The Eleventh Plague

TWENTY-SIX

There was a crash as I fell into one of the gaming tables that littered the casino floor. How did I get here? I wondered distantly, then Jenny’s hands dug into my shoulder and pulled me up. She threw my arm over her shoulder and pushed me blindly through the dark. My bones ached from the cold. My skin burned. I couldn’t stop shivering. I remembered kneeling by the grave in the snow. I told her to leave me with Dad, but she wouldn’t listen. I wanted to tell her again, but now I couldn’t speak.

Jenny dropped me down on the bed in the back room and covered me up with all the blankets we had, tucking them tight around my body like a cocoon. I lay there in the absolute dark and quiet of the room. The blankets had my arms pinned to my sides. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t see. It was like being a thousand miles under the ocean with the immense weight of it pressing down on my chest.

But I wasn’t afraid. I was relieved. Finally, after all my running, I had arrived at the place I was meant to be, at home, at peace, in the nothingness and the dark and the cold.

The door opened and Jenny was at my side again, leaning over me.

Was it hours later? Days? I didn’t know. I couldn’t see her, just feel her arms digging under my shoulders and lifting me up.

I groaned, struggling against her touch, trying to keep still. “I’m fine. Leave me alone.”

“Stephen, you’re freezing to death. Now move!”

Jenny managed to get me up from the bed and out of the room, shoring me up with her shoulder and driving me down a long hallway. I couldn’t fight. I faltered along beside her, my legs stiff and awkward as a foal’s. We moved deeper into the casino toward a distant light. A fire. Jenny had built it in the center of a tiled atrium. Its smoke twisted upward to the shattered remains of a skylight.

She dropped me within inches of it. Its brilliance made my eyes ache, but I couldn’t feel its warmth. It reached out but couldn’t touch me. Jenny wrestled me up into a sitting position and arranged the blankets over my shoulders. I tried to push her away, but I was too weak. All I wanted to do was lie down. All I wanted was to sleep, to be in the quiet and alone in that black nothingness, but Jenny wouldn’t let me go.

There was a crash somewhere out in the casino, then the sound of shattering glass. Jenny stiffened. Dad’s knife appeared in her fist as she crouched beside me like an animal, peering into the dark, listening for more.

“There’s no one out there,” I said thoughtlessly, my head lolling onto my chest.

“Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Will and them aren’t done with us. They could still come.”

“They’re dead.”

Jenny’s eyes left the empty dark and fell back on me.

“What? Who’s dead?”

I looked up from the tiled floor. Jenny’s face, streaked with ash and pockmark burns, was framed in fire.

“Everyone,” I said, my voice rising up from the deep in a cold rasp. “Marcus. Violet. Dad. My mom. Even you and me. We thought the Collapse was over but it’s not. It just keeps going. It doesn’t matter where we go or what we do. We’re all dead. All of us. We just don’t know it yet.”

Jenny said nothing. She eased down beside me, bringing her body alongside mine. She brushed my hair aside with the tips of her fingers. When I flinched away from the warmth of her lips on my cheek, she wrapped her arms tight around me and leaned me in toward the fire, rocking us back and forth.

The heat from the fire pounded against my skin, but it was useless. My body was a gate of iron and I would not let it pass.

All that night, she left my side only to get more wood for the fire or to dart out into the darkness to check on the crashes and groans that seemed to be our constant companions. She was sure that each one was Will or Caleb or some faceless mob with torches in hand, ready to burn us down. But each time it was simply the old building settling into the brunt of winter. Broken glass. Creaking walls.

“We can’t stay here,” she said.

It had stopped snowing. A thin, watery light began to show through the clouds. The first traces of dawn.

“It isn’t safe.”

I turned toward the dim outline of the casino’s front door. Outside, across the parking lot and through the trees, was the clearing where Dad lay, buried deep underground. There was no cross. No marker. Jenny had pulled me away before I could make one. If we left, I knew I would never be able to find him again.

“You can go,” I said.

“I’m not leaving without you.”

Somewhere behind us, the roof of the casino groaned under the weight of the snow. I traced my finger along the hills and valleys of the wrinkled blanket piled up in my lap, marking out a meandering path on its folds. Never the same path twice, I thought. That way you’re safe. That way no one finds you. I saw myself on the trail. I saw worn ground and the mall and the neighborhoods, crumbling and covered in vines. I could hear Dad, his shuffling footsteps, his bright babble like water coursing over smooth river rocks. I saw his hands so clearly — long-fingered and strong, a hairline scar running down the index finger of his right hand.

“Steve?”

Jenny laid one hand over mine, blotting out the trail. She used the other to lift my chin up to her, so I couldn’t look away, couldn’t not see her.

“Maybe there isn’t anything better out there, but… your dad and your grandpa handed you this life, right? Just like Marcus and Violet handed me mine. This is your name. This is where you live. This is who you are. We never chose any of it. So whose lives are we living? Ours or theirs? Haven’t you ever thought about that? Don’t you, just once, want to choose something for yourself?”

I pulled my chin out of her hand and looked deep into the darkness of the casino.

“I have,” I said.

Jenny stared at me, her eyes wide and hurt, waiting for more, but I said nothing. She let go of my hand.

“I’m sorry about your parents,” she said. “But at least they died while they were trying to live. They didn’t just sit around waiting to die.”

Jenny pushed herself back from me and stood up.

“It’s not safe for us here, Stephen. I think you know that. There’s an old hospital a few miles west that’s still pretty intact. I’m going to leave for there today. I want you to come, but even if you don’t, I have to go.”

Jenny waited for a response, and when there was none, she walked away from the fire and was gone.

Without Jenny, the immensity of the casino’s silence was overwhelming. This was what I wanted, wasn’t it? On my own in the dark. I sat there while the fire died out, then stumbled back to our room. Before I drew the curtains shut, I surveyed my little world. I had shelter. I could find food and water easily enough. I had everything I needed.

My eye fell into the corner of the room by the window, to a large white square. I didn’t recognize it at first, but I moved closer and saw that it was Jenny’s sketch pad. It fell open to the end as I lifted it, to the last picture she had drawn.

It was like a small, soft hand had reached inside of me and pulled the air out of my lungs.

It was the picture Jenny drew our first morning together as I huddled, freezing, under the blankets. All the details of the barn were there: the patched-together plank walls, the early morning sunshine, the rumpled bed. You could almost feel the chill in the air. I was staring up into the rafters and my feet were sticking out of the cover, hanging slightly over the edge of the mattress. I smiled despite myself.

She had made me taller.

I kept coming back to the look on my face. I almost didn’t recognize myself. She caught me just as I was waking up, before my worries about Dad and the town had flooded in. I had, not a smile exactly — it was harder to place than that — but more a look of stillness, of thoughtfulness. Of peace. On my face was the look of someone who was exactly where he wanted to be with no thought of the future or the past. Nothing but that moment.

Jenny said that drawing quieted something inside her. I said I had nothing like that, but was I wrong? Wasn’t that what being with her did for me?

I thought back to that night out by the snowy highway, wondering if the answer was to walk away and disappear. If being alone might spare us the pain of feeling anything like Dad felt the day Mom’s hand slipped from his in the shadow of that amusement park. Maybe if we never built anything, then nothing could ever collapse.

We have to be more than the world would make us.

Mom’s words were like a warm breath blowing past my cheek.

The sketch pad fell out of my hands, and I drifted from the room and down the hallway, following the dim morning light toward the exit. I could just barely see Jenny standing outside.

The unbroken snow was dazzling, clean and white. She didn’t turn as I stepped through the door and came up beside her. The back of my hand grazed hers. Her fingers fell and intertwined with mine, locking together. I felt a deep sigh in my chest as something settled into place.

“I’m so sorry about your dad,” she said.

A chill spread over me again, but I pulled Jenny close. My heart thumped hard in my chest.

“They destroyed their world,” Jenny said, looking out over the vast plain of snow. “But this one is ours.”

“We should leave,” I said. “Today.”

We said nothing more for a while. I wished Dad could be there with us. Wished he could leave and come find whatever it was we would find. I wondered if there would always be this empty, aching place inside me where he used to be.

Jenny nudged me with her shoulder. “Come on, then. We’ve got some packing to do.”

She reached for the door, but before we could go in, there was a crunch of snow to our right. Tree branches shook. We jumped back into the doorway and out of sight.

“Probably just a deer,” I whispered, but then we saw two figures slide behind the curtain of trees. Once they passed, Jenny motioned me forward. I took her wrist, but she turned back and held up one finger.

Just a second, she mouthed.

I followed as Jenny moved to the corner and we both dropped down low to peer around to the back of the building. Two men emerged from the woods. I could tell immediately that they weren’t Will or Caleb or anyone we knew from Settler’s Landing. They moved in precise glides, short automatic rifles held ahead of them, communicating with crisp hand signals. They were both wearing some kind of black uniform, their shoulders and waists crisscrossed with pouches of equipment. They looked ex-military to me.

What are they doing here?

The two men circled the building, then disappeared around the other side. Jenny looked at me. I nodded. We moved along the back wall until we saw them climbing the hill toward the highway and Settler’s Landing.

“Scouts,” I whispered.

“For who? Fort Leonard doesn’t have any military.”

A buzz of nerves started to rise in my chest. “Come on,” I said. “We’ll pack up. Go. Like you said, this isn’t our—”

Before I could finish, Jenny leapt up from her crouch and ran for the highway.

“Jenny!” I hissed, then scrambled to my feet and went after her.

The scouts were a ways ahead of us by the time we made it to the woods, but we could follow their tracks easily enough. We didn’t catch sight of them again until we came out of the trees above Settler’s Landing’s gates. The men swept down the hill toward them, but instead of passing through, they veered sharply north and into the forest across from us.

“We should see how many of them there are. Maybe they’re camped nearby.”

“Jenny—”

“If it was just Fort Leonard against Settler’s Landing, I’d leave it, but if they’ve brought in help, we need to tell Marcus and Violet it’s not going to be a fair fight. Right?”

I hated the idea but had to admit she was right. I agreed, and we trailed the two scouts from as far back as we could. They followed pretty much the same path Jenny and I had the other night. I thought they were making straight for the Henrys’ house, but before they reached it they cut around it and went farther east, disappearing into thick trees.

When their footprints finally petered out, we dropped down onto the snowy ground and crawled up to a fallen tree that lay at the edge of some brush. Voices came from the other side, a mix of languages and accents. We glanced at each other, then peeked over the edge of the tree.

Less than a hundred feet from where we lay was a camp made up of black tents arranged in precise rows. Twenty of them, at least. Men like the two scouts we’d seen milled around, bristling with as many weapons and as much ammunition as they could carry. A fire burned at the center of the camp, and behind it sat a central tent that was flanked by three large dark shapes that sat just outside of the firelight.

Jenny looked at me, but I shrugged, unable to tell what they were. The forest curved around the north edge of the camp, so Jenny and I pulled back from our hiding place and crawled until the three dark shapes became all too clear.

The one closest to us was a flatbed truck. On its back there was an immense metal canister with a hose running from one side of it. A fuel truck, I guessed, meant to service what sat next to it — two hulking black jeeps, their sides and fronts plated with armor and an open back where heavy machine guns were mounted on rotating tripods.

It was like looking at two prehistoric monsters. Both of us stared in awe, speechless at what was looming over Settler’s Landing as it quietly slept just a few miles away.

“How could Fort Leonard afford mercenaries?” I whispered. “Aren’t they smaller than Settler’s Landing?”

Before Jenny could answer, there was a commotion in the camp as the black flap of one of the central tents opened. Two figures walked out and everything inside of me froze.

No. It can’t be.

The black man’s dreadlocks were longer than the last time I’d seen him, and so was his beard. The white man with the scar seemed, if anything, bigger. There was no doubt who they were though. Their faces were seared into my memory.

Not mercenaries.

Slavers.

The air rushed out of me as I realized exactly what Fort Leonard would have offered them in exchange for ending the war once and for all. They offered them Marcus and Violet and Jackson. They offered them Tuttle and Martin and Derrick and Wendy. They offered them everyone and everything in Settler’s Landing.

“Stephen?” Jenny whispered.

She grabbed my arm and pulled me deeper into the forest, away from the camp. Once we couldn’t hear them anymore, we eased down the back side of a slope, pressing our backs into the snow.

“We’ll tell Marcus,” Jenny said. “Warn them. Maybe if they know what’s coming—”

I almost laughed. The thought that they had a chance against these people, that they could even risk that, was ridiculous.

“They’ll have to go,” I said. “All of them. Take what they can and leave.”

“Leave Settler’s Landing? They won’t. Marcus and Violet? They’d die first.”

My fists curled in on themselves. She was right. God, what had I started? Were they here because of me too? Had they come looking for me and Dad and found Fort Leonard instead?

We sat there, a moat of empty space between us. Jenny chewed on her thumbnail, staring at the ground. We both knew what was coming.

I had seen it in the belly of that plane and she had seen it in a mass of men with their guns and their wild, hungry looks.

“It’s not our fault,” Jenny said. “What we did was stupid, but it was Caleb who went to Fort Leonard. Not us. He started this.”

I murmured something in agreement, but I didn’t believe it and I knew Jenny didn’t either.

A light snow began to fall again, whipping through the trees and tapping against our shoulders. A laugh, loud and throaty, rose from the slave traders’ camp. It was like the grunting of an animal ready to hunt.

I took Jenny’s hand and we fled through the woods.

Violet and Marcus were at the kitchen table when we arrived. Violet was at one end, knitting distractedly, while Marcus leaned grimly over a mug of tea.

“What is it?” Violet asked.

Before I could speak, Jackson came thundering down the stairs. I felt a flash of happiness to see him again but as soon as he saw me and Jenny, he stopped where he was, grasping the rail and eyeing us sharply.

“What are they doing here?”

The way he spat it out, I knew instantly that Marcus told him everything about our raid on the Henrys’. How we had started all of this. My mouth went dry. I felt sick. Ashamed.

“Come sit down, Jackson,” Violet said. “Stephen and Jenny say they have something to tell us.”

Jackson crept down the stairs, then took a seat at the far end of the kitchen table. He didn’t look at me and I found I couldn’t look at any of them. How could I? I’d abandoned Jackson, stolen from Violet, and betrayed Marcus and everyone else in the town. “Well, Stephen?” Violet said.

They all sat there watching us. Waiting. I clasped Jenny’s hand under the table and told them about the slavers that Fort Leonard had hired. The jeeps. The weapons. That they were the same ones my Dad and I had fought. Everything.

When I was done, Marcus rubbed his hand over the thick collection of stubble on his chin.

“Slavers,” Marcus said carefully. “You’re sure?”

I nodded. “I’m sure.”

Marcus looked across the table at Violet, but she stared down into her lap, all the color drained from her face.

“I know you don’t want to leave,” I said. “But you don’t know what these people will do. They—”

“They won’t do anything,” Jenny interrupted.

I turned to where Jenny sat beside me.

“What do you mean? Of course they—”

But Jenny wasn’t looking at me. She was focused on her parents. Her parents, who wouldn’t meet her gaze.

“Will they?” Jenny asked, holding the words out like bait. Marcus and Violet said nothing. Jackson didn’t move.

“I don’t…”

And then I got it. I saw what Jenny saw.

Ever since the night of our raid on the Henrys’, they should have been expecting the forces of Fort Leonard to arrive at any moment. But if they did, then why was Violet sitting at the table knitting? Shouldn’t she have been preparing for the coming fight? Shouldn’t Marcus’s rifle be close at hand instead of sitting in its rack on the wall?

And when I told them that a small army of slave traders was bearing down on them, they didn’t seem scared. They didn’t pack up. They didn’t flee town.

Most of all, they didn’t seem surprised.

I felt something like a barbed hook sinking into my gut and in that instant I knew.

Fort Leonard didn’t hire the slavers.

They did.

TWENTY-SEVEN

“Caleb told us they were mercenaries,” Marcus said, looking down into his tea. “Ex-soldiers. I don’t know where he found them. He said they’d run the people at Fort Leonard off so they wouldn’t come back. That’s all. He said no one would get hurt.”

“What are you supposed to do for them?” Jenny asked.

“They want to expand west. Caleb said we’d be like a way station. Nothing more. They’d store fuel here, food. He didn’t tell us they were slavers, I swear.”

“When does it happen?”

“Tonight. Sundown. We’re supposed to meet them at the gates and then we all go together.”

“We have to talk to Caleb,” Violet said. “Now.”

Marcus looked up at her. “And say what? You don’t think Caleb and his friends know what these people are already?”

“Then we talk to everyone else. Sam, Tuttle — we’ll have a vote.”

“You think if we have a vote and we actually win, they’ll just leave?”

We all sat there, still as statues as it sunk in. Slavers were no different from starving animals. Deny them Fort Leonard and they’d eat Settler’s Landing just as happily.

“Then what?” Violet asked.

Marcus turned to face the swirl of white outside. It was mounting steadily on the porch and bending the trees until their branches hung down miserably, nearly ready to snap.

“We did well this year, but you know the winters as well as I do, Vi. We’ll lose at least ten people from the cold and lack of food alone. If we have to deal with Fort Leonard picking away at us too, we could be done for. Our home. All of us. Gone.”

“What are you saying? We let this happen? Marcus—”

“I’m saying we don’t have a choice, Vi.”

“We do,” Violet said. “We have a choice about what we become, Marcus. Maybe it’s the only thing we do have a choice about.”

“Do you want to be out there again? Us and not them? Is that what you want?”

“How many times have we come close to doing the right thing,” Violet asked, “and then stopped because we were afraid? This. Sean and Mary Krychek—”

“Violet.”

“—that girl of theirs, just nine years old?”

“We did the best we could for them.”

“We stood up for them for an hour before giving them an old blanket and a day’s worth of bread and sending them on their way! Because we were afraid!”

Violet was red with anger and shame, leaning up out of her chair, her nails digging into the table. Marcus had no answer for her.

The wind howled and the snow mixed with hail that sounded sharp and metallic, like fingers tapping on a tin roof.

“You remember that day we played Go Fish, Jenny?”

Everyone turned to Jackson. His back was to us, caught in the half-gloom at the edge of the kitchen, looking out past the marble-topped counter to the storm outside. “Yeah,” Jenny said. “I do.”

“Everyone in Fort Leonard is just waking up,” Jackson said, almost to himself, the words tumbling out. “They’re talking. Starting fires for breakfast. Wishing it wasn’t snowing. But then these people, us, will appear and some of them won’t live through the day. Some of them have maybe a few hours left until they’re gone, or their families are gone and they’re alone. And they have no idea it’s coming. They think it’s just another day.”

Jackson’s voice hitched in his throat. A redness crept into his cheeks like leaves of flame.

“Jack,” Marcus urged. “Listen to me. I don’t like it either, but it’s us or it’s them. It’s—”

Jackson turned from the window and faced Marcus head-on, searching his face. Marcus deflated. He dropped his head, looking down at his hands. They seemed so small now, framed against the hardness of the table.

Violet moved over to Jackson, wrapping her arms tight around him from behind.

“I’m afraid too,” Violet said to Marcus. “But if fear’s all we’ve got, then we’re building this world on the same rotten foundation as the last one. What good are we doing Jackson or Jenny or Stephen? What good are we doing anyone?”

Marcus turned and regarded each of us one by one, like we were a jury deciding his fate, before struggling up out of his chair and gathering his rifle and his coat.

I stood up at the table. “No,” I said, urgently. “You can’t fight them. If you try to be a hero—”

“Caleb lied to us,” Marcus said. “And he did it so he could turn this place into something none of us want it to be. This is our home. If this isn’t worth fighting for, then what is?”

Jackson left his mother and crossed the room to stand with Marcus. Together they went out into the front room. A moment later, the door shut with a deep boom that shuddered through the house.

No one moved for a time. The wind moaned. The finger-tap hail pattered on and on.

Violet went without another word to her cabinet. She lit candles and then opened each drawer one by one, taking inventory with crisp practiced motions, preparing for whatever was to come.

Beside me, Jenny sat with her chin resting on her fists, absorbed in the whirl of white. I pushed away from the table and went out the front door.

A rush of wind and snow blew toward me as I stepped outside and dropped down onto the front steps. Across the street, Marcus and Jackson moved from one house to the other. They’d disappear inside for a time, and when they came out they’d be joined by one or two others and they’d all move on, snaking their way through the town.

With their dark coats cutting through the snow, they reminded me of an army of black ants gathering to make a valiant stand against a farmer’s boot.

Behind me, the front door opened and closed. Jenny descended the steps and went to stand beyond the porch’s roof, looking from house to house, taking it all in.

“You’re staying,” I said. “Aren’t you?”

Jenny lifted her chin, examining the cottony sky. “I thought I could leave,” she said. “I thought it’d be easy. But I can’t. Not if they don’t.”

Everything in me ached. Of course Jenny would stay. She’d join with whoever Marcus could raise to fight Caleb and the slavers, and they’d all suffer.

And what could I do? Only one thing.

“I should get our things,” I said, looking down at the brick steps beneath my feet. “From the casino. Before anything starts.”

“Want me to come?”

I turned back to face her. Jenny stood on the porch with her hands jammed in the pockets of her coat, her hair a cloud of black. She was looking over my head, scanning the neighborhood, her eyes focused to a knife’s edge. There was no stopping her.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll do it myself.”

Jenny darted in and kissed my cheek. “Hurry up. It’d be a shame if the cold killed you before the slavers had a chance.”

I nodded and Jenny threw open the front door and went inside. I stood there a moment looking at the blank face of the door, listening to the falling snow, before I crossed the Greens’ front yard and went out into the street.

The walls to either side of the Settler’s Landing gates had never seemed more like two gravestones as I passed them and went into the forest. Looking out over the crumbling highway and the casino, everything seemed so far away. Jenny. Jackson. All of my friends. I wished the chain that bound me to them could be cut, but it was there, strong as ever.

I bypassed the casino and trekked some miles until I found the clearing where I’d buried Dad. In the center there was a swell in the blanket of white. My hands stung as I knelt in front of it and scooped the piles of snow away until I reached the loose dirt at the top of the grave. I pressed my palms deep into it. My breath dropped to a whisper. A yawning emptiness opened inside me.

I’m here, I thought. I’m right here.

I used Dad’s knife to cut a thick branch down from one of the surrounding trees, stripped it of its bark, and flattened one side. I held it in my lap and carved the letters of his name before plunging it deep into the ground at the head of his grave. When I was done, I traced my fingers over its surface.

I thought of Grandpa lying out alone in the woods so far away. If we had left a marker for him, it would have said the exact same thing. And soon so would mine.

I started to speak, to say good-bye, but it was like my mouth was stuffed with dead leaves and sand.

The wind rose, carrying the scent of pine and earth, and for a second I felt Jenny’s lips, soft and warm, against my cheek. She lingered there, her forehead at my temple, her breath on my neck. I had to shake her ghost away.

I drew my knife and tested its dark edge with my thumb. Though its surface was pitted and scarred and worn with age, it was still sharp. It killed me to lie to Jenny, but I knew that what I had to do, I had to do alone.

TWENTY-EIGHT

I slipped into the trees as quietly as I could, staying low and in the shadows. I had to stay hidden for as long as possible.

The snow had stopped and the day had grown warmer, leaving slippery patches of ice and snow and mud. As I drew closer to the slavers’ camp, I caught metallic clanking noises and snatches of voices, faint at first. Despite the cold, sweat was dripping off my forehead. When I slid Dad’s knife from its sheath, my palms were slick on the handle. A heavy thump shuddered through my chest.

I closed my eyes and was once again cowering in the back of that plane, choked with the musty smell of dank water and the tangles of weeds and dirt all around us.

I wiped my hands off on my jeans and stood up, surveying the last stretch of woods between me and the slave traders’ camp. I gripped the blade tight and began to step over a fallen tree, but a pair of hands grabbed me from behind and yanked me backward. I struggled to get away but my knees hit a stump and I toppled over it. The knife shot out from my hand. I thought of Jenny and the Greens. I couldn’t lose like this, not when I was so close. I tried to get myself up again, but before I could, my attacker vaulted over and pinned me down. A face framed with long wisps of black hair darted down toward mine.

“Jenny?”

She put her fingers to her lips, then dragged me away, farther from the slavers’ camp. We stopped on the other side of a fallen tree and she dropped down in front of me.

“What are you doing here?” I hissed.

“What am I doing here? Following you, that’s what I’m doing. Man, I’ve known you for, like, a week and I can already see right through you. ‘Going to get our things from the casino.’ Yeah, right. Why didn’t you tell me you had a plan?”

“There is no plan,” I said, picking Dad’s knife up out of the snow.

“Go back to town.”

“Oh sure. I’ll let you waltz into camp and stab their two psycho leaders on your own. I’m sure that’ll work out just great. Are you insane? This was your plan? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“’Cause I didn’t want you to follow me! Look, just go home. I don’t want you involved in this. This isn’t your problem. Let me—”

“That isn’t how this works, Stephen.”

“How what works?”

Jenny stared at me.

“Us,” she said. “If you’re going to do something stupid, then so am I.”

My hands went weak on the handle of the knife. “Jenny—”

“Marcus gathered about forty others,” Jenny said in a hush. “They’re meeting Caleb and the slavers at the gates at sunset. If they can’t call it off, they’ll fight. I figure the best we can do is slow them down, hobble them a little to give Marcus a chance. Without those jeeps, things would be a little more even. Right?”

I wanted to argue but she was that hurricane again, ready to tear through whatever was in her way. How do you fight a force of nature? “Right,” I said. “But how—”

An explosion of light came from the direction of the camp, piercing the gloom with razor-thin fingers. Jenny and I fell flat in the snow. We glanced at each other, then Jenny crept forward before I could stop her. I scrambled along behind, and together we peeked over the edge of the fallen tree.

The jeeps’ headlights washed over the camp, throwing the shadows of the slavers onto the trees. Their engines roared. The men were making final preparations, fueling the jeeps, strapping on their gear, and checking their weapons.

There were at least twenty of them. With just the two of us and practically no weapons, I didn’t see any option for us that didn’t look like suicide. I was about to tell Jenny it was impossible, but before I could, she nodded out to our left where a lone backpack sat by the side of a tent.

At first I didn’t see why, but then I looked closer. Hanging from the side of the pack was a string of black baseball-size orbs with pins sticking out of them. Grenades. One of the men must have set them aside, meaning to grab them on the way out. I looked across the camp. The pack was a good ten feet from where the slavers were gathering for their instructions, but at least forty feet from where Jenny and I were.

“We’ll never get to them before they get us.”

Jenny was silent, chewing on it. She kept her eyes fixed on the camp. The man with the scar climbed into the driver’s side of one of the jeeps just as it was finished being fueled.

“This isn’t going to work,” I said. “We should just —” Jenny pulled off her heavy coat, revealing her old Red Army jacket beneath. She started buttoning it up. “What are you —?”

“I’m taking care of the first part.” Jenny pulled her hair back tight and secured it with a leather thong she took from her pocket. “Second part’s on you.”

“Jenn—”

Before I could finish, Jenny kissed me quick, stepped out from behind the tree, and walked right into the middle of the slavers’ camp.

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.”

THIRTY

I led the two of them at a run through the woods.

“Where are we going?” Jackson asked from behind me, more insistent now that it was the third time he’d asked without me answering. I ducked beneath a low-hanging branch and took the last leg at a sprint. The rocky ground gave way to the snow and grass that surrounded the house, and I had to stop, unsure where to go next. Luckily, as soon as we made it to the yard, Jenny knew exactly what we were doing.

“Stephen, you’re a genius,” she said. “Come on, it’s this way.”

She took off. I started to follow her, but Jackson grabbed my coat and jerked me back.

“What are we doing here?”

“There’s no time to explain,” I said, but he wasn’t backing off. The mix of fear and anger in his eyes was electric.

“Why should I trust you?” he asked through gritted teeth. “After what you and Jenny did — you just left. You didn’t even say anything. I thought we were friends.”

“We are.”

“Then why—”

“I was trying to protect you!”

“Well, I don’t need your protection!”

“Look, this whole thing was my fault. I know that, but I need your help to fix it. I’m sorry I left. I am. I didn’t know what else to do.”

Jackson didn’t relent. He held me there, sure that I was lying; sure that it was a trap. The distrust in his eyes bored through me. Some part of me that was still Grandpa’s wanted to push him away and finish things with Jenny, but I held my ground.

“It’s not going to be like before,” I said. “We’re not going to let them have this place, Jackson. And we’re not going to run. I swear.”

Jackson fixed me hard with his eyes, looking deep for the lie. A clatter of gunfire rose behind us, followed by three deep booms that lit up the sky in orange flashes. Jackson pushed me aside and ran after Jenny. Praying I was right, I followed.

We found Jenny at the northern edge of the Henrys’ big house, kneeling down and peering out around a corner of the wall. In the darkness all we could see was the sharp outline of two paddocks and the wall of trees that separated them from the Henrys’ pigs and sheep. Inside the pens, the horses and cows, anxious after the night of gunfire, were a confusion of restless shadows, snorting and attacking the ground with their hooves. The sound of it, angry and wild, made a piece of my heart lodge firmly in my throat.

Jenny nudged Jackson with her shoulder. “Whatcha think, Jackie boy?”

Jackson’s forehead furrowed as he put it together. “Will it work?”

“Did last time,” I said, earning a glare from Jackson and Jenny. “What? It did.”

Jackson stared into the darkness, his hands fidgeting and seizing into fists, relaxing, then doing it again.

“We can do this,” I said quietly, just to him, hoping it was true.

Jackson turned to me and something seemed to click inside him. He stood up and swept the rifle off his shoulder. Without another word, he tore out into the open.

Jenny and I followed him, running out across the Henrys’ yard, slowing as we came to the pens. Closer up, I could see how panicked the animals really were. The horses paced and bucked fitfully in their small area, thousands of pounds of muscles and fear, the whites of their eyes flashing in the low moonlight. Near Jenny, the group of twenty or more cows lowed and snorted and dug their hooves into the ground, swinging their horns wildly around them. My stomach twisted with nerves as I set my hand on the flimsy latch that held the wooden gate closed. Whenever one of the horses so much as touched a rail the whole thing shook. Jenny looked up at me. I took a deep breath and nodded.

“Okay!” Jenny called out. “Now!”

Four shots from Jackson’s rifle exploded into the air across from us. The animals reared up and crashed into one another, filling the air with their high-pitched squeals. When they started moving, the ground beneath us shook. Jenny and I yanked the gates open, scrambling to get out of the way as the animals came boiling out as a single mass, like water exploding from a burst dam. They trampled through the mud and snow past the house, headed for the trees, throwing up a haze of debris all around them, their dark bodies shooting through it. I pressed my back against the wooden gate until I saw a flash of Jackson through the dust. He was moving south, firing his rifle into the air, herding them along.

I left the pen after the last horse had cleared it and followed along behind. I didn’t see Jenny anywhere — the cloud of mud and smoke was too thick and the roar of the animals was deafening. I was swept away with it, running, stumbling, barely able to see the ground beneath my feet, my mouth and nose clogging with dust. I thought I heard someone calling my name, thought I saw someone up ahead, but then it would all disappear in the gray churn and all I could do was run and hope I didn’t fall.

It was worse when we moved out of the field and into the woods. There, the rumble and blare of the stampede were enclosed in the trees and focused, like an avalanche finding its course. The animal surge tore apart everything in its path: brush and leaves, exposed roots and saplings. All of it was shredded and sucked into the deluge, leaving a barren strip of land in its wake.

The herd spread out as it poured into the field. When the firing and screams began, I knew they had found their mark. Out in the open now, I could see the animals breaking around the body of the jeep. Most of the soldiers had heard them coming and fled, but as I ran I passed the few who hadn’t, lying beaten and bruised on the ground, the conscious ones gasping for air as though they’d nearly been drowned.

I didn’t know if Marcus and his people were taking the opportunity to attack or not — there was too much confusion to be sure — but up ahead I did see the one thing that mattered.

Somehow the man with the scar had managed to hold his place on the machine gun at the back of the jeep. He was no fool either. He knew what was happening and wasn’t paying the slightest attention to the stampede around him. He was aiming squarely ahead, fully prepared for Marcus and his people to attack.

I ran toward him as he leaned into the gun and a tongue of orange flame roared out of it. Taking three quick strides, I leapt up to the lip of the jeep’s bed. My foot hit the edge of it and I pitched forward, piling into him. He jerked around and, not missing a beat, dropped his fist like a hammer. The breath shot out of me. I gasped but somehow managed to hold on to him. He struggled, squirming and punching, until his feet hit a pile of shell casings that littered the floor of the jeep and he went down. I fell on top of him, my legs landing on either side of his chest. He looked up at me and a sudden burst of recognition shot through him.

“You,” he growled.

Before he could say anything more, I braced my forearm on his throat and pressed down with all my weight.

I stared down at his white face, craggy and pitted and hard as Grandpa’s. His teeth were bared, his eyes burning but empty. I saw him coming at us in the plane, drunken and full of hate. For so long I had blamed Dad for what had happened. But I knew right then, leaning over that monster, that it was this man’s fault, everything was. All Dad had been trying to do was be a better man than him.

I grabbed my wrist and leaned in, pressing down onto his throat. His fists slammed into my sides but I barely felt them. I wasn’t going to miss my chance. He gasped and his eyes widened, but he was far from giving up. He struggled even harder, his balled-up fists beating at my ribs, then grabbing at my shoulders. His hands went white, trying to tear me off. His left hand made it to my throat, his fingers clamping down as his right braced against my chest.

I had to let go of him to pull his hand from around my neck. As I thrashed, his other hand closed around my throat as well. He pushed me over onto my side, then rolled on top of me, both hands on my throat.

“Stupid kid,” he said as he squeezed. “You may have helped that woman and her brat, but looking for you and your dad led us right here where we made some nice new friends. I should thank you.”

I threw my fists into him, but they bounced uselessly off his thick shoulders. I gasped for air as he put me down on my back and leaned over me, squeezing his big hands tighter and tighter.

Gunfire crackled around me as the world tripped into darkness, collapsing until there was just his face, twisted into a snarl or a smile — I couldn’t tell which — hanging over me like an awful moon.

The shouting and gunshots faded, receding farther and farther away. As darkness seeped in, I saw Mom and Dad. He had his arm around her, drawing her in close to his side. They were standing in a sun-drenched field against a blue sky, smiling, skin bronze and shining. Mom was in her red and gold dress, her hair blowing in the breeze.

Mom’s hand grazed my cheek, then took my shoulders and brought me in between her and Dad so I could feel the warmth of their bodies and the steady rhythm of their breath, in and out, in and out, all around me.

I looked up and saw the flash of her smile like a winking star.

Then there was a crack, like thunder, and everything went black.

THIRTY-ONE

I was being dragged across the ground by my wrists, my arms thrown over my head, aching badly. Shackles. I’m in shackles. Rocks and shell casings scraped my back, and when I tried to breathe, the air was thick with smoke and my throat was wrecked. My head pounded.

I was alive. How? I opened my eyes, but they stung from the smoke. All I could see were hazy blooms of light in the sky. Orange and yellow and then a smear of bloody red. I wrenched my head back, hoping to see who had me, but I couldn’t see any farther than my own wrists and the pair of hands that were clamped around them. Not shackles. Hands. Pulling me. But to where? I writhed, trying to free myself, but I was too weak.

“Who are you?” I croaked. My throat was ragged, dry, and swollen like it was full of thorns. “Where are you taking me? Where’s Jenny?”

A canopy of trees closed over us and whoever was pulling me dropped my hands and stalked a few feet away. I tried to sit up, but my back screamed in pain, so I lay there catching my breath, trying to ready myself for whatever was next. The fighting was a distant series of thumps and cries somewhere out on the field.

A shadow fell over me and I cringed, attempting to get my hands over my face to protect myself. But all that came was a cool rush of water sweeping down over my forehead and across my eyes, wiping away the grime and the burning. I opened my mouth to let the water rush down my throat. Once I drank all I could, I opened my eyes again.

Sitting behind me, a canteen in his hand, was Jackson. He wasn’t looking at me. His arm was wrapped in a bandage that was soaked through with blood. There was a clatter of gunfire way out in the field and then the yellow flash of an explosion that lit up his dirty face.

“You okay?” I asked.

Jackson nodded.

“Where’s Jenny?”

“With Dad and the others. They’re chasing the last of them out now.”

I urged myself up to my elbows painfully. A low fog hung over everything, and a column of smoke billowed into the sky from the corner of the school’s roof that was visible.

What had once been a baseball field was pitted and torn. A few animals stood here and there, lost. Some lay dead on the ground. The fighting had moved east into the woods. The jeep sat in the middle of the field.

“What happened to…”

And then I saw him. Just behind the jeep lay the man with the scar. He was facedown in the mud, his arms thrown over his head. The snow around him was stained a deep red.

I turned to Jackson. His rifle lay on the ground next to him. He stared across the field at the man, looking hundreds of miles away.

Jackson shuddered, then dropped his head into his hands, his chest heaving as he sobbed.

I dragged myself closer and put my hand on his shoulder. I wanted to say thank you. I wanted to say I was sorry. I wanted to say a lot of things, but right then it seemed best to say nothing at all, so I sat there with him until his breathing slowed, thinking how the end of the world had made so many of us unrecognizable, even to ourselves.

Soon, Jenny came running across the field and dropped down beside us. Her clothes were torn and dirty and there was a smear of blood on her forehead, but I couldn’t tell if it was hers or someone else’s.

“Are you—”

She lunged across me and grabbed Jackson into a hug. He seemed surprised at first, but then his hands tightened around her back, grasping her to him.

“Mom and Dad are all right,” Jenny told him breathlessly after they parted. “After the man with the dreadlocks ran, the rest started to fold. There are a few stragglers, but we’re pushing them back.”

“How many of our people—”

“Don’t worry about that now. We can—”

“How many?” I insisted.

Jenny looked at her brother, then at me. A tattoo of rifle shots crackled through the air, followed by the boom of explosions like a waning thunderstorm.

“Twenty,” she said. “Maybe more.”

“Will?”

Jenny turned to track a low rumble that rose in the east.

“He’s dead.”

It was like the deep toll of a bell, leaving us silent, kneeling together under that stand of trees.

We all turned as some kind of commotion broke out down the hill on the way to town. The few adults who remained were racing up the road past the school, shouting back and forth to one another.

“What’s going on?”

Jenny helped me and Jackson up, and together we trotted across the field and down the road. We reached town just behind the gathering group of people. They were all hurrying into the park, but the three of us froze where we were.

Sam’s house was a wall of fire. Three houses down the road from it were smoking, their windows lit a livid orange from inside. Trees were burning like torches and spreading the fire from house to house. The slavers may have gone but we had a new problem now.

Settler’s Landing was in flames.

THIRTY-TWO

Jenny pulled at my hand and we all raced into the crowd that was gathering in the park between Sam’s house and the Greens’. Others flooded in behind us, returning from the fight only to find their homes close to destruction.

Tuttle stood at the center of the crowd shouting instructions I couldn’t make out over the roar of the fires and panicked voices. Buckets were passed out and people began filling them with snow and rushing off to the houses that hadn’t caught yet. Another group took axes and ran to the stands of trees between houses, hoping to fell them and create firebreaks.

It seemed hopeless. The air was thick with smoke and the smell of burning. There was screaming as the crowd surged and pushed. Tuttle tried to keep people organized, but his voice was getting more and more drowned out.

Someone forced a bucket into my hand and I was pushed on by the crowd, Jenny beside me.

“We’re going to the school,” she shouted into my ear. To her right were Jackson and Derrick and some others.

“They sent the little ones there,” Derrick said. “Thought they’d be safe there during the fight. We think some of them are still there now!”

I remembered the plume of smoke I’d seen rising from the school roof and broke into a run. There were about twenty of us, some with axes and some with buckets. We tore down the hill and across the parking lot to the school.

It was better off than many of the houses, but smoke was seeping out of the cracks of doorways and some of the windows were lit up with flames. Derrick led a group to a snowbank nearby where they began to fill their buckets.

“Where are they?” I asked Derrick. “The kids?”

“Toward the back, I think.”

I dropped the bucket and once Jenny, Jackson, and I made it to the school’s front doors, I slammed my shoulder into them. The doors gave with a screech and a wave of heat. It was worse inside than it looked. Jenny motioned some of Derrick’s team into the doorway and they began tossing loads of snow onto the walls to try to keep the fire from growing. There was a hiss and gasps of steam as some of the flames were squelched.

“Stay low,” Jenny called.

The three of us covered our mouths and noses and ducked down, crawling along the floor where the air was clearer. We checked all of the small classrooms we passed, but each was empty except for overturned desks and chairs. The smoke was already massing in my throat and burning my eyes. We had to find them fast.

The three of us finally reached the main classroom at the end of the hall and tumbled through the doors, coughing. The air inside was clearer, but still just as hot. I doubled over and sucked in a painful breath. At first the room seemed empty, but then I saw a leg poking out from behind Tuttle’s big desk. “There!”

We found ten of the little ones cowering behind the desk, all of them stained with soot and looking terrified. Jenny dropped to her knees by their side.

“It’s going to be okay, guys,” she said calmly. “Just come with us and we’ll get you out of here.”

The kids shied away at first, like scared animals, but she was finally able to pull them to their feet and lead them back to the doors. I paused by the desk as she went. Jenny turned back.

“Take them out of here,” I shouted.

“What are you going to do?” Jenny asked.

I turned toward the far wall of wooden shelves. Each level was stacked with row after row of books. Science. Government. The arts. Everything.

“Are you crazy? We don’t have time, this place is coming down!”

Over her shoulder I could just see Jackson leading the kids into the smoky hallway.

“Then go! Help Jackson with the kids!”

I knew Jenny would keep protesting, so I turned from her and ran for the bookshelf, weaving through the lines of desks and pulling books off as fast as I could, filling my arms with them. I reached for a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, but Jenny got it first.

“One more stupid thing I have to do because of you,” she said with a sooty smile as she yanked down a score of books.

Our arms were full when there was another moan from behind us. The far wall of the classroom was blackening and about to go. Soon the whole place would be on fire.

“Think we’re out of time, pal. Let’s get out of here!”

Just as we turned to the doors, a curtain of flame appeared, blocking our way. The wall alongside it had begun to smolder too. Smoke was now seeping into the room.

We both stood there, our arms weighed down with books, looking for some way out. The walls around us groaned. Tinder deep inside them crackled and popped. We were trapped.

“Well, Stephen? Any more bright ideas?”

I looked all around the room. I had nothing. The only doors out were blocked and the fire was only growing stronger and hotter. The books felt like lead in my arms. How could I have been so stupid? We were going to die for these? As the smoke grew thicker all I could think of was the whole town wiped away, little more than a smudge of ash in the woods. All they had done, all they had built, would be lost, forgotten.

“We have to just run for it,” Jenny said. “Drop the books and jump through the fire. It’s the only way.”

It was insane. The fire had grown too big, feeding off the old wood. “Jenny, no. We can’t—”

“Just do it!”

Jenny dropped the load in her arms, but then someone screamed my name from behind us. I turned to see Jackson leaning through the open window high up on the back wall.

“Come on,” he shouted. “This way!”

I looked up at the window. It was narrow and set a good fifteen feet high. We’d never make it. I spun around the room, hunting for a solution, but all I saw were desks and chairs and… something snapped. I had it.

“The desks!” I shouted to Jenny. “Come on.”

Jenny started grabbing desks out of their neat rows and dragging them over to the window. There, we stacked desk upon desk until we made a ladder leading up to the window. Jackson knelt at the window’s edge and held out his hand. I pushed Jenny up first. When she reached the top she turned and held her hand out for me, but instead of starting the climb I reached back and gathered the stacks of books.

“Come on!” Jenny urged.

“Hey, remember how I promised Tuttle I’d bring about the new golden age?”

“Stephen!”

“I’m not moving until you take them!”

Jenny grimaced but held out her hands as I dug into the piles and handed up as many as I could. She passed them off to Jackson, then dove through the window and reached down for my hand.

“Okay, now you!”

The desks were shakier than I’d thought. The thin metal legs quivered as I climbed. I could feel the heat of the fire singeing my back, growing by the second. I made it up one desk, then two, but as I reached for the third, there was another collapse behind me and I felt the bottom desk shift and falter.

“Jump!”

My legs shook. There was a crash as the desks tumbled beneath me and then I was falling, my arms pinwheeling as the hands of gravity pulled me backward, down into the smoke. There was a strange moment as Jenny’s face seemed to rush away from me and everything else slowed down. I felt weightless and weak and I knew there was nothing I could do. I would fall and the smoke would swallow me whole, but at least Jenny and Jackson and the kids would be safe. I closed my eyes, accepting it, but then I jerked to a stop.

I opened my eyes and there was Jenny leaning halfway out of the window, her hand locked onto my wrist.

“Gotcha,” she said, and then other hands appeared, latching on to me and dragging me up toward the window. As I got closer, Jackson took hold of my sleeve. I grabbed on to them, pushed against the wall with my feet, and climbed, the fire licking at my heels.

When I made it to the window more hands reached out: Derrick’s, Martin’s, Carrie’s, and others’. I felt the cold, fresh air rush into my lungs and I bent over, coughing, then fell onto my side. Behind my friends were the ring of little ones and a stack of books mostly untouched by the fire.

I had only a moment to rest before Jenny lifted me up and we all stumbled away from the building and out to the battlefield. Once we were far enough away, we stopped and turned back to the school.

Flames had consumed most of the west wall and were spreading around to the front. Soon the roof groaned and fell in. When it did, the fire surged, lighting up the gray sky and filling it with columns of smoke. It seemed as though only minutes passed before there was nothing but piles of burning wood and scattered bricks.

I remembered sitting inside that first day, desperate to flee, feeling alien and alone amid all those kids who seemed nothing like me. I looked around at the group of us now. Everyone was streaked with ash and peppered with burns and trails of blood, our clothes torn into ruins. Carrie was leaning into John Carter’s shoulder while Derrick and Martin sat on a snowbank on either side of Wendy, helping her wash the ash out of her eyes. Jenny’s hand fell into mine.

Standing there as the school burned, that group of us drew together into a tight little band that felt solid as iron. The houses could burn and the school could fall, but maybe together we’d survive.

“Look,” someone said.

We turned toward the field just as a group of people emerged from the trees opposite us, maybe forty in all. “Are they ours?” Derrick asked.

“All of our people went back to fight the fires,” Jenny said.

The group moved slowly, weaving their way past the bodies and the wreckage of the jeep. They definitely weren’t slavers, but as they got closer I made out the thin silhouettes of rifles in their hands.

Whoever they were, we still weren’t done for the day.

THIRTY-THREE

Jenny, Jackson, and I moved the younger kids back into the woods with Derrick and the others.

“Should we go get Mom and Dad?” Jackson asked.

Jenny shook her head. “There’s too much to do down there. Looks like it’s just us.”

The three of us made our way through the carnage, our boots sliding on the muddy and blood-soaked snow. As soon as the others saw us coming, they unslung their rifles and lifted them. The three of us slowed.

“Just stay calm,” I whispered. “Don’t make any sudden moves and keep your hands where they can see them.”

It was a ragged group, a mix of old and young. They weren’t clothed or fed as well as those in Settler’s Landing, but we couldn’t mistake that for weakness. Some looked just as scared as I imagined Jenny and Jackson and I did, but some also looked hard and ready for whatever might happen. They would use their weapons, no doubt about it.

This looked especially true of the one I took for their leader. He was a tall, rail-thin man with a scraggly black-and-white beard and a patch over one eye. He had a chrome revolver attached to his hip but was so calm he hadn’t even drawn it yet, just moved across the field with his hand resting on the pistol’s grip.

We kept our approach slow and easy until there was only about ten feet separating us. Everything around us stank of blood and fire. Jenny and Jackson and I stopped where we were; the man with the patch lifted one hand, and his people stopped too. Gun barrels dipped slightly but did not drop.

No one said anything for a moment as we took a measure of one another. I looked back over my shoulder. No one in sight. Everyone was still in town fighting the fires. A shot of nerves quaked through me. I’d have given anything for Marcus and the others to appear, but we were on our own.

I took a step forward. My mouth felt full of cotton. My hands shook.

“You’re from Fort Leonard,” I said.

The man nodded slowly. “Looks like you all had a bit of trouble here.”

“Yes sir.”

The man appraised the field around us and spit on the ground. “Slavers. We passed a bunch of them retreating on the way over. No coincidence they were here, I guess.”

“No sir.”

“You all hired them to take care of us.”

I looked over at Jenny and Jackson. I could tell both of them were scared, but they were putting on stony faces. I felt their strength bleed into me, straightening my spine, making me even more sure of what I had to do.

“Yes sir,” I said. “We did.”

“Guess it didn’t go as planned.”

“Some of us thought the folks who hired them shouldn’t be running things anymore,” Jenny said from beside me. “When we told them and the slavers to take off, they went after us.”

“You think I’m going to thank you for deciding not to turn all of me and mine into slaves?”

“No sir,” Jenny said.

It went quiet again and I had to fight to keep still. This wasn’t going right. What were we thinking, coming up here?

“Stephen, Jenny, Jackson — step away from there!”

The three of us whipped around to see Marcus and Sam and about ten others appear on the field behind us. Each of them had a gun trained on the people from Fort Leonard, who in turn raised theirs with a metallic clatter. The man with the patch had his gun out now and was pointing it right in Marcus’s face. The chrome hammer was drawn all the way back.

“Stephen,” Marcus said slowly, “take Jenny and Jackson and move out of the way.”

I swallowed hard. “They’re not here to fight,” I said.

“Stephen.”

I turned to the man with the patch. “Are you?”

The man tightened his grip on the revolver.

“They killed two friends of ours. We will fight if we need to, son.”

“Tell them it was an accident,” Jenny pleaded.

“Just get out of the way!”

I turned away from Marcus and back to Fort Leonard’s leader.

“It was my fault,” I said. “Okay? It was a dumb prank. I made everyone here think your people were attacking us and that’s why they sent the group that shot your friends. So if you want to shoot someone, then shoot me, but we’re telling you the truth. The ones who sent the people who killed your friends, the ones who hired the slavers, are not in charge anymore. I swear they’re not.”

The man with the patch considered this as we all held our breath.

“Look,” I said, as steady as I could, “the people who came before us nearly destroyed the whole world, but that was yesterday. This is today, and today we’ve got a choice, right?”

The group from Fort Leonard gripped the stocks of their guns like they were trying to keep their heads above water. If the wind blew wrong, they’d fire. And if they did, Marcus and his people would too.

“Marcus,” I said, “have everybody put their guns down.”

“Them first,” Marcus said. “We’re not—”

“Just do it,” Jackson commanded, turning around to face his father. “You’ve come this far. Just go one step further.”

Marcus gripped the rifle to his shoulder, sweat cutting channels through the soot on his face.

Jenny took a step toward him. “Please, Dad,” she said, and reached out to lay her palm over his rifle’s sight.

Painfully slow, Marcus lowered the barrel of his rifle, keeping his eyes on the people from Fort Leonard the entire time, looking for any hint they were about to take advantage. When they didn’t, he lowered his gun all the way and then motioned for Sam and the others to do the same.

Jenny turned to the man with the patch. “Now you.”

The man looked back at his people and gave a slight nod. All around us gun barrels wilted and fell until we stood there, two divided fronts without a war to fight.

Marcus took a tentative step forward and held out his hand.

“Marcus Green,” he said.

The man holstered his revolver, then lifted his own hand to take Marcus’s.

“Stan Allison.”

The two stood silently for a moment. Marcus looked back over his shoulder at the smoke rising above the trees.

“If you all could spare it,” he said, “we could really use some help.”

Stan nodded, then waved his people forward. Marcus and Sam and the others from Settler’s Landing led the way, but soon the people from Fort Leonard had caught up. They all mixed together, one side indistinguishable from the other as they marched toward the fires.

We watched them go, then Jenny took my hand and Jackson’s, and once we gathered up the little ones, we followed them back to town, all of us hoping there would be something left.