The copter landed on the abandoned floor. I peered out from behind the small pile of rocks that had protected us as the door popped open and the pilot emerged. He was followed by another man about fifteen centimeters taller and ten kilos heavier. The pilot was tattooed up his bare arms and open vest, and even his helmet had decals and insignias. The other man, however, was unadorned, except for a single small tattoo of a bird on his neck.
“Ulysses!” I cried. I ran from the hiding place before Will could stop me.
Ulysses turned toward the sound of my voice. When he saw me, he dropped to one knee and raised his arms. I ran right into him, throwing my hands around his thick neck. His chest was warm and full, and I buried my head in the rough fabric of his shirt.
“I thought you were dead,” I whispered.
“I thought you were dead!” he roared.
I hugged him harder and was surprised at how good it felt. It had been a long time since I had hugged anyone like that, and I held on tightly. Finally I stepped back and looked at him. There was a new wound on his forehead, and when I touched it gently, he flinched.
“That’s the worst of it,” he said. The story tumbled out of his mouth in a rush: After the dam had burst, he had been knocked unconscious and awoke in the truck, one leg wedged under the seat and his arms tangled in wire. Somehow he hadn’t drowned, and the truck had been pushed by the waters to drier ground. He had managed to extricate his arms and leg, then to crawl through the open door and collapse. The helicopter had found him lying on the ground about half a kilometer from the truck, nearly dead of dehydration even though the waters from the dam still flowed nearby.
Most of the pirates’ equipment had been destroyed, and at least half his men were dead or missing. The dogs were gone, and he assumed they were dead too. Only two trucks still functioned, and the pirates had salvaged parts for a third. Ulysses left the survivors to repair what they could while he and the pilot took off to search for Will and me. They ambushed some of Nasri’s men on the road, and from them they learned we were in the canyon.
“We couldn’t leave you in the hands of PELA,” he concluded.
I never felt more grateful to have been captured by pirates. But the loss of my new friends weighed heavily again: Ali, Pooch, and Cheetah. Death was everywhere, but never so sudden or so violent. The images of swollen bodies taken by the river haunted me, faces purpled and blackened tongues extended. I would never forget the sight of blood spurting from Dr. Tinker’s head, dark red and viscous. I shut my eyes, but the dead were still there: hands twisted, legs akimbo, mouths frozen in horrible screams. But I didn’t see Kai, and that gave me the slimmest hope.
Will had stood quietly nearby, listening to Ulysses’s story, and now he ventured closer. “What about the driller?” he asked. “The driller and his son?”
“Kai?” asked Ulysses.
I tried to hide my surprise but could not. Ulysses laughed and said, “I’m not a dunce. You gave it away the first day we met you. Then we heard you talking in the truck. Of course we know Rikkai. I told you we were following him.”
“You said you were following a boy and his father.”
“The father goes where the boy tells him.”
Was Kai alive? I felt my heart quicken.
“He’s a diviner,” explained Ulysses. “Finds water with his nose. And he’s found something big.”
“His nose?” repeated Will.
“That’s the theory, but there are lots of them. Doesn’t matter how he does it. The fact is, he can find water, and his father drills for it.”
He can find water. I remembered the way Kai first spilled water on the road, as if he knew there was plenty more where it came from. The gifts he brought to our home. How he found the underground spring at the abandoned mill. He can find water.
“Is Kai here then?” asked Will.
Ulysses shook his head. “No. This is an evil place. It’s all dried up. In a couple months, the final aquifer will fail. The men will try to hide it by adding chemicals to the water that remains, but after a while even that will become too expensive, and they’ll abandon it.”
“What will happen to the kids?” I asked.
Ulysses’s mouth drew tight. “They’ll die. Or the men will shoot them and bury them in the caves. I’ve seen it happen.”
“We have to help them!”
Ulysses did not respond, but children began emerging from the caves and drill holes, drawn by the helicopter, the lack of gunfire, and a constant driving thirst.
“There are too many,” said the pilot, speaking for the first time.
“We can try.”
Now there were more children, hundreds of them, perhaps even thousands, standing on the edges of the entrances to the caves, staring back. I could feel their eyes, curious and burning, beseeching me. We had to save them.
Ulysses put his hand on my forearm. “The most we can do is free them from here, give them some water, and hope they make it on their own.”
“They’ll die. You said so.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
I was about to argue, but Ulysses raised his gun. I looked to where he was aiming, and saw the tall man with his two guards approaching. Two other guards were about twenty meters behind them. Ulysses gently pushed me backward toward Will and the pilot.
“Put down the weapon,” instructed the man.
Ulysses adjusted his grip and sighted through the laser.
“You’re outnumbered,” the man continued. “Drop your weapon.”
“Outnumbered on the ground. There’s a bird in the air will take out all of you before you can get off a single shot.”
The tall man considered this. “And where is this bird?”
“She’s silent, but you’ll hear her if you don’t lay down your guns.”
The man smiled, but it was clear he was nervous as he looked from Ulysses to the sky and back to Ulysses again. Perhaps Ulysses was bluffing, but pirates were known to surprise their foes, and there was already one helicopter responsible for a dozen dead bodies.
“Better come with us, then,” said the man, and he took one step toward Ulysses.
Before I could take my next breath, the man was on the ground clutching his leg. Ulysses dropped and rolled, then came up firing at the two guards by his side. One went down immediately, while the other spun backward, his hands trying to hold in the blood spilling through the belly of his tunic. The other two guards rushed forward, and one managed to get off a shot, but a round from Ulysses plugged him in the chest and dropped him where he stood. The other never got off a shot.
This all happened quicker than the eye could follow. When it was over, my feet had barely moved. A stray bullet had split a rock not more than one meter away, and a dusting of chips and the smell of cordite still hung in the air.
The pilot quickly tended to the two wounded men, while Ulysses confirmed the other four were dead. The man Ulysses had shot in the gut was moaning softly, and the pilot signaled he wasn’t going to make it. Ulysses took the man’s pulse, then held his head while he whimpered and gurgled blood. When the man died, Ulysses gently closed his eyelids with his fingers. Then he turned to Will and me.
“Everyone all right?”
I nodded, still trying to sort through what I had just seen.
“Where did you learn to shoot like that?” asked Will.
“I’ve learned a lot of things I wish I hadn’t.”
Will just kept staring at Ulysses. I know he was thinking about the shootouts at the gaming center, except this one was brutal and real, and the dead did not get up and play again. Ulysses wiped his bloodstained hands on his pants, and then pushed his sweat-matted hair off his forehead with the back of one palm. His hand, I noticed, was shaking.