“Dad?” I called out. “Where’s Sandy?”
He took a breath, then exhaled. “Ken was walking her along the road at the top of the woods on the fourth ring. A squirrel ran across their path and Sandy chased it past the warning fences.”
“Did Sandy go into the Bomb’s Breath?”
He rubbed his hand over his face.
“Sandy’s dead?” Aaren asked.
When my dad bowed his head, I knew the answer was yes. I felt sick.
“We’re crazy to live so close to something so dangerous,” he muttered. Almost like he was saying it to himself. “Come on. They’re leaving soon.”
I followed him, numb. Sandy was dead. Mr. Williams didn’t look right without Sandy by his side. Nothing was right with this day.
Just like every year, I was saying goodbye to people I’d known my whole life. It was worse this year, though—it was the first time I had to say goodbye to Aaren’s brothers. It seemed wrong to send them into such great danger, while we sat in our safe, protected valley. We ran out of Ameiphus when Aaren got hurt, so we couldn’t even send some with the guard to treat injuries.
I stood next to Aaren while his siblings hugged Travin and Cole; then it was our turn. I told them I’d miss them and to be safe, and they hugged me like I was one of their sisters. Cole rubbed his knuckles through Aaren’s hair and said, “You’re the oldest son at home now. Watch out for everyone, okay?” Aaren told him that he would, then looked away.
When his mom began to cry the moment she put her arms around Travin, and my mom started crying about half a second later, I helped Aaren walk back to a wagon. He didn’t say a word. Neither did I. What was I supposed to say to him? Eventually I managed, “They’ll be okay. They’ll be back.” I wasn’t sure how convincing I sounded.
All of us at the council meeting fidgeted as we listened to Mr. Williams talk about the amount of coal mined for the winter, and Ray Romanek talk about the amount of firewood we had. I didn’t blame us for being antsy. Today marked the fourth week since the guard left. Every Wednesday at four p.m., someone from White Rock went to our side of the pass and someone from Browning went to their side of the pass, and they communicated with the telegraph system that Mr. Hudson had made.
It was almost five, time for the meeting to end, and everyone drummed their fingers, wiggled in their seats, and looked to the doors almost constantly, barely listening to the speaker. People filled all the empty spots in the room. We all wanted news on whether Browning had been attacked, and if so, how our guard fared.
Brock joined Aaren and me at our normal spot against the far wall, and Brenna sat on her mom’s lap on the benches.
Finally, when virtually everyone was staring at the double doors at the side of the gym instead of paying attention to the speaker, Joey Kearney burst through them and ran up onto the platform at the front. Out of breath and panting, he said, “They’re fine. There have been no attacks.”
We all let out a relieved breath. My mom and Aaren’s mom, who both sat on the front row of benches, hugged each other. Even Brock sighed in relief. I turned to Aaren and grinned.
Mrs. Beckinwood got up from the council head’s seat, walked to Joey, and patted him on the shoulder. “That is good news, Joey. Good news.” Mrs. Beckinwood’s eyes went to the side doors for a moment, as if she’d heard something. Then she turned back to Joey. “Before we know it, winter will be over and we’ll have our boys back home where they’ll—”
Then everyone’s attention flew to the doors as we heard a rumbling. Kind of like thunder, but much closer. Like it was happening right outside the room.
About as quickly as the sound started, it stopped. We all turned to look at the person next to us with confused faces just as the doors at the front, back, and sides of the gym burst open. Men filed into the room, dressed in dirty coats and snow-covered boots. Men I’d never seen before. Men with guns aimed at us. Mrs. Beckinwood froze with her hand still on Joey’s shoulder.
One of the men yelled, “Nobody move!”
I didn’t. I couldn’t. I stood like a statue in a shocked stupor. There were people we didn’t know in White Rock. During winter. When we were isolated. Safe.
The men spread out along the aisles at the side, front, and back of the room, surrounding us and blocking all the exits. My heart clenched tight, and every beat hurt. My breath came fast and a cold sweat covered my arms and back, making goose bumps everywhere. I couldn’t think.
The side doors opened again, and two men entered who I did recognize. The tall, curly-haired man with the scar that I’d seen near the river at the Harvest Festival—Mickelson—and his shorter, darker-skinned friend. They both strode to the front of the room. The shorter man stopped as they neared the platform, but Mickelson stepped onto the platform, next to where Mrs. Beckinwood and Joey still stood.
I held my breath as Mickelson stared down the entire gym. “Your town has something we want.” He pulled a gun from his hip—one that looked like it had been made before the bombs—and waved it carelessly as he walked around the table, stopping for a moment behind each council member. “So, tell me. Who’s in charge?”
“He’s going to hurt Mrs. Beckinwood,” Brock whispered. “I can see it in his eyes.”
My dad could see it, too. I watched with horror as his focus shifted from Mickelson to where Joey’s support was all that kept Mrs. Beckinwood from collapsing on unsteady knees. Then my dad looked to my mother, seated in the front row. He mouthed one word. Sorry.
My mom’s hands flew to her mouth and she shook her head in panic.
“No,” I said, though my voice came out a whisper.
The sound of my dad’s chair legs scraping across the wooden platform silenced every murmur. He stood tall and drew in a breath. “I am.”
The man raised his gun slightly and shot my dad in the thigh.
“No!” I screamed as everyone in the room rose to their feet. We were standing so far from my dad. I tried to run toward him but couldn’t seem to move. It took a moment before I realized Brock and Aaren were holding my torso.
Aaren whispered a frantic “Don’t go.”
The words didn’t make sense. Every part of me wanted to run to my dad.
“Stay, Hope. Please.” Aaren’s voice was urgent in my ear. “My mom’s already to him. See? She’ll help him. Stay, please.”
The room blurred in some places and shone abnormally clear in others. The walls closed in. I couldn’t suck in enough air.
Mickelson aimed his gun toward the crowd. “Sit down,” he commanded as Dr. Grenwood packed my dad’s wound with gauze to stop the bleeding. The man meandered to the front of the platform, totally at ease. “You’re a trusting town. I need you to trust that our guns do have bullets, and that we aren’t afraid to use them.”
“We … we have food stores,” Mr. Sances stammered from his seat on the platform. “We’re willing to share everything we can.”
The man raised an eyebrow. “That’s not what we came for. We want your antibiotics.”
Whispers filled the room.
Mr. Sances glanced at Mrs. Beckinwood as Joey helped her to a chair, then at my dad, who lay on the platform, wincing as Dr. Grenwood pressed on his leg. “Our Ameiphus? It didn’t grow well this year, and our latest batch isn’t finished. But we can offer you food or other supplies.”
Mickelson’s voice was calm and controlled, yet somehow filled every inch of the gym. “You don’t know the value of Ameiphus, or how rare it is, if you’re offering food and supplies in its place.”
Mr. Sances looked around, as if searching for confirmation that he was hearing right, or answering right. “Is someone hurt? Does someone have Shadel’s? Tell your men to put down their guns and we’ll talk about getting you help. Maybe when the new medicine is finished, we can give you a few doses of Ameiphus.”
The scarred man ignored Mr. Sances and walked straight to my dad’s side. I wanted to scream at him to stay away from my dad, but my mouth wouldn’t work. My lun
gs wouldn’t work. Aaren and Brock still held on to me, even though my legs wouldn’t work.
Mickelson crouched down across from Dr. Grenwood and said, “No. I want it all.”
My dad suddenly looked like he was in a lot more pain, and Dr. Grenwood scowled. She met Mickelson’s eyes and said, “It’s not ready.”
Mickelson stood up. “Explain.”
“It takes weeks to turn the mold from Ameiphus into an antibiotic in a usable form,” Dr. Grenwood said. “It’s not finished yet.”
Mickelson waved his gun in the general direction of everyone seated in the gym. “So tell me, Doctor. How long will me and my men be the guests of the good people of White Rock while we wait for the antibiotics to be ready?”
Aaren’s mom stopped working on my dad’s leg and bit her lower lip. “It’s in the refining and purifying stage. If I could get enough stabilizers and bulkers in powder form to press the medicine into tablets, I might be able to finish in three days.”
Mickelson narrowed his eyes at Dr. Grenwood, like he was trying to guess if she was overestimating. “You have until sundown two days from now. I suggest you get him patched up quickly, because if you don’t meet the deadline, you’ll need to worry less about finding that bullet and more about finding coffins.”
The smell of vegetable soup and baking bread wafted from the kitchen. Aaren and Brenna sat beside me on the wooden bench where my mom usually sat for town meetings. I rocked back and forth with my arms wrapped around my knees and waited for news of my dad. My fingers were numb from the cold, but I couldn’t seem to make myself move—even to get closer to the hearth fires.
Before Mickelson let Dr. Grenwood have men carry my dad down the hall to the clinic, he demanded the town’s records so they could make a list of everyone age fourteen and over. In the last two hours, Mickelson’s men had gathered anyone who’d stayed home from the council meeting and brought them to the community center to be counted.
Now every member of White Rock huddled in the gym or in one of the classrooms. The bandits even put people in the library. This building was designed to house everyone in White Rock in an emergency, but we didn’t have much space. With bandits in every room, at least it meant there were only six in the gym with us, instead of thirty-four.
“Is it supposed to take this long?” I asked Aaren for easily the twelfth time as his dad walked toward us.
Mr. Grenwood put his hand on my shoulder to stop my rocking and answered for Aaren. “Yes, it’s normal. My wife’s good at this kind of thing, Hope. She’ll be done soon. Your mom will be in here the second that bullet comes out to let you know how he’s doing. And if you need anything, we’re just right over there.” Mr. Grenwood pointed to the rest of Aaren’s family, gathered near one of the hearth fires; then he took Brenna’s hand and led her back to them.
When Joey and Dr. Grenwood came through the door supporting my dad, I leapt up and helped them position him with his back against the wall. My mom sat next to him and held his hand with both of hers.
I knelt down, wrapped my arms around his neck, and gave him the tightest hug I dared. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll be all right, pumpkin. Are you okay? Things got a little scary in here.” His voice sounded so strained, like even talking hurt.
I nodded and wiped away a stray tear, then turned to Dr. Grenwood. “Shouldn’t he be in a bed at the clinic?”
Dr. Grenwood tucked a curl behind her ear as she adjusted the bandage on his leg. “Yes, he should. But your dad’s tough.”
“We had our own personal bandit watching us in there”—my dad’s eyes searched the room as Mr. Newberry wandered toward us, trying not to be noticed by the bandits—“and I need to talk with the council. Is Newberry the only one here?”
“Yeah,” I said. “They split up the council—one to a room.”
He grunted, then squeezed my mom’s and my hands. “Can you two give us a minute?”
Aaren, my mom, and I scooted a few feet away but stayed close enough to hear their whispered conversation.
My dad coughed a couple of times. It was like the cough emptied his entire body of air. He took a deep breath, then said in a voice that sounded like it took more energy than he had, “Any word on how the bandits got in? Joey would’ve seen them if they came through the pass.”
“Nope. Not through the pass,” Mr. Newberry said. “Burke Davies was at the ball mill when the bandits collected everyone who wasn’t at the meeting. He said bandits were guarding the mines.”
The mines! My mind flashed to the hole in the mine floor Mr. Williams had shown us on our field trip, then to the Harvest Festival when I saw Mickelson and the shorter man on the path by the river. I felt sick.
My dad exhaled like he was in a lot of pain. “I thought there wasn’t a way in or out through those caves!”
Mr. Newberry shrugged. “I guess we were wrong.”
His words sent chills down my back, because it was so close to what Mr. Allen had said when he talked about the choices made in World War III. I suppose, in a way, I was witnessing White Rock’s history being made.
Mr. Newberry took a breath like he was going to say something else, but the nine p.m. whistle blew, the doors at the back of the gym burst open, and Mickelson strolled in.
“Line up!”
My mom jumped to her feet. Panic filled her face as she glanced between the line forming and my dad, probably because she hated to leave him while she lined up.
In the moment she hesitated, a dark-haired bandit came over and yelled, “You heard the man. He said, ‘Line up!’ ” Then he shoved her really hard, knocking her to the floor with enough force that she skidded several feet.
People ran forward, grabbed her, and pulled her into the line.
“Get in line!” the same bandit yelled, and I turned from my mom just in time to see it was my dad he yelled at. My dad. He didn’t look like he could move an inch, let alone line up.
It was too much. I couldn’t sit and do nothing while he treated my parents that way. Without thinking, I stepped between the bandit and my dad. “He can’t!” I yelled. “You guys shot him!”
I saw a blur of motion from the bandit’s arm, but he was so quick. There wasn’t any time to duck or turn as his open hand hit my face and sent me sprawling to the floor. My hand flew to the stinging pain in my cheek.
“Everyone over fourteen lines up. Everyone under fourteen stays out of the way and doesn’t make problems for everyone else.”
I wasn’t too injured to catch the threat in his voice—he’d punish everyone if I didn’t keep my mouth shut. A couple of my neighbors helped my dad while I moved away from the line. Aaren and Carina joined me, not saying a word, and Brenna buried her face against Aaren.
Mickelson and the six bandits went up and down the line and smacked people who didn’t stand straight enough, or who made the line crooked, or who muttered something under their breath. Anything they could do to make people more afraid.
The looks on the faces of everyone in my town made my heart sink into my stomach. They were so afraid and already giving up hope. It wouldn’t take long before every one of them would hand over the Ameiphus to get the bandits to leave.
The sharp pain in my cheek slowly changed to a burning heat, and I could tell the handprint was starting to swell. But that didn’t stop me from worrying about my parents. They needed help. The entire town needed help. There was nothing any of us could do to stop the bandits. Not without weapons and not without our guard. We had neither.
Even if the bandits didn’t shoot anyone else, without our medicine, people would die. Someone had to find a way to get our guard!
Suddenly I realized that Mr. Hudson’s mantra of “work with your strengths” could actually apply to me. So many times I’d thought about the things I’d willingly trade for being good at inventing. But for the first time ever, I thought about what I wasn’t willing to trade. I definitely wouldn’t trade my physical abilities. Maybe the fact that I always took too many r
isks could be a strength.
A fire burned in my chest as strong as the fire shaped like a bandit’s hand on my cheek. Maybe I could get our guard.
I went through everything in my head. I could escape through the loose paneling Aaren and I had found that led into the closed-off hallway. And I could go through the Bomb’s Breath and over the mountain to get to Browning. I didn’t exactly know where Browning was, except that it was northeast of us—the direction of the rock formation at the top of the mountain that looked like a shovel. If I started on the path we took to our cliff, I could continue on, keeping the Shovel in sight. When I reached the crest of the mountain, I’d be able to look down and see Browning on the plains. It was an entire town with almost as many people as White Rock, so it couldn’t be hard to find.
The more I thought about it, the more I decided it might be possible. It wouldn’t be like sneaking off to sky jump, though. It could take a while. And if I went without telling my parents, they’d panic. But telling them would mean I’d have to confess to my dad that I’d jumped into the Bomb’s Breath. I think every time he even heard the words Bomb’s Breath, he thought of his childhood friends who’d died. If I told, he’d be so horrified, sky jumping would be over for me forever.
Losing the Bomb’s Breath wasn’t the biggest reason not to go, but the other reasons were too painful to think about.
Moment by moment, my dad looked worse. His face twisted in pain, and his skin was so pale, it was white. I knew he could pass out at any minute. The bandits had everyone counted, but still they harassed people and made them all stay in line. Maybe they did it to scare us. Maybe they did it to punish the town because of my outburst. Or maybe they did it to make my dad stand there longer.
Whatever their reason, it convinced me I’d made the right choice.
Sky Jumpers Series, Book 1 Page 8
