The Savage Boy

30



“FEELS LIKE SPRING,” whispered Escondido in the cool darkness as the two of them sat beneath the ramparts along the wall. It was morning, just before sunrise.

Below the wall, in the fields and forest beyond, all was a soft gray.

The Boy smelled a breeze thick with the scent of the field. And on it, he knew, he could taste the waiting tribes out there in the darkness.

“Be a long summer,” muttered Escondido, his old eyes squinting at the far horizon. “But what do I know.”

The Boy checked Raleigh’s knife. It was stuck into the soft wood of the parapet.

Escondido had taught him how to break the rifle, pull out the expended cartridge, load another of the massive bullets into the breech, exchange rifles with Escondido. Repeat. They had more than a hundred cartridges. But not many more.

Escondido wiped angrily at his nose.

“I can smell ’em comin’ up the ravine. If we fall back, or you see the Chinese start to leave, head down to the courthouse in the center of town. They’ll make their stand there. That’s if I’m kilt, understand?”

The sun washed the field in gold, and out of the low-lying mist, arrows like birds began to race up toward the parapets. Loud knocks indicated the arrows ramming themselves into the wooden walls just on the other side of their heads. Someone screamed farther down along the wall. There was a sudden rush of the slurring Chinese, spoken in anger and maybe fear.

Escondido popped his head over the wall, keeping his rifle erect.

He shouted a string of Chinese directed at the others along the wall.

Then he sat down with his back to the parapet. “They’re using them arrows to keep our heads down. There’s thousands of ’em crossing the fields with ladders and poles now.” He took three short breaths, then, “Here we go!” Escondido popped his head over the wall, this time sighting down the rifle, and a second later the world erupted in thunder and blue smoke.

As the echoing crack of the rifle fades across the forest, the tribes began to whoop and scream below, breaking the morning quiet.

Escondido backed down behind the wall, handed the spent rifle to the Boy, and grabbed the other from the Boy’s frozen fingers.

The Boy had been told all his life about the legendary capacity of a gun to strike back at an enemy. But he had never seen one fired. He was never told of its blue stinging smoke and sudden thunder.

Three breaths as Escondido raised the rifle back over the wall. He targeted some unseen running, screaming tribesmen. A brief click as he pulled the trigger, and again the explosion.

They exchanged rifles. Unloaded and smoking, hot to the touch—for the other rifle, now loaded and waiting to be fired again.

Repeat.

“There’s thousands of ’em,” stated Escondido again.

Three breaths.

The explosion.

Repeat.

“They’re coming up the walls, it’ll be knife work shortly.”

The explosion.

Repeat.

“Duck!”

The sudden whistle of flocks of arrows flinging themselves from far away to close at hand, then the thick-sounding chocks as the cloud of missiles slammed down into the walls and old buildings within the outpost.

The Boy grabbed Raleigh’s knife when he heard the ladders fall into place on the other side of the pine logs. He put it in his mouth before he took the expended rifle and started the unloading trick he’d been taught.

Explosion.

“Be a long hot summer,” muttered Escondido.

Repeat.

The Boy finished reloading and waited to exchange rifles.

When nothing happened he looked up.

Escondido was slumped over the wall, almost falling facedown. The Boy pulled him back behind the parapet.

A bolt had gone straight up through his jaw and into his brain. His eyes were shut tight in death.

The Boy heard feet scrabbling for purchase on the other side.

All along the wall, lunatic tribesmen jabber, scream, and spurt blood as they hack away at the mostly dying Chinese.

The Boy, still holding the rifle, grabbed the sack of cartridges and tumbled off the platform, checking his landing with a roll.

He raced down a lane, his limping lope carrying him away from the bubbling surge of madmen now atop the wall and spilling over into the outpost. Chinese and Hillmen raced pell-mell for the old courthouse. Snipers from its highest windows below the old dome were shooting down into the streets.

The Boy was making good speed while watching the courthouse. He saw one of the snipers draw a bead on him and fire at the place where he should have been. Instead he crashed through the front door of a shack. Inside he found linens and pots and pans. There was even food in glass jars.

Go to ground, he thought, and wondered if this was the voice of Sergeant Presley. There was too much going on for him to tell.

Get behind the first wave of attackers, Boy. They’ll go for the courthouse.

He remembers Raleigh telling him to meet MacRaven at the front gate so that he could lead the tribes to the planned horror of their murdered leaders.

Outside, mohawked tribesmen were streaming down the streets with axes and blood-curdling screams. Bullets, fired from the courthouse, smacked and ricocheted into the cracked and broken streets.

When the first wave passed by the store, the Boy darted across the street and into an alley. He followed the alley and a few others as he worked his way back to the gate that sat astride old Highway Eighty.

He smelled smoke and burning wood.

Women were screaming.

Ahead, above the rooftops, where the gate should be, he saw an explosion of gray smoke and splintering wood.

The gunfire from the courthouse was increasing.

Breaking glass both close and far away.

Screams.

Whatchu gonna do now, Boy?

I’ve got to get Horse.

At the gate, the ashen-faced warriors were leaping over the collapsed remains of the entrance to hack with their machetes at the stunned Chinese riflemen mustering in the median of the old highway.

Through the smoke, MacRaven and a collection of warriors from the tribes of the Sierra Nevada were picking their way through the rubble. MacRaven turned, waving his machete, and behind him a vanguard of ashen-faced warriors pushed a wagon forward through the shattered remains of the gate. Atop the wagon rested a large gleaming metal crossbow.

The Boy crossed the open sward of grass to the on-ramp, waving at MacRaven.

MacRaven led the tribesmen toward the Boy as he pointed for the giant crossbow to be set up on the median of the highway.

“Have you found them?” roared MacRaven, his performance of concerned commander utterly believable.

The Boy nodded, unsure what to do next. He looked to the gate, hoping Horse would come through at any moment as more and more ashen-faced warriors poured through the breach.

MacRaven led the Boy away from the others as if to receive the planned bad news of their leaders’ demise.

“Speak to me like you’re telling me something horrible,” he whispered once they were some distance from the others.

The Boy couldn’t think of what to say.

“Just move your mouth.”

He opened and closed his mouth as MacRaven nodded. Then, “Where did Raleigh put the bodies?”

The Boy pointed toward the Old School.

“On the field, up there.”

“All right, in just a moment you’re going to lead us up there. But first I want to watch my space crossbow take out their courthouse.”

MacRaven turned back to the crossbow crew and raised his arm, then brought it down toward the dome of the courthouse.

A singing twang sent a six-foot iron shaft speeding from the gleaming crossbow into the cupola of the courthouse. Brick and debris shot out the other side of the building as rubble crashed down onto the lower levels and finally the steps leading to the parking lot.

“Great, huh?” said MacRaven, turning to the Boy. “It’s from Before. It was designed to go up into space and shoot down asteroids so smart men could bring soil samples back to earth. I found it inside an old research plant down east of L.A. Place called JPL, whatever that means. Doesn’t sound like a word, but maybe it was in another language I ain’t learned yet. From what I could tell, they were gonna send it up into space before the war. Good thing they didn’t, huh?”

The Boy heard a little electric motor whining as the drawstring recocks the crossbow. Three men levered another iron bolt off the floor of the wagon and placed it onto the weapon.

“I’ll conquer the world with it,” said MacRaven in armor amid the smoke and bullets. “Just wait.”

The catapult fired again and the massive bolt disappeared into the main body of the courthouse. Its effects were devastating.