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.