Thunder Run

by Daniel José Older

  Mapper and Tom circled up above on Beans.

  In front of them, six trikes marched side by side across the swamplands, attached by a massive steel harness. Each had a howitzer attached to the armor on either flank. Briggs and Toussaint rode the two in the middle. “You made it!” Toussaint called. “Yeeeeeehaw!”

  “RECONNAISSANCE!!” Briggs hollered, throwing a fist into the air.

  “Ahh, speaking of reconnaissance,” Montez said. “Don’t look behind us.”

  She did.

  The whole forest rustled and rumbled with the movement of many, many dinos and men through the trees. That scattered rush they’d seen before had solidified into a single, unflinching focus. At the far end of what must’ve been several miles of the Confederate Army, a command sauropod gazed out over the canopy toward the east. The march to reconquer New Orleans had begun.

  “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!” Montez yelled as they hurtled on toadback over trees and a whole battalion of trikeriders.

  Magdalys just tried to stay low and make sure her rifle was ready. The toad’s skin was slimy and bumpy, and she felt like any wrong move or gust of wind might send her flying over the side, and then, if the fall didn’t kill her, the enemy soldiers definitely would.

  KA-FWOM!!! The whole earth shook as they landed on a muddy embankment and immediately the crack, crack of rifles started up from below. “Didn’t waste any time, did they?” Mapper growled, taking up position behind one of the toad’s big lumpy growths.

  “You probably wouldn’t either if an amphibian the size of a hotel dropped out of the sky on your army,” Wolfgang said, flattening himself against the slimy dome and aiming into the clearing dust below.

  Magdalys squinted, but all she saw were tiny flashes in the brown murk. A few bullets whizzed past, but they all went wide by a long shot. The soldiers below probably couldn’t see much more than she could and were just taking desperate potshots. She raised her carbine.

  There wasn’t much of a plan, mostly because they didn’t have many options. Wolfgang explained that the two other toads had wandered off together; he didn’t want to speculate as to why. That meant they had one giant toad, six trikes, three dactyls (one injured), a microraptor, and eight soldiers to get past an entire army and make it to New Orleans in time to warn them of the impending attack. And Mapper was positive there were no shortcuts to be found — he’d closed his eyes and gone into a kind of trance, then shook his head. “Nothing that will get us there before them, anyway.”

  They’d talked about splitting up, but as dire as things were, they couldn’t spare any firepower — even as it was, they’d probably be overrun pretty quickly.

  The Confederates had spread their army across a wide swath of land and were marching forward in attack formation instead of a long narrow line. Wolfgang said it was in case they bumped into Banks’s forces; this way they wouldn’t have to scramble to get in position. “Just means we hit their farthest flank.” He’d pointed to the very edge of their battle line, where a single squad of trikeriders marched through an open field a ways away from the main body of troops. “Drop a toad on ’em and cause enough chaos so they’re distracted while our trikes are rolling up.”

  And that was exactly what they’d done.

  Bang! screamed Magdalys’s carbine. Bang! Bang! Bang! Every time she saw a muzzle flash below, she aimed for it. She had no idea if she hit anything or not, just that between her, Wolfgang, Bijoux, and Montez, and with Mapper and Tom shooting from dactylback, they should be able to lay down enough fire to at least send the Confederates into a temporary flurry of confusion.

  Fwiiiiiii a bullet sang as it sped past, a little too close for comfort.

  Magdalys hunkered lower and let off two shots at where she thought it had come from.

  It was only yesterday that she’d (probably) taken her first life in battle. Who could really tell in the thick of things? Bog Marauders had been attacking and she’d pointed her carbine and shot and shot, and men had fallen screaming from their sinornith mounts into the swamp, but Mapper had been shooting too and maybe they’d lived and —

  THWUMP!! A bullet landed in the toad’s thick flesh beside her and Magdalys jumped back, heart racing wildly in her ears. She couldn’t afford to get lost in her thoughts like that, not with enemy fire coming in all around her. It was a good thing the toad didn’t seem to mind getting shot much. He turned his monstrous yellow eyes downward to the troops massing below, and Magdalys felt his whole body convulse as that freight-train-sized tongue unraveled itself from his open mouth and flashed out. An armored triceratops squealed, lifted suddenly into the air, and then the toad’s enormous mouth closed around it, and for a moment there was just awed silence.

  “Yaaaaaaaa!!” Mapper yelled from where Beans was flying up above, and then the shooting started up again.

  “Here they come!” Wolfgang called, nodding at the woods behind them, where Toussaint and Briggs were wrangling their six trikes in a mad dash toward the skirmish.

  “They got reinforcements headed our way,” Tom warned from Dizz’s back, just as the dactyl spun a wild loop-de-loop through the clouds above. “Whoa! Dizz, slow down, man! Can’t make out what’s coming! Dizz!”

  Time to cause some trouble, Magdalys thought, lowering her carbine. “Montez, cover me.” He scurried over to where she crouched, almost slipping along the way, then got into position and let off a few shots into the fray.

  Magdalys tried to focus. About ten enemy trikes stomped around below. And Tom was right: There were more dinos on the way, but Magdalys couldn’t make out what they were yet. She’d deal with them when they got here.

  For now, she had some trikes to upset. It wouldn’t take much pushing, probably. The toad had already gotten them riled up nicely for her. She reached out, immediately linking with five of them. A mess of frantic triceratops grunts and pants rose up within her: Garunga garunga … bah … bah … garunga …

  Magdalys sent two of them charging into a third and the other three spinning in widening circles as troops scattered and were tossed to either side.

  “Impressive,” Wolfgang said, walking up beside her and blinking his one eye down at the chaos below.

  “Bog Marauders incoming,” Mapper called. “Sinorniths on your ten.”

  Magdalys glanced up, narrowed her eyes. These were the same guys who had chased her and Mapper through the Atchafalaya and trapped Montez and the others in that mansion for days on end. She sent a half dozen careening out of the sky with a wave of her hand. The others landed quickly and launched back up, but farther away, hoping to get out of range.

  “Uh, Private Magdalys,” Wolfgang said. He was squinting through the spyglass, gritting his teeth. “There’s, ah … You should see this.”

  “What?” She took the retractable metal cylinder, peered through. Nothing made sense. Dinos were tossing their riders and scurrying in a fevered circle. Most of them were trikes, plus a whole squadron of ankys and a slew of raptors. Men yelled, trying to wrangle their mounts back into some kind of order. The dinos paid them no mind. At first Magdalys thought they were turning back — had something happened? Then she heard a voice carried along on the warm bayou wind: “For Sweet Virginiaaa!” All at once, the dinos turned toward Magdalys and fell into formation.

  Then they charged.

  “IF YOU SEE Drek,” Magdalys said, nudging her brother, “take the shot.”

  “Huh?” He swung his rifle around, scanning the oncoming surge of dinos. “What happened to getting information and there’s bigger things at play than the one guy and all that?”

  She shook her head. “Change of plans.” The dinos were still out of her reach, but they wouldn’t be for long. And then … she’d never wrangled that many at once before. There had to be at least thirty-five, maybe forty. Back at Chickamauga, Elizabeth Crawbell had probably had even more than that in her archaeopteryx squad, but they were small and seemed to have been trained for those kinds of formation attacks. These were random b
attle dinos, and Drek had forced them under his will and sent them all together like a bristling, stomping outpouring of his rage at Magdalys for killing Sweet Virginia.

  And she hadn’t done it!

  But Drek had already had it out for her, even before Montez took out his precious crimson dactyl. He’d seen what she could do, been bested by her, and now he’d leveled up himself, fueled by a homicidal wrath with one singular focus.

  “We have to make a run for it,” Magdalys said.

  “I’m not sure if —” Wolfgang started.

  “I can’t hold them off!” Panic seized her. “I can’t! Not all at once! Not that many!” A headlong dash for safety was the only option. They had to run and they had to go now if they were going to have any chance of making it. Drek would wear out every dino in his reach to destroy Magdalys, of that she was sure.

  “Private Mapper!” Wolfgang hollered. “Private Summers! Get down here, boys! Make it snappy!”

  Ka-bang!! Montez’s rifle blasted.

  Magdalys jumped. “Did you see him? Did you get him?”

  “No,” Montez said. Ka-bang!! Bang! Bang! “It’s the Marauders — they’re coming back. Or at least” — he gazed through his sight again — “their mounts are.”

  Magdalys spun around. Out in the sky, a flurry of sinorniths sailed toward them in what looked like slow motion, those death-dealing jaws open wide.

  “We’re here, sir!” Mapper reported, landing Beans on the toad’s head behind them. Dizz came skittering down with Tom a second later.

  “It’s me that he wants,” Magdalys said. “We have to split up. He’ll … We have to split up.”

  “Private Bijoux,” Wolfgang said. “Tell our boys with the trikes to make a break for it. Cover them from above. Head straight for New Orleans and don’t turn around for nothing.”

  Bang, bang! Montez’s rifle crowed behind them and sinorniths plummeted screeching through the sky.

  Magdalys unslung her shoulder bag and handed it to Mapper. “Take this,” she said. “We stole some documents from the Knights of the Golden Circle. It’s all in here. Whatever they’re up to, it’s in these papers. Get it to New Orleans, Mapper. You have to.”

  Mapper furrowed his brow. “I don’t want to leave you behind … The … the squad, Mags …”

  He was right. The Dactyl Hill Squad had been shattered by this war, and somehow it felt like that sacred bond would be forever broken if they separated. But there was nothing else to be done. She steeled her face. “Go. You have to. Get these documents to General Banks. I’ll … I’ll be okay.”

  He hugged her so suddenly and fiercely that Magdalys almost burst into tears. “Go!” she ordered, wriggling out of his grasp and blinking furiously.

  Ka-blam BLAM!!

  “They’re almost on us!” Montez yelled.

  Mapper took one last look at Magdalys, then threw her satchel over his shoulder and ran off, clambering onto Beans in a single leap and took off into the air behind Dizz and Bijoux. The last thing she saw was Milo’s tiny head peeking out of the satchel and staring after her.

  Wolfgang was beside Montez, firing off shot after shot at the sinorniths circling above. There were too many. And a whole other attack coming from the ground. And Drek somewhere nearby, controlling it all.

  She held up both hands, trying to calm her frantic mind.

  JUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUH came the urgent burble of the toad beneath her.

  Jump! Magdalys thought. Go! But even as he crouched to leap, three sinorniths landed on one leg, each sinking their venomous jaws into his flank.

  “No!” Magdalys yelled.

  JUH!

  She swung her arm, and the sinorniths stumbled some, looking around. Be gone! she thought. They looked up at her, and then a ka-blam! cracked out and one fell away squawking.

  “What’s wrong?” Wolfgang asked, loading more cartridges into his rifle.

  The other two sinorniths leapt.

  Ka-blam! Blam! Wolfgang blasted away one of them, and Magdalys finally reached the other and sent it scurrying off.

  JUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUH!! the toad warbled.

  “The sinorniths bit our toad,” Magdalys said. “And I don’t know … I don’t know if it can withstand their venom.”

  Jump! she thought. Please!

  The horde of dinos was upon them, just a few feet away.

  The toad crouched low again, sprang up but not as high as it had been. They flew through the air. Montez yelped and stumbled, almost toppling down the slippery, wart-covered hide.

  “Montez!” Magdalys reached out, but he’d already pulled himself up and rolled over onto his back, panting. His rifle had sailed over the side.

  And then they were crashing through the treetops, coming to a sloppy, collapsed landing not nearly far enough away from the storming dinos.

  “You alright?” Wolfgang asked, passing his sidearm to Montez.

  “Yeah, but …”

  “Doesn’t matter,” the corporal huffed. “We use what we got.”

  Already, Drek’s dinos were bearing down on them once again.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Magdalys said.

  “We gotta jump again,” Wolfgang said. “We’ll do our best to hold ’em off.”

  Bang! Bang! Bang! Montez let loose with a pistol in each hand. The screams of dinos sounded nearby amidst the thunder of their approach.

  C’mon, toad, Magdalys urged. I know you’re hurt, but … we gotta get out of here, buddy. We gotta go. We gotta live. C’mon!

  Juhjuhjuhjuhjuhjuh came the murky reply, now diminished somehow, that poison working its way through the massive, ancient creature. He stirred though, turned, and hopped a little ways forward, then again. Magdalys climbed to the top of his now bowed head and gazed out across the wilderness. There. Up ahead, a lake stretched out into the distance toward New Orleans. And there on the far shore: the sharp incline of a battlement wall, where Magdalys could just make out the shiny black lengths of those ten-gallon cannons called Parrott rifles poking out. Above them, the stars and stripes of the US flag waved in the wind.

  We just gotta make it to the water, she thought. See? We’ll be safe there. C’mon, ol’ boy!

  Beneath her, the toad shivered, then leapt half-heartedly again.

  Blam! Blam! Blam!

  Juhjuhjuhjuhjuhjuh, the toad sighed.

  Blam!

  C’mon, buddy!

  And then another sound came to her — the sweet familiar fubba fubba of one of her favorite pteros. In all the frenzy of battle and escape, she’d forgotten that Grappler was still with them, curled up in a secluded area of the toad, nursing her wounds. Now the dactyl sang a sweet song of fubbas within Magdalys, and the toad seemed to answer in kind: Juhjuhjuh juhjuhjuh.

  “Yes, girl,” Magdalys whispered. “Tell him we gotta make it to the water. Come on!”

  The toad leapt.

  JuhJUH juhJUH juhJUH it sang, now even more animated.

  It leapt again, a little farther this time. The lake was only a few more jumps away. Mountainous clouds cluttered the sky above as darkness began to creep around the edges of the world.

  They leapt again, even farther this time, but still with a woozy kind of sloppiness.

  Fubba fubba fubba!

  The toad broke into an awkward kind of stumble toward the water. Behind them, the dinos still clamored along in furious pursuit, but they were a little ways back now.

  The toad took two more galloping, floppy struts and then crouched low and launched into the air, sailing clear out over the water.

  “YEAAAAAAH!!” Magdalys yelled, but then her eyes went wide. Two fizzling crackles of light streaked directly toward them from the far shore. The low booms reached her a moment later. Artillery fire. But that was a Union outpost!

  Swerve! Magdalys pleaded, a second too late.

  “Incoming!” Wolfgang yelled.

  The first shell shrieked over their heads and then erupted into a blinding flash of light as it burst across the sky. Magdaly
s dove for cover, shrapnel shredding her arms and back, and then felt her stomach plummet as they went into free fall toward the lake.

  BABANGAAA!!!! The other shell burst nearby them, more shrapnel and the sky spinning wild circles and the dark waters of the lake rushing up, up, up to greet them as the toad warbled his desperate, dying song through Magdalys: Juh … juh … juhhhhhh.

  A DARKNESS DEEPER THAN any Magdalys had ever known covered the world. Giant walls of movement swayed and swooshed around her; she felt each tiny and humongous twitch of the universe.

  And a murky silence prevailed, broken by a few faraway burbles and rumblings.

  There was no time, no distance, no past or present.

  And then: JUH!!

  Two enormous yellow eyes opened up in the void.

  JuhJUH!

  I thought you were dead, Magdalys thought to her immense and ancient friend. She felt so happy and sad at the same time. Cannons boomed somewhere far away, a whole other realm, it felt like.

  I’m so sorry I failed you.

  Juhjuhjuh, the toad replied, and it felt like a laughing rebuke. She hadn’t failed him, the toad insisted. He had gone along with her knowing full well what the risks were, that these tiny, strange mammals were at war, had been for some time, in one form or another. Magdalys had been a pleasant reminder that sometimes you have to stand up and fight. Can’t just sleep in the mud for an entire lifetime, right?

  Magdalys had no idea how she understood all this, but it was as clear as a glass of water what he was saying in her mind. The toad let out a tremendous juh-inflected chortle and then narrowed his huge eyes on her. You must live. There is still work to do. I will heal. You don’t worry about me.

  The darkness swirled.

  Magdalys felt herself rising, rising, pushing through the void, up, up, up toward the surface and then with a gasp she collapsed onto a shoreline as the emptiness slipped from her amidst the toad’s far-off chuckles. She crawled away from the splish of tiny waves, leaned over, and then vomited up what felt like a whole gallon of lake water.