Untaken by J.E. Anckorn Read Free Book Online Page B

and leaves skittered past my legs, stinging my ankles, and the chalkboard with the week’s special flavors written on it fell over with a
bang
.
    I turned to go, but before I made it three steps, a flock of napkins fluttered up off one of the little cast iron tables, right into my face.
    “Whoops, sorry.” The woman sitting there made a grab for them, her oversized sunglasses flashing my own reflection back at me.
    “So much for ice-cream, huh?”
    She had a little white dog on a leash and as the wind blew harder, the pup started to yip and whimper.
    “Hush up, Tootsie,” she scolded.
    Other dogs barked too, howling in backyards all around the neighborhood. The sound made me uneasy, like cold fingers trailed up and down my spine. I’d heard of dogs barking all together before an earthquake, but not because of a bit of wind.
    “Tootsie!” The little dog flashed past me, claws skittering on the pavement, tail tucked between its legs, its leash flying out behind it. The woman’s chair toppled to the ground as she ran after her dog. She scooped Tootsie up just before it ran into the busy traffic of Comm Ave. The little dog struggled and snarled in her arms. “Tootsie, what the hell!”
    The wind threw my hair into my face, so I pushed it back and squinted at the sky, expecting to see a bank of summer thunderheads rolling in, but.…
    I swallowed. My knees became weak.
    Above me, the Silver Ships were
moving
. Four of them gathered far above us, like sharks circling their prey. Their vast silver bellies flashed in the sunlight. They hung there for a minute, and then, all at once, they plummeted. My breath caught in my throat like my lungs had shrunk to nothing. I wanted to scream out a warning, but my mouth flapped helplessly.
    I’m dreaming. I fell asleep on the porch after all, and now I’m going to wake up
. At first, the ships made no noise at all, then a terrible high-pitched screaming, that made all the hair on my arms stand up—something I’d always thought only happened in stories.
    I was screaming, too, but my voice was lost in the roar of the ships. My hair whipped into my mouth and I spat it out, choking. A car alarm began bleating to my left, and then that too was swallowed by the noise of otherworldly engines shifting up to killing speed. The storm had begun a hurricane and the thunderous din made my brain rattle in my skull. I wanted to run, but my legs felt like two strips of rubber. All I could do was stand frozen to the spot as the wind shoved me back and forth, my eyes streaming from the downdraft.
    The silvery hull of the nearest ship grew and grew until the blue summer sky vanished behind the monstrous hulk, and still it kept coming. The summer day had grown dark as twilight, and the pavement beneath my scuffed sneakers shivered.
    Someone hit my shoulder, almost knocking me off my feet. People poured out of the store, their eyes wide, their mouths shaping screams I couldn’t hear. One of the shop girls ran smack into the old guy, sending him flying to the ground. She didn’t stop to help him up, just trampled over him like he wasn’t there.
    Across the street, the window of the Italian Place shattered into glittering shards, the noise lost in the maelstrom.
    The wind shoved me again, stronger than before, a hot wind, with a weird smell like burnt sugar that made me gag. I stumbled, and just like that, whatever spell had frozen my feet in place seemed to be broken. I ran, half-blinded by my tangled hair, and half-mad from the crushing wall of sound and terror. I skirted a dogwood tree that had been ripped from the earth, black roots clawing at the sky like frantic hands. A pair of cop cars flew by me through the junction, the flashing lights sending me momentarily blind.
Don’t look up, don’t look up
, I told myself frantically. My sneakers crunched and slid on broken glass, my chest felt like it was stuffed with cotton. The world appeared in snatches of color and sound through the silvery