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.