Page 68 of I Punched an Alien and Now We’re in Couples Therapy

“Proceed to the scanner,” said the stern-faced guard.

I followed her instructions and walked into a large metal tube. There was an outline of a human with their feet spread apart and their arms raised. At the guard’s instruction, I did the same, and to my shock, I felt a pulse of electricity whip through the tube as it closed in a half circle and opened up again. I stumbled back, my tail hitting the wall of the tube. “What was that? What did it just do to me?” I demanded.

“It’s just a scanner,” Blair said impatiently.

“What is it scanning?” I snapped.

“I don’t know man, I never worked for the TSA. Probably just metals and shit so you don’t blow up the airport.”

“They are the ones with the bomb!”

“Look, I don’t have time to explain to you America’s overdependence on security and Big Brother. Just get your crap from the bin and go!”

I stormed to the end of the queue and gathered my armor, quickly pulling it on.

“All right, good, we’re halfway done. Turn to your right and head down the stairs to the train.”

Running down the hall, I descended the moving staircase. A line of humans blocked me halfway down, seemingly content to stand perfectly still and let the stairs’ momentum carry them onward. Impatient, I shoved them down the stairs and leapt over them. “What is a train?”

“On your right side, there’s a bunch of double doors. It looks like the train isn’t there yet, so you probably just missed it. Stand there, and it should be back in about thirty seconds. When it gets there, the doors will open, and all you have to do is step on,” Blair directed.

Seems simple enough.

Or so I thought. The train entered with a roar of the beast accompanied by the screech of something evil and wrong when it stopped. It was a monstrous windowed tube that looked like it belonged to the Biwban rather than the humans. The doors opened, but there was nothing but death on the other side.

I was nowhere near the crash site when the Calamity struck, but all of Dulrock could see when the sky split in half. There was no warning. No way to prepare. A boom and a flash and then the air just burned. I didn’t know mountains could disintegrate. I didn’t know the ground could just simply split and swallow cities. I didn’t—

A man shoved past my shoulder and entered the train as more humans filed into the cramped tube like it was an average occurrence. I moved to step on the train, but the light above the door blinked red.

Red like the streaks in the sky before meteors of death pelted the ground. All of Yorule City died instantly. No mercy for mothers, no children to mourn them. I had seen war, relished in it. That was annihilation; that was the end.

“What happened?” Blair asked. “You completely missed it.”

Ash blanketed everything. Disease came in burning eyes and blackened lungs. Nothing worked, no vaccine, no safe zones.

I cleared my throat. “I’ll get the next one, that one was too full.”

“Ah, yes,” she soothed. “Well, we can’t have His Majesty cramped on the little train when his so-called wife is STRAPPED TO A BOMB!”

“I know,” I snapped. Yet when I heard the train coming again, claws pierced my spine at its loud roar.

“Osid, you good?” Blair asked, her tone gentler.

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” she mused. “Look, I’m sure this might be scary for you if you haven’t seen it before. I promise you it’s gonna be fine. Just step on the train, one hoof after the other. You don’t have to be afraid.”

“I am not afraid, you wicked creature. The last train was simply too full.”

Blair sighed. “Of course it was, my mistake. Tell you what, even if you’re not afraid, humor me a little and close your eyes.”

“What does that have to do with—”

“Just humor me and close them.”

With a deep breath I closed my eyes, trying to drown out the telltale hiss of the train coming to a stop. I couldn’t see the Calamity behind my eyelids, but the screams, gods there was so much screaming.

The air sickness affected the holy oracles the worst. Weeks before the crash, they had flagged a terrible omen on the horizon, but none of them could say for what. I had visited them soon after the announcement, but every last one looked dead-eyed with terror. Even the high seer could do nothing but weep when I pressed her for answers. Three days after the crash, the first oracle fell ill. Hours later, the first holy woman fell from her temple in the sky to splatter her body on the streets below. Then two more, then three, until a rain of bodies caused mass panic. Fists pounded the castle gates. The desperate begged for a cure their king couldn’t provide.