55. Less Than an Hour to Live

Less Than an Hour to Live

“Little Lin? Is that really you?”

The moment I landed, I was surrounded by people.

And this was exactly why I had never considered coming to the trailer park earlier: awful neighbors.

“Yes, Grandma Zhao,” I said to the wrinkled, squat, fully armed old woman climbing out of a half-destroyed trailer. “It’s really me.”

I stopped just beyond her reach.

Not because I was especially worried about the rusty shotgun roughly aimed in my direction, but because Old Zhao was a very physical person…

And her breath often smelled like stinky tofu.

“Oh, look at you. All grown up!” she said softly, craning her neck to look at me.

I could not help shrinking back a little.

“And now you’re a superhero too!”

“…What superhero?” I asked, bracing myself for whatever answer the white-haired old woman would give.

“Why, the great hero saving our city from those monsters!” she shouted, gesturing wildly.

It was a miracle her shotgun did not go off in someone’s face.

Then again, judging by the gun’s battered condition, maybe it had already jammed.

“We were done for, surrounded by those damn things, and then you flew down from the sky and beat the stuffing out of them!”

“I did not beat the stuffing out of those undead,” I denied amid her enthusiastic retelling.

Mostly because boxing, like every other sport, was a terrible way to fight actual enemies.

Then I realized what Mrs. Zhao had just said and asked, “Wait. How did you see me fly down?”

Because I had not actually flown down. With my new teleportation-like abilities, I no longer needed to cross the intervening distance.

“I saw it on the television,” the old woman whispered, as if revealing a great secret.

“That old television is useful, isn’t it?”

For her, perhaps it was.

For the rest of us, with the city power grid damaged, electrical appliances did not function properly, not to mention the way magic interfered with most signals.

Or maybe Grandma Zhao was just high.

With her, it was impossible to tell.

“…So I told the others you’d come. I did. Told them you’d come save us all!”

“I see…”

Well, Liya had sent me here specifically to save people from monsters.

“How many of you are here?”

“So many!” she answered with a laugh. I forced myself not to frown and glanced around at the smoky, muddy, ash-choked surroundings.

If she kept shouting like that, she was going to draw every monster nearby.

“My children, and my nephew’s family, Old Chen and his five cousins, Old Zhou and the little kids from her daycare…”

It was clearly a long list.

As we passed slagged trailers, ash-covered lots, and the occasional crater, the old woman recited nearly everyone on it.

Most of the people she mentioned had already left, or tried to flee and been blown up, or vanished one or two at a time each night, or gained combat abilities and joined the resistance.

According to the old woman, at least, many people still remained in the trailer park.

My enhanced senses detected no one.

In fact, aside from fires and ruins, the only things my senses could perceive were multiple strange cold spots following us.

“Grandma Zhao, are you sure this is the way?” I finally interrupted her rambling as we approached the largest abandoned lot so far. “I don’t see anyone around us.”

“Oh, if you could see them, the enemy would’ve killed them already, wouldn’t they?” she cackled smugly. Then she lifted her shotgun and tapped what looked like empty air.

“You have to be sharper, dear, and a little more open-minded. Really, young people these days.”

As she spoke, the whole lot seemed to ripple.

When my sight cleared again, the ripple had affected my enhanced senses too, and the empty lot was no longer empty.

A black-haired woman a few years older than me stood beside an ancient television with a bulky cathode-ray tube screen, the sort that had stopped being made before I was born.

More than thirty children under ten stared at the screen, absorbed in the bright colors and rapid action of a nineties superhero cartoon. They seemed entirely untroubled by the desolation around them or by the worried, loving looks the black-haired woman kept throwing their way.

Farther into the lot, a dozen little camp kitchens had been set up between two heavy old barbecue grills. Several men and women more than three times my age were busy throwing together a quick, rough meal—with the emphasis on rough.

Others had gathered around an ancient-looking board game, as absorbed in it as the children were in the old television.

In all, nearly a hundred people and about fifty pets were gathered in an open space behind a magical barrier so seamless that even after I was allowed through it, my senses could barely detect its existence.

“Ye Lin,” the only person close to my age greeted me coolly, most of her attention still on the children and the flickering old television.

Looking more carefully now, I realized the television was not actually working.

It was not plugged in. No electricity moved through it at all. Yet the old cartoon still played across the screen.

Superpowers were at work.

“Hello,” I greeted the older girl.

Her round face twisted with distaste.

Back when we were both still in middle school, she had been an aspiring socialite, and I had been the little brat who refused to show weakness to anyone.

After she entered high school, we had not seen each other again. I had not even remembered her family name.

“This illusion is yours, I’m guessing?”

“Yes,” she answered sharply. “We had to hide here. Stay safe by staying hidden.”

Her dark brown eyes pinned me like nails. “The resistance finally sent someone to save us.”

“The resistance?”

“I call it like I see it,” she shot back.

“What kind of world is this, where an entire city has to rely on a ten-year-old child?” She glanced again at the oblivious children, her hands tightening at her sides.

“I’m pretty sure Liya is seven.”

Though if my suspicions were correct, I had no idea by how many times that “seven” needed to be multiplied.

“Are you ready to evacuate?”

“No, but that doesn’t matter anymore.” She sighed, then sat in a chair that had not existed a moment before.

At least, according to my senses, the chair still did not exist.

“Without help, we’ll all be dead within an hour,” she added, looking away from the children toward the direction where Grandma Zhao was wisely kicking the asses of the board-game players and making them start packing.

“That is… a suspiciously specific estimate,” I said, scanning the area as more and more cold spots approached.

“It’s not an estimate,” she replied.

The air warped.

The children, the television, and everything else vanished behind another illusion.

An instant later, the nearest cold spot became a translucent, ghostly person trying to stab me in the back.