Toys

Chapter 108

Lucy and I ran onto the main lawn, where the action was taking place. And there he was-Hughes Jacklin himself, head of the Elite nation.

He was wearing a dark suit and couldn’t have been more serious or impressive. “My fellow Elites! I welcome you here to celebrate this wondrous and important day!” His amplified voice boomed across the concourse as he addressed the expectant, bloodthirsty crowd.

Lucy and I quickly threaded our way through the outskirts of the Elite throng. Jacklin was flanked by soldiers and other top government officials, just as he had been for his inauguration. But clearly this was an even bigger day for him, and for the Elites.

“As the sun rises on this glorious morning, so dawns a new era,” Hughes Jacklin orated, sweeping his hand toward the brightening eastern horizon. “The human strain, this menace that has hovered over the earth for millennia, is about to end. They will be extinct, relegated to the same fate as Neanderthals and other evolutionary missteps that came before them. This is a good thing, a very good thing.”

The crowd erupted with sickening cheers. Some of them might have heard rumors, but the president’s words, in this solemn and important speech, meant that the holocaust was actually happening-extinction was happening. The shouts and applause grew louder, and the historic significance of the day was lost on no one.

Jacklin stood there, basking in Elite approval and adulation. For me, he brought to mind several important historical figures-Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Idi Amin. Clearly, Elites weren’t proving to be much better students of history than humans had ever been.

But then he paused, squinting up at a thick, dark cloud of human transports, old-fashioned warplanes approaching from the west. They had become visible as the night sky paled into daylight-and now were encroaching over the city limits. Another historic scene flashed into my mind-the Battle of Britain.

The crowd kept applauding louder and louder. Apparently they thought this was some kind of air show to celebrate the supreme might of the Elite empire and this special day. They couldn’t imagine that humans might actually be, dare I say it, fighting back.

But Jacklin was rattled. He cried out, “What the hell is going on? I didn’t order this!”

It was everything the resistance had-all in this one push. We had managed the element of surprise, but if Jacklin got away and reconnected with his military command…

The surpise clearly wasn’t complete. Elite jets, faster and better armed, were already streaking in from nearby bases, blasting away at their human-piloted targets. But we had the numbers, and soon the Elite planes started to go down.

Next, the air blackened with thousands of parachutes as resistance troops-humans-descended to take back the city. Suddenly, Elites in the crowd started to disperse, stampeding out from the lawn. This was clearly not on the program.

“Kill the head!” Lucy leaned in close. “Focus, Hays!”

With an earsplitting screeeeee! a fireball flew over the president’s head, twisting and slashing like a giant whirling knife. It exploded into the mansion’s elegant facade, bursting the front windows into splinters and bringing down an entire wall.

“Didn’t order that either, did you-you sonofabitch!” Lucy yelled at Hughes Jacklin as she continued to rush the stage. But there were still plenty of Elite soldiers surrounding him and the other VIPs up on the dais. The bodyguards gathered around their twisted leaders, herding them to safety.

“Dead or alive,” Lucy screamed, “we have to do our part! We can’t let him out of here!”