Chapter 56

  Dragonfly

  The chaos had not yet begun by the time that Alan arrived at the apartment. People at this stage were still only confused, puzzled and perhaps a bit disturbed by the cracking of the sky, but not yet afraid. A strange thing: the end of the world, the most dangerous thing to ever happen, and yet it lay so far outside of the realm of normal human experience that its appearance produced only bafflement. This, however, would not last.

  Alan Sheppard did not know the details of how exactly the world was going to end, but he had it on good authority that it was happening now. He had no power to stop it. Everyone in the world was going to die. But there was still something worth doing.

  Kaitlyn Carter had given him an address in Chicago. When he arrived at the address, he saw Kaitlyn’s body on the street outside, lying in a pool of blood. Sirens approached; he was only a minute or two ahead of the police. Alan moved on. Something remained to be done.

  The Walkers’ apartment showed clear signs of the recent presence of October Industries. The front door lay scattered all over the floor; everything inside had been destroyed. The smells of fire and gunsmoke and ozone permeated the air. A slight breeze drifted through the open door, carrying smoke into the hall. A gaping hole opened to the Chicago skyline where the balcony had been. Kaitlyn must have fallen from there.

  A chilling thought occurred to him. Did Rebecca know? Did she know that her beloved niece had fallen to her death? Would he have to be the one to tell her? He thought that perhaps, if she were to hear it from anyone, it should be him. It was, in part, his own fault.

  He heard the sound of someone crying. Alan entered the apartment weapon-first and walked carefully; the floor might be unstable. Down a hall, in a room full of music mixing equipment, he found a little girl hugging a turtle pillow, clutching a seashell, lying on the bed and crying.

  She looked at him fearfully when he entered. But then, before he knew what to say or do, she rolled off the bed, ran to him, and hugged him around the knees.

  Alan never knew what to do with kids. Even after his years raising Heidi, he still had no idea. After a long awkward moment, he put a hand on her head. “Leah?” he said.

  The little girl nodded in the midst of her sobs.

  “My name is Alan,” he said.

  She nodded again and kept clinging to him.

  “Kate told me to come get you,” he said. “I’ll be here while we wait for your parents, okay?”

  Leah looked up at him with tearful eyes. “Where’s Eric?” she asked.

  “Eric’s fine. He’s okay. He’s with Heidi.”

  Leah thought about this, still hugging his legs. Then she nodded firmly. “He’ll be okay,” she informed him. “He has Frisby Wiser with him.”

  Frisby…Wiser?

  Something cracked violently overhead. Alan’s bones shuddered. Everything moved in some unseen way. Leah flinched and whispered something.

  “What’s that?” Alan knelt down beside her.

  Leah leaned in close and whispered in his ear. “It’s my fault,” she said in a horrified whisper.

  “No,” Alan replied. Whatever it was, no. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I was scared.”

  “Me too.”

  She kept hugging him. He wasn’t sure what to do next besides return the embrace. But they might have to move soon. Again, a resounding crack fluttered through them.

  “Can you feel that?” Leah asked.

  Alan nodded. “The sky is breaking,” he said. He tried to sound as though he actually understood what that meant.

  But Leah shook her head. “Not that. The other thing.”

  “The other thing?”

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  “Something is different now,” she whispered.

  Alan looked around. He didn’t see anything different. Neither was he inclined to disregard the intuition of this six-year-old child.

  He tried to contact Heidi. No luck. He had to trust that she’d be okay, for now. He would find her.

  He looked down at the girl, Leah, who had returned to her turtle pillow. A sudden resolve overtook him. He would do everything in his power to make sure this girl survived. There had to be a way. And it might have to do with Michael.

  “Leah,” he said, “are you hungry?”

  She nodded emphatically.

  He led her out to the ruined kitchen. Although everything was broken, edible food no doubt still existed in the cupboards and refrigerator. He stepped carefully over the wreckage to the fridge.

  “Come look,” said Leah from the living room.

  He turned and saw her standing at the edge of the enormous hole in the side of the building. He stepped quickly over, noticing some blood on the floor as well as a broken bass guitar. He picked Leah up and set her down a few feet back from the edge, but she hardly noticed. She stared at something up in the sky. He followed her gaze.

  The sky still looked shattered, now more than ever, but something else had begun to happen. Clouds were leaking through the cracks. Clouds, or some kind of silver-grey mist, drifting down in wispy threads from above.

  His phone rang. Michael Whyte. He kept an eye on Leah as he stepped back from the edge and put the phone to his ear.

  “This is Alan. Is everything okay?”

  “Well now that you mention, I guess so. Yeah, something like that. Our dog reappeared, only as an albino teleporting thing called an angel, and then the sky started breaking up and October Industries showed up and tried to kill us, and now Jim is unconscious and I’m driving. Oh yeah, and I’ve still got your MacGuffin in the backseat.”

  His what? “But Jim is okay?” asked Alan.

  “He’s unconscious. He still hasn’t woken up. That’s a bad sign.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To Montana, I think. Why, where are you?”

  “Chicago. Michael, I think we should meet up.”

  “Hey I’m all for that idea. Where should we meet?”

  “I need to make a few calls.”

  Michael laughed bitterly. “A few calls, huh? Good luck with that. Phone lines are shot. I’ve been trying to call people for the last hour. No idea how this one came through.”

  Good to know. “We might not have much time.”

  “Not much time? Not much time ‘til what?”

  “Until…” Alan was about to say, ‘until the world ends.’ But that sounded so stupid, and he didn’t want to have to explain it. It would have sounded stupid to him too, if he hadn’t known about October Industries. Or if he hadn’t met McFinn. “Everyone is in danger,” he said.

  “Danger? You don’t say.” He was angry.

  “Michael, October Industries would have come for Jimothy even had I not sent you the package.”

  “Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. Why? Why would they have come for him? Is it because of his…special abilities? Is that it? We in a Stephen King novel now?”

  This almost made Alan laugh. He actually knew something about Stephen King novels these days. “It’s the angel, Michael. You said your dog became one?”

  “Yeah, Hazel. I guess that’s what Ezekiel said.”

  “Who?”

  “I talked to one of the October Industry guys. Said he just wanted—hang on—just wanted the angel. But he’s gone now. Hazel, I mean. Could be anywhere.”

  “Keep me posted. Take care of Jimothy.”

  Michael laughed. “Sure. Let’s talk later. It’s always fun.” He hung up.

  Alan looked at his phone a moment. Rebecca Carter next. But if she didn’t know about Kaitlyn, could he tell her?

  He stepped to the edge of the gaping hole in the wall and looked down at the street below. Several police cars clustered around the tiny body of Kaitlyn Carter. She had been wearing a lab coat, painted in bright colors. A dark stain surrounded her on the pavement. Alan turned away.

  Why hadn’t the police come up here? Obviously she had fallen from this hole; debris littered the street. Someone in this apartment building must have called in the noise, the explosions. Alan had been ready with an explanation. But why weren’t they here? Their absence was both convenient and unsettling.

  He noticed something else: the cloud leaking down from the cracked sky had made its way almost to the level of the apartment in which they stood.

  At around this point, the chaos began. In the city of Chicago, the extent of the chaos was very great.

  Alan and Leah held out until nightfall, but her parents did not arrive, nor did the police. They never did.