I rolled onto my side. My brain spun inside my skull like a bad hangover. Everything was bathed in red light. My eyes didn’t want to focus.
The choking sound was coming from Scout. She was right next to me. One of her arms swiped at her chest, the hand fluttering around a huge piece of stained-glass like a butterfly that couldn’t decide where to land. Her other arm was trapped behind her back. She wasn’t trying to untwist herself.
I scraped up onto my hands and knees and crawled over to her. The blackened grass disintegrated when I touched it and I pictured a long black swipe of ash stretching out behind me like a blood smear. I crouched down beside Scout.
When she saw me leaning over her, she tried to say something, but all she did was choke some more. Her hand kept fluttering around that piece of glass. I don’t think she realized she was doing it.
She was crying.
I grabbed her fluttering hand and held it still.
She gave me a bare, thin-lipped smile for thanks.
I nodded.
Thunder boomed overhead. Someone was screaming. Others were yelling. I couldn’t understand any of the words. Scout was shaking all over. Underneath the noise of everything else, I could hear her heart. It couldn’t beat all the way. The piece of glass was stuck through it.
“Tough?” Clarion skidded to a stop next to me. “We’ve got to get out of here! Everyone’s got to fall back to the rendezvous point!”
Scout’s eyes went wide and terrified. She was afraid I would leave her.
Don’t think that about me, Scout. I shook my head, hard, and squeezed her hand. Please don’t think I’m that bad.
Clarion started to pull me up, but I shook him off. My arms and legs were working well enough now that I could scoop Scout up. She went rigid and tried to scream when I did it, but all that came out of her mouth was a bubbly sound and some blood.
Clarion had somehow held onto his gun in all the craziness. He ran ahead of me and cleared the way to the road as we went. A few other bloody survivors joined us on the way.
This blinding purplish-red glare was coming from where the Dark Mansion had been a few minutes ago. Now there was just that light hanging over a bombed-out shell.
A TBG-7 wouldn’t have caused that kind of destruction. I wasn’t even sure a case full of dynamite could have done that.
A few fallen angels were in our path, but they were staring at that purple-red light, black eyes wide and mouths hanging open. They didn’t try to stop us and Clarion didn’t engage them.
Both of the coyotes’ Broncos were waiting at the mouth of the lane when we got there, gates open. Everybody who couldn’t fly piled in. Clarion touched each one on the shoulder and counted as they went.
I climbed in last, sitting on the tailgate next to Clarion with Scout in my lap. She had died on the way to the road, but I didn’t leave her behind.
PART II: WASHED IN THE BLOOD
Godkiller
Houses, fields, and forest burst into flame as we passed. The concrete parking lot of our target heated, cracked, and turned to slag beneath our feet. Multistoried dorms, class buildings, and a newly erected stadium caved in. People screamed and cried out from the rubble. Alarms went off across the redneck ag college’s campus.
We crossed through the sleepy college town, igniting trees and lawns, ripping buildings from their foundations in our wake.
Leif was pulling out of a parking spot in front of a little bar, a girl younger than we were in his passenger seat. He and his new fucktoy leaned forward to look out the windshield as we approached. The girl’s glittery eyeshadow sparkled in the light of the fire.
For a moment, Leif’s eyebrows drew down toward the bridge of his nose. “What the…? Tempie?”
We traced his fender. The truck’s metal body melted under our fingers, welding the doors closed. Leif and the high school girl screamed. Black smoke filled the interior. The girl clawed at the dripping glass of the windows, breaking her painted nails, but unable to escape. Leif roasted alive inside his beloved truck.
A screaming wind fanned the fires of the ruined town and set the prairie ablaze.
A moment later, on the riverfront of Hannibal, the waters of the Mississippi turned to blood. The river rose, flowing over the levy for miles in every direction, and washing through the floodgates before the city could shut them.
The businesses and apartment buildings downtown were battered and broken under the weight of the river of blood. Dad died alone in his little one-room efficiency, buried in the rubble of his new life.
Aunt Arie and the other CNAs and nurses at the nursing home tried to help their patients to safety, but the bloody water swept them down the halls into inescapable nooks and crannies, breaking bones, stealing away pockets of air, and drowning them all.
Mom didn’t even open her eyes when the river smashed out the windows and filled the house we’d grown up in. She died in her bed with no one trying to save her, just like she wanted.
The floodwaters continued to rise. Gianna, Leif’s friends and family, our teachers, bosses from summer and high school jobs, everybody we had grown up with—every soul in and around our hometown was crushed under the flood.
There were so many like them left. People who used and abused the innocents of the world. People who knew and did nothing.
We turned our focus outward, projecting ourself outside of time and place. It was effortless.
With nothing but a thought and a raised hand, we spread holocausts across the surface of the Earth, smothering souls
