WHAT IS THAT?!” THE GIRL next to Fort shouted, her voice cracking with terror.
Fort couldn’t respond, could barely breathe. This wasn’t happening. This type of thing only happened in movies, not in real life. Definitely not in the middle of Washington, D.C.
Enormous black-scaled fingers pushed up through the ground, sending grass, rock, and dirt flying in every direction. A muffled roar sounded from somewhere beneath them, and Fort felt it even through the ground shaking.
“You get him, I’ll grab her!” Fort heard his father shout from somewhere in the memorial, but Fort couldn’t move. Fear pulsated through his body with every racing heartbeat, freezing his feet to the marble steps like he’d been sculpted there.
TV helicopters flew overhead toward the monument, only to suddenly reverse course as they approached, flying back over the city. Sirens played in the distance too, but somehow never made it any closer. And now the crowds on the monument steps below Fort began to run off in silent waves, as if a command to escape was passing up through them one at a time. But even with the insanely ordered evacuation, the shaking ground made it hard to move, let alone run, and many of them lost their footing as they escaped.
“This can’t be real!” the girl next to Fort said as one of the clawed hands reached up to the Washington Monument and grabbed it with its hundred-foot-long fingers. The obelisk began to tilt, then topple toward the ground.
When it hit, the ground jumped beneath Fort’s feet, and he found himself flying in the air, only to slam into the steps a few feet up.
“Lauren, where is Megan?!” a woman shouted from above him. Fort looked up to find the girls’ mother carrying an old man, one Fort had seen earlier in an electric scooter. “Where did she go?”
Lauren started to answer, only to go silent as her eyes glazed over. Without another word, she turned around and ran down the steps, away from her mother.
“Lauren!” the woman shouted, stumbling against the trembling ground.
“Dad?” Fort shouted up.
“Fort, get out of here!” his father shouted from somewhere inside. “I’ll be right behind you!”
Fort looked back at the devastation across the National Mall, then turned back toward the memorial and forced his feet to move up the stairs, one after the other. Don’t look at it, he thought, gritting his teeth to fight through the fear. You can do this. Dad needs your help!
He took a step, then another, fighting to keep his balance while trying not to think about the horrific creature emerging from the ground behind him. His father needed him, and there was no way he was going to let him down. He had to—
RUN.
The thought hit his mind like a hammer, and Fort instantly straightened up, his mind blank, then turned and ran down the stairs. In the distance, he could see the remnants of the Washington Monument, but that didn’t matter. Nothing seemed to mean anything beyond leaving in an orderly fashion.
RUN.
He hit the bottom of the steps and ran toward the line of people escaping—
“Fort!” his father shouted, and somehow, it cut through the fog in Fort’s head. He slowed to a stop, then froze in place, one foot hanging in midair.
RUN!
The power of the command crashed over him like an ocean wave, drowning out all his other thoughts, and he started jogging, merging in line with the other runners. But as he reached the side of the Lincoln Memorial, he slowed again, then stopped, shaking his head.
What was he doing? His father was still up there!
A young woman plowed into him from behind, knocking him off his feet. She stumbled a bit, then continued running like nothing had happened. Fort stared after her for a moment in confusion, then looked back up the stairs to find his father carrying an older woman who’d been with the man on the scooter.
Fort pushed himself up and made his way back to the steps. “Dad!” he shouted. “Are you okay? I can help!”
“No, just go!” his father shouted, waving with one hand as he slowly tried to maneuver down the shaking stairs.
Fort ignored him and started crawling up the steps on all fours. As he reached the halfway point, though, the marble beneath him exploded, throwing him off into the grass to the side of the memorial. For a moment, everything went blurry and he couldn’t breathe, the air knocked right out of his lungs.
And then two ten-foot tall claws pushed up through the steps where Fort had been standing, and a roar shook the ground, a sound so powerful Fort could feel it in his chest.
A noise like torrents of rushing water thundered behind him, and he turned to find a nightmare rising from the middle of the Reflecting Pool, a giant black-scaled head covered in horns like some sort of crown. The water drained down into the hole it created, and the creature roared again, revealing what looked like row upon row of massive razor-sharp teeth. Its red glowing eyes stared down in fury, and the sheer impossibility and terror of it froze Fort in place. He couldn’t even think, let alone comprehend what he was looking at.
More helicopters flew in, this time painted black, and these actually made it close to the creature. A missile rocketed out of one, slamming into its head, but the monster didn’t even seem to notice.
“Fort!” his father yelled from above. Fort looked up to find his father on his knees on the steps just below the creature’s fingers. The roof was crumbling down all around him, sending huge chunks of marble crashing into the steps.
“Dad!” Fort shouted, and tried to get to his feet, but the shaking was too intense.
The creature’s hand pushed the rest of the way out of the stairs, closing around his father and the woman he’d been carrying. Fort’s heart stopped as he watched his father disappear behind those scaly fingers.
But then the old woman came tumbling out from between the creature’s fingers, crashing to the grass next to Fort, with his father pushing through right after her.
“DAD!” Fort shouted as the creature roared behind him. Something else hissed out of the helicopter and exploded against the creature, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered but his father getting free. He was almost there, half his body had already made it out of the creature’s grasp—
But then the hand started pulling back below ground.
“Fort!” his father shouted. The creature’s hand curled around him, rupturing the remains of the memorial as it descended back into the ground. “FORT—”
The creature’s massive hand disappeared within the earth, and his father went silent.
“NO!” Fort shrieked, and he crawled toward the wreckage, trying to make his way to the hole his father had been pulled into.
NO. LEAVE NOW. RUN.
“I won’t!” he shouted, not sure who he was talking to, but determined to find his father. “Dad! Can you hear me? Dad!”
He clambered up over the jagged stones, half climbing, half pulling himself toward the hole. A wave of heat swept out of the crack, almost too hot to bear, but Fort pushed himself onward and stared down into the abyss.
“DAD!” he shouted again. . . .
And then something took over, and Fort lost control of his body.
His hands pushed him away from the hole, and his feet climbed him down the rocks. Inside his mind, Fort watched his actions helplessly, almost from a distance, like he was staring down at himself from the wrong end of a telescope.
Inwardly, he screamed over and over, but no sound escaped his lips as his body continued on, jogging him away from danger and into a line with the rest of the silent, fleeing tourists.
NO! he shouted into the void, pushing back with all his strength against whatever force was taking him from his father. He fought and struggled and resisted, his efforts growing in intensity until pain filled his mind and he could barely think, the image of the creature taking his father propelling him to keep battling to free himself, to regain control over his mind, to make it LET GO—
And then, abruptly, his body was his own again. From an impossibly long distance, he heard a scream, and it echoed through his brain. It sounded like a girl’s voice, and she was in pain, but that didn’t matter, nothing mattered except that he was free and could go back to his father. . . .
But a wave of pain washed over Fort, drowning his mind in agony, and everything went dark as he collapsed to the ground, silent joggers flowing around him from every side.