Thunder Run

by Daniel José Older

  Magdalys bristled. “But —”

  “This is how you will be of service to your country, privates. Not by playing make-believe and living in a land of fairy tales. Don’t make me regret my decision,” Banks warned, turning on his heel and marching out of the room. “If that happens, I’ll make sure you regret it more than I do.”

  He slammed the door.

  “ASSIGNMENTS!” MAGDALYS HUFFED for the eight hundred and fifty-sixth time as she poured another bucket of water across the stable floors. “If this is the real way for us to be of service to our country —”

  “Then the country must be way more full of dinopoop than you’d thought,” Mapper finished for her. He started making his way over the uneven stone with a push mop, shoving the last bits of narstiness to either side. There was still dried poop crusted to the floor that they’d have to chip away at with shovels when this part was done.

  “Wow, steal my thunder why don’t you,” Magdalys grunted.

  “It’d be harder to steal if you didn’t repeat it every day for two weeks straight.”

  Had it been two weeks already? Time had seemed to move so slowly on poop duty, and there were no weekends to help keep track. The weather swung woozily back and forth between obscenely hot to downright chilly, and huge bugs and random swamp dinos wandered around freely, as if they owned the city of New Orleans, not the Union or Confederacy or Spanish or French or any other silly humans.

  Magdalys hadn’t had much of a chance to get out and see the city — she spent almost all day every day scrubbing the stables — but the glimpses she’d gotten and the stories she’d heard made her desperate to wander freely. It smelled like the swamps but a little fresher, with that sea breeze coming in from the gulf. Plus, someone was always baking bread or making coffee nearby. And at night, the streets of the French Quarter filled with revelers and the air seemed to tingle with the scents of all kinds of spicy cuisines simmering in pots.

  “I hate everything,” she grumbled.

  “How do you think I feel?” Mapper said. “We’re in a strange city, and I haven’t even had a chance to survey the terrain, not really! And from what I have seen, it doesn’t match the official maps! Which means!” He waved his hands around, exasperated.

  “Which means there are new maps to be made!” Magdalys finished for him. They’d been doing a lot of finishing each other’s sentences these days, even when it wasn’t something they’d been repeating over and over for two weeks.

  At least the dactyls were all okay. Dizz and Beans had indeed come in with their riders, and Grappler had shown up at the outpost a little after Magdalys, still struggling to fly and soaking wet but very much alive. General Banks had agreed to let them stay in the stables with the other battle mounts, seeing as how they’d provided an invaluable service to their country, etc. etc.

  “I just feel like …” Magdalys said, not sure what she felt like yet but needing to get it off her chest anyway, “… liiiike …”

  “Like if you don’t do something more substantial than shovel dinopoop soon, you’re going to explode,” Mapper said.

  That was it. That was it exactly.

  Magdalys sighed, nodded. “We’ve come so far. And we still haven’t had time to figure out whatever it is Drek and the Knights are up to! And the city is probably about to get attacked at any moment!” Last they’d heard, Banks had assigned several trike and raptor divisions, including what was left of the 9th, to the far western outpost. The Confederates had taken the hint and fallen back some, but who knew how long that would last.

  Montez had sent a dactylgram to say they were all fine and back to target practice and goofing off during free time, and Magdalys had felt a twinge of jealousy that they were already back in the action and having fun while she and Mapper were …

  “Poop alert!” Mapper yelled. The air got thick with that gnarly sulfur smell and then Magdalys heard the telltale plop plop of one of the stegos letting its breakfast go. She rolled her eyes. Not again! They had just gotten the main floor cleaned up.

  “Can’t you mind-meld with them and tell them not to poop or whatever,” Mapper groaned. He swung open the gate to let the stego out of its enclosure and passed Magdalys a shovel.

  “Then they’d just fill up with poop,” she said.

  “Right, then we could send ’em into the Confederate camp and they’d poop all over them!”

  Magdalys snorted, and the snort turned into a giggle, and pretty soon they’d fallen back into yet another fit of laughter. This one was also interrupted by the sudden entrance of an officer — fortunately it wasn’t General Banks this time though.

  “At ease!” Lieutenant Franz Lietenwurst said, stepping in and saluting. Magdalys and Mapper hadn’t gotten much better at jumping to attention out of a giggle fit, so they were both relieved that the most laid-back commander in their unit had been the one to show up. “Well,” he said, surveying them, “I see you’re already at ease. Very well. Listen, privates, I have some good news.”

  Magdalys wasn’t even sure what that meant these days. She tried not to scowl at all the dim possibilities of what the US Army considered good news.

  “Congress has finally passed the bill guaranteeing you equal pay.”

  “What?” Mapper gaped.

  Magdalys just blinked. Black soldiers were paid a fraction of what their white counterparts received, and most of them, including Magdalys and Mapper and all their friends in the 9th, had opted to refuse pay until they were equally compensated. It was relatively easy for Magdalys and Mapper — they ate in the mess hall and slept in the barracks, so they didn’t have much need for money. Some of the other soldiers were supporting whole families back home though, and anyway the whole thing stank! But this … this meant that they’d won! They could get their pay and have some sense of equality in the ranks too!

  “I can only say,” Franz went on, “I’m sorry it took so long.” He shook his head. “They still haven’t confirmed they’ll give full back pay, which is a whole other legislative fight, I’m afraid. But I have brought you two your money from the last two weeks of work, for what it’s worth.” He was a young man with sad eyes, red cheeks, and a bright blond goatee. He smiled regretfully as he handed over some coins to each of them. “Some places in the city still try to only accept Confederate money. If they do that, insist and then report them. And take the rest of the day off, kids. You deserve it.”

  Magdalys and Mapper blinked at each other. It was only noon. They had the rest of the day to themselves! They were out the door before Franz could change his mind, fresh stegopoop still steaming in the far end of the enclosure.

  “LOOK,” MAPPER SAID as they stepped out into the cobblestone streets of the French Quarter. “I know you, Magdalys. What’s going on?” An aging stegosaurus lumbered past them, pots and pans clanking on either side with each thundering step. Three raptor riders zipped around it amidst growls and hoots — one snatched a society lady’s purse as they went. “Come back!” the lady yelled. “Thief!”

  “What’s going on is I shovel poop from sunrise to sunset every day.”

  “That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

  He was right: Something had felt like it was festering inside Magdalys since they’d gotten back to New Orleans, but she honestly couldn’t put her finger on what it was, and being on stable detail just seemed like the simplest answer.

  “You feel stuck,” Mapper said.

  “I am stuck,” Magdalys pointed out. “We both are.”

  “Yeah, but you have a mission to accomplish. And you can’t. And it’s making you want to strangle someone all the time. And I’m almost always the nearest someone! And I don’t want to get strangled!”

  Up above, onlookers gazed down from balconies with elaborate plants bursting from wrought-iron banisters. A group of kids and microraptors ran along the far side of the street, cawing and laughing with each other. It had just rained — but then, it seemed like it had always just rained when Magdalys went outsi
de — and the early afternoon sun sent dazzling images of the city reflecting from puddles in the bumpy, uneven sidewalk.

  “It’s so pretty and alive,” Magdalys said, deliberately ignoring how right Mapper was. Even New York, which had way more people and dinos, didn’t feel quite this vibrant somehow. Everyone there was in a hurry to get somewhere, even if it was just to the next corner to beg, and it seemed like there was always a clock ticking away the moments nearby. Here, folks just lounged around idly for days — whole lifetimes probably! — watching shadows grow long from porches and balconies, wandering the streets in a slow meander, riding along on dinos or the streetcar and taking in the many wild sights of the city.

  “Don’t change the subject on me, Mag-D!”

  “Fine! I’m stuck! I want to strangle someone! Everyone, really! What am I supposed to do about it, Mapper?”

  He flashed a winning grin and wiggled his eyebrows. “I’m so glad you asked!”

  She sighed. “Here we go. You have a plan, don’t you?”

  “Actually, I do not.”

  Magdalys mock-gasped.

  “I have a suggestion.”

  “Oh?”

  He swept his hand across the dangling ferns and street buskers and fancy folks and dinos of the French Quarter. “That you come up with a plan! A plan to complete your mission! General Grant ordered you to put a squad together and that’s exactly what you gotta do. Who cares what stinking Banks thinks?”

  “Well —”

  Mapper waved off the point she was obviously about to make. “We’ll find a way around that. The point is, putting squads together is the thing in the world you’re second best at doing. You brought us together in Dactyl Hill, didn’t you?”

  “Not exa —”

  “Nonsense! We all headed south into the middle of war together! Why? Because we believe in you, Mags! And sure, we got split up and everything went wrong, but that doesn’t change the fact that we believe in you. And if we do, others will too! You’re a born leader, Mag-D. It’s not just dinos that you have sway over, it’s us two-legged mammal types too!”

  “I mean …” She really didn’t know what to say. She’d felt it, seen it inside herself, and seen it in the eyes of those around her. It wasn’t just that she had powers. People really did look to her for answers. “I just …”

  This made three times Mapper was right in barely five minutes! It would’ve been infuriating if it wasn’t also kind of touching. And anyway, he was also right about it being time to get to work. She would just have to find a way to put a team together when she wasn’t on poop duty. And what better time to start than when they’d just gotten the rest of the day off?

  “Hear that?” Mapper yelled. “It’s a parade!” The ferocious thump of drums and deep oompa oompa of a tuba reached them from somewhere not far away. “Let’s go!”

  They headed off through the streets, dodging between the legs of a medium-sized brachiosaurus that carried what looked like a small ramshackle house on its back and hurrying past a chanting procession of nuns on ankylosauruses.

  “Over there!” Mapper said. He grabbed Magdalys’s hand and led her toward a larger street as the music grew louder and crowds gathered around them.

  “Whoa!” they both gasped again as they stepped onto the wide-open throughway and took in the marvelous sparkling waters of the Mississippi River that seemed to wink at them from beyond all the ruckus and revelry of the city streets. A marching band swung around the corner as the music crescendoed with wild horn blasts and drum explosions. Four tall black men, each blowing through puffed-out cheeks on a brass instrument, stepped in time with each other at the front of the line. Behind them two women riding duckbills clanged cymbals together. The tuba player came next, his instrument coiled around him like a giant boa constrictor with its gaping mouth bouncing up and down in time to the beat. Behind him, three kids rode atop a huge alligator, each one wailing on a tiny clarinet. Finally, a whole squad of drummers took up the rear, their furious pounds and smacks echoing across the whole avenue and out over the river.

  Magdalys had never seen or heard anything like it in her life. There had been the procession for General Grant that they’d flown into when they first made it to New Orleans, but that had more pomp and circumstance and not nearly the fire that this one did. Her friend Hannibal had told her about these parades, but being here, feeling the excitement of the people around her, the way everyone started dancing on either side of the street like some wild spirit was sweeping through on the warm Louisiana breeze, the crash of those cymbals! Magdalys wanted to live in this tiny moment forever.

  But Mapper was already squeezing her hand again and pulling her somewhere else as the last drummer marched past. “What is it?” she asked, halfway wishing she could just follow the parade wherever it went, halfway excited to see something else brand-new and amazing.

  “Don’t you smell it?”

  Magdalys realized she’d been breathing through her mouth out of habit from so much poop shoveling. She took in a deep breath of muggy swamp air, body odor, something tangy like beer or possibly pee, and most importantly: coffee! Amazing fresh strong coffee! And something else too, something sweet and freshly baked. They ran across the street, almost getting trampled by a decadently adorned iguanodon in the process, and stood in front of a bustling marketplace under a striped awning.

  “There!” Mapper said, diving into the crowd. Magdalys shook her head, heading in after him, but she had to smile. He was so excited about everything, and when was the last time they’d gotten to have actual fun without being shot at or attacked by dinos?

  Even as she thought it, Mapper was turning back toward her, a deep frown creasing his face. “What is it?”

  He clenched his teeth. “Whites …” He rubbed his face. Blinked. “Whites only.”

  Behind him, white people from beggars to debutantes sat at metal tables sipping coffee and munching on delicious-looking, sugar-covered treats served by waiters in green aprons.

  Magdalys’s fists clenched at her sides.

  They had been having so much fun, and here … here was a sharp reminder that this world wasn’t made for them, didn’t care about them, barely tolerated their existence, in fact.

  The smell of all that yumminess was making her mouth water. “C’mon,” she said, taking Mapper’s hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Children,” a voice as old as an oak tree sang out from the crowd. “Not so fast, my dears, mmm …”

  MAGDALYS AND MAPPER looked up and then farther up and directly into the eyes of a very tall old lady with a crinkled, dark brown face, pearl earrings, and a brightly colored head tie wrapped around her hair. She smiled down at them, leaning over a small wooden stand. A sign above her read OLD ROSE’S DELICIOUS CHICORY COFFEE AND CALAS.

  “You don’t want to mess with those cheap imitations anyway.” Old Rose chuckled, swatting a hand at the whites-only coffee shop. “This here is the real stuff, the good stuff, my dears. Calas!”

  “Who-as?” Mapper said.

  “Ah, you are …” She squinted, then raised an eyebrow. “You are soldiers, eh? Ahaha … In that case you get our special soldier discount, mm? Try a cala. For free! For free!” She let out a soft chuckle.

  “Oh, no, ma’am, we can pay,” Magdalys insisted, her fingers finding the coins in her pocket. She didn’t want to part with them so soon, but she was famished, and she and Mapper had agreed to go out and enjoy the city together. “We just got paid today for the first time, in fact!”

  “Ahh, I know, my dears,” Old Rose said. “They finally decided to pay you what you’re really worth! Heehee! ’Bout time, you know? Every man kills and dies the same, no matter how much you pay him. Every girl too!” She looked sad for a moment, then shook it off. “Anyway! Calas and coffee! On the house!”

  “But —” Magdalys started, but Old Rose cut her off with two sharp claps.

  Nothing happened. The crowd bustled around them. Magdalys and Mapper glanced to either
side.

  Old Rose rolled her eyes, clapped again. “Minuette! S’il vous plaît!”

  A skittering sound erupted behind the counter. Old Rose sighed, waving her hand in a get-on-with-it gesture. “I swear. You’d think she was born on the continent! She’s never even been there. She’s just a pup, you know!” She disappeared behind the counter and Magdalys heard the sound of pouring and the gentle clink of silverware. “There you go! Allez, mon ami.”

  A short, squat ceratops waddled out, balancing a tray ever so carefully on her back. It was one of the ones without horns, and it looked a little vexed to have been disturbed from what must’ve been a very pleasurable nap. The tray had two steaming cups of black coffee on it and a small plate of doughy treats covered in sugar.

  “Go on, young ones, try it! Mm!”

  Magdalys and Mapper glanced at each other. They’d been eating hardtack and crummy army ration coffee for what seemed like forever. And even before that, orphanage food was … mediocre on a good day, and rarely that. This though: This was clearly something special.

  Minuette eased into a squat, impressively only spilling a little of the coffee, and then went back to sleep.

  Mapper blinked, licking his lips.

  “You first,” Magdalys said.

  He picked up one of the treats — calas, she’d called them — and put the whole thing in his mouth. “Wowww …” he moaned between chews.

  “Ayee! Hungry children!” Old Rose smirked. “Dip in the coffee next time!”

  Magdalys picked one up. It was warm and immediately covered her fingers in powdery sugar. She lowered it into her coffee, then took a bite. Doughy fresh deliciousness filled not just her mouth, but her whole body. It was so sweet, with the perfect twinge of bitterness from that strong coffee! So fluffy and light she thought honey might spill into her mouth with each chew!

  A noise came out of Magdalys that she didn’t mean to make, something like a sigh or laughter maybe; all she knew was she wanted more of that feeling.