Worlds War One

Prologue

O war, thou son of hell,

Whom angry heavens do make their minister

Throw in the frozen bosoms of our part

Hot coals of vengeance! Let no soldier fly.

He that is truly dedicated to war

Hath no self-love, nor he that loves himself

Hath not essentially but by circumstance

The name of valour.

—King Henry VI, Part Two

Spring Loloma had less than ten minutes left to live. She didn't know it. Most people never do. Everyone lived by the clock, tellers everywhere, but when the time came it was ever a surprise. She even glanced at her phone, the digital numbers on the front showing 11:45. Spring Loloma wouldn't be alive by noon.

She'd wanted to see the world. Her family had thought she was crazy when she'd left. Her sister had warned her she'd get lost and never find her way back home. None of them had ever left the reservation in Coconino County, Arizona. But Spring had never fit in there. She'd been a dreamer in a place where everyone was asleep. Spring had felt like a misfit her whole life. A piece that was a different shape than the world around her. Maybe she'd been born into the wrong place or the wrong family or the wrong body. She'd wondered about a world wider than that contained within the borders of her small hometown. She had wanted to discover the way things really were.

The spirits had spoken to Spring one autumn evening and whispered in the winds blowing across the Southwest plains—it is time. Thus, she'd left. Spring had seen much since—multiple cultures, different lifestyles, myriad faiths, amazing sights. Her Navajo ancestors claimed to be in touch with their spirits, and Spring felt like this journey connected her to some deeper part of the world.

Spring had found her way to China. Eventually. Throughout the last few years, she had been to every corner of the globe. She'd seen things she'd once regarded impossible, and sights more beautiful than anything she'd ever imagined, more amazing things than could fill a thousand social media posts. This was the latest. This would be the last.

Spring sipped a cup of sheng pu-erh at a small table, watching people promenade around Senado Square. It was April, yet the city of Macau was already sweltering. She was surrounded by beautiful buildings and people from countries all over the world. Strange things. Ancient things. Older things than she'd ever seen in all her adventures. She took another sip of tea. It would be the last thing she ever tasted—the flavor would still be on Spring's lips when she took her last breath.

Three minutes left.

She thought about Autumn suddenly. Her sister Autumn had worried about Spring Loloma with every new continent, imaging all sorts of horrors out there in the world. But the scary things in China were no different from the scary things in Coconino County, Arizona or the Congo or the mountains of Chile. One didn't survive by staying home. One didn't survive by never going anywhere. One did not survive by fearing every little thing that could gobble a person up.

Spring didn't survive the next ninety seconds.

She had seen him here the day before. He was a Spaniard. His hair was dark and as long as hers. He had a mustache that twitched when he smiled. His skin reminded Spring of tanned leather and his cotton shirt and pants were as white as the clouds above. Spring had heard him haggle with a local vendor yesterday. His accent was alluring. When he'd noticed her listening, he smiled at her, mustache atwitter. Spring had wanted him to come over, but instead, he'd disappeared into the crowd. Now he was back. He was walking in a trajectory that would intersect exactly with her table.

He was thirty seconds away.

Spring would be dead in twenty-nine.

The last thing Spring Loloma smelled was a rancid stink in the square. Something rotten wafted on the wind. The scent was old—a stench that suggested something ancient. Death filled the air.

The last beautiful sound she heard was a bird singing a song, the melody stopped mid-note. The last taste was the tea still on her lips, bitter and stale. The last good thing she ever felt was a pang of attraction, the spark that sometimes flickered into true love.

Spring Loloma had ten seconds left to live. When she walks out of Senado Square this afternoon, she will be dead.

The screams started along one end of the square and Spring had been conditioned by modern tragedy to think one thing—terrorists. Maybe a truck plowing through the crowd. Or a suicide bomber. Perhaps a lunatic with an automatic weapon outfitted with a silencer. The screams were of fear and finality. Whatever the means, it was terror indeed.

The cries of panic came from the other end of the public area. The screaming spread exponentially, becoming a chorus. East, west, then north, then also to the south. Where to run? Where to hide?

Spring examined her surroundings and dozens of tourists stared back, all with the same terrified expressions. They were paralyzed. None of them knew which way was freedom and which was the greater danger. In a wider circle, people scattered in an orbit, scrambling this way or that, fleeing in random directions. They could be running for their lives or running toward their deaths.

Spring Loloma stood up and gazed at the man who might have been her forever. Then she looked past him, over his head. She wore sky-high heels that amplified her five-foot-nine frame. She could see over the heads of the scattering tourists, and for the first time since puberty, she wished she was short and fat instead. At the fringes of as far as she could see, the crowd stopped. Men and women who had been racing toward escape—pulling elderly, carrying children, paired with a loved one—they all stopped dead in their tracks. They stopped and stood, backs facing Spring and the man of her dreams. She would never know his name.

It happened the same in a circle around her, at the edges of the stampeding herd of people. The effect was moving inward at an impossible speed. The screams tapered off like someone was turning down the volume dial on a shrieking radio. Ticktock. Her last breath. Last blink. Last heartbeat. Last second. She stared at the man who might have been her everything, and then there was nothing. He was the last thing she ever saw.

Spring Loloma died on her feet.

She stood there.

Spring didn't move for another minute.

Fear and chaos became order and peace, calm spreading out across the crowd. The people who've been desperate for escape suddenly stood still. The effect raced through the group, infecting thousands in a matter of moments. The crowd, every one of them, became still as statues.

Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. All standing, unmoving, not breathing or blinking or hearts beating. Soundless and motionless. Like a scene put on pause.

Then, as one, the whole crowd, from different countries and continents, various ethnicities and religions, all the colors and flavors of the world, turned. The parade of the dead marched forward, Spring in step with the rest, a member of a new strain of sentience. Indeed, there was more to the vast and unending wider world than Spring Loloma would ever see. Her eyes will gaze on many, many more amazing things, but Spring Loloma would not see. Spring was gone. Her spirit had departed. But her body was not done.