Felix tramps off, away from the landing site. Xander and I follow.
“You know what, Rave?” Xander says to me. “Tell me. I know Toph thinks this is his own private True Grit, but Tuck was my best friend. And this is ridiculous. What does he think he’s going to achieve?”
I stare at Felix’s back and try to formulate an answer. But my ability to speak is overwhelmed by anger as I properly process the danger Topher has put us all in. And more than that, I’m furious at him for leaving without me. How can I keep him alive if he walks away from me? And why do I even want to, if he’s so determined?
“There he is,” Felix says suddenly. He’s gazing across the ridge through a pair of high-powered field binoculars. Pointing to the edge of the burned-out swath, he hands them to me.
I scan the spindly black landscape. At first I see nothing. Then, taking another scan, I spot Topher, sitting, his back to a tree stump, his head hanging. I have to press my lips together to keep from calling out to him. He doesn’t move. My ears strain to hear anything.
“It doesn’t make sense for us all to go down there. It’s too dangerous and exposed,” Felix says, shaking his head. “What was he thinking?”
“Let’s go back up. We’ll have a better angle,” Xander says. “We can provide cover if anything comes up.”
We move farther up the slope. Every few minutes I check through the binoculars. Topher still hasn’t moved. “Wait here,” Felix says. He eyes the rifle I borrowed from Lochie. “Can you shoot straight?”
“Not really,” I admit.
“Wonderful. Shoot high, then. I’d rather not get hit with friendly fire today. Let Xander go for the kill shot.”
What is Topher doing? I wonder as Felix leaves us. He still hasn’t moved. Felix jogs down, sticking close to the trees and ducking out of sight wherever he can find cover. I follow his descent through the binoculars.
“Shit,” I hear Xander whisper beside me.
“What?”
“The birds have stopped.”
Suddenly, a guttural, animal screech pierces the air, and two black shadows descend from the sky. They seem to have come from nowhere.
“Topher!” I yell. Down the ridge Felix is running. I flatten myself on the ground and yank the binoculars back up to my eyes. Topher is gone. Felix bolts past the tree where he was sitting and disappears, leaving a puff of ash and dust in his wake.
Where the hell did they go? The two transports touch down on the hillside between us.
Xander crashes to the ground next to me, his rifle fixed on the ships. “Did you see where they went?” I shake my head. “Right,” he says, gritting his teeth. “Shoot or run?”
The door of the first transport opens. Two shadowy figures appear in the doorway. Human shaped, but too large, armored in dull, deep gray. Everything about them is like a living weapon, hard, metallic, and lethal. My insides turn to Spam, which threatens to come back up. We can’t cover Topher and Felix if we can’t see where they went.
“Run,” I squeak. “Run!”
Xander leaps to his feet, yanking me up after him.
I hear the hiss of the other transport door open and the clatter of armored feet on the gangplank.
I’m lost. Despite our weeks of survivalist games, neither Xander nor I have any proper combat training. I have no idea about strategy in a situation like this. If they go after Felix and Topher, we might as well say good-bye right now. But we can get over the top of the ridge and head back down into the valley. We would have the advantage of being out of sight for a minute or two. That might save our lives. But what about Topher? What about Felix?
Xander lets go of my hand as I stumble to a stop. I spin around and point my weapon in the general direction of the squadron of Nahx gathered at their landing site.
“Are you crazy?”
Well, yes, I think. Yes, I am.
“Get behind me!” I scream at him.
I fire into the center of the group of Nahx. Unbelievably, I think I hit one. It spins around and seems to shove one of its colleagues to the ground. I’m pretty sure the bullet just bounced off the armor, but now the whole group of them turns as one and starts barreling back up to the ridge.
“Oh Jesus, we’re going to die,” Xander says. I pull him, diving over the ridge and running full speed back down to the river, which glistens in the sun like an emerald necklace. It feels like only a few seconds have passed when I hear a high-pitched whining noise.
“Paintball!” I yell to Xander. He gets my meaning right away. All the kids from the dojo played paintball at least three times a year. We both know the best way to avoid getting hit is to run like a convulsing lunatic. He veers away from me.
A dart zings past my head as I begin to weave in and out of the burnt tree trunks. Xander ducks and leaps like his shoes have springs. A tree splinters next to me as another dart misses its mark. The Nahx behind us aren’t even running. I have heard they can move at inhuman speeds, but they are calmly marching, their weapons whining and firing. Bizarrely, one is walking with a hand on another one’s shoulder.
Another dart whizzes past. Ahead of me Xander tumbles and rolls.
“Xander!” I shout, but he leaps back up to his feet on the other side of a cluster of burnt logs. When he reaches the riverbank, he turns and raises his rifle.
“Get down!” he screams.
Clearly, he’s even crazier than me. I dive to the ground and roll toward him as he fires off rounds. A glimpse of the Nahx tells me his tactic is not slowing them down even a little bit. Two darts zing past his head, and he ducks. I use the momentum of my fall to keep rolling, clutching my rifle to my chest as Xander keeps firing. I stop rolling, leap up, and tackle him. We both fall off the riverbank, crashing to a small muddy outcrop below. Xander lands in a heap on top of me.
The river’s edge is a tangle of mud and roots from the trees on the riverbank above. I know we have seconds before the Nahx reach us, seconds to do about the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. “Take a deep breath and hold on,” I say, grabbing Xander by the shirt and rolling into the river.
The water is frigid and instantly knocks about forty points off my IQ, but I manage to stick to my plan and pull us both under, reaching out to the roots under the surface for something to hold on to. Worse case is I will let go, and the river current will pull us back into the lake we left a day ago. That would epically suck, so I wrap my arm around a large root, pop to the surface to take another breath, and slither deep into the water.