We were inside for only a minute or so before a sound like thunder began to roll continuously. It was fucking loud too.
“What the heck is that?” April asked, and we shared a look. Then, abruptly, we both realised what was happening.
Charles was using the massive sheet of metal and the hammer to make massive amounts of noise. He was trying to stun the crowd back into placidity.
“Sounds like the bird that dragged the blizzard over us,” April muttered, inching towards the door.
She wasn't wrong. The bird had been making a noise close to real thunder as it flew over. Charles’ hammer and sheet metal trick was doing a good impression of it.
We'd both inched towards the door as the sound continued, and I gestured towards the door. “I kinda want to peek. Do you want to peek?”
I’d already made the decision not to jump in and help as Silver, but if things got really bad, I could… I don’t know, step in somehow. I needed to see what was happening, though.
The thunderous cacophony came to a stop, giving our curiosity the final push it needed. April nodded, and we cracked the door slightly to peer out. Cold air wisped in, and I winced. We’d been inside with the door closed for barely a minute or two, so why had all my tolerance vanished?
Beyond the door, out in the cold night, Charles was yelling at the crowd while waving his hammer around. The sharp howl of the wind snatched away his words, but I could get the gist of it. He was telling everyone to stop being idiots and that they needed to calm down before their herd-mentality fear killed us all.
God, there were so many red, angry faces staring back at Charles, the Captain, and Sean. I could see many were starting to feel the cold. I would too, if I was standing out there in summer clothing with the blizzard picking up again. Even with just a crack in the door to peer through, the chill was beginning to really bite. I shoved my hands into my pockets and kept watching while the three men tried to talk the crowd down further.
Their anger was terrifying. It’d been pointed at April and me for a minute there, and seeing all those eyes filled with fury… I shuddered. What would’ve happened if they tried to attack me and April instead? The woman with her medication had a point, depending on what it was she was taking. I was pretty sure some people were probably already sick because they hadn’t had a dose of whatever drug was keeping them healthy.
“She kinda had a point, the medication woman,” April murmured, glancing at me. “Like, depending on the medication, people could die, you know? Insulin, for example. Shit… how are we going to get more? That stuff only lasts so long, and…”
She trailed off, and my gut squirmed as she left the rest unsaid. “Our healers might… I mean, if they level up enough, maybe they’ll have a way to deal with that problem?”
“I fucking hope so,” April said, taking a deep, anxious breath. “I have a friend — different city, but… if she lived through the first day, she’ll be running into that problem pretty soon.”
I gave April a sad smile. We both knew the odds that her friend was still alive. Outside, there was a loud bang, and I turned back to the scene, heart pounding.
Over at the L building, a man in an EMT uniform was hurrying away from a door that was now flapping in the wind, slamming against the side of the building. He didn’t seem to care that he’d left it open, though, and with good reason.
The whole time the argument with the crowd had been raging, Mr Wilcolm, the widower, had been on the ground, motionless. He didn’t look like he was in good shape, but his chest was moving slightly, so he was alive, at least for now. A few people from the crowd were trying to keep him that way, but it was obvious they didn’t know what they were doing.
The EMT barely made it four steps before the cold got to him. He stumbled for a second, breath visible in the air as he looked towards the crowd, scanning for Mr Wilcolm. Was it getting worse? There were more snowflakes coming down again now, and a few were actually catching and sitting on the ground — not melting.
“Thank god,” April said, sighing with relief. “That dude has just been laying there…” She turned to look at me and whispered. “Don’t you have a healing ability?”
“Only as… her,” I replied defensively. “I’d have to transform.”
I saw her thoughts race through the same conflicted logic that I had a few minutes ago. With a grimace, she nodded. “Okay, I get it.”
Outside, the EMT’s gaze landed on the gravely injured man, and he launched into a sprint, worry creasing his face. Some of the crowd moved out of the way when he arrived, while he just shoved others out of the way. Resting a hand gently on the widower’s forehead, the EMT closed his eyes, and a moment later, a dull grey and green glow pulsed into the unconscious man. He twitched, but didn’t wake. Even from inside the workshop, with the wind plucking at sounds like a pickpocket, we heard the “fuck” that the EMT blurted.
Abruptly, the wind faltered, and we were left hanging in an odd, eerie quiet. The argument between the crowd, Charles, and the firefighters suddenly became audible again.
“Okay, Mrs Kellan, okay! We’ll put together a team to get the medication, I promise. I just need patience, okay? We only have so many people, and I cannot stress this enough, it is dangerous out there. We haven’t lost any fighters yet, but we have an entire classroom of wounded, just from the supply runs today. I’m not trying to frighten you, I’m being realistic — if you go on your own, you will die.”
A woman stepped forward and pointed at the squad leader who was looking visibly ill while he stared at the EMT as he stabilised Mr Wilcolm so that he could be moved. “Patience, Carter? Do you know what happens when I go cold turkey with these—”
Charles, who’d been watching the exchange, suddenly exploded. “Are you fools not listening to the man? He’s not trying to make you quit your damned drugs, woman! He’s trying to get them, but it’s dangerous out there — the real world, not la-la land. You want your pills? Shut up and let the Captain do his job.”
I saw Mrs Kellan gear up to throw more anger at Charles, but she staggered, as did everyone else who was outside.
Until that point, the air had been uncomfortably cold — biting, but you could grit your teeth and deal with it. That changed. The temperature dropped. It turned everyone’s breath from a slight mist, to billowing clouds, and almost in the same moment, everyone shuddered.
Charles was the one to say what everyone was thinking. “What the fuck—”
The wind hit like a hammer. People stumbled, the EMT fell forward over his charge, and even though we could see their mouths moving — screaming, no sound reached April or me at the door to the workshop. It was just howling.
A second after the wind, the hail arrived, hammering down like a volley of arrows. The crowd quivered, then broke, rushing for the shelter of the gymnasium. Chaos erupted at the door as too many people tried to fit through. Meanwhile, the EMT and three other men were wrestling to get the unconscious widower through a different door.
My attention shifted away from the human carnage, though. The trees were swaying wildly, whipped into a frenzy by the wind.
It was coming from the wrong direction — such an unimportant detail, except that the storm wasn’t natural. This one was trailing around after a bird the size of a passenger jet. So, if the storm was coming back, then so was the bird.
I bolted out of the workshop before I realised why, and used my hand to block as much of the hail as I could. It was, honestly, useless. Everywhere that I had exposed skin was peppered with cold, stinging bites. I caught up to Charles as he wrestled with the sheet of steel. He’d rolled it up, but even then it was threatening to fly out of his hands. He tried to say something to me, but the wind shredded his words and threw them out into the night.
April appeared beside us, and she grabbed the roll of sheet metal, pulled it from Charles’ grasp, and dashed for the now empty doorway. The old man and I were right behind her, and we stumbled through and into the gym, gasping for breath.
“Captain, Captain!” I called, gasping.
“What?” he asked, giving me a harried look. The crowd was eying him again, although everyone looked miserable after getting pelted with hail. The gym was packed with people though, so if things flared up again they had a lot of potential backup.
“The wind! The hail isn’t coming from the same direction it was an hour ago,” I said, gesturing towards the door. Sean was desperately trying to get it closed.
“So?” The Captain did not look like a man willing to deal with a random kid talking about the weather.
I gestured wildly back towards blizzard again. “Am I the only one who still remembers the giant fucking bird that was leading the storm around? It blew up the gas station! Now it’s suddenly turned around? Do I have to spell it out?”
I didn’t actually blame them for putting it out of their minds. It was a testament to how hectic things were that a massive bird flying over was something that was a relative footnote in the day’s events.
The Captain’s face drained of colour. “What are you saying? That we fight it? There’s no way…”
“No, I’m saying we hide and wait until it gets bored,” I explained, practically begging him to understand the potential magnitude of the situation. “We get everyone inside and we pretend nobody is home.”
“It already knows we’re here,” Sean said from where he was leaning, panting against the door. “I saw its shadow up in the clouds when I was getting the door closed.”
As if to punctuate his point, there was a massive screaming boom of thunder. The whole building shuddered.
“You. Go to the front and get everyone inside, if they aren’t already,” the Captain barked, pointing to a few people who looked like they had combat classes. “Doesn’t matter if it’s seen us.”
The people he’d given orders to hurried deeper into the building. I could hear that a door or a window was open somewhere, because it was slamming repeatedly.
The door beside Sean began to whistle. It had a gap somewhere, and with the interior entrance to the gym open, frigid air was forcing its way inside. I shuddered and pulled my jacket closer to myself.
“Close the door!” someone called, and a moment later, there was a final, louder slam as the gym was sealed again. The whistling stopped… mostly. You could still hear it though, very faintly.
A dozen or so heartbeats later, people’s breath became visible. The temperature was dropping with terrifying speed. The silence after the door closed was eerie, and it made it easier to hear when teeth started to chatter.
“The hail stopped,” April said abruptly, looking up.
She was right. The wind was still thrashing the building, but the noise of the hail hitting the roof was gone.
“Does that mean the bird is gone?” someone asked into the silence.
“I fucking hope so. Did you see it when it flew over earlier? It looked like the size of an airplane,” another voice replied.
There was a murmur of agreement from everyone nearby.
Fuck, but it was cold. I could feel it seeping into my bones. My jacket was warm, but not that warm.
A gruff throat clearing from beside April and me caused a momentary spike of alarm to shoot through me, but I calmed when I realised it was just Charles.
“You two kids okay?” he asked in a low voice.
We nodded together, then April laughed softly.“Cold as fuck, but yeah. Did you see what we managed to do?”
He grunted, and a smile curled his lip. “I saw a bunch of metal bars. They your handiwork?”
“Hell yeah, they are,” April said, offering me a fist bump. I accepted.
“April used her new metalworking magic to melt the squiron,” I told him, feeling an echo of our excitement over the achievement.
Charles’ eyebrows rose. “Really? That’s… in that dinky little forge? Had to have been magic.”
“First you want us to die without our medication, now you want us to freeze to death?”
The sudden shout made me realise that over near the Captain, a low angry murmur had been rising again. Oh no. This was really not the time for more yelling.
“Come on Carter. The houses nearby are full of stuff,” someone interjected. “If we form teams with a few protectors and a group of non-combatants, we could quickly grab anything useful. I’d rather take my chances with the giant bird than freeze my balls off tonight.”
“Yeah!” Someone else from inside the crowd called, pleading. “We can help! Just let us help…”
The Captain wore a deep frown, but when he glanced towards Sean for support, the other firefighter simply shrugged. “You trained for winter conditions just like I did, boss. You know what’ll happen if the blizzard sticks around and we don’t get these people warm.”
“Shit,” the Captain muttered. Then he turned and looked at the crowd. “Alright, here’s the deal. We’re going to go round up all the fighters we can find. We’ll split into groups, two fighters for every ten non-combatants. We’ll go out into the nearby houses, no further than one block from the school, and we’ll take everything that can keep us warm, and any food we find. After one hour, everyone comes back — no exceptions.”
There was a low cheer from the crowd, and people began to split off, opening the interior door again — probably to find all the combat classers.
Turning to Sean, the Captain said, “Get them organised. I’ll join you in a moment.”
Then, his gaze fell on April and me. “April. Kai. Word is you two can contact Silver. I don’t know where she ran off to, but it’s time she stopped messing around and based herself in the school.”
Oh shit. This wasn’t good. If I got forced to stick around here as Silver, it would make keeping my identity a secret way harder.
“I… um…” April stammered, glancing in my direction for a moment. I stared helplessly back, giving her a shrug with only my eyes.
The Captain sighed. “Please?”
April squared her shoulders and raised an eyebrow. “Sure, Captain. Let me just pull my phone out and give her a call. Come on, dude.”
He grunted, then stomped a foot in frustration. “Damn. We could really use her knowledge right now. If you somehow see her in this mess, tell her to come find me.”
“I mean, I can but you don’t actually control her, you know that right?” April said, placing a hand on her hip.
“Oh, I am well aware of how far my authority goes,” he said darkly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Shaking his head, he threw a hand out in the vague direction of the door. “It means that, legally, I can only do so much.”
“I mean, it’s really good that you’re sticking to the law, but…” April said, trailing off as we all filled in the blanks. “Speaking of, we can make you proper monster-killing tools now. Do you still want axes?”
He nodded without any real enthusiasm. “Axes are good, it’s what we trained on.”
“Alright, we’ll dash back over to the workshop and get to it…” April said, clapping a hand down on my shoulder. Maybe I was imagining it, but the warmth of her beside me made a primal part of my brain want to step closer. It was distractingly cold now.
Oh. The forge. It would be nice and warm — assuming we could get it a little more shelter. It was under an awning, but a roof would only keep the snow off us, not shelter us from the cold.
The Captain was already leaving when he absently waved goodbye. I barely paid him any attention. Axes, huh? That was just offense, though. We needed to keep our people from getting hurt, too. Proper armour was going to be a pain in the butt to make, though. What could we do instead? What was something fast, something easy?
I slapped my fist down into my palm. “Shields!”