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“Be careful!” Nix said.
“You be more careful,” he said.
They smiled at each other, then Benny pulled her to him and they kissed. They had no time for this, but Benny took the time. If it was going to be their last kiss, then it was going to be one of history’s best. There were no words, no “I love you”s shared back and forth. It was not a good-bye kiss, either. After that kiss, as Benny released Nix and they both staggered back from that moment, Benny knew that he damn well wanted to live.
He turned and left without another word.
Benny faded back into the forest and circled the camp, running fast, slipping now and then in the mud. Any sounds he made were lost to the roar of the falling rain. He was soaked to the skin, and his clothing and weapons felt heavy, but he held an image in his mind as he ran. Those kids huddled together, and the oldest girl’s smiling face filled with hope. Filled with the belief that despite all of the evidence to the contrary, someone in this world still cared what happened to her and the other children. When Benny fell, that image was what picked him up. When his lungs began to burn from the effort of slogging through the mud, that image put steel into his legs and fire in his muscles. When the fear threatened to take the heart out of him, that image made him keep going, step after trembling step.
He reached the last of the paths that led into the camp and skidded to a muddy stop between a pair of dead trees. There was a guard. A big man with a yellow rain slicker and a shotgun, the big double barrels pointed at the ground to keep them from filling with water. Benny had only two chances, and he’d thought long and hard about them this afternoon while waiting for this moment. He could try and sneak past the man or he could attack him.
He liked the first idea better, because it seemed to have a future attached to it. But the reality was that if he left the guard in place, then Lilah would probably be spotted when she returned. No, Benny decided, this was the moment to stop acting like a kid and start acting like a man. He crept forward to the trunk of the larger of the two dead trees. Old branches littered the ground, and Benny had to be careful where he stepped. If the branch was old enough, then breaking it would sound like a gunshot. They might not hear that from the camp, but this man certainly would.
The man stepped closer to the cliff wall, to try and keep the rain from pounding his head, and began fishing in his pockets. He brought out a pipe and some matches and leaned into a cleft to light it, turning completely away for a few seconds. Benny used those seconds. He bent and picked up one of the dead branches—a length of gnarled hardwood nearly as long as his bokken. He held it like the wooden sword as he crept catfooted through the mud, and he was nearly within striking range when the man turned, his pipe lit, smoke funneling out from under his hood.
He saw Benny.
The man was fast. He dropped the pipe and swung the shotgun up, the deadly weapon sliding easily on its wet shoulder sling at the same moment as Benny jumped forward and hit the guy across the face as hard as he could. The old branch was brittle, and it shattered into a hundred soggy splinters as it broke over the man’s cheek and nose.
The blow slammed the guard back against the cliff wall. The strike from the stick did not knock him out. Hitting his head on the wall, however, did.
The crack of bone on rock was lost as thunder boomed overhead, but Benny saw the shiver that ran through the man’s whole body. He dropped to his knees and fell face forward into the mud, an inch from Benny’s toes.
Benny looked dumbly at the fallen man for a moment, then dropped the broken remains of the stick onto his back. He gagged at the thought of what he had just done, but even while his chest was still hitching, he drew his knife, positioned the tip of the blade in the correct spot at the base of the skull, and pushed. When he straightened, the world seemed too loud and too bright for a moment, and he took a couple of dizzy steps away from the corpse.
“One down,” he mumbled, his voice thick, his heart hammering. “Only twenty-two to go. We can start the victory party now. ”
He took a breath to steady his nerves, turned, and ran as fast as he could through the rain.
Nix wormed her way to the outside of a tent that was at the very edge of the camp. The tent’s occupant had crawled out when the rain had started, and had run to another point in the camp. Nix listened at the side of the canvas long enough to assure herself that there was no one else in the tent.
She drew her knife.
“Come on, Benny,” she whispered. “Please …”
Benny reached the far edge of the camp and slipped inside without anyone noticing. He could see groups of the bounty hunters, standing together under tarps strung between trees. Benny remembered that trees could attract lightning strikes, but he didn’t think his good luck extended to a timely bolt from the heavens that would fry all these creeps.
He kept to the shadows, moved to the rear of the tent, and squatted down. There was no light from inside and no movement. If Vin Trang was still in there, then he was being very quiet. Benny fished in the mud for a stone and lobbed it in a slow overhand, so that it hit the far side of the tent.
Nothing. No movement. No head poking outside to see what had made the noise.
Benny grinned and moved from his spot, keeping the tent between him and the rest of the camp. When he reached the flap, he tossed another wet rock inside.
Still nothing.
Benny drew a breath and slipped inside the tent. It was pitch-dark, and Benny wasted several seconds feeling around for what he wanted, finding only socks, a dog-eared book, some toiletries. Nothing of use.
He had to risk a light.
“Crap,” he whispered as he fished in his pockets for his tin of matches. He rattled them and then dried his fingers hastily on Vin’s bedroll. Then he opened the tin and removed one of the three remaining matches.
He closed his eyes and took a breath. Then he struck the match on the knurled end of the tin. The match flared at once, and the light filled the whole tent. There were two bedrolls and a lot of junk scattered around. Two shotguns lay on one bedroll. For a moment Benny didn’t think he would find what he was looking for, and without it the whole plan was going to come crashing down. Then he saw that the thin pillow of one of the bedrolls rested on a small leather satchel.
He found what he was looking for in the satchel.
“Perfect …,” he said breathlessly.
“Hey!”
Benny heard the cry and recognized the voice at once. Joey Duk.
The flaps were closed, so Joey could not have seen him, but the glow from the match made the whole tent glow. Outside, there were shouts and the slopping sound of feet running toward the tent. There was no time to do anything but act. Benny dropped the burning match on the bedroll, slung the satchel over his shoulder, and drew his knife.
The match ignited the bed linen, and fire spread with frightening speed. Benny used his knife to slash at the rear wall of the tent. Even in his haste he did it the smart way—cutting the bottom of the wall, right where the lacing was wrapped around the aluminum frame—and then he pushed the canvas up and slithered out like a snake. The canvas fell back into place, so that the back of the tent appeared undamaged.
The shouts were almost on top of him as he shimmied on his belly through the mud and slid over the edge of the plateau. He froze and tried to melt into the landscape, as if he was just another lump in the big, wet, muddy mountain.
The shouts increased in volume, and he risked a quick backward look.
The tent was ablaze.
Vin Trang and Joey Duk stood staring at the blaze. Other bounty hunters ran from all parts of the camp, some shouting, some laughing. Nobody was firing a gun. No one seemed to be looking out into the woods or down the slopes. Vin turned to Joey and yelled something very loud in Vietnamese, then shoved his friend violently in the chest. Joey went staggering back, slipped in the mud, and fell hard on hi
s ass. The others burst out in uproarious laughter. Vin, not content with knocking Joey down, snarled like a cat and jumped atop Joey, then started hammering at him while behind them the tent burned.
This was even better than Benny could hope for. Vin obviously thought Joey had left something burning in the tent and was pummeling him for having lost all of his possessions.
“There is a God,” Benny said to himself as he slipped away into the shadows, “and apparently He has a warped sense of humor. ”
He moved off into the darkness and circled halfway around the camp. Even with the heavy downpour, he could still hear the shouts and laughter. He had a sudden flare of panic. Had Nix heard it too? Would she think this was the diversion that Benny had planned? If so, she was going to start too soon!
He ran faster.
Then his foot came down wrong in a puddle that was deeper than it looked, and Benny pitched forward, sliding face-first through the mud. His hands opened, and he watched in absolute horror as the little tin of matches went sailing into the rain and out of sight.
“NO!” he shouted.
It was small a blessing that no one heard him. It almost didn’t matter, because without those matches, he and Nix were probably going to die.
Nix cut open the side of the tent and crawled quickly inside. The pen was just outside, and she knelt, knife in hand, and peered out into the rain. The twelve-year-old girl had the other kids clustered together, and they were as calm as they could be under the circumstances. She must have told them about what she’d seen, because they were not wailing. Each of them stared into the storm with huge eyes that were filled with tears and hope.
One of the guards walked past, and Nix watched as he went several paces down the center path of the camp and stretched his head to try and catch what was going on over at Vin Trang’s tent. She’d hoped he would have gone all the way over, but he stayed relatively close to his post.
“Here goes,” Nix whispered to herself and then crept out of the tent and crabbed sideways in a low crouch, until her shoulder bumped up against the pen rail. The kids gasped, but Nix shushed them. She reached through the wood slats of the pen and touched several of them, assuring them of her reality. Nix slid along the pen rail to the back corner and watched the guard. He was still craning to listen through the hammering of the rain.
Nix straightened and then climbed quickly and quietly over the rail. She dropped down in the mud and then huddled next to the crowd of kids. In the gloom and with all the mud, she blended in. When the guard cut a quick look over his shoulder, all he saw were children hunkered down in a bunch. He grunted to himself and turned back to watch the fun. Vin and Joey were beating the hell out of each other, and everyone was yelling and cheering them on.
Nix showed her knife to the oldest girl. The girl’s eyes went wide, but she understood. Nix gritted her teeth and attacked the bundle of ropes, and in less than a minute the whole bundle of ropes was cut.
Nix pulled the twelve-year-old girl close. “Go over the rail and down the slope. There’s a path down there. Follow it all the way down to the creek. Don’t leave the path and don’t stop. You understand?”
“Yes! But, who are you?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Nix snapped. “Just run!”
The girl scrambled over the edge of the pen and reached out to pull the first of the children over.
Then something big and dark moved out of the rain, and they all looked up in horror.
Charlie Pink-eye stood there above them. He held a pistol in one hand, and the barrel was pointing straight at Nix’s face.
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“WELL, I’LL BE A ONE-EYED SKUNK,” YELLED CHARLIE PINK-EYE SO LOUD that Benny could hear him through the rain, the laughter, and the noise of the fistfight. All of the men who were clustered around the burning tent stopped and turned to see their boss standing by the pig pen, pointing a gun at the red-haired girl who had escaped the day before. They laughed as if this was some new form of entertainment, and the whole mass of them broke into a run to go share in the fun. Vin pushed Joey away from him, and the pair, bruised and bloody, got to their feet and staggered along as well.
Benny came out of hiding and ran low and fast to the shadowy cleft between two of the wagons. There was a big bonfire that had been sheltered from the rain by a thick stand of tall pines. He craned his neck to see what was happening.
“Move one muscle, little darlin’,” said Charlie, “and I’ll cut my losses and leave you for zom meat. Don’t think I won’t. ”
Benny’s heart froze in his chest at those words. He climbed onto the side of the wagon for a better view. Despite the rain, his mouth went dry at what he saw. Nix, covered in mud, stood inside the pen, and Charlie stood on the other side of the rail, his pistol held in one rock-steady hand. Stark terror and raw hatred commingled on Nix’s face, transforming her beauty into a mask equally as feral as Lilah’s, but in some indefinable way, more savage. Perhaps it was because Lilah had never been civilized, and any thought she felt was immediately and unthinkingly displayed on her face, whereas Nix had always been controlled and self-aware. What Benny saw now was her unguarded, naked emotion.
Two of the men climbed over the fence and closed in on Nix from either side. It was clear they did not consider her a major threat, but they were nonetheless cautious of the big-bladed hunting knife she held. Charlie used the barrel of his gun to gesture to the knife Nix held clutched in her fist. “Drop that pig sticker, little darlin’. ”
Nix did not drop the knife. She clutched it to her chest, cutting desperate looks to her left and right for some way out.
Charlie swung the barrel of the pistol away from her and aimed it at the twelve-year-old. “Drop the knife, girl, or I’ll put a hole in this little cutie. ”
The girl, seeing her death, straightened and held her head high. Then she spat into the mud at Charlie’s feet.
Charlie thumbed the hammer back.
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