Under Wicked Sky: 8. The Gate (Patreon)

(Reminder: This is my write-a-thon project. The previous chapters can be found here.)

Dylan

I could feel Lilly's disapproval coming off her in silent waves as I slowed past one car after another to peer in for survivors. I didn't dare roll down my window and call out. It didn’t matter. The cars were all empty shells; abandoned, burned, and sometimes splattered with blood.

The clock on the Land Rover's dash read midnight by the time we turned the last block to Stateline.

Back when the world was sane, Stateline was the big corporate hub of South Lake Tahoe. A smattering of eclectic motels and boutique shops edged both sides of the road on the California half. Two feet after crossing the California-Nevada border, sleek, twenty story tall casinos rose into the sky. California didn't allow gambling, but Nevada did, and the city took advantage with three of the largest, tallest buildings in the area. To me, they looked like two separate cities.

Now, the casinos, and some of the buildings on the California side, were on fire.

We all stared. Smoke poured from out broken windows. Panels and brickwork had detached from the buildings and broken on the concrete below. Even from blocks away, I could see thick moss and lichen draping down from the casino walls, spilling into the street where the flames had not yet reached. It didn't matter because dozens of unnatural trees had sprouted up between the casinos, choking what was left of the road.

And hundreds, maybe thousands of griffins flew around the flaming buildings like demented moths around a flame. They landed on every available ledge, hung off hotel balconies, and crawled on top of one another. They fought, called, and screamed.

"Well," I heard myself say into the heavy silence. "We know where all the griffins went."

"I bet there were a lot of people in the casinos. It makes sense,” Lilly said.

No, it doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense, I wanted to tell her. When I swallowed, my throat was dry. "We... We shouldn't drive through there."

"So, they're attracted to light," Lilly continued, ignoring me. "That's useful."

Merlot sat in the passenger seat with Baby Jane sleeping in her arms. "I think there are some side roads that can take us around." She touched the tip of the baby’s nose as she spoke. She seemed much calmer now she had someone to look after. Like if she focused on making sure Jane was safe, nothing else mattered. Maybe it was a way to deal with shock. "My driver used to go that way when the roads got too crowded in the tourist season. Take that next right up ahead."

I didn't like the idea of heading off the main boulevard onto smaller streets. There would be less room to turn, and I kinda sucked at aiming the car already. But we were lucky the fire hadn't yet spread from the casinos.

Come tomorrow, the whole city could burn.

At the next intersection, I turned the Land Rover down the right-hand road. Driving wasn't natural yet, but I'd relaxed my death grip on the steering wheel, and most the time I didn't have to think about where to put my feet when I braked. It was kind of like a full-body videogame, only using my hands and feet instead of my thumbs. The tough part was remembering how wide the car was and not scraping anything as I passed.

And if I kept thinking about that, and not about the thousands of man-eating griffins who’d taken over Stateline, my breathing stayed steady.

With Merlot's instructions, I navigated a path around the casinos. The roads back here were narrower, winding between clusters of ratty duplexes without sidewalks. Twice, I had to use the Land Rover's front bumper to push dead cars out of the way. Even without trees growing out of them, the cars tended to cluster together when they stopped.

Then we came to the school bus. Maybe it had been the same one I'd seen that afternoon, a couple of hours and a million years ago. The bus had stopped diagonally across both lanes. Some of the windows were smashed out, and the emergency door in the back swung open on its hinges.

Rolling the Land Rover to a stop, I watched the windows for movement inside. It was the dead of night with two fluffy cedars on either side of the road creating a thick shadow in the moonlight. If anyone was still in the bus, I couldn't tell.

"What are you doing now?” Lilly asked. "We should just backtrack again and go around." She sounded tired, or maybe she was still sulking over my decision to bring Baby Jane along.

I unbuckled my seatbelt. "I'm going to see if anyone’s still in the bus."

For once, Lilly stayed silent. I didn't wait to press my luck—didn't care if she disagreed anyway. Carefully, I pushed the door open and stood.

"Hello?" I called in a low voice. "Anyone in there?"

Nothing.

Keeping the door half-open in case I had to dive back in, I stepped away from the car. The door at the front of the bus was still closed, so I headed for the emergency hatch in the back. I only got a few steps before I caught a thick scent in the air; iron, and a cloying smell that reminded me of an open sewer pipe.

I stopped. I’d read my share of gory and violent books when I was younger, before Mom died and death hadn’t seemed real. In them, there had been passages about disemboweled men in battle—the smell that rose up when guts had been split open.

And I knew that I did not want to see what was inside that bus.

Lilly remained quiet as I sat back in the driver’s seat. She reached over and pressed the lock button on my door after I closed it.

Merlot leaned to peer through the windshield. "You didn't go in. Are you sure it was empty?"

"Yeah." I forced myself to take a deep breath of air untainted by blood and sewage. "I'm sure."

Clicking the shifter down, I started the slow, halting process of backing up. Turned out, I was a lot worse at it than going forward.

Traveling around the casinos took another hour and a half, and that was only after I got tired of backtracking blocked roads, and started using the heavy duty Land Rover to push more stopped cars to the side. By the time we rolled back onto the highway on the Nevada side of Stateline, the Land Rover made sputtering noises, and the steering wheel shimmied under my grip.

"I told you not to push that last truck. You damaged something," Lilly said scornfully. "What do we do if our car breaks down?"

"Jump in and drive another one," I told her. "There's kind of a lot around."

I tried not to glance at the clock often. If I was right, the griffins would become active again at daybreak. Well, not the ones flying madly around fires. But if we didn't make it home by the time the sun was up, we’d have to stop and hope that griffins didn't figure out how to break into vehicles.

The sky to the east was starting to edge into gray by the time we were a mile away from mine and Lilly's house.

I pressed the gas harder, grimly twisting around stopped cars, and once, running over a small pine tree that had been felled across the road. The faster I drove, the more the Land Rover shook. It felt like the wheels wanted to come off.

We arrived at the gated driveway which led to our house just as the first griffin shriek split the gray sky.

Lilly sat straight with a gasp. "Did you hear that?"

The high call sounded again, echoed by a second voice. They came from far off, but I didn't want to chance it. I reached out and pressed the code box that was supposed to open the wrought iron gate. Nothing happened. Maybe the electricity was out.

"Stay here." Opening the door, I hopped out and went to the latch. You could walk through the small side-gate with the right code, because that didn't require electricity, but I wanted to drive the car through. In an emergency, the gate could be opened from the inside by pulling a short length of chain. Gripping it, I leaned back and hauled.

The rusty metal squealed as the heavy gate rolled on the tracks. Five shrieking calls answered from the trees above.

I pulled my whole weight against the chain. The gate rolled open, but too slow and too loud. Dropping the chain, I ran to the edge of the gate, set the edge against my shoulders, and pushed with all my strength.

I thought I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, but the gate was moving. I was almost there...

"Dylan!" Merlot cried from the car.

I didn't dare look up to see what was wrong. With one final push, the gate rolled open wide enough to drive through.

I turned to see a griffin standing between me and the Land Rover.

It was larger than any of the others I'd seen so far. Draft-horse size, and daffodil yellow with a white underbelly. Sort of pretty, except for the fact it faced the open driver’s side door. Its head cocked back and forth as if trying to figure out if what was inside was edible or not.

Lilly and Merlot crouched against the other side of the Land Rover, frozen in fear.

Baby Jane gave a wail, and the griffin's lion-like tail lashed as it bent to poke its head in.

I grabbed the first thing I could find — a stick as long as my forearm—and hurled it at the thing. It bounced off the yellow back.

The griffin whipped around, quicker than something that size should.

My heart pounded so hard I thought it would burst. "Hey!" I yelled, waving my arms over my head and backing up, edging to the other side of the gate to put thick wrought-iron between us. "Hey! Over here!"

The griffin let out a low rattling his, feathers and fur rising along its spine.

My knees felt like a pair of disconnected rubber bands, but I waved my hand over my head to keep the griffin’s attention on me and off the girls.

Hoping griffin's didn't understand English, I yelled, "Lilly! Pull the car through the gate!"

Lilly was already scrambling to the front seat. One step ahead of me, as usual.

The griffin advanced towards me, menace in every line of its body.

"Where are the keys?" Lilly shrieked. "Merlot, do you see the keys?!"

I had one moment of frozen, crystalline horror. I didn't have to look. The keys were still clutched in my left hand.

The griffin made an easy leap and landed on top of the gate. The metal groaned and swayed under its weight, but held. And the griffin stared down at me, hunched to spring.

Scrambling backward, I tossed the keys towards the car. I didn't see where they landed. It didn't matter. In seconds, the griffin was going to tear me apart, just like the girl in the auditorium.

It should have leaped already. It was hesitating. Why—

A boom of noise, a gunshot, went off just behind me. The griffin jerked in place, slipping off the top of the gate in an ungainly mess of feathers. Catching itself, it spread its wings in a span longer than the Land Rover was long. It screeched so shrilly I would've clapped my hands over my ears if I weren’t paralyzed with terror.

The gunshot went off again. The griffin staggered before slipping completely from the gate and landing with a thud. A bloodied chunk of flesh as big as a baseball was carved out of its feathery chest.

Lilly yelled... something. It sounded like triumph. But shock and adrenaline made my thoughts skitter without anything to connect with.

I turned.

Just up the driveway stood my cousin, Terry, with my father's bear rifle still up to his shoulder. Beyond him stood a blonde girl my age and a younger boy about ten-years-old.

Terry stepped forward, pumping in a new round and blasting the felled griffin three more times, just in case. Only when it stopped twitching did Terry lower the rifle. He shook his head at me, almost laughing. "Holy cow, cuz. Can I shoot, or can I shoot?"