Not a chance.
I couldn’t afford to shut up. I had to get my words out, quickly, or we were going to make the biggest mistake of our lives. I had to tell them about the thing that had been rolling around inside my head, waiting for me to figure out exactly what it was.
I had to tell them that everything, literally everything that we had planned up until this point was dead wrong and that we had to stop Jimmy from telling Diana or her people about their stupid super immunity fix to Necropoxy.
They could never know.
Diana could never know.
Here I had been, all this time, with people like Jimmy and Sanjay who were different from us but no less, and with fat people like Trudy Aiken who saved us from getting caught back on the road. I had been with gay people like Randy Stephens who fought the poxers alongside me and Trina in front of Walmart, and ancient people like Dorcas Duke who literally saved me from that lunatic, Roger Ludlow, who wanted to feed me to his dead wife.
And all of them, ALL OF THEM, were strong, good, capable people who had every right to be part of our new world. If we told Diana that she had inadvertently discovered a way to selectively make people super immune to Necropoxy, people like them would be cast aside.
That couldn’t happen.
That could never happen.
As Prianka pulled her hand from my mouth, tears began streaming from my eyes. We all turned and watched as whoever had been climbing down that ladder from the helicopter hit the bottom rung and swung around. There was a gun in his hand, and he pointed it directly at Jimmy.
Whatever words I had to say literally froze on my tongue.
“Whoa, dude,” Jimmy said as he threw up his hands in front of the soldier.
“You ‘Whoa dude’ yourself,” snapped the guy. He stood there with his pistol gripped in his fist.
“Hey,” said Jimmy. “You can poke an eye out with that thing.”
“It would be a start, crip,” said the guy.
Crip?
Cripple?
“Did you just, um, call me a cripple?” said Jimmy. “Like really?”
“Yeah, so?” the guy hissed.
“It’s just, like, um, you look a little old to still be in third grade.”
What was he doing? The guy from the helicopter really didn’t care about him. Jimmy had been right. He didn’t give one little fig about a guy in a wheelchair—but I did. Trina did. We all did.
“Cut the crap,” the guy sneered. “What’s with the Diana sign? You obviously got a death wish or something because people like Diana aren’t interested in people like you.”
“Yeah, well,” said Jimmy. “People like Diana just might be interested in what this ‘crip’ has to say.”
“Is that so,” the guy said, bringing his other hand up so both hands were holding onto his pistol. I heard a growl from the woods next to me. It was more like a snarl. Whitby had crouched low to the ground and her lips were curled up, exposing sharp, little dagger teeth. After all, she had been trained to protect people from guns.
Meanwhile Jimmy kept talking with his voice as smooth as silk. “I’d probably take a look around before you do anything sort of bonkers with that gun.”
“What are you talking about?” sneered the soldier, but I could see his hands falter a little.
Jimmy spread his arms out. “It’s just that I got a lot of friends and a lot of fire power in the woods behind me,” said Jimmy. “Like they used to say in the movies before people like you killed movies for everybody—you’re surrounded.”
The guy’s hand lowered a little more. I watched him look past Jimmy and past the flames. In the dim light at the edge of the forest, I’m sure he saw fifteen people, draped in robes, pointing guns at him from every direction.
If I could have seen that far, I’m sure I would have watched the guy’s face turn white. I’m sure I might even have seen a dark tinkle stain spread across his khaki pants.
Scant seconds passed by before the soldier’s shoulders hunched, and he brought the gun up again so it was pointing directly at Jimmy’s face.
“You tell them to back off or I’ll waste you,” the soldier bellowed at Jimmy. Then he raised his voice for all of us to hear. “You hear that?” he screamed into the line of trees. “Back the hell off or your crip here ain’t going to be breathing no more.”
Whitby snarled again, louder this time.
“Grab her collar,” I whispered as quietly as I could to Bullseye, but he wasn’t even listening to me. He had his own gun out, the one that he had stuck in the back of his pants. He had joined the fifteen gods and goddesses by putting the soldier directly in his sights. Meanwhile another soldier appeared in the side door of the helicopter and started climbing down the ladder, too.
“Hey, man,” Jimmy began. “Put your gun down, and we can talk,” he said. “And maybe you can walk, and I can roll out of here in one piece.”
“I think not,” said the soldier and took one more step toward Jimmy. That’s all it was. Just one step.
Whitby tore free from Bullseye and bolted.
29
THE NEXT TEN seconds took a lifetime.
I could probably have finished high school, gone to college, gotten married, had a zillion kids, worked, retired and ended up in an over-fifty-five community in the space of those ten seconds, and still have about a second and a half to spare.
In slow motion—wicked slow motion—the guy on the ladder coming down from the helicopter swung around just in time to see a white streak fly out of the woods like a supersonic projectile.
He screamed out something. At first I didn’t know what it was. I was more concerned with the big gun he had in one hand, and his precarious grip on the ladder with the other.
I heard him cry, “Waaaaattttchhh ooooowwwwttttt,” to his friend who was pointing a gun in Jimmy’s face, but I probably just imagined the whole thing, because no part of what was happening seemed real.
There was an explosion, but I didn’t have time to worry about explosions, or soldiers with guns, or high speed service dogs with razor sharp teeth. Prianka fell away from me as I ran out of the tree line just as Whitby leaped through the air and grabbed hold of the wrist of the soldier who was pointing the gun at Jimmy. I heard screaming like someone was being murdered and I heard another quick explosion, but I didn’t have time for that either.
“YOU LOOKING FOR ME?” I screamed. “I’M TRIPP LIGHT. CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.”
Then I ran across the meadow toward the monastery with the sounds of screaming soldiers at my heels. I ran as though my life depended on it, which it did.
What’s more, it wasn’t just my life anymore.
It wasn’t just my sister’s life or Prianka’s life.
It wasn’t only the lives of my friends, my family, and the other people we had saved.
This whole time, we thought that we were just going to waltz up to Diana, tell her she didn’t need us anymore then ride off into the sunset like the characters in some bad B-rated movie.
We couldn’t do that. Not anymore.
What about everyone else out there who survived Necropoxy? What about the lives of those who might not be up to the perfection scale of Diana Radcliffe, Dr. Marks, all the pretty doctors, and everyone else who manned the numerous sites out there?
We all had a right to exist—every one of us. Thin, fat, gay, straight, black, brown, white and every color in between. We all had a purpose, even if that purpose was only to love a service dog from the protection of a wheelchair.
Either super immunity was for everyone, or super immunity was for no one. There were no in-betweens.
“Stop right there,” I heard a voice cry from somewhere behind me, but I wasn’t about to stop. I ran as fast as I could with my head spinning and my lungs burning in my che
st. “I’ll shoot,” the voice cried out, but I still didn’t slow down.
Thank God for soccer. I was fast. Not as fast as Whitby because no human could ever be as fast as she was, but I was still fast. I left the soldiers in the dust with only the vaguest notion of which way I went in the dark.
When I got to the wooden steps of the monastery, I came to a screeching halt, bent down, tore off my sneakers and quietly tiptoed up to the weird-shaped doors. I barely knew what I was doing. I just had to keep moving.
Like a cat burglar, I gently pulled open one of the doors with a tiny tug, only a few inches, and put one of my sneakers in the doorway. I heard nothing from inside. Not yet. That was good. That was really good.
Then I took a deep breath, slipped over to the IN and OUT box that had been filled with dirty laundry bags, quickly opened up the lid, hopped inside and closed it.
I barely had time for the lid to settle and stale air to creep into my nostrils inside the darkness of the box before I heard footsteps running. There was more than one set of shoes making the noise. There were at least two, maybe even more.
“Freaking dog,” snarled a guy’s voice. “I’m bleeding all over my gun.”
“Tough it out, soldier,” I heard a second guy growl. “You shot the damn thing, didn’t you?”
Oh, my God, no. Not Whitby. They couldn’t have shot Whitby. My chest started to tighten, and my eyes grew damp.
“Who knows?” said the first guy. “Stupid dog. It took off into the woods.”
“Idiot,” laughed the second guy.
“Whatever,” the first guy said. “I don’t care about the dog, anyway. I care about the damn kid.” He spat on the ground. Gross. “I hate kids,” he muttered. “Can’t we just shoot him and be done with it?”
“Diana wants this one alive,” said the second guy. “This . . . this . . . what’s the kid’s name?”
“Tripp Light,” huffed the first guy.
“Tripp Light,” repeated the second guy, who almost sounded bored. “Fantastic.”
Ugh. Like I hadn’t heard that one a thousand times before from old people who thought it was somehow funny. As for me, I never got the joke. Anyway, I held my breath as I crouched in the box, waiting as the seconds ticked by.
“He’s supposed to have a twin sister, too,” the first guy said. “I guess they’re . . . I don’t know . . . special.”
“Ha,” laughed the second guy. “Special enough to tie a bunch of statues to trees to try and trick us into thinking they had a whole posse with them? How did that work out? Not so good, huh?”
Meanwhile, I was thinking that it worked out long enough for me to come to my senses, and for Whitby to almost rip a guy’s wrist off.
More steps came running up to the monastery. I could hear them through the cracks in the wood box. There was a third person with them. I heard something familiar, and every muscle in my body tensed.
“I am so damn sick of that kid in the wheelchair,” said Cheryl the It. I knew her rough, macho voice anywhere. Jimmy and I had met her back at Site 37, and then Trudy Aiken tried to get into a helicopter with her when we almost got snagged on the road back near Hollowton. “He was the other one who caused all those problems up at the McDuffy Estate.”
“I hope you put the crip down,” said the second guy—the one who thought I was ‘Fantastic.’
“What for?” she snapped. “He’s in a wheelchair. He’s not going anywhere.”
I heard the wood floor at the entry to the monastery creak. God, the three of them, Cheryl the It and the two others were standing right next to me and right in front of the doors to the monastery.
“Fine,” the first guy said. “Let’s just go get the kid and be done with this.” There was a little bit of movement then I heard him mutter, “I sure hope he gives us trouble. My trigger finger’s itchy. Maybe I can just shoot him a little.”
Cheryl the It snorted. The floorboards creaked again and I heard the big wooden doors open. Thankfully it was dark inside there. They wouldn’t have seen what was right in front of them—not the poxer monks and not the gooey piles that were left behind. I guess all they saw was a black hole. They probably didn’t even hear movement, or if they did, I’m sure they thought it was just me.
As the three sets of footsteps moved inside the monastery, I quietly opened up the IN/OUT box, slipped out, dashed over to the door, grabbed my sneakers, and pulled the doors closed.
Then I did something that was pretty terrible, but I was feeling like being terrible. There was no ‘fantastic’ in me at the moment—only a chill that I couldn’t deny.
I pulled my jeans down and tore them off, leaving me wearing just a pair of boxers that were thankfully not as skanky as they could have been if we hadn’t found a Walmart and new clothing. Then I took the legs of my jeans and threaded them through the handles of the door and tied them in knots.
I took a step back. Tying Cheryl the It and the two other soldiers inside the monastery with a bunch of poxer monks was a pretty horrible thing to do. Then again, what they planned on doing with me and Trina if we were ever caught was even worse.
As I heard shouts and a gun go off from behind those doors, I slipped my sneakers back on and smiled a little to myself.
I guess karma really is a bitch, after all.
30
THE HELICOPTER, with the ladder still hanging out of the side door, was flying in a wide arc around the meadow with the burning Diana fire still blazing below. The pilot was most likely waiting for the soldiers to come back, or searching for me and Trina himself . . . or herself.
If Necropoxy taught me anything, it was that bad guys could be girls.
Look at Diana Radcliffe. She was a bad, bad girl.
As I ran in the dark, I found myself thinking about what kind of parents spawned something as awful as my new arch nemesis with the penny loafers and preppy style.
I ended up holding hands and making out with my old arch nemesis. That was never, ever, going to happen with Diana. Just the thought of her little prune lips puckering up almost made my lunch spill out onto the peaceful grounds of the Peace Pagoda.
As far as the soldiers went, Cheryl the It included, I didn’t give a rat’s ass if they ever got out of the monastery. If they did, I didn’t care if their humanity was still intact or not.
Whatever happened to them, it served them right.
That was pretty dark thinking on my part, but I didn’t care. Ever since Necropoxy started, it seemed like everything my friends and I did was all about running and hiding. Sure, there was a teensy weensy bit of destruction of public property, meaning half the town of Greenfield and the McDuffy Estate, along with just a smidge of coercion with Luke and Cal, but running and hiding had filled the bulk of our time.
Now, instead of running and hiding, I had a sneaking suspicion that we were about to turn the corner on our previous way of handling things, and just maybe have to fight. Sometimes there were casualties in a fight, and if the three of them inside the monastery ended up as casualties, all it meant was that we were in a war.
That’s what happens in wars.
People bit it . . . or with Necropoxy, people got bit.
Right now, though, my friends and I needed to run again, like pronto.
I sprinted in sneakers and boxer shorts toward the big round Peace Pagoda instead of where the fire was burning. It was dark, and underneath the shadow of the huge, white dome it was easy to hide. The air was getting chilly, and I was fully aware that goosebumps were starting to pop up on my bare legs. Thankfully, I knew there were more clothes back on the bus, and another pair of brand-new jeans sitting in a Walmart bag with all the other things we brought with us.
As the helicopter spun around in the sky, I left the shadow of the Peace Pagoda and dashed over the bridge that crossed the lily pond. Ji
mmy wasn’t in front of the fire anymore. I hoped that meant that he was safe because Cheryl the It had said that she left him there.
Too bad she thought my friend in the wheelchair wasn’t fully able to take care of himself. That was a big mistake.
As quickly as possible, I side-swiped the burning flames and dove directly into the woods alongside a golden woman, dressed in orange robes and lashed to one of the trees. Fixed to her with duct tape was the bazooka. For a brief moment I thought about tearing it from her grasp and aiming it directly at the helicopter.
Could I actually do that? Would I actually do that? Thankfully, I thought better of it. I felt barbaric even having the thought. At least inside the monastery, there was still a chance the soldiers could run and hide, but pointing the business end of a weapon like that at a helicopter? That seemed like a bridge too far, although I was fairly sure things might eventually come to that.
As I made my way through the darkness, my fear of the woods totally evaporated.
I thought back to when Dorcas and I had hidden in the forest alongside the road outside of Guilford, after we had left Roger Ludlow with a bullet in his leg and a bottle of pills. There had been a big, black snake there that had crawled over my hand when we were crouched down in all the leaf litter. Back then, that snake had scared me so badly that I thought it was going to be game over for sure.
But now, with my newfound knowledge that we had a job to do—to make sure that Diana and her people never found out that they had stumbled onto some sort of super immunity to the bite of a poxer, I felt a little invincible.
The closest I could equate the feeling to was the adrenaline rush I used to get when zipping through a soccer field, a ball between my feet, running as fast as I imagined a cheetah could run, and with the absolute knowledge that I was going to score against the other team.
Trust me, we certainly hadn’t won against Diana, but I felt like we had won something. That knowledge gave me power and that power made me feel like, for the moment, nothing could touch me.
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