Army of the Unsettled: A Dystopian Novel (Academy of the Apocalypse Book 3)

by K A Riley

  He settles on saying something to two of the Unsettled guards behind him, but since he doesn’t say it into the microphone, I have no idea what he’s up to.

  It doesn’t take long to figure it out.

  The two Unsettled—one boy and one girl—step forward from their sentry positions behind him.

  Each of them is brandishing one of those five-foot-long wooden handles with a meat cleaver duct-taped and tied with twine to the end.

  “Two against one? And she doesn’t have weapons? That’s not fair!” Ignacio shouts over the din of the raucous, taunting crowd around us. His hands are clamped in a vice-grip on the steel railing in front of us that separates this flatbed from the Trial Barge.

  This time, Angel Fire leans down and speaks into the microphone, his entire face puckered with rage. He points an accusing finger at Sara but then turns his full attention to me and my Asylum. “You have already been found guilty. But you have been miraculously successful in three of your appeals with the fourth now left unresolved. If your champion can survive the final Bonus Appeal, you’ll go free. What could be more fair than that?”

  “How about you and me, one on one?” Ignacio cries out over the thrum of machines and people.

  I don’t think Angel Fire hears him. Which is just as well. We’re maybe two minutes away from being free or dead, and I’d rather not have Ignacio tipping the scales of Fate, or the mercurial wrath of Angel Fire, in the wrong direction.

  The two teenagers from the Unsettled circle around from behind Angel Fire’s desk and stride toward Sara, who doesn’t seem to care what’s happening one way or the other.

  In fact, with her tired eyes and her arms hanging loosely at her sides, it looks like she might be gearing up to…yawn?

  Whatever she has in mind, the two Unsettled attackers don’t seem to care. The boy, short but powerfully built, slams to a stop right in front of her. He raises his spear and plants his feet into an attack position on the deck of the flatbed.

  And then…he attacks.

  Sara ducks the whooshing swing of his spear and pivots around behind the boy. Lashing out at the same time with a sweeping leg kick, she uses her momentum to drive the heel of her boot into the boy’s knee. He cries out as his leg folds backward in the complete wrong direction, and he falls to the ground.

  But he doesn’t stay down.

  We all shout at her to watch her back, but she can’t hear us. The downed boy presses himself to his feet. With Sara now engaged with the girl, he’s got an open shot, and he takes it.

  He swings his bladed spear. Fortunately, the trailer lurches just enough so the strike catches Sara in the shoulder instead of in the head where he was clearly aiming.

  And then, two of the strangest things I’ve ever seen happen right before our eyes. (And I’ve seen some stonking strange things.)

  Sara moves in toward the boy, almost like she’s going to slip into his arms and invite him to dance. He stares at her, smiles a sweet, appreciative smile. And then, he turns and limps down the length of the flatbed, leaps off the back end of the trailer, crashes through the crowd of walking spectators, and disappears in the distance in a hobble-sprint between two moving columns of treaded bulldozers.

  As for the girl, she stops in her tracks. Her eyes glaze over, and I think she’s about to launch some kind of last-ditch desperate attack against Sara.

  Instead, she scoops up her spear, bounces it twice in her hands, and hurls it…right at Angel Fire.

  22

  Treason

  The makeshift spear sticks with a thunk right into the wooden desk in front of Angel Fire. The wood splinters out in a starburst array with the crackling crunch of a tree getting struck by lightning.

  I can only imagine what that weapon would have done if it had hit human flesh and bone. Especially flesh and bone as flimsy as Angel Fire’s.

  Snarling and frothing at the mouth, the girl, with the rabid desperation of someone starving and eager to have a taste of food, charges toward the desk to get at Angel Fire.

  She has blind rage in her narrowed eyes and is screaming like a ferret in a bear trap.

  Angel Fire shrieks and drops down behind the huge desk. Even though there’s not a ton of space between the bottom of the desk and the floor of the flatbed, it’s more than enough for us to see Angel Fire curled in a fetal position, his knees tucked to his chest and his arms clasped around his legs.

  The girl grabs the spear and works it out of the desk like she’s pumping water from a well. Getting her feet under her, she leaps up onto the top of the desk, spear in hand, her thick-soled boots hammering out thunder as she thrusts the spear forward with one hand while making big circles with her other arm in an effort to maintain her balance.

  Clamping the spear in both hands, she raises it above her head, point down, a feral snarl at the corner of her lips, her eyes laser focused on her target. I think she’s about to plunge her spear straight down through Angel Fire’s cowering body, but then she wobbles as the truck hits one the millions of deep fissures in the ground.

  From next to me, Ignacio calls out, “Whoa!” and reaches out a hand like he’s going to magically steady the girl from thirty feet away. (I don’t know why he’d want to, anyway.)

  Even over the rumble of the expansive fleet of vehicles, I can hear the audiences around us gasp.

  Melting the frozen moment, Zephora leaps out from behind the heavy red curtain. She surges forward, her own spear in hand. She rams her weapon into the girl’s chest just under her solar plexus with enough force to turn the traitorous girl instantly into a human kebob and skewer her all the way through, from chest to back.

  In a feat of unexpected strength, she lifts the impaled girl clean off her feet and flips her down to the flatbed where she lands in a twisted heap of limbs with the spear—its blade end coated in a glistening layer of blood—halfway through her body.

  Angel Fire’s head appears from behind his desk. With the darting eyes of a desert pocket mouse, he glances around and apparently assesses the situation enough to know it’s safe. Silver-Scruff on one side and Zephora on the other reach down, hook his arms in theirs, and lug him fully to his feet.

  Straightening his tie and standing with his feed wide apart, he signals for his microphone. Leaving Zephora to work her spear out of the crazy dead girl, the male guard picks the microphone up from the deck of the Trial Barge and hands it to him.

  Taking it with the delicate care of a boy taking a bone from the mouth of a rabid dog, he addresses the crowd. I expect to hear a nervous tremor in his voice or an angry rant, but he acts like he gets spears thrown at him every day.

  “The appellants have been successful in their appeal. I hereby decree that a pardon has been granted.”

  The crowds cheer and starts chanting “Granted! Granted! Granted!”

  From our scrunched-together line behind the gate of the escort flatbed, Ignacio’s mouth is still hanging open. “What the frack just happened?”

  “That girl with the spear…,” Matholook starts to say but then trials off.

  Arlo shakes his head. “I don’t know why she did that.”

  “I do,” I tell them.

  Ignacio curls his fingers around my shoulder and whips me around. Leaning down, his nose an inch from mine, he asks, “Do you mind sharing with the class?”

  I tell him, “Sure.”

  Libra and the three boys lean in like I’m about to tell them the secret of the universe or something. But it’s not anywhere close to being that complicated, I promise them.

  “Every organization has its brainwashed, its true believers, and its doubters. That girl just happens to be someone strong and brave enough to stand up to injustice, even when she knows she’s bucking the party line and will likely get punished as a result. She did a noble thing—standing up for us like that against a dictator like Angel Fire. We should be thankful.”

  After a wordless moment of verification with each other, Libra and the boys nod and hum their lukewar
m agreement.

  I let out the breath I’ve been holding, happy they were at least partially okay with my explanation.

  But I was lying.

  I’m not ready to bet my life on it, but gun to my head, I’d say what just happened here has something to do with Sara.

  The guards usher us across the metal bridge and back onto the Trial Barge to join her. The six of us stand there in a cluster, wondering if we just succeeded or if we just failed once again in spectacular fashion. The flatbed continues to roll on, and even though it’s a smoother ride right now than it was a few minutes ago, we still bobble together in a huddle, waiting for whatever might come next.

  From in front of his desk, Angel Fire takes a full minute to survey his chittering audiences.

  Leaning toward Sara and doing my best to keep my lips together, I whisper a question to her: “For that moral dilemma…what would you have really done?”

  She doesn’t blink or turn to face me when she answers. “I’d have killed the baby.”

  The way she says this, quick and casual, makes me think she would’ve killed the baby even if her life and ours weren’t depending on it.

  23

  Choice

  With carnival barker pomp and over-the-top grandiosity, Angel Fire issues a proclamation:

  “Our prisoners have proven their merit and have warranted their innocence. I hereby decree that they are free, now and in perpetuity!”

  “In what?” Arlo asks.

  “It means ‘forever,’” Libra giggles.

  Angel Fire’s smile stretches far enough across his face that I think his lower jaw might plunk off and land at his feet. He makes a ceremonial adjustment to his ill-fitting tie and then, turning in each direction to face the crowds, he rolls his hand in an exaggerated royal salute.

  In unison and rolling along with the trailers like sailors on a rocking boat, the crowds in the Port and Starboard Grandstands start chanting, “He hereby decrees! He hereby decrees!” while pumping their fists in the air and stomping loud enough to drown out the grumble and grind of the engines and the crunch of rubber tires and steel treads on the rocky tundra all around us.

  Ignacio looks around at the rowdy crowds, over to Angel Fire, and then to me. “We’re free? We can go?”

  I’d answer except that I was about to ask the same thing.

  Ignacio taps our microphone, which causes a screechy cascade of feedback to ring through the steaming hot air. “We can go?” he asks, leaning forward, his eyes locked onto Angel Fire.

  “You can,” Angel Fire declares from behind his own microphone, his skimpy chest puffed up enough to almost strain the buttons on his dress shirt. “But I would prefer it if you didn’t. At least not yet.”

  Libra raises her hand halfway, like she’s afraid if she calls too much attention to herself, he’ll change his mind and execute all of us on the spot. She steps up next to Ignacio, nudging in front of him and taking the microphone from his hand as he takes a hesitant step back. “You want us to stay here?”

  “For your own safety,” Angel Fire answers.

  “I’m sorry,” Libra smirks as Ignacio and Arlo assume protective flanking positions on either side of her. “Do you seriously think we’re going to stay with someone who just tried to have us killed?”

  “I tried to have you tried,” Angel Fire grins. “There’s a difference. Justice and vengeance are sometimes the same. Not this time. Our ferocity in battle is absolute. As is our reliance on fairness and our uncompromising forgiveness. Once convicted, you die. Once acquitted, you’re forgiven. Instantly. Forever.”

  My Asylum gathers around me and Matholook to form a loose huddle.

  “What should we do?” Libra asks, her palm cupped over the top of the microphone to muffle our voices.

  “We get the hell out of here,” Ignacio snaps through clenched teeth. “Of course. I mean, look at all the people. Any one of them, or all of them for that matter, could be our very own potential future murderer.” His eyes are zipping around so fast I think they might eventually pop right out the sides of their sockets.

  “Okay. I’m with you,” I promise. “Angel Fire is just as likely to change his mind and make us box a cactus or play a game of chess to the death or something else insane.”

  Sara slicks back a lock of her short blond hair and looks past me and over to Angel Fire, who is waiting patiently while the six of us confer, our heads nearly pressed together in our tight, conspiratorial circle. “I disagree,” Sara coos. “I think we should stick around for a while.”

  I give her an eyeroll I’m sure she can feel. “I hope you’re kidding.”

  Tossing her hair and with an easy confidence, she gives us all a little smile and a helpless, “what-choice-do we-have?” shrug. “We’re not on the mission we were sent out to do. But we are on a mission. If we can gather some intel to bring back to the Academy…”

  “You’re assuming this isn’t some kind of trap,” I point out. “You’ve seen what they put us through. That kid is into mind games and manipulation. He says they’re all about the rule of law. But look at this place.”

  Arlo squints like he’s in pain and shakes his head. “No. Sara’s right. If we miss this chance to find out everything we can about the Unsettled…well, that’s a lot of intel to leave on the table.”

  “I guess it makes sense,” Libra concedes. “We don’t want to get back to the Academy empty-handed, right?”

  “If we can even get back,” Sara adds, toggling her finger between Arlo and Ignacio. “Their abilities are still glitchy. Arlo’s lucky to be alive. And you don’t seem to know where Haida Gwaii has gotten off to, and without her, we don’t have any chance of finding our way. So…I say we stay.”

  “It’s the top of that mountain,” I remind her with a stab of my finger in the direction of the far-off, snow-capped peak where the Academy sits, invisibly overseeing the world below. “How hard can it be?”

  “How about ‘next to impossible,’” Libra sighs.

  “Impossible has never stopped us before,” I snap, and then I take a breath and rein myself in.

  I’m not angry at her. Technically, she’s right. But whether or not we know the way home won’t matter if we stay here and end up dead. We’ve lost too much on this mission already.

  No. What I’m irked about is the fact that Haida’s disappeared, and I don’t know why she left, where she is, or what I’m supposed to do about this weird gap in my brain where her consciousness usually takes up shop when we’re bonded. And, on top of that, I’ve got my Asylum looking for excuses to stay when we’re lucky we’ve even survived this long.

  Matholook raises his hand halfway. “I hate to bring it up, but I’m not exactly one of you. Everyone in this army thinks I’m the enemy, and they seem to have a wide variety of pretty unpleasant ways of treating their enemies. So I’m all for taking Angel Fire up on his original offer and getting the frack out of here.”

  “And where would you go, exactly?” Sara asks. “Back to the Academy with us? Back to the Devoted?”

  I know what Sara is really asking: Are you with us or against us? It’s kind of a rude question to ask the bloke she knows I’m into. But it’s also, I have to admit, a pretty good question.

  Face to face with Sara, Matholook blinks a bunch of times and runs his hand along the light stubble coming in under the sharp slope of his defined cheekbones.

  I ask him what he’s thinking. He grits his teeth and shakes his head before answering. “No. Sara’s right. We should stay. At least until a better opportunity presents itself.”

  I plant a stiff gaze on each of my friends before asking if they’ve all gone completely off their nut.

  Behind us, Angel Fire leans into the microphone and clears his throat. “Have you made a decision?”

  Sara and I nearly bump heads as we both lean into our microphone with Sara saying, “Yes!” and me saying, “No!” at the same time.

  “At least let me show you around,” Angel Fire offers. “
Before you go.”

  When we don’t answer right away, he pleads with us. “There are dangers in the desert you don’t know about. There’s a war on its way. If you leave now, it could find you.”

  When we still don’t answer, he sweetens the pot. “I’ll take you to your weapons. They’re in an ammunitions truck in the Security Garrison.” He points off into the distance. “Up that way. Toward the front of the convoy.”

  “Security…?” I start to ask.

  “Security Garrison. Our army is divided into eight districts called Garrisons. My good friend Revelle oversees security. She’ll make sure you get your weapons back.”

  “It would be nice to have our weapons back,” Libra admits under her breath. “Maybe it’s worth the risk. After all, what’s the worst that could happen?”

  It’s the kind of question I’m perfectly happy to leave unanswered.

  “Yeah,” Arlo agrees. “We’ll feel better once we’re armed again.”

  Nodding his agreement, Ignacio says he’s also leaning toward staying. “For a while, anyway. Angel Fire’s right about the dangers out there. And I don’t want to end up like…”

  He doesn’t finish, but Mattea’s name, like her memory, hovers ghostlike in the air around us.

  “So you all really want to stay?” I ask. “At least until we get our weapons back? And then we’ll definitely leave, right?”

  I’m answered with glazed eyes but enthusiastic nods.

  What’s happening here? All we’ve been talking about was getting free and getting back to the Academy, and now, after two minutes of debate, my friends have gone from desperate to leave to eager to stay.

  Even Matholook shrugs. “Sara’s right. I don’t know where I’d go back to if we left. You all need your weapons. And your intel. I need to figure out if I’ll even be welcomed back by the Devoted. So…I guess it makes sense to stay.”

  “Okay,” I sigh as my friends stare at me, waiting for me to weigh in. I straighten up and turn to address Angel Fire, who is waiting patiently about thirty feet away, rocking, his hands clutched behind him, in a kind of rhythmic, almost hypnotic sway as the flatbed continues on its course with the rest of the Army. “We…um…accept your offer,” I mumble into the microphone.