Thunder Run

by Daniel José Older

  “The real question is,” Parker said, “what are the Knights of the Golden Circle planning? Magdalys, you said you overheard them discussing the Mexican situation when you captured those documents, correct?”

  “Yes, sir. They said it was …” She tried to remember the exact words. “This is how we win, the one they called the Grandmaster said. He told them it wouldn’t be in Virginia or Chattanooga, that what they were about to do would trap the Union Army in their pincers and end the war for good.”

  “Well, that certainly tracks,” Parker said.

  “Then he instructed Drek to head along the Mississippi, cross the Gulf, and embed with some guerrillas.”

  “I knew it!” Parker snapped. “They’re sending a dinomaster into the fray at the border. Which means whatever those papers say —”

  “We’re already on it!” Mapper announced, gathering the documents up. “We’ll figure this out, Lieutenant Colonel! Promise!”

  “You better,” Parker said. “I’ve already secured passage across the Gulf for you and your squad, Magdalys. You leave tomorrow.”

  She gaped at him. “We leave … tomorrow?”

  “For the borderlands, my dear. Top secret mission. That is, if you agree to accept it. General Grant certainly hopes you will.”

  Magdalys looked back and forth between Mapper’s and Bijoux’s excited expressions.

  “Wait a minute!” Banks said, leaping to his feet. “She gets to choose whether or not to accept it? What is going on here?”

  Parker directed a withering glare at the major general. “I really would’ve thought you’d put all the pieces together by now. Everything this young lady has told you is the truth, although I doubt she’ll be telling you much more from here on out, given how you received her the first time. Now, we have some highly classified matters to discuss, which I’m afraid are beyond your clearance level.”

  “I —”

  “And anyway, you have an imminent campaign to prepare for, do you not?”

  “I —”

  “Now.” He turned to Bijoux as Magdalys just stared at him, wide-eyed. “I told your corporal about one of my favorite little dive bars in the French Quarter. I wonder if we might meet the others over there. We have much to discuss!”

  “We have ju-just the place!” Bijoux said.

  THAT PIANO WAS at it again.

  The boys from the 9th were crowded around the table at their favorite saloon, running numbers and locations with Lieutenant Colonel Parker, and so much was happening, so much! More than Magdalys could wrap her head around, really.

  But the woman tinkering away on that old piano in the shadows seemed to know that, somehow. Instead of the galumphing, low-down juke joint stomp, she sent the notes toppling over each other in sizzling arpeggios that rose and fell like nebulous mountains or the building tops of a cityscape.

  For this tiny moment, Magdalys felt strangely at peace. It didn’t make any sense — she hadn’t mastered wrangling multiple dinos at once, and she had no idea what terror awaited her at the borderlands or if she’d have any idea how to face it.

  “That’s a four!” someone yelled. “Carry the four!”

  “It is not!”

  “Is so. And that makes this seventeen, and so that puts us smack in the middle of … wait for it … Wisconsin!”

  Everyone burst out laughing.

  She had a team, once again, against all odds. She had a team of incredible, talented, brave soldiers who would follow her into the gaping maw of death if she asked them to. They’d all set to work as soon as she’d explained what task lay ahead, and they’d done it without a second thought or question. It was like they’d been waiting all this time for someone to come along and finally send them off on a terrific mission into the wilds, and for Magdalys to be their leader.

  “Guys, guys, guys!” Montez said, still laughing and waving his hands around to get their attention. “Just let Mapper do this! It’s literally his name!”

  “I’m saying!” Mapper groaned.

  Briggs jumped up. “But … But …”

  “RECONNAISSANCE!!” everyone except Parker and Briggs himself yelled together.

  “You guys are no fun!” Briggs complained.

  Parker shook his head. “Someone’s going to have to fill me in.”

  “You’re quite frankly better off not knowing,” Wolfgang advised. “Trust me.”

  Mapper leaned over the table, squinting with concentration. “Okay, okay, okay! Let me focus, guys!”

  “Fat chance of that,” Toussaint scoffed. “But nice try, little map dude.”

  Parker stood, rolled his eyes, and made his way over to where Magdalys sat watching them all. “Quite a rowdy crew you’ve assembled, Private Roca.”

  She laughed. “Ain’t it?”

  He plopped down next to her.

  “If I may, sir …”

  “Go on.”

  “Isn’t this a bit … not private, as far as places to discuss classified information go?”

  Mapper was now standing on the table, eyes closed, making small circles with his arms while the others cheered him on.

  Parker chuckled. “Which of these old drunks do you think is going to tell our secret plans to the Confederates?”

  The bar had pretty much cleared out, Magdalys noticed. All that remained were the pianist, Felipe Petit, who was tending bar, and three guys nursing drinks in the corners. “Any of ’em could, really.” She hadn’t forgotten what General Grant told her the day after Drek escaped into the back alleys of the wealthy, white Garden District: When our boys got there for pursuit, nobody had seen anything. Perils of a Union-controlled city in Confederate territory.

  Parker’s face got serious and he nodded. “You’re right to worry. Lets me know we’ve picked the right person for the job. Salchiche!” he yelled suddenly. “Check in.”

  The man who’d been slouched over a table near the door leapt to his feet, back straight, and nodded at Parker. His overcoat swayed just slightly in the breeze coming in from the street, and Magdalys caught the glint of a pistol handle tucked into his belt.

  She blinked at Parker. “Those are your guys!”

  He tilted his head, mouth curved into a half smile. “Tiko.”

  Another guy Magdalys had taken for some old drunk sprang to his feet, nodded, then sat back down.

  “Fremet.” The third rose, nodded, sat.

  They were all definitely armed and definitely not even slightly drunk. They looked like killing a man would make no particular difference to their day one way or another.

  “All good, Lieutenant Colonel?” Felipe Petit asked from behind the bar. “Care for a drink?”

  Parker shook his head and waved him off. “All is well, Felipe.”

  “He’s with us too?”

  “Mm-hmm. And Anabelle over there.” He arched an eyebrow toward the pianist. “One of our best spies, as a matter of fact.”

  “I’ve never heard music like that.”

  “Mm, she’s good at that too. You know folks come to establishments like this to spill their guts. What better way to garner information from an angry city, hm?”

  “That’s why the guys brought us here in the first place to go over the documents!” Magdalys said. “They knew it was a safe zone for their secrets.”

  “As safe as one can get. But listen.” He slid a little closer and his face seemed to grow long, tense. “There are some delicate matters you need to understand.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Since the president doesn’t want to be seen as interfering in a foreign country’s affairs, you and your team will be …”

  “We’ll be on our own,” Magdalys said. “I understand. No uniforms, no identification.”

  “And …”

  “There will be no rescue operation.”

  Parker nodded gravely.

  “What else?”

  She didn’t think Parker could look any more uncomfortable than he already did, but somehow he managed. “The state y
ou’ll be operating in —”

  “Tamaulipas.” Magdalys decided to keep why she knew that name so well to herself.

  “Good. You learn fast and remember crucial data. Yes, Tamaulipas. Besides being the site of President Juárez’s last stand, it’s a hotbed of rebel activity among the Apache Nation.”

  Magdalys kept her face even. Amaya’s mom was Apache, and from the sound of it, pretty involved with the resistance. She’d instructed Amaya to learn everything she could from her father, but Amaya had always felt like that had been part of a deeper, underlying plan somehow. They’d been separated suddenly, before she could ever get any real answers, and that’s what she’d gone out west to figure out. And Tamaulipas must figure into all that somehow…. Maybe this was how.

  “I’m not sure if you know this, but the United States is currently at war with the Apache Nation.”

  Magdalys nodded. Amaya had told her about it. The United States was at war with the Indigenous people who had been here before European settlers came with their slave ships and poisoned blankets. And it was a war of extermination. One Magdalys would have no part of. She tried — failed — to keep the tension she felt inside from spilling out into her face.

  “I know,” Parker said. “I can’t talk about it all. Not here, not right now. All I know is: This is a war we have to win, the one you and I are soldiers in. That’s what matters most of all. If we fail at this, nothing else will matter anyway.”

  Magdalys just stared at him.

  “And as Ely Samuel Parker, rank and designation aside, I’m telling you, Magdalys Roca, human to human: Stay out of that mess. Do you understand? Don’t fall in with one side or another, because either one will spell certain doom. Don’t get caught up in a whole other struggle when you already have one on the verge of collapse.”

  She kept staring. There were no answers in his eyes; she wouldn’t let any show in hers. And she didn’t have any answers anyway — the world was just a terrible place and that was that.

  “I got it!” Mapper yelled amidst yelps and hurrahs. “I got it! Oh … my … god!”

  “What is it?” Wolfgang asked. “What’s wrong?”

  Mapper just shook his head. “But what … does it mean … ?”

  Parker stood. “Tell us, Mapper.”

  Magdalys shook off the strangeness of the conversation she’d just had, the creepy feeling it’d left on her. “Mapper, talk!” she called.

  “Tyrannosauruses. Lots of them.”

  “I hate those things,” Toussaint said. “What about them?”

  “There’s about to be about a thousand of them rumbling through the exact spot where President Juárez and his army are,” Mapper said.

  “But that’s just a migratory pattern, right?” Briggs said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

  “What are the Knights p-p-planning?” Bijoux asked.

  “A thunder run,” a gruff voice said from the doorway.

  Magdalys stood. “Monsieur Lafarge!”

  Late afternoon sunlight poured from behind the old man, casting his shadow long across the saloon floor. He seemed to be standing up straighter than usual. Both hands gripped the cane in front of him in a way that somehow made it seem more like a broadsword than anything he’d need to help him walk.

  “What’s a thunder run?” Parker said. “And who are you?”

  “He’s my —”

  “I am Lafarge,” Lafarge said dramatically.

  “Yes, I gathered that,” Parker huffed.

  “A veteran of the United States Army, and that’s all you need to know.”

  “He’s a hero,” Toussaint said.

  “He’s my teacher,” Magdalys finally blurted out. “And I was hoping he’d join our team.”

  “That I will not do,” Lafarge said, taking a few steps toward them. “But I will tell you exactly what they’re planning.”

  “A thunder run,” Parker said. “You mentioned that. What is it?”

  “Something that can only be accomplished by a master dinowrangler, I’m afraid. Earl Shamus Dawson Drek may be one of the only people on earth capable of such a feat.”

  “What —”

  “It’s a forced dinostampede,” Lafarge snapped. “A virtually unstoppable assault. With a thousand tyrannosauruses, imagine a river as wide as the Mississippi but of only gigantic gnashing jaws and stomping claws, and then imagine it hurtling forward at fifty miles an hour in a frenzied race.”

  “It will utterly destroy Juárez’s forces,” Wolfgang said.

  Lafarge nodded. “Indeed. It’s not sustainable for very long, even for the strongest dinowrangler. But it won’t take much to accomplish the destruction of an army. Just precision.”

  Mapper shook his head. “Wha …”

  “That is all. I must go.” Lafarge turned around and disappeared out the door.

  Magdalys took off after him. “Lafarge! Wait!”

  THE STREETS OF the French Quarter teemed with life, as always.

  Magdalys dodged a scramble of microraptors and wove in and out of bustling crowds. Up ahead, Lafarge moved with startling speed along the cobblestoned throughway and then dipped suddenly into an alley beneath dangling ferns and rusted ironwork.

  “Monsieur Lafarge!” she yelled, shoving past a minitrike and clomping down the alley after him.

  “Be gone, child. You have work to do! I can’t help you anymore!”

  “You lie!” Magdalys yelled.

  The old man stopped. Water drip-dropped from the balconies above, then plinked into dark, uneven puddles along the sidewalk. “I have never lied to you.”

  “We need your help,” Magdalys said, pausing a few feet from him. Lafarge hadn’t turned around, but she could tell from the way his shoulders rose and fell that he was breathing heavily. “You served once before. They called you a hero.”

  “I am a man of peace now,” Lafarge said. “And that is that.”

  “Easy to say when your people aren’t being enslaved,” Magdalys muttered.

  Lafarge finally turned, his old eyes catching her young ones, and for a few moments, the two just stared at each other across the alleyway. Maybe she’d pushed too hard, too soon. But the man was so stubborn! Like he enjoyed playing this whole enigmatic old guy routine. But so many lives were on the line…. Who had time for all that?

  And anyway, it was true: Peace was always the easy route for those out of the line of fire. The pacifists up north wanted the war to end so they could go on profiting from slavery. But what was slavery if not a never-ending, one-sided war? Magdalys had had it with pacifists who would sit back and watch her die while feeling high and mighty about their moral choices.

  She felt a presence growing around her a few seconds before she heard the shuffles and stomps of approaching dinos. Was this it? Lafarge could have her trampled or eaten in seconds if he felt like it.

  But no. These dinos came gently forward; they pulsed with curiosity and something else, something deeper … compassion? The Gathering. Lafarge seemed to do it without even meaning to. What was the secret of this mysterious maneuver? A medium-sized trike emerged from the shadows near them, and then a whole family of raptors clacked gingerly up behind Lafarge, their heads bobbing and weaving, eyes glancing around. Three dactyls landed on the balconies up above, then four more. They squabbled and fussed at each other before falling into a subdued silence.

  When Lafarge finally spoke, it was barely a whisper. “The British killed half my family. I was just a boy. Even younger than you are now, probably. I came home from hunting with my older brother, Michel, and … found them.”

  Somehow, the dinosaurs seemed to be getting closer to him without even moving. As more and more showed up, they filled the alley around Magdalys and Lafarge, grunting and huffing in the early evening air. The tupus from earlier flapped down from the shadows and landed on top of a stegosaurus, then settled in, looking on solemnly.

  “I swore revenge. Swore I would do everything in my power to get it. And, as it t
urned out, everything in my power was quite a lot.” He shook his head. “Quite a lot indeed. I had — have — this power inside of me. I didn’t know what to call it, and at first I was terrified of it. Ashamed. But when we found my sister’s and father’s bodies trampled on the road leading to our house, well … I wasn’t ashamed or terrified anymore. I just wanted blood to be spilled.”

  Magdalys gulped. Half of her wanted to run across the alleyway and hug him, for what he’d been through, for revealing himself to her. Half of her wanted to turn around and never come back. He had no right to compare his life to hers, even if he had suffered terrible tragedies.

  “I joined up with General Jackson’s troops. We were barracked just outside the city when word came that the British fleet was approaching. We were outnumbered and the fate of all the Americas seemed to rest on our shoulders. Of course, the war had already been won by that point, treaties signed. We just didn’t get word until it was too late….” He shook his head, scowled.

  “I was just a drummer boy, you know. Just a child. I was a lot like you, in many ways. Wise beyond my years, but with a wisdom born from tragedy. Brave, probably too brave for my own good. Which is to say: reckless.”

  Magdalys swallowed a flinch. She had been reckless, if she was being honest with herself, but it still smarted to hear it from a stranger.

  “I didn’t have the guts to tell General Jackson about my skills.” He scoffed a sigh, eyes gazing off at some faraway battlefield. “Wouldn’t have even known how to explain it, not really. The British came with everything they had, but they were disorganized; they clamored against our entrenchments in pathetic, sloppy thrusts at first, and they paid the price in blood.”

  Magdalys took a step closer. “And then?”

  “They kept coming.” He spat the words out, horrified. “There were so many. They rode trikes and tyrannosauruses. A whole squad of ankys pelted us with buckshot. I just … I wish I didn’t remember it, wish God had spared me these memories. If I could’ve just blacked out … anything. But no. It is all very clear, even now, almost fifty years later: I remember the terror and rage, but those are vague things, eh? It was the Gathering, you see, although I didn’t know it at the time. The most powerful maneuver a dinowrangler can make. And I was the most powerful wrangler the world knew. But more than anything, I remember that tremble and click I felt when all those dinosteeds became mine. Mine. The queasy intoxication of it, the taste of all that power, of victory transforming in the space of one breath from something near impossible to a thing assured.”