Thunder Run

by Daniel José Older

  The smoke had been rising from a chimney on one of the smaller houses, Magdalys noticed with satisfaction. Which meant the stone stack rising from this one should be usable. She crept over to it, trying to stay as soft on her feet as possible, and then crawled in.

  She’d only spent a short time sweeping chimneys in Dactyl Hill, Brooklyn, but the feeling of that cramped, soot-covered darkness surrounding her came back in dream after dream. And now here she was again, crisp smell of charred firewood fresh in her nose as she carefully made her way lower and lower.

  “And what if they are?” a nasal voice demanded. Magdalys froze. “They’ll never catch up to the progress we’ve made already.”

  “Your arrogance will be the death of us all, Grandmaster.” That was Drek; she was sure of it.

  “Watch your tone, Shamus,” a woman snapped. “And don’t forget who you’re addressing.”

  If only Magdalys could see! Ever so quietly, she crawled a few more feet down.

  “My point is this,” Drek said, sounding like he was restraining the growl in his voice from growing even more severe. “We think we are the hunters, but we are being hunted. That girl can’t be the only one they’ve gathered to destroy us. Let me find her and take her out of the equation and then —”

  “You are so terrified of a child!” the woman sneered. “And a Negro one at that. Pathetic.”

  Magdalys was caught somewhere between rage and terror. Whatever happened after this, she had a target on her back now. That much was clear. And it wouldn’t go away until Drek and all the Knights of the Golden Circle were behind bars.

  “She rode into battle on some kind of primordial toad, Grandmaster. And she broke my hold over the dinos I sent to destroy her. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Magdalys allowed herself a small flush of pride within her nervousness. Of course, her being that powerful was exactly what had now landed her in Drek’s crosshairs.

  “Get ahold of yourself, man,” snarled the Grandmaster. “You’re a class-A dinomaster with the Knights of the Golden Circle. Listen to yourself.”

  “My man in the Army of the Tennessee says Hewpat has been captured,” Drek said.

  “I’ve heard. Bad luck,” mused the Grandmaster. “But he was our weakest member, let’s be honest. And anyway, he’s been rendered insensible, from what I understand, so he won’t be giving up any valuable information on us anytime soon.”

  “And Miss Crawbell sent a gram saying she faced off with a Negro girl on a pteranodon over Chickamauga and was nearly bested.”

  “Elizabeth?” the woman scoffed. “Not possible.”

  “She wrote the gram herself, Mistress Shallows.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the Grandmaster hissed. “What matters is the mission. That’s all that matters. You have your orders. Here’s the data you requested from our scientists. Forget the Negress. Forget everything else except the mission. Don’t you see, Dinomaster Drek? This is how we win. Not at Chattanooga. Not even in Virginia, where Lincoln has concentrated the majority of his efforts. Those pompous fools are all looking the wrong direction! And when they realize their mistake, it’ll be too late! They’ll be trapped in our jaws and stamped out forever.”

  Magdalys heard papers being shuffled. That was the key to everything, whatever it was. And there was no way they’d say their mission out loud, not when it was written down and spelled out clearly in the papers that had just been handed over. She had to get her hands on that document! But how?

  She lowered herself to just above the edge of the fireplace.

  “If someone is able to best our highest-ranked dinomaster,” Drek said icily, “I think that matters a whole lot, actually.”

  “Not your concern,” the Grandmaster said. “We’ll handle the girl. You do what you’re told, Drek. Now, you’re to leave immediately. Is that clear? We have friendly agents among the riverboaters in New Orleans. Travel down the Mississippi and then cross the Gulf of Mexico and embed yourself with the guerrillas. I’ll send two of our Sky Raiders to rendezvous with you at the site. Those documents will tell you everything else you need to know.”

  “What is that?!” Mistress Shallows shrieked over the metallic click of guns being cocked and chairs screeching against the floor.

  “Where?” someone yelled with a booming voice Magdalys hadn’t heard yet.

  “Over in the shadows there!”

  What was happening?

  “Just a silly raptor,” Drek said. “Calm down. I’ll just …”

  Magdalys heard the skittering of claws — Milo! It had to be! She’d clean forgotten that he had crawled into her satchel. And with a quick pat, she confirmed that he was indeed no longer in there. But what was he up to?

  Mistress Shallows yelled: “Careful, Shamus! It’s … Do something!”

  Milo hissed and cawed and something large turned over, a table probably, and then a few shots sang out, their echoes reverberating through the stone building. Magdalys pulled out her carbine and took advantage of the ruckus to load and cock it. More yelling and skittering amidst boot stomps and the sound of paper fluttering every which way.

  Why wasn’t Drek able to control him?

  Didn’t matter. She couldn’t let them hurt Milo. Bijoux would be devastated, and he’d probably never forgive her.

  “Stop shooting!” the Grandmaster yelled. “Drek! What’s the matter with you? Stop that dino!”

  Magdalys took a deep breath and dropped into the fireplace.

  MAGDALYS LANDED RUNNING and let off two shots into the air as she burst through the room.

  Maximum confusion. That was the only thing that would get her out of this alive. She kicked over a chair, swung another over a table, and elbowed past someone in a white robe standing nearby.

  Guns exploded around her, but she didn’t know if they were aiming for her or Milo. “That’s her!” Drek yelled. She fired again, the noise deafening in that enclosed space, and then dove behind a cabinet and glanced around the other side.

  There were almost a half-dozen figures in the room — way more than she’d thought — and all of them wore those long white robes, except for Drek, who sprinted toward her, still in his gray Confederate uniform.

  Milo was nowhere to be seen.

  “Get that dino!” someone yelled.

  “Get the girl!” Drek insisted.

  Magdalys aimed for his kneecap, but the shot thwunked through the wooden floor planks instead. Still, it had been enough to send Drek ducking out of the way, and that was all the time Magdalys needed to dash for the far door.

  She burst into the sunlight as more shooting rang out behind her and didn’t stop or glance back, just barreled full tilt across the wooden catwalk until she saw Dizz’s shadow sweeping past her.

  Right on time! she thought, slowing down to climb onto the railing so she could jump to where the dactyl flapped in a loop-de-looping dive.

  Behind her, Drek wailed, “NOOOO!!” with so much anguish and horror that it made Magdalys stop midclimb and glance back. “Sweet Virginia!” Drek wasn’t looking at her; his eyes were glued to a large, shining shape floating lifelessly in the murky water below amidst a growing circle of red. The crimson dactyl.

  Drek turned, looked directly at Magdalys. “What have you done?!”

  She shook her head, already reaching for Dizz.

  “You killed her!” Drek suddenly had a pistol in each hand. Magdalys hadn’t even seen him draw them. His whole face turned as red as his beard, and he let off shot after shot with each gun.

  “Go!” Magdalys yelled, grabbing tight to Dizz’s stirrups as bullets whizzed past. There wasn’t time to climb all the way up. “GO!”

  “I’ll kill you!” Drek raged below her. “You’re dead, girl!”

  “What did you do?” Magdalys demanded, sliding down from Dizz’s saddle onto the branch that Montez was still stretched out along, squinting through his rifle sight.

  “Canceled any plans Drek might’ve had of chasing us, for one thing,
” Montez said.

  “We can outfly him! And we might’ve been able to lead him somewhere and then capture him! And all he has to do is think about it and another dino will show up. You didn’t cancel anything!”

  Montez shot her an annoyed glance over his shoulder. “You’re yelling at me for killing a Confederate dino.”

  The shouts of men and clomping of boots on wooden gangplanks came from the campsite below. They hadn’t spotted Magdalys and Montez yet, but it was only a matter of time. And having a loud brother-sister fight would only make it sooner.

  She took a breath, lowered her voice to a severe growl. “I’m yelling at you because the man whose favorite mount you just sniped was talking five minutes ago about how he wants me dead, and now he thinks I did it and he wants me dead even more.”

  “Hold on, I can fix that problem too if I can spot him,” Montez said, turning back to his rifle.

  “You can’t just shoot everything and think it’s going to make the whole problem go away.”

  “It’s worked for me so far.”

  “Montez!” She was shouting again, but she couldn’t stop herself. “Stop making snappy comebacks and just listen to me!”

  He let out a long breath, sat up on the branch. Turned to face her.

  “The Knights of the Golden Circle are planning something. Something huge. They think they can clinch victory not just in this war but over the whole continent. The hemisphere! They’ll take what the Confederacy’s built and spread it across the world, a whole empire of slavery.” That was how the nation she was fighting to protect had gotten its start too, Magdalys realized, but right now it was the only one standing in the way of an even greater threat, so she’d have to deal with that part later. “I need to stop them. We need to stop them. I can’t do it alone.”

  Very slightly, Montez’s face softened.

  “If you take out Drek, they’ll just get Crawbell or someone else to do it, but we won’t have any idea who or what they’re planning or anything else. But if we can figure out what they’re up to, who their leadership is, where they get their money, then we can crush the whole organization and wipe them off the map for good.”

  Montez looked away. Down below, the men were yelling back and forth about something; Magdalys couldn’t make out their words.

  “You haven’t seen what I have,” Montez said very quietly.

  She nodded and sighed. “I know, Montez.” I’m sorry didn’t make sense. No words did.

  “There are so many of them. And they just keep coming and coming and coming.” He shook his head, sniffled. “Over the barricades and into the camp. And when you’ve seen that, when you’ve faced that, and felt that fear, as they rush up toward you and each and every one of them wants you dead or in chains, then you learn that you take whatever chance you can get to make their numbers smaller.” He raised one shoulder, wiped his eyes. “That’s all.”

  Magdalys didn’t have anything to say back to that; she just wanted her brother to be okay. She wanted to shatter the whole world so they could rebuild it into one that loved them. She wanted to scream and cry without having to worry about giving away their position to soldiers who would murder them.

  “And what happens when we give up a shot on Drek,” Montez said, “and then he sends his dinos into battle and wipes out more of our troops? Or sends a T. rex rampaging through the streets of New Orleans? Aren’t those deaths on us, Mags?”

  “Just as much as the ones that’ll happen when the Knights send the next wave of attacks against us, and the one after that. But no, none of those are on us, Montez, not really. They’re on them. It just means we have to stop him. Stop all of them.”

  She turned, because her brother’s sad eyes were about to make her break down, and headed for Dizz.

  “We’re just kids,” Montez said behind her.

  She nodded. “I know.”

  “This shouldn’t be on us. We should be playing and worrying about our homework and what we’re gonna be when we grow up.”

  “I know.”

  “Not how to take down slavery empires and whether or not to kill someone.”

  Magdalys grabbed the saddle straps and pulled herself up. She slid into position and looked at Montez. Steeled herself. “Let’s go get Drek.”

  CONFEDERATE TROOPS AND Bog Marauders swarmed through the forest as Magdalys and Montez flew silently above on Dizz’s back. When he’d told her about what it felt like staring down so many of them in close quarters, she’d figured she would have that moment herself one day, but she never thought it would be just a few moments later.

  They were everywhere — a sea of gray-and-brown jackets surging between trees and through swamps. And that meant one thing: The newly re-formed Army of the Mississippi was on the move.

  “This is bad,” Montez said, scanning the troops through his rifle scope.

  “Where do you think they’re headed?” They seemed to move in a hundred different directions at once, which probably meant they were looking for something. Probably us, Magdalys thought.

  “I don’t know, but our rendezvous point is straight ahead. Any sign of Drek?”

  Magdalys shook her head. She’d been trying to catch sight of that bright red beard since they’d flown out over the forest. And now there were too many troops below to make much sense of. And anyway, they’d be spotted soon.

  She swung Dizz off to the side where there were fewer soldiers down below and then dipped under the tree line and glided smoothly between the towering oaks.

  “He’s probably riding something,” Magdalys said. “Maybe I can find him that way.” She closed her eyes, trusting Dizz to keep them from crashing into anything, and inhaled a deep breath of thick, mulchy swamp air. What dinos were nearby?

  Immediately, the kree-kree song of some small, fluttering reptile that Magdalys couldn’t quite identify filled her. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem like something Drek would choose as a mount.

  What else?

  A brunk brunk brunk noise rose up within. Something big, four-legged. A stego maybe. Now more of them. Had to be a convoy, part of the Confederate Army. Drek could be with them, but she doubted it, considering the argument he’d just had with their commanding officer. And marching along in a line like a regular battle grunt didn’t seem like his style.

  She opened her eyes and glanced around. No more soldiers, just the flitting of dragonflies and gentle rustle of leaves and Spanish moss in the Louisiana wind.

  Breeka! a familiar high-pitched voice crooned. Breeka! Breeka!

  “Milo?” Magdalys gasped, swooping low with Dizz and glancing around.

  “Where?” Montez asked.

  “Somewhere up ahead.”

  “Hey!” someone yelled off to their left. “There she is!”

  “Hold tight,” Magdalys said, diving even lower and speeding up as a bullet thwunked into a nearby tree trunk.

  “Get back here!”

  They zoomed just above the forest floor, sweeping left and right between bushes and vines. More gunfire crackled around them.

  “There!” Montez said, pointing up ahead.

  Magdalys saw it: a flash of something white flapping around Milo’s tiny running body. What did he have? She sent Dizz rocketing forward, under a trunk that had been nearly cut in half by a mortar shell and around a giant moss-covered mound.

  “Units converge!” someone yelled. “Triple time!”

  “Open fire!” another voice commanded from not far away.

  “Grab him!” Magdalys yelled, coming up fast behind Milo as Montez leaned all the way to one side of the saddle and reached out his long arm.

  “Got him!” Montez yelled, and Magdalys sent Dizz hurtling skyward as tree branches cracked and collapsed around them beneath a withering barrage of musket shots.

  Blam! Blamblamblamblam! Blam blam! Blam! Gunfire took over the forest, became the world. Dizz hurled up, up, up, bursting out of the canopy and into the open sky.

  “Wooooooooooo!!” Magdalys yelled a
s they flew clear of the trees and away. She was terrified and heartbroken, surrounded by enemies, but at least for this escapade, they’d survived, against all odds. “Everyone okay?”

  “I’m good,” Montez reported. “So’s Milo. Also, he seems to have snagged a present for us in his travels.”

  That must’ve been whatever the flapping white shape around him was. “Oh?” Magdalys pointed Dizz toward their rendezvous spot.

  “Looks like a bunch of boring stuff about migrational patterns of different dinos across North America. Numbers, numbers, charts, blah, blah, blah. What is it? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Magdalys had slowly turned around in the saddle and was staring wide-eyed at Montez. She looked down at Milo, who was sitting in his lap looking very satisfied with himself.

  “Montez,” she said. “That’s the … Those are …”

  “Speak, sis!”

  “THOSE ARE THE SECRET DOCUMENTS THE GRANDMASTER GAVE TO DREK SO HE COULD COMPLETE HIS MISSION!!”

  “Whoa, now.”

  “THE ONE THAT THEY THINK WILL BRING THEM VICTORY AND WIPE US OFF THE MAP!! MONTEZ!!”

  “Mags, you’re yelling. Like a lot. But also whoa! Are you sure?”

  She took the papers. “They gotta be!”

  Breeka! Milo chirped, still very pleased.

  Numbers and charts spilled across page after page within the loosely bound folder. Milo must’ve sensed her wanting to get her hands on it somehow and just … made a dash. Either that or there was some other dinowrangler with her abilities nearby who also wanted it, but that didn’t seem possible. One way or another, it was hers now. Making heads or tails of it would be a whole other problem, but she’d worry about that when she was safely back in …

  “Uh,” Montez said. “Looks like we’re showing up right on time.”

  Magdalys glanced up from the documents.

  In an open stretch of marsh along the bayou, a giant toad stood at its full height, towering over the tall grass. Colonel Wolfgang Hands waved from between its eyes. “Hey, how do you drive these things?” he yelled. “We gotta get out of here!” Bijoux was beside him, prepping weapons, while Grappler looked on from a little farther back.