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.