolution toward us before being swallowed by it.

Its blades grind to a halt. For a half moment it sits there, suspended. I’m close enough to see the soldier manning the
side-door machine gun. He’s an ice statue, sculpted with mouth and eyes wide open, finger at the trigger.

The frozen chopper plummets; a missile shrieks. Baby reels sideways, sends a funnel of liquid frost at the attacking gunship. Another missile races toward us from the left. Two from the right. I glance back to see the first one spin around.

Baby dives and the missiles follow.

Go cold!

Her skin cools to frigid and her glow brightens to blinding. She dodges three more missiles, heads for the helicopter with the red dragon head. Bullets zip everywhere, a swarm of metal locusts crisscrossing our path.

Baby bucks, bolts, and swerves, always breathing her ice. Ten gunships become five. Missiles churn the mountainside, send fountains of rock and snow hundreds of feet skyward.

In the blizzard of destruction, I lose my orientation. Shadows in the flying detritus could be a thousand feet away or ten, enemies or boulders. I call out every blur, imagined or not, shouting against the thunder until my voice goes hoarse and my lungs burn cold fire.

The explosion hits us from below. Warmth and pain surge through me. Baby tumbles head over tail. My grip loosens, legs slip, head spins.

When my focus returns, Baby’s crashing into a mountain and I’m hundreds of feet in the air without a dragon.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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The
Dragon World War—WWD—ended when I was twelve, at least according to Modern History. The end of the fifty-page chapter listed the top ten freedoms we’d sacrificed in our struggle to survive.

Videos accompanied each item. In the middle of the list, a multicolored plane glided through clear skies. An interior shot showed families relaxing to old movies, smiling attendants handing out beverages and blankets.

Until last night, that twenty-second clip was my only memory of flying.

It seemed so peaceful.

“Wake up.” The All-Black across the aisle nudges me in the ribs with his rifle.

I open my eyes. “Wasn’t sleeping.”

“Praying?”

I shake my head.

“That’s good. Ain’t no prayers gonna save your glowheart.”

“Leave me alone.”

“Maybe she fancies herself one of them talkers Olshansky was telling us about,” he says to the beefy soldier seated next to him. “Huh, dragon sister, you trying to talk to your dragon?”

I don’t answer. I do try to contact dragons. Nothing.

The soldier unbuckles his harness, grabs the handcuffs around my wrists, and squeezes until I cry out. He lets go with an approving nod. He leans over, presses moist lips to my ear. “What is it with them dragons? You like Catherine the Great or something?”

I squirm away.

He falls back into his chair. “All I wanted was a thank you. See that, Corporal? No gratitude from the dragon generation.”

“We should make her thank us,” the corporal says. “Pretty, ain’t she?”

“She’d do. Sweet face. Kind of like it with the blood and bruises. Gives her a savage look.” He growls at me, claws the air.

The corporal reaches out and strokes my cheek. I flinch
and can no longer hold back the tears. He cups my chin, wobbles my head, worsening my headache. “Look, Sarge, we made her cry.” He thumbs the wetness from my cheek.

I spit at him.

In a blink, he’s jamming his hand against my cheek, pressing my face to the window. A squad of dragon jets accompanies us and four other gunships over the blackened remains of some yesteryear metropolis. Baby is sprawled in a massive cargo net dangling by steel tethers from the other four helicopters. I moan as I spot the spearlike tranquilizers protruding from her glowless back.

The corporal wrenches me back by the hair, shoves me against the seat. “You’re disgusting. Good men died today because of you, but you care more about that damn lizard than your own kind. I should have let your glowheart fall.”

I had been halfway to the ground, too terrified to scream, when I’d spotted the helicopter diving toward me at a steep angle. An angel of death in his black body armor, the corporal had leaned out from the gunship’s berth, his rifle pointed at me.