The Other Side (5 page)

As
we walk hand-in-hand back to the hospital, Allie rattles off names and stories of her new Green buddies. I interrupt with repeated reminders to avoid future discussion. She gives her assent each time, then jumps right back into telling me how great and friendly they are.

I don't know if her unwavering love of dragons is some reverse side effect of her reconditioning, or if she's too young to remember life before the blackout policy. The Reign of Flame, as the media named it, ended almost a decade ago, when a task force led by my father discovered dragons couldn't see black. Tipped the scales. Five years later, the war was over, the monsters were defeated, the humans were safe.

There was a point in my life when I clung to those lies,
particularly after Mom died. Then I discovered my dragon-talking abilities and got shipped to Georgetown, where I learned that not all monsters come with glowing scales attached. And not all dragons are monsters.

Unfortunately, most of it's a gray, globby mess. When the wingless Blues stampeded north, ravaging rain forests and villages on the way to North America, they did so because they were supposedly fleeing the invisible monsters that chased them. In one of our more heated discussions, Grackel informed me, in so many words, that the Reds obliterated our cities in retaliation for the incessant military onslaught, hoping to dissuade further aggression.

Most everyone can agree on one thing: Greens are the most dangerous dragons, ragers who seem to thrive on war and death. They don't much like anything, including one another. Which is probably the only reason they don't currently rule the world.

I was six when a quintet torched half of New York City. Took them less than thirty minutes. Required ten squadrons of jets to bring them down. Worldwide panic ensued because nobody had ever seen Greens strike in unison before.

Luckily, it was an aberration.

Until Oren arrived on the insurgent scene with a unification plan. If he gets his hands on Baby and breeds her . . .

Allie doesn't know that on the monster scale, Oren and
those Greens rank right up there with our Georgetown captors. And I don't want her to know. Right and wrong make sense to her in some crazy way I both envy and dread.

“You can't talk to them anymore, Allie,” I say as she continues to prattle on about a dragon named Bornak who claims he can roast a deer from five miles away. “Not until I meet them and they get my seal of approval.”

“Okay, but you can't be tough. Bornak would make a great camping buddy. He likes to hunt and he makes good fires.”

When we reach the hospital, Nurse Frown informs us that Colin's in the recovery room, waking from the anesthesia. “Once he's stable, you guys are on your own.” With a stern warning not to excite him, she leads us to the patient wing.

“Mr. Janson, your girlfriend's here to see you.”

“Melissa,” Colin says. Slurred. Groggy. But my name.

Heat rises in my cheeks, and I'm glad for the dim lighting. “His ex,” I say. “No, Frank, it's me, Sarah.”

“I knew a Frank,” he says, followed by an extended yawn. “Frank and Kevin and Mac—”

“From TV,” I interrupt.

“The fab four. Kissing dragons everywhere they go. Until J.R. got too close. Poor Junior.” His chuckle fades into a quiet snore.

“Don't worry, this is normal. The anesthesia should wear off soon,” Nurse Frown says, and leaves.

I send Allie to the vending machine with a few dollars and instructions to wait in the lobby, then pull up a chair beside Colin. The color's returned to his cheeks, and his breath comes easily.

A part of me wants to get into bed beside him, wrap his arm around me, and lay my head on his chest. Stupid. Even if there were time for something, anything, what would he want with someone four years his junior with almost as many physical scars as emotional ones? And even if he could somehow look past all that, there's the small issue of his dead sister.

But I like the dream—don't have many good ones anymore. I lower my head onto him ever so gently, slow my breathing until it matches the rise and fall of his chest.

I must doze, because the next thing I know, his hand's on my neck. He seems to be asleep. Maybe it was an accident, maybe he didn't know I was here.

Maybe he did.

When I grasp his fingers to disentangle myself, he murmurs, “You're fine where you are. Quite fine.”

I sit up and exaggerate a stretch. “Sorry about that. Got tired. Glad you're okay.”

A dopey smile crosses his face. “You're my girlfriend, huh?”

I look away. “That's our cover. Your idea?”

“Should have been,” he says, then launches into another ramble about
Kissing Dragons
, ending with “It didn't get good again until you were on there. Absolutely stunning.”

“It was all fake,” I say, standing. “That girl never existed.”

I'm almost to the door when he says, “You're wrong. I see her every day.”

I make the mistake of glancing back. He's looking at me. Such soulful eyes.

No! I spin around and break into a run, but I'm too slow.

“So beautiful she doesn't even know it. Like my sister.”

I flee. Through the lobby, outside, down the empty road toward the morning moon that hangs low over the darkness of the river. My lungs knot up, my legs turn to dry ice, and my heartbeat thunders in my ears. But it is not enough to drown the memory of that look and those words.

I'm almost to the river when my feet slip from under me and I fall hard onto my injured ribs. Mewling, I roll onto my stomach. Behind the blood pounding in my ears and my own pathetic moans, I hear dragons.

Then the jets come, with their percussive gunfire and shrieking missiles. I push myself to my knees and glance toward the eastern horizon. The clouds are ablaze with abstract blue streaks, a chaotic collage of tracer dots, and
fuzzy green balls of light. An aurora borealis of war.

Not real.

I dip my hands into the snow and press them to my face. The cold stings, but the cacophony remains. When I split my fingers and peek skyward, the air battle looms, ever bright.

Two Greens emerge from the clouds in fast pursuit of a jet that's lost one of its thrusters. They pinch in around him, blasting fire in turns. Not orange like normal dragonfire, but azure. Beautiful.

A stream of flame envelops the wing. The plane wobbles, twirls into a flat spin. The pilot ejects, his black parachute cast in a vivid green glow. There's a brief roaring match between the dragons. The smaller one darts under the larger one and inhales the chute.

I look away. “Not real. Not real. Not real.”

Can't be. Sirens would be blaring. People would be scrambling for dragon shelters. Standard operating procedure for—

For cities painted black, for cities where dragons aren't confused with UFOs.

I spring to my feet, calling for Randon and Baby, but neither answers. Still asleep? I look toward their hiding spot in the outlying mountains. Far from the battle. Safe for now.

But Allie and Colin aren't. At any moment, a jet could spin out of control and crash into Dillingham, or dragons
might break loose from the battle and decide to have an impromptu shish kebab of locals and cheechakos.

I search the surrounding cars, find a beat-up black Jeep the owner didn't bother to lock. No keys inside, so I sprint to the adjoining house. I start to knock, but then test the knob. It gives. I sneak in. It's dark inside. I fumble around, locate a pair of switches, turn on the porch and foyer lights. I snatch a set of keys from a bowl on an end table and race back to the Jeep.

I grind the gears twice before the clutch engages, then floor the accelerator. A rooster tail of snow explodes behind me, and the car hurls forward in chaotic swerves. Thankfully, the road's wide and nobody's on it. I ease off the gas pedal, gain control, and speed toward the hospital.

I'm a couple of blocks away when a trio of Greens swoops out of the clouds, the figures atop them little more than snowy specks. They break from the battle and dive toward Dillingham.

I lay on the horn to wake the residents. The dragons grow larger in the rearview mirror, their reflections rippling across the river. The shoreline buildings are well within range, but they don't open fire.

What are they waiting for?

The hospital sign comes into view faster than expected. I slam on the brakes and turn the wheel a sharp right. I leap
out, leaving the engine puttering in neutral. A police siren whines in the distance.

The sheriff's calling out orders over a bullhorn from somewhere that sounds a few blocks away. “Keep clear of outer walls and windows. Seek cover beneath tables or in bathtubs or closets.”

Useless. The residents of Dillingham might survive a tornado, but not a dragon attack.

The hospital lobby's empty. I hurry through the heavy doors at the rear, toward Colin's room. But he and his medical equipment are gone. I yell for him, Allie, and Nurse Frown as I scour the other rooms in the patient wing. Nothing.

The residents of Kanakanak Hospital have vanished.

I return to the lobby. Through the windows, I see that the town's now bathed in an eerie Christmas-light glow.

What are they doing?

Though I can't see them, I can feel their eyes on me. Searching. Ravenous. I bite hard into my lip until the pain overwhelms the fear. As the watching sensation lessens to something manageable, I focus inward and listen.

Where are you?

It requires all my nerve to ignore the dragons' words and skulk to the window. I get a clear view of the sky. At least three dozen Greens trace slow figure eights above the town, in alternate streams.

Melissa.
I almost scream at the sound of Randon's voice inside my head.

“You need to get Baby to safety,” I say aloud. Too loud. Everything feels too loud.

We are already flying, human. There is no indication of pursuit
.

I drop into silent communication.
Do you know where Colin and Allie are?

The shelter from dragons
, he says a few seconds later.

I look over my shoulder at the access door that leads to the offices and the changing room where Allie and I showered. I'd forgotten about the emergency stairwell. It didn't occur to me before, because I was worried about contacting Preston, but why would a one-story building need a stairwell?

I breathe a little easier. “What to Do During a Dragon Attack.” One of our annual school seminars. They gave us ebooklets full of rules. “If outdoors: seek safety at a library, school, or hospital.” Not because dragons understand the critical importance of education and health, as some teachers joked, but because of a federal mandate that required every public building to construct a subterranean bunker.

Please tell them I'm okay and that I'll be there
—

A gunshot rings through the air. A dragon overhead unleashes a torrent of flame that engulfs a home catty-corner
from the hospital. A woman with a toddler cradled in each arm bursts onto the road. A couple seconds later, a burning man tumbles out and immerses himself in a snowbank.

The Green lands in front of the family, and his white-cloaked rider dismounts via a rope ladder. The dragon collapses onto its haunches, licks its lips. The kids wail. Mom's crying too as she gets on her knees. Dad, steam rising from his body, raises his arms high.

The rider shoots him in the head, then motions to the dragon. I turn away and cover my ears, but the crunch of corpse and shrieks of children play loud in my head anyway. Not real, and real, all at once.

“What do you want?” Sheriff asks via the bullhorn. Sounds terrified. Another Green—the brightest dragon I've ever seen except Baby—dives toward the source.

“We mean you no harm.” The austere voice that booms from the bullhorn a minute later fires a shiver through me. Though I've only heard it a couple times before, I'd recognize it anywhere. Oren White, the Diocletian leader. “However, if you attempt to harm us, we will be forced to retaliate. We're looking for a pair of girls.”

He doesn't know Baby's in the area, I realize, turning back toward the hospital. But somehow he knows about Allie and me. Will undoubtedly torture us for information.

“They landed in Dillingham within the past day,” Oren
continues. “One of them is seventeen. Five-ten. Short brown hair. Brown eyes. Probably skinny. Name's Melissa, though she's likely using an alias. The other—”

He stops talking. Sheriff must be in his ear.

It'll be seconds before Oren relays the information to his dragons and they pounce on the hospital. I stare at the Jeep, still idling in the emergency lane. I have to lead them away, hope I can occupy their attention long enough to give Colin and Allie a chance to escape.

I relay my thoughts to Randon.
Tell Colin.

He says that you must not do this. That it is foolish. I agree, human.

There's no other choice,
I say, and break cover at a full sprint.

I climb in, thrust the Jeep into first, and take off. The Green on the ground whirls around, blocking the road that leads out of town. Another pair of dragons slams down behind me, sending up plumes of snow. I accelerate toward the riderless one.

The dragon spreads its mouth wide so I can see the mass of fire gathering in the back of its throat. I jerk the car toward the sidewalk and plow through a low snowbank. I emerge on the other side, fishtail, almost run over that woman and her two children.

The rider opens fire with his machine gun. My rear tire
blows out, and the Jeep pitches left, toward the Green. I tap the brakes, veer right. The Green dances sideways, will squash me between its elephantine leg and the house ahead if I don't stop. My only chance is to try to split the gap between its legs. Clear sailing on the other side.

I point the Jeep at the dragon's enormous foot and smash the gas pedal to the floor. My heartbeat echoes the frantic
bump-bump-bump
of the blown tread. Blood rushes my ears.