I Am Number Four

I stand, the glowing knife still in my hand. The soldier pulls some sort of lever on the side of the ca

My knife strikes first.

The world vanishes. The shadows fade and the cold and the dark return as though they had never left. A vertiginous transition. I take a step backwards and fall. My eyes adjust to the dearth of light. I fix them on the dark figure of the soldier hovering over me. The ca

Something about being in the alternate realm has weakened me. I place my hand on a nearby tree to steady myself and catch my breath, only the tree is no longer there. I look around. All the trees surrounding us have collapsed into heaps of ash just as they did in the other realm, just as the Mogadorians do when they die.

I hear the roar of the beast and I look up to see how much of the school is left standing. But instead of the school there is something else, fifteen feet away, standing tall with a sword in one hand and a similar-looking ca

There is nothing I can throw, and the gap between us is too great to charge before it fires. And then its arm twitches and the sound of a gunshot rings through the air. My body instinctively jerks, expecting the ca

"That's for my dad," I hear behind me. I turn. Sam, holding a silver pistol in his right hand. I smile at him. He lowers the gun. "They passed right through the center of town," he says. "I knew it was them as soon as I saw the trailer."

I try to catch my breath, staring in awe at Sam's figure. Just moments before, in the first soldier's blast, he was a decaying corpse sprung from hell to take me away. And now he just saved me.

"You okay?" he asks.

I nod. "Where did you just come from?"

"I followed them in my dad's truck after they passed my house. I pulled in fifteen minutes ago and got swarmed by the ones that were already here. So I left and parked in a field a mile away and walked through the woods."

The second set of lights we had seen from the window of the school came from Sam's truck. I open my mouth to respond but a clap of thunder shakes the sky. Another storm begins to brew, and relief courses through me that Six is still alive. A bolt of lightning cuts the sky and clouds begin rushing in from all directions, being pulled together into one giant mass. An even greater darkness falls, followed by a rain so heavy that I have to squint to see Sam five feet away from me. The school is blotted out. But then a great bolt of lightning strikes and everything brightens for a split second, and I see that the beast has been hit. An agonizing roar follows.

"I have to get to the school!" I yell. "Mark and Sarah are somewhere inside."

"If you're going, then I'm going," he yells back over the rumble of the storm.

We take no more than five steps before the wind comes howling, pushing us back, torrential rain stinging our faces. We're soaked, shivering and cold. But if I'm shivering then I know I'm alive. Sam drops to a knee, then lies on his stomach to keep from being blown backwards. I do the same. Through squinted eyes I look into the clouds-heavy, dark, ominous-swirling in small concentric circles and, in the center, the center I'm trying mightily to reach, a face begins to form.

It's an old, weathered face, bearded, tranquil looking as though it sleeps. A face that looks older than Earth itself. The clouds begin to lower, slowly nearing the surface and consuming everything, everything darkening, a dark so deep and impenetrable that it's hard to imagine that somewhere, anywhere, a sun still exists. Another roar, a roar of anger and doom. I try to stand but am quickly knocked back down, the wind too great. The face. It's coming alive. An awakening. The eyes opening, the face upturned into a grimace. Is this Six's creation? The face becomes the look of rage itself, a look of revenge. Coming down fast. Everything seems to hang in the balance. And then the mouth opens, hungry, its lips curling to show teeth and its eyes squinted in what can only be described as pure malice. A complete and utter wrath.

And then the face touches down and a sonic blast shakes the ground, an explosion reaching out over the school, everything illuminated in red, orange, and yellow. I'm thrust backwards. Trees break in half. The ground rumbles. I land with a thud, branches and mud falling atop me. My ears ring as they've never rung before. A boom so loud that it must have been heard fifty miles away. And then the rain stops, and everything falls silent.

I lie in the mud, listening to the beat of my heart. The clouds clear away, revealing a hanging moon. Not a single gust of wind. I look around but don't see Sam. I yell for him but get no response. I yearn to hear something, anything, another roar, Henri's shotgun, but there is nothing.

I pull myself up off the forest floor, wipe away the mud and the twigs as best as I can. I exit the woods for the second time. The stars have reappeared, a million of them twinkling high in the night sky. Is it over? Have we won? Or is it just a lull in the action? The school, I think. I have to get to the school. I take one step forward, and that's when I hear it.

Another roar, coming from within the woods behind me.

Sound returns. Three successive gunshots ring through the night, echoing so that I have no idea from which direction they have come. I hope with everything inside of me that they are from Henri's shotgun, that he is still alive, still fighting.

The ground begins to shake. The beast is on the run, coming for me, no mistaking it now, trees broken and uprooted behind me. They don't seem to slow it down at all. Is this one even bigger than the other? I don't care to find out. I take off ru

Everything returns to the way it was before the storm, the shadows following, looming. Scouts. Soldiers. I veer to the right and sprint along the tree-lined path that leads to the football field, the beast hot on my trail. Can I really expect to outrun it? If I can make it to the woods beyond the field, maybe I can. I know those woods, the woods that lead to our house. Within them I'll have the home-field advantage. I look around and see the figures of the Mogadorians in the schoolyard. There are too many of them. We're greatly outnumbered. Did we ever really believe we could win?

A dagger flies by me, a flash of red missing my face by mere inches. It sticks into the trunk of a tree beside me and the tree ignites in flame. Another roar. The beast is keeping pace. Which of us has the greater endurance? I enter the stadium, sprint straight across the fifty-yard line and pass through the visiting team's side. Another knife whizzes by, a blue one this time. The woods are near, and when I finally sprint into them a smile forms on my face. I've led it away from the others. If everyone else is safe then I've done my job. Just when a sense of triumph blooms within me, the third dagger strikes.