All That Lives Must Die

“Eliot?” she whispered.

“I’m here,” he said. “Hang on.”

He snapped on a flashlight, the same one they’d had in the sewers when they hunted Sobek.

“You’re still carrying that around?”

“A first aid kit, too,” he said. “Some water, and a few granola bars, just in case. I even have Cee’s lunch if we get really desperate.”

It was one of the few times her brother had impressed her. Fiona would never in a million years, though, tell him this.

Eliot looked through the gate. “Do you really think it’s-?”

She stood next to him. Wind blasted her and carried with it a thousand screams and cries of pain from the depths. A plume of magma blasted from a giant fissure and sent a shower of sparks a mile high into the rust- colored sky.

“What else could it be?”

Eliot held up a hand, fingers outstretched. “I feel it’s something terrible,” he whispered, “but part of me belongs down there. I can’t explain it.”

Fiona pulled him back from the gate. The heat must have boiled his brains.

“Are you crazy? Nothing belongs down there.”

But she felt it, too. A little tug. . as if just on the other side of this valley of nightmares there might be something terrible and wonderful, waiting for them. Or maybe it was that feeling you got when you looked down from a tall building or bridge, wondering (but never seriously) what it would be like to jump.

“There!” someone called.

The voice was far away, on the other side of the gate, and so faint, Fiona wasn’t sure if it had been real or not.

It came again, this time more urgent: “A light-I saw a light! Up there! Quick!”

Shadowy shapes scrambled up the steep embankment toward the gate. Men and women, wild eyes gleaming, and carrying with them a scent she’d smelled too many times: on Perry Millhouse, and when Mike Poole dipped his hand into the deep fryer-burned human flesh.

“We better go,” she said.

Two figures ran up the path on the other side of the gate. . then six. . then dozens.

The ground trembled as they stampeded the gate. They cried and screamed and shouted: “There! They’re opening the gates! Give me that flashlight! You, come here!”

Eliot backed up.

The gate look impenetrable by anything less than an atomic bomb. . but the adjacent fence was bone and metal and barbed wire heaped together. Fiona wasn’t sure it would stop all those people.

She grabbed Eliot’s hand and pulled him along faster-running.

A tide of flesh crashed upon the gate and spilled over to the fence. There must be a hundred people pounding on the gate from the other side.

The bones and rusted barbed wire flexed and groaned and shuddered.

And all those people screamed.

The noise stabbed at Fiona’s ears. She dropped her brother’s hand and instinctively covered her head. It felt like her skull split.

Eliot had one hand over his ear, but the other held his violin and pointed up.

A great bird swooped down from the sky. It was the size of a small airplane: a collection of black feathers and outstretched steel claws and glistening black eyes-and screaming the sounds of breaking glass and nails on blackboard.

The thing tore through the crowd near the gate. There was an explosion of feathers; bone snapped and limbs tossed into the air.

Fiona’s heart beat in her throat.

She and Eliot ran.

Behind them, human cries mingled with the bird’s and there was a whoosh of wings.

Fiona looked back.

In the glowing sky, the one giant bird disintegrated into a swarm of swirling feathers and claws like a Salvador Dali tornado of bird parts. It spiraled up and then toward them.

She looked for cover. Eliot’s flashlight illuminated a stand of twisted trees ahead, but that was too far away.

Fiona froze-only for a split second, though. She grabbed and stretched her rubber band. The air about its edge hummed as she focused her mind. . to cut.

“Come and get me,” she said. “Just try it.”

Eliot stood next to her, his face flushed, and his violin on his shoulder. Bow on strings, he drew out a long, sad note.

The birds hesitated and lost cohesion hearing this-but their momentum still carried them straight toward her.

Fiona braced.

Countless caws and screechings enveloped her. Grasping claws caught her clothes and hair, but failed to find purchase on flesh.

She cut-bone and sinew and feathers-severed even their screams midair.

Behind her, Eliot played: a song of sorrow that bridged to something lighter.

The birds scattered and fell silent before her brother’s music. So did the people on the other side of the gate. Even the erupting volcanoes in the distance quieted. Like the entire world paused to listen.

His song spoke of life and love. . and hope.

Fiona’s picked up their flashlight, looking again for cover or a way out of this mess.

There was no trace of Kino’s tire tracks in the volcanic ash. The wind had already blown them away. That shouldn’t matter, though; all they had to do was follow the cliff edge back the way they had come.

Those birds, however, would come back if they saw them out in the open.

She cast her gaze to the thicket of dead trees. They looked like skeletons with outstretched arms and fingers. Their shadows lengthened and wavered in the beam of the flashlight.

She spotted another flicker of light deep in the forest.

Eliot stopped playing.

“Keep going,” she whispered. “There’s someone, or something, coming through those trees.”

Eliot shook his head. “I can’t do any more. The song hurts too much.” He held one trembling hand to his chest.

That hand of his had never recovered from that infection. Fiona knew he should’ve seen a doctor. She was about to tell him that he’d been an idiot, but decided now wasn’t the time for that. Besides, Eliot looked like he was in real pain.

“It’s okay.” She looped an arm around her brother and helped him toward the trees. “I think someone’s coming to help. And if they’re not, I can take care of them.”

Fiona wasn’t so sure. Her legs were leaden, and the adrenaline that had given her strength before was gone.

She waved their flashlight back and forth.

The light in the forest answered, doing the same.

She and Eliot made their way to the edge of the trees and pushed through until they saw a figure with a lantern. It was all shadow first, and then she saw an arm, a body, a man’s rugged face.

She knew him. . but couldn’t place exactly from where. The man looked like a retired athlete, with gray hair and hands that could have grasped a basketball as easily as an apple. He wore camo sweatpants, sneakers, and a black AC/DC T-shirt.

She remembered him then: Their last birthday at Oakwood Apartments, this man had dropped by, just as they had been opening their presents.