‘Oh, it was definitely alive. I didn’t notice anybody looking sick. But then again, I wasn’t looking at them. Why?’
‘We had three of them.’
‘There are three of those things?’
‘All variations of each other. With that many animals mixed together in one body, things are bound to go wrong. At the same time they were making them, Laylah, the lead physician, was working on an apocalyptic plague. It was supposed to be for us humans, but there was a lot of experimentation to make it as gruesome as possible. Somehow, one of the strains got passed on to the sixers.’
I remember Uriel talking to Laylah in his suite before the last aerie party. He was pressuring her pretty hard to cut corners and make the apocalypse happen faster. I’m guessing she’s been cutting corners all along to meet his demands.
‘The sixers infected the angel doctors. They got sick, then about a day or two later, they were exposed to the sixers again, and that massively accelerated the disease. They bled out in the most horrible way. It looked excruciatingly painful too. It was everything they were trying to do with a human disease, only it killed angels and locusts instead. The human lab workers were fine, and so were the sixers. They were just carriers of the disease.’
‘Do you have one in a cage somewhere?’ I ask.
‘The infected sixers were all killed. I was ordered to dispose of the bodies. Angels don’t do dirty work like that. Before I burned them, though, I managed to sneak two vials of their blood. I used one to infect the new batch of sixers that they created. I was hoping it might cause some random damage.’
‘Did it?’ I ask, thinking about Raffe even now.
‘I don’t know. After the accident, they separated the projects to avoid further contamination, so I lost track of it.’
‘What did you do with the second vial of blood?’
‘I kept it for study. That’s what we’ve been using to try to come up with an angel plague.’
‘But no luck?’ I ask.
‘Not yet,’ says Doc. ‘Not for a long time to come.’
‘Time we don’t have,’ says the Colonel. ‘Next idea.’
Our goal is easy to identify – we need to come up with a way to survive the onslaught tonight. But we just talk in circles, trying to figure out how to do it. For all we know, we could be the only freedom fighters showing up at the Bay Bridge.
As we drive up the peninsula, we talk.
And talk.
And talk some more.
I’m trying not to yawn, but it’s not easy. It feels like it’s been a week since I slept.
‘The angels might not even know which bridge is the East Bay Bridge,’ says the Colonel. ‘We need a lure or something that will attract them away from the Golden Gate.’
‘What kind of a lure?’ asks Dee.
‘Should we dangle little babies from the bridge?’ asks Dum.
‘Sadly, that’s not funny,’ says Doc.
I rub my forehead. I’m usually not prone to headaches, but all this desperate talk of coming up with a plan is killing me. I’m not really the planning type.
My eyes drift to the window, and I become mesmerized by the drone of the adult voices in the car and my own sleepiness.
We’re driving along the bay as we head north to San Francisco. The water sparkles like a field of diamonds waiting to be picked if only you could reach in with magic hands and grab them.
The wind picks up, floating leaves and trash by the side of the road. I don’t remember seeing trash by the freeway in the World Before, but a lot has changed since then.
My eyes lazily follow a piece of paper as it flitters across the road. It dances in the breeze, floating up and down, then pirouetting on the wind. It lands in the water, causing a ripple of sparkles around it.
In my half-dreaming state, it looks like one of the twins’ talent show flyers.
‘Come one, come all to the greatest show of all.’ Isn’t that what the flyer says?
I can see the twins standing on an apple crate, wearing striped suits and hats like barkers at a carnival. They’re calling to the ragged refugees. ‘Step right up, folks. This will be the biggest fireworks show in history. There’ll be bangs, there’ll be screams, there’ll be popcorn! This is your last chance – your last chance to show off your amazing talents.’
Then it all comes together.
I sit up, as wide awake as if I’d been zapped by my mother’s cattle prod. I blink twice, tuning back in to the conversation. Sanjay is saying something about wishing he knew more about the angels’ physiology.
‘The talent show.’ I look at the twins with wide eyes. ‘Who could resist a talent show?’
Everyone looks at me as if I’m nuts. That puts a slow grin on my face.
55
By the time we arrive at Golden Gate, it’s noon. We have about six hours until sunset.
The famous bridge is in shambles like all the other bridges around the bay. Several of the suspension cables swing in the air, tethered only at the top. It’s broken in four sections, with a big chunk missing just past the middle. One of the sections leans precariously, and I wonder how long it’ll be before it falls.
The last time I saw the Golden Gate, I was flying in Raffe’s arms.
The wind chills me as I get out of our SUV, the salty air tasting like tears.
A meager group of people mill about by the water’s edge beneath the bridge, waiting for someone to tell them what to do. I didn’t expect thousands of people, but I was hoping that more would be here.