The Eleventh Plague

TWENTY-NINE

My heart seized. The slavers saw her immediately and raised their weapons, but for a strange moment no one fired. It was as if Jenny’s sudden appearance was so unexpected that they were all trying to make sure they weren’t dreaming. Jenny stood ramrod straight, her arms clasped crisply behind her, a scowl on her face.

With her hair back and her army jacket, she looked like the picture of a grim and fearless Chinese soldier.

“Ching-ma!” she shouted. “Cho wen dow! Cho wen dow. Ching-ma!”

As the men looked, puzzled, from one to the other, I got up and started moving to our left. Jenny kept shouting in her nonsense Chinese, but the distraction wouldn’t last long. I had ten seconds, tops, before the men put it together that she was not being backed up by an entire Chinese regiment and then started shooting.

The man with the scar was starting up his jeep while the man with the dreadlocks moved off toward the one parked on the opposite side of the fuel truck.

“Ching mow don! Kai! Kai!” Jenny called forth her imaginary soldiers, then took off into the trees. There was a split second of confusion before shots rang out as about half the men chased after her. Leaving her on her own felt like a knife twisting in my gut, but I had to stay focused.

I leapt into the camp, running as hard as I could to the grenades. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the dreadlocked man yanking the steering wheel hard, trying to get his jeep moving. Smart. Not even a little bit interested in Jenny’s distraction. I pushed through the burn in my legs and drove toward the bag, skidding to a stop and grabbing it before taking off again the way I had come.

“Hey! You! Stop!”

There was a sharp crack, then a bullet tore past my shoulder and cut into the branches next to me. I pumped my arms, running hard until I was even with the fuel truck and stopped. I took a grenade and yanked out the pin.

I pivoted to the camp. The dreadlocked man had the jeep turned around now and was only seconds from getting away with it.

I thought of John Carter pitching as I wound up and threw the grenade at the side of the fuel truck.

The boom of the explosion was deafening. A yellow flash blinded me as the shock wave tore through the trees and knocked me to the ground. I lay there, arms over my head, as three more explosions rang out one after another. Deep, hollow booms. After that, there was a moment of silence when everything hung, suspended, like the world was holding its breath and waiting. Then all at once everything came crashing back. There were shouts and cries and the sound of burning that seemed to be everywhere at once.

The camp was in chaos. The air was thick with black smoke that smelled sickeningly of chemicals and burned my throat and eyes. The men who hadn’t chased after Jenny were battling the flames that had erupted with the explosions. One main fire at the eastern edge of the camp was out of control. I could just make out a dark skeleton of twisted metal deep in the yellow flames. One of the two jeeps burned next to it.

The other was gone.

“Stephen!” Jenny was standing behind the first rank of trees. “We have to get out of here,” she cried. “Now!”

I ran toward her. The oily smoke had already seeped into the woods, mixing with shafts of moonlight and the hellish glow of the fire, turning the forest into a confused maze. I had no idea if we were even headed in the right direction, but Jenny pushed on.

“Hey! Hey, you over there! Stop!”

A string of shots crackled behind us. We dodged to our right, following a sharp ridgeline. More gunfire came from behind us. Men shouted and we ran flat out, as fast as we could, sometimes missing trees by just inches.

“This way,” Jenny said. We ran for a mile or more, turning back for Settler’s Landing only when we were sure we had lost our pursuers. We came out of the trees at the crest of the hill that led into town. A thick haze of black smoke filled the air and dirtied the snow. The slavers had beaten us there. Everything reeked of burning wood and gunfire.

“God,” Jenny breathed.

I took her hand and we moved on, past the front gates and down the road into town. The first two houses we came to were on fire. Orange flames poured out of the smashed windows, throwing awful jerking shadows onto the dark road and the woods. We passed a green house with an American flag just as its roof collapsed with a moan.

“Stephen, what if …?”

I nodded down the road, toward the distant sound of gunfire. “I think they all pulled back that way. Everyone probably left their houses before the soldiers even got here. Those houses are empty.”

I was amazed by how sure my voice sounded, given that I had no idea if what I said was true. I prayed it was. We leapt over tire-shaped scars in the grass and past the swing sets and slide that were lying smashed in the mud.

We followed the sounds of gunfire down the road, turning off to the left and down a short hill. I suddenly realized where they were leading us. The school. We slowed as we got close, staying low, finally taking cover behind the brick corner of the building. We flattened our backs to the wall. It was hard to make anything out in the fog of gun smoke, but I saw one group across the playground by the swing sets. It seemed to be a row of people on their backs and someone who moved quickly among them. In the lulls between the gunshots I could hear steady moans coming from them. Beyond them, lying in a rough line behind the crest of the hill that led up to the baseball field, were thirty or more townspeople with rifles, taking the only cover available. The slavers’ men must have been just over the hill.

“Stay here,” I said to Jenny as I started around the edge of the wall. “I’m going to go see if I can help.”

“Did you just meet me?”

“Jenny, if it wasn’t for me, this wouldn’t —”

She darted out into the darkness.

Right. Should have known. I shot out from behind the school as a volley of gunfire erupted from the crest of the hill, lighting the playground in flashes of yellow and orange. I ducked my head and ran, passing within feet of the swing sets.

A voice called out from my left. “Stephen, over here!”

It was Violet, kneeling down among a group of ten or more people.

“Violet, I have to get to —”

“Later.” She pushed a flashlight into my hand and pulled me down next to her. “Shine that here.”

I looked up the hill, searching for Jenny. “Now, Stephen!”

I flicked the light on, shining it down onto someone on the ground. As soon as I did, my hand shook.

All I saw was blood, shockingly red against the white of the snow.

“Steady,” Violet said.

I didn’t know the man on the ground in front of me. He had been shot as many as three times. There was so much blood it was hard to tell where. He was unconscious. Violet leaned over him, probing a wound on his shoulder with a small pair of pliers until she pulled out a big piece of shrapnel. As soon as she did, blood welled up in the gash and coursed down his arm. I was sure I was going to be sick. Violet grabbed a towel off the ground next to her and pressed it deep into the man’s shoulder. My stomach turned again as the towel grew damp with red. I turned my head away. Others were laid out to Violet’s left, a line of wounded men, women, even kids my age. Some unconscious, some twisting and moaning.

“The soldiers didn’t expect us to fight. Neither did Caleb and his people. His family and a few others joined with the slavers. We let them chase us back here to get away from the houses and then we turned on them.”

I fumbled for a roll of bandage on the ground and handed it to her, still holding the flashlight on the figure in front of me. I got a better look at him. He was young, maybe even my age, wearing a dark T-shirt and jeans. He had fine features and his hair, where not matted and red with blood, was golden and flopped down over one eye.

Something inside of me went cold.

It was Will Henry.

“But … he’s with them,” I said. “With Caleb and the slavers. He —”

Violet gritted her teeth and yanked a bandage tight. “He’s dying, Stephen. It doesn’t matter what side he’s on.”

“Is he really going to …” I couldn’t finish. My throat had closed up.

“I don’t know,” Violet said. She wiped her hands on her jeans, then moved down the line. “I’ve got it from here.” She took the flashlight from my hand. Another volley of gunfire roared behind us and we ducked instinctively.

As Violet moved along the line of wounded, I wiped a splash of blood off Will’s cheek with the edge of my sleeve. For an awful moment I thought I would never be able to leave that spot. There was a time I probably would have claimed that I wanted Will Henry dead, but now, seeing him lying there pale and covered in blood, all I felt was emptiness, waste, and stupidity.

I pushed myself off the ground and ran up the hill, anger crashing through me. When I got to the crest I dropped down into the grass and peered over the edge. Out across the field, near second base, was the black shadow of the remaining jeep. A line of low swells in the grass stretched to the right and left of it. The soldiers and Caleb’s people, I suspected, dug into shallow pits.

Jackson was lying to my left, a rifle in his hands. Marcus and Sam were on the other side, their eyes steady on their rifle sights. There was another barrage and we all ducked our heads. Bullets whistled past inches from us.

“Where’s Jenny?” I asked.

“She said she was going back to town to help look after the little ones,” Marcus said.

Right, I thought, looking all around trying to find some trace of her, but seeing nothing.

A roar of machine-gun fire rose from up ahead and was answered with shots from the line to either side of me. The bullets slammed into the ground between the two sides, kicking up a fog of snow but doing no damage.

My mind raced. When I was little, Grandpa would sit me down almost weekly for one of his endless lectures on military tactics. I’d humored him, barely paying attention, but I struggled now to bring some of it back. Marcus had numbers, but the slavers were so well armed it more than evened things out. I scanned the snowfield and surrounding trees ahead, looking for a way out. Suddenly something fell into place.

“You’re pinned down,” I said. I could almost hear Grandpa’s voice in my head. “You need a smaller group to go out into the trees, around to their flank, and distract them so the main force can move in.”

“I can’t spare anyone to —”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “When the flanking group attacks, the soldiers will be distracted. That’s when the rest of the line has to get up and rush them. It’s the only way.”

“Wait, where are you going?” Marcus yelled. “Stephen!”

But I was already on my way, hurtling down their line toward the woods, staying as low as I could. There was no time to worry about where Jenny had gone. It was best we were apart, given what I had planned.

As soon as the soldiers noticed my movement, they let go with a hail of bullets that Marcus and the others quickly answered. The mud and snow made it tough going, but I made it into the trees and out of sight. I thought I was home free until I heard someone running after me. I turned and there was Jackson, his rifle slung across his chest. “Jackson, go back!”

He ignored me and kept coming. I ran as fast as I could, putting some distance between us, but I could still hear him behind me, his footfalls mixing in with the gunfire and shouting. There was no time to try to turn him back. I prayed that I’d either lose him or, when he saw what I was planning to do, he’d turn back on his own.

I ran until I was sure I’d made it as far as the soldiers’ line out in the field, then jogged to my right. My heart sank when I saw who was waiting there.

“What are you —”

Jenny put her finger to her lips, then motioned me over next to her.

There were only a few thin ranks of trees between us and where the soldiers lay. It had gone quiet out in the field. The jeep was maybe fifty yards away, surrounded by about twenty men arranged in a half circle. One man stood at the back of the truck behind an armor plate, operating the swiveling machine gun and shouting orders. I could tell from the hulking outline that it was the man with the scar.

The underbrush behind us crunched. Someone coming. I slipped my knife out of its sheath and turned, but when the trees parted it was Jackson, rifle in hand.

“Oh great,” Jenny whispered. “The cavalry’s here.”

“What are you two —?”

We both shushed him and motioned for him to get down. “What are you doing here?” Jackson said, pulling close to us.

“Up and at ‘em,” Jenny said. “You in?”

“No,” I said sharply, then dropped my voice down to a whisper. “We’re not doing it. We’re going back and joining Marcus’s line.”

“That’s stupid, and you know it,” Jenny snapped.

“It’s not.”

“Then what did you even come here for? God, Stephen,” she said. “These people have more guns and more ammunition. They can just wait us out. I mean, think about it — the only reason they’re firing right now is so Marcus and them will waste ammo shooting back. Right? Am I right?”

What could I say? Of course she was. From the other side came the rustling of soldiers adjusting in their places and the metallic clinking of reloading from both sides. It was about to start again.

“Okay, then,” Jenny said. “How about it, Jackie boy? You up for some mischief?”

Jackson nodded. He looked terrified, but he was serious. He was going to do it. They both were. It was pointless. I knew we wouldn’t get ten feet before that machine gun swiveled our way and chopped us down. I peered into the brush I had come through, my mind scrambling for another idea, some alternative. If I’d been alone, I would’ve been running right out into the field, no matter what my chances were. Seeing Will had settled that. But now Jenny and Jackson would be right there with me, and they’d be cut down as fast as I’d be.

Jenny hopped up off the ground. Jackson slung his rifle over his shoulder.

“You coming, Steve?” Jenny asked.

I had no choice. If they were going, so was I. Whatever was going to happen to Jenny and Jackson, I wanted to happen to me too. As I pulled myself up off the ground, something about the brush surrounding us made me stop short.

Mischief.

“What’s on the other side of those trees?”

“The Henry house,” Jackson said. “Why?”

My mind raced. I turned back to the soldiers arrayed along the ground.

“Steve?”

I felt what I always imagined Dad and Grandpa felt in times like these, a moment when all the twisting confusion and uncertainty collapsed into a simple straight path.

A moment of being sure.

“Come on,” I said, pushing between the two of them and up the trail. “Follow me.”