Flew

By Pamela Love

Hearing anything over that wind’s howl is impossible. So maybe I’m not hearing anything. Maybe I’m imagining… something. I’m sure I’m not dreaming. Must check.

Cold floor. Even through my slipper socks, I shiver. As I tiptoe to the window, I keep a hand on the IV stand, steadying it on its squeaky path. I hope it’s not loud enough to wake my sister, curled up next to her teddy bear.

My other hand touches the shade. Yes, I can definitely hear them. Twitching the slats apart, I try to see—

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I smile, even though I feel sick to my stomach. I smile, even though she can’t see it with the lights out. I smile as I whisper the biggest lie I’ve ever told in the twelve years I’ve been alive. It might be the biggest lie anyone’s ever told. Millions, maybe billions of things are wrong. But I’m not telling my six-year-old sister that now. Maybe I’ll never have to.

“You were talking in your sleep. Did you have a nightmare?”

“Yes.” No. Lie number two.

“Was it about a ghost? The wind sounds kind of scary. And the geese, too.”

She heard it too? My mouth went dry. Hoping she couldn’t hear my pounding heart, I said, “I… heard the honking. It woke me up. I just wanted to see them flying south against the moon.” That part was true, sort of. True, but impossible.  “Anyway, we probably just dreamed it. Sorry I woke you up.”

“It’s winter, not fall. Shouldn’t the geese be south already? And do geese fly at night?”

I gritted my teeth. “It was a dream, I said.” The IV stand lurches once as I head back to bed. I stop it before it can topple. Nothing’s wrong with my reflexes. Yet. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay. I didn’t cough tonight. And you only coughed once,” she says, proud for us both. Even in the hospital, the Greeley sisters are achievers.

“That’s great. We’ll tell the nurse tomorrow.”

I sink back onto my pillow. Yes, we’ll definitely report the lack of coughing. And we’ll leave out the new symptom—the shared hallucination. Which is what it was. What it must have been. Because what has us both hospitalized, what killed Mom, Dad, and millions of other people, is bird flu. It wiped out almost all of the water birds. Geese are now extinct, like the dinosaurs. Emma’s been too sick to pay any attention to the newsfeed, so she doesn’t know that yet.

But the newsfeed last week reported flu victims hearing honking and claiming to see V formations in the sky.

The two of us were probably just dreaming, though. I hope so, anyway.

Because those who hear the geese usually die soon afterward.

I wonder where those geese are headed. I wonder if they’re leading the way for us.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

After graduating from Bucknell University, Pamela Love worked as a teacher and in marketing before turning to writing. Her science fiction and fantasy stories have appeared in Cricket, Beyond Centauri, and Spaceports & Spidersilk, among other magazines. Her fantasy novel, The Pegasus Potential, is available on Amazon and Smashwords. She is also working on a new fantasy novel.

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