Bloodless

65

Commander Alanna Delaplane stood at the southern end of Forsyth Park, flanked by two lieutenants, observing the rally. So far it had gone off without a hitch. She could see the senator on his platform, high above the crowd, his voice booming out from the speaker towers. Behind him were two gigantic screens displaying and amplifying his speech as he stabbed the air with his finger and pumped his fist, the crowd roaring its approval and waving placards and flags.

Delaplane privately believed Drayton was a first-class jackass, one of those politicians who gave a lot of lip service to supporting law enforcement but, in fact, was always first to cut funding. But she’d never breathe a word of her personal views to her colleagues. Nobody knew her politics and that was just fine with her.

The protesters the senator had been worried about turned out to be half a dozen dispirited young people waving signs and shouting, unable to make their voices heard over the boom of the speakers and the roars of the crowd. She wondered how a guy like Drayton could generate a turnout this big and enthusiastic. There was something about him a certain type of person loved, it seemed. She just couldn’t see it.

Her radio hissed, then emitted a screech, followed by a torrent of unintelligible shouting.

“Officer,” she said, “take a deep breath and identify yourself.”

“Officer Warner, ten thirty-three! Got a... flying... a crazy thing flying... attacking... What the—?”

There was so much background noise the words disappeared into the roar. “What is the nature of your situation?” Delaplane yelled. The officer had sounded incoherent, panic-stricken.

There was a burst of static, and then the transmission was cut off.

Now the radios of all the cops around her were suddenly abuzz with hysterical chatter. As she tried to get through the jammed emergency frequency, she heard sirens to the east. And something else: a chorus of car alarms and faint screams.

She pressed transmit. “Dispatch, dispatch, Delaplane here. What’s going on?”

“Avondale, east Savannah, multiple reports of assaults. Something, uh, flying, assaulting people.”

“What are you talking about?”

As the dispatcher spoke — and none of it made any sense — Delaplane could hear a sound in the air, a clamor rolling in from the disturbance to the east and rapidly getting louder. She turned and looked over the tops of the oaks lining Drayton Street. Now she could see an orange light in the sky, and a rising column of smoke — a fire.

She focused on her radio, but the dispatcher was making no sense, just broadcasting a 10–33 over and over. The officers around her seemed uncertain what to do, looking to her for direction.

Delaplane rounded on them. “Okay, you heard it. We got a situation in east Savannah. Something big, a ten thirty-three, all officers respond. Now. Let’s—”

Drayton’s voice faltered midholler. The crowd stirred, suddenly silent, uneasy. The eastern sky was reddening fast and the night was now filling with the sounds of car alarms and sirens. The booming voice from the speakers stopped and she glanced over at the stage. Drayton was staring eastward, mouth agape. And then she saw what he was staring at: a dark shape, backlit by the reddish sky, flapping its wings slowly, almost lazily, as it approached. She stood transfixed as her mind tried to make sense of it. A bird of prey? No: it was too large, too far away. Some sort of flying contraption? It was dark and yet shimmery at the same time. It glided over the tops of the buildings, which seemed to reflect off its underside. Christ, it was the size of a small plane.

The deep silence that had fallen over the crowd was cut by a single thin scream — and then all hell broke loose. The massive shape came straight for the gathering, gliding in as if attracted by the noise, light, and multitude. It passed over the stage, abruptly illuminated from below by the floodlights. Now she could see it in detail, but that was of little help: it was like nothing she’d ever seen in her life. A mosquito head with huge bug eyes and an oily feeding tube was affixed to a monstrous, batlike body the color of liver. The wings were webbed with engorged blood vessels, and from its belly hung two rows of hairy, withered dugs. After passing over the stage, it banked and came back around, pumping its wings with a sound like tearing silk, gliding in low, each thrust sending a wash of foul, humid air over the terrified, stampeding crowd. Delaplane saw the greasy proboscis thrusting out, like a dog’s nose scenting the air, the compound eyes swiveling this way and that.

In a flash, the gathering had been transformed into a pandemonium beyond all belief. The thousands of rallygoers ran from the platform like a massive wave, with an inchoate roar of terror, scrambling every which way, falling and being trampled, chairs clattering and overturning, shoes coming loose, people clawing up the backs of others as they tried to escape — and on the stage, high above, was Drayton, his face on the giant screens slack-jawed, jowls quivering, as the creature swooped in. Delaplane saw a flash of savage talons close like a steel trap around Drayton’s torso, and then he was yanked upward, the creature rising into the air with a beating of its leathery wings, with Drayton twisting and writhing like a fish torn from the water by an eagle, a single shrill scream echoing down from above.

The senator’s security detail — the few who hadn’t fled — pulled their weapons and, crouching on the stage, opened fire on the thing as it rose. Delaplane pulled her own Glock, the cops around her following suit, but the thing was beating upward and out of range — and she held her fire; the chances of hitting the senator were too great. Besides, it seemed the barrage of gunfire from the others wasn’t hurting it, just making it mad. As she watched, it reared its mosquito head back and plunged the sharp end of its dripping, tube-shaped labrum into the senator’s body. Drayton’s keening voice was abruptly silenced — followed immediately by the wet, gurgling sound of a thick milkshake being sucked up with a straw.

She pulled her radio again. “Commander Delaplane, in Forsyth Park. We need SWAT, we need National Guard, we need heavy weapons, we need full mobilization. Now! Now!”

And just at that moment, the panicked, mindless crowd reached the police staging position, surging over them like a human tsunami, and Delaplane felt the glancing impact of a burly man with a shaved head, and she staggered backward as the crowd streamed by.