The Flock

Gabriela had gone almost a week without any troubling visions. She made a loose routine of sleeping in the abandoned warehouse in a nook on the first floor, well away from the stairs. She was making enough money playing jazz on Mercy street to eat three meals a day and had even bought a couple of old blankets to sleep on. The weather was starting to warm up. She got up around sunrise and bought a cup of coffee from Mr. Yilmaz. She could almost hear him thinking she was too young to be drinking it. I think I did hear him say that, she thought, but his mouth was closed. You can't hear a thought though. That's—crazy. She shook her head and kept walking.
As she neared her favorite spot on the corner when she heard clucking. She turned around. A chicken was following her. Gabriela kept walking. She stopped. It stopped. She moved. It followed. The next time she turned around, there were three. As she reached her corner, a fourth came down the street and fell in line. I don't know much about chickens, Gabriela thought, but this can't be normal. She decided to ignore them.
As Gabriela played, two more came out of an alley and one came down from a roof. Seven large chickens were sitting at her feet and listening. The butcher, limping and bleary-eyed, peered out of his shop window and stared. Gabriela saw a lurching movement in the corner of her eye and spun, still playing, to face Dave the butcher who had come out of his shop with a cleaver. He grabbed a chicken. Gabriela stopped.
“Wha-?” she said. He slammed the bird against the side of a building, hacked off its head, and grabbed another. “No!” She pulled the horn to her lips and blew a high, sweet, fiery blast that rattled the window of Jorey Rae's and scared the pigeons in the trees. A piece of a cracked window on an upper story slid out of its frame and shattered on Dave's head. He fell, and Gabriela could see blood coming from the gash. She ran away.

Jory Rae's

Gabriela's head hurt. It had for days. She felt like there was a gap running down the middle of her brain getting wider all the time. She tread lightly in her own thoughts. She was afraid to play the trumpet and terrified to stop. Three days after her last meal, she was passing Jory Rae's. She was sick with hunger and exposure. She fell, catching herself on the front window of the diner. A waitress, also staggering and bleary-eyed, came out and pulled her in. Gabriela smelled booze and coffee on her breath and felt long-nailed hands too dirty to serve food haul her to her feet. The stranger led her inside, took her to a booth, and, without a word, put a hot plate of fries down on the table. Bottom lip quivering, Gabriela ate them, one by one.

Carnival

Gabriela walked until she had pushed the smell of smoke to the back of her mind. She realized that she was hungry. I can play now, she thought. I can play and get money to eat instead of picking up trash, but I have to find people. The dusty sidewalk was deserted, but there was a poster on a telephone pole. Gabriela's head ached. She was dizzy, and the letters swirled before her eyes. The big, red word “CARNIVAL,” though, was clear. She squinted, tilted her head, and made out where it was. She made her way there, stood by the entrance, and played.
Within a couple of hours, she had more than enough for lunch and dinner. She was bored, and she had enough money for some tickets. She tucked her trumpet under her arm and headed for the rusty ticket booth. A man with rotting teeth leered down at her.
“H-h-honey,” he said. “I-I'd g-g-g-give y-you a roll for f-free if I could s-s-see under that s-shirt.” He smiled. Gabriela took a step backwards.
“I d-didn't m-mean to s-scare you h-h-honey. I t-thought y-you was one of the g-g-girls f-from over th' antique sh-shop. L-lotta them h-have b-b-b-been through h-here t-today. L-l-listen. I'l g-give y-you t-ten tickets free.” He did. She bought ten more and headed for the tilt-a-whirl. It was noon, and the lines were short. She guessed that it was a week day and most people were at school or work. Why aren't I? She asked herself. No answer was forthcoming, so she decided to ignore the question, at least for a while.
A young man with wavy, chestnut hair in fashionable diseray let her on along with an old lady who held the hands of two grandchildren. He offered to watch her trumpet, but she shook her head and carried it with her. The metal arms, spotted with brown rust, creaked as the machinery clanked to life. As they rose, Gabriela saw
Fire. Fire, fire in the sky and wings, great white wings-so white-big enough to block the-No, she thought. I'm not going to think about it. I'm not going to think about the-
She saw it. She saw wings, her wings, seven feet long from top to bottom, more than three feet across. Each feather shone like a thin sheet of brass as she flew through a bleeding sunset. There were cries and moans below, but they seemed so far away, distant. The people down there were insects, butterflies, their lives beautiful, iridescent, and brief. As she raised her trumpet to lips like fire with hands that had turned to molten gold, she saw the universe reflected in her bell, rising, falling, singing. Wars and plagues played out before her eyes. Atoms split. She could hear it, too. The voice of a woman wailed in ruins. A man cried out in the wilderness, and she could see the hairs of his garment and smell the locusts and honey he had eaten on his breath. She saw a billion or ten billion births and watched Chicago burn, heard steel grind and clash on steel and glass, half-molten, crazed with heat, hit pavement as two towers slid into the street. She was flying high, but a dove had somehow swooped down from above her. It cried out as it passed, and its voice was more like the battle scream of an eagle than a gentle coo. Its voice bent somehow, and a sound that was not quite a sound, a voice that was not quite a voice, rang in her mind.
It was less a noise than two thunderheads clashing over a battlefield covered with heavy artillery. It was an atomic bomb, a red tsunami that she felt was taking curious pains to be gentle. Anything but its most gentle touch would have torn her mind apart. She could not hear it. She could not translate it, but she did understand it.
SOUND YOUR TRUMPET, ARCHANGEL!!! it said. She did. The sky cracked. The earth shook. Gabriela threw up. The ride stopped.
Gabriela staggered away and ordered a Sprite to settle her stomach.