Chapter 1 #2
Flocks upon flocks of them. And all that I can hear are their cries.
Crows, eagles, hawks, even robins and jays, they swam the sky together, screeching. It all garbles into one deafening cry that wipes the dance silent.
The music can’t be heard anymore.
I toss a look at the stage.
The band members are loosening their tension on their guitars, the mics, and their slack faces are lifted up to the sky.
Like thick black clouds, the birds move in such masses that the light starts to dim, and dim—until it’s a mere dusky glimmer washing down on us.
All around the dance, people have stilled.
Most stay out in the open, necks arched back, faces aimed up at the thousands of birds in wonder. Others, in a split moment, start pushing in a swell for the spots of shelter.
And that pushes a current of people my way.
I drop into a crouch and duck under the edge of the table.
My neck cranes, and I watch the billowing cloud of birds smear the sky.
I’ve never seen anything like it.
Their screeches grow louder and louder.
I smack my hands to my ears with a wince.
That billowing flap, flap, flap of wings is pressing down on me; I feel it, the violent force of disturbed air, like someone is flapping a blanket above me, over and over, and all I can do is cringe against it.
Then I see it.
There, among the birds.
Jagged wings, talons, fox-like faces.
Bats.
The bats move with the birds… in the middle of the fucking day.
My face slackens with the horror.
The horror of realisation.
The birds, the bats, the flies…
They are fleeing.
Before I can even ask myself from what, the table smacks into my skull.
The strike knocks me to the ground.
I fling a dazed look up at the table, at the middle-aged woman who just crashed into it.
The woman spares me no apology, no glance at all, before she’s barrelling around the side of the popup van—and heading for the bulk of the parked cars up on the dusty hill.
“Yeah, fuck you, too!” My shout is useless.
The wings of the birds and bats, it’s a flapping blanket cracking down on us all, and no shouts are getting through that noise.
I stagger to my feet and look over the sea of bobbing heads.
Tesni is kneeling on the hood now, arms waving above her head, eyes locked onto me, as though she already knew where I was before the sky darkened under the siege of birds, and she was just waiting for me to reemerge.
Her mouth moves with shouts.
With the distance between us, I don’t hear a word she’s shouting at me, but I see the shift of her arms, suddenly flapping in an urgent summons.
More people are gathered around the truck now.
A dozen, at least.
I waste no time before I’m shoving into the crowd.
Still, there are too many dancers at a standstill.
No music blasts from the band on the stage, no sun is scorching down on us. The clouds of the birds above, more and more of them just spilling into the sky, stealing the light, it has frozen too many people, hooked too much attention.
And now there’s a solid, motionless crowd in my way.
I use the moment of stagnancy to squeeze and shoulder around them.
Some shove me back, others lean aside or throw me a scathing look, there’s a murmured apology somewhere, until a man backs into me and his hard boot comes down on the toe of mine.
My cry is strangled.
He staggers around me, unaware of my crushed toes, the fucker, and he’s gone from sight in a blink.
Grumbling curses after the man, I duck under a woman’s extended hand, a pointed finger—and not a heartbeat after, a scream fractures my damn eardrums.
Tesni’s shout comes strangled, “Bee, run!”
Startled, I hesitate—and trace Tesni’s wild stare, the same direction as the stranger’s pointed finger, the reason for all that damned screaming.
I look all the way across the dirt field to the shrubs beyond the hills, where some Joshua trees are peppered through the shadowy landscape.
I hear it first. A rumbling, thudding sound rolling through the constant flapping of wings above.
I blink—and just like that, I see them, a hoard of animals running out of the horizon, charging towards us.
Wild sheep, coyotes, rabbits, fucking bobcats…
I suck in a sharp breath, then jolt into a sprint straight for the truck.
The surge of panic hits the crowd at the same moment—and the urgency swells through the dance, pushing people into runs all over, and I’m staggering in it.
Tesni jumps off the truck and runs for me.
There’s a slight distance between us, but in that slight space, a stream of people rushes by, a violent river current that I’m in danger of being sucked into.
Tesni lunges into the current, boots planted. Like a tree sprouted from the soil, she holds her ground.
Her hand shoots out for mine, wedged between two people rushing by—and our palms slap together.
A strangled sound catches in my throat as I’m yanked through the river of panic, hard enough to spring aches up to my arm socket.
Tesni doesn’t care.
Tesni would dislocate anyone’s arm without a moment’s hesitation to get me out of danger, even my own.
The violence of the pull has me smacking into her, and we both tumble at the impact.
“Go, go, go!” Tesni shrieks, words almost indecipherable. “Fucking get upppp!”
Our boots slip over the dirt as we shove up from the earth. But the moment we are standing, ready to lunge for the truck, to climb onto the hood—the stampede hits.
My eyes are wide, dazed, as a deer slams down on the hood of the blue pickup truck.
Hooves crash down on the metal, hard enough to dent, to crush, before the deer propels itself onto the next.
The stampede washes over us.
I snatch Tesni by the arm, then throw her to the edge of the truck.
The wedge between the truck and the next is slight, barely enough for us to squeeze into—but we jam ourselves in and huddle on the ground.
The stampede rattles the cars, a violent cloud of dirt swallowing us whole.
I sway with the rocking of the trucks sandwiching us.
Tesni’s cry is constant at my side. She huddles up into my shoulder, arms crossed over her head, but the scream—it claws at my bones. Or is that my own scream?
Animals leap overhead, a never-ending stream of so many creatures, and I feel every single one rattle the car against my back. The earth is being pummelled by the stampede of wild animals and the people still caught out there with them.
I can’t help them.
The ones who scream, whose cries curdle the dust-clouded air. All I can do is wait it out.
Whatever the fuck it is.