“What?” Pepper blinked his gray eyes and looked around.
“Stay calm like that.”
“Damned if I know,” Pepper muttered. “The only other choice is running around screaming.” He scanned the horizon. “Doesn’t look like anyone else made it out of the docks.”
That was what they had been waiting for.
Pepper shifted and adjusted the tiller. Lucita’s tiny bow aimed for Frenchi Reef.
“Where you from?” Jerome asked. “Out by Capitol City?”
Pepper shook his head. “Further.”
“How much further?”
“What did you learn about in school about where we all came from?”
In school? School taught him the same tale his mother told him.
“We came from the worm’s hole, up in the sky,” Jerome said. “You come from the worm’s hole?”
Pepper nodded. “We came from different places. Some settled in orbit. Others settled up north. Many people from the Caribbean came here to Nanagada, looking for some nice equatorial sun and peace. We were just a tiny bunch of refugee camps and lake fishing villages, hoping we could hide in this far-out corner and be left alone.” Pepper stretched, and the bench beneath him bowed slightly. He eyed the water, then continued, “Very few on Earth knew we were here. Hell, some people in orbit didn’t even know about all the islanders along the coast and jungle. Better times,” he sighed. “Before the wormhole was destroyed.”
Pepper talked as if he had seen these times firsthand.
“They say the old-father didn’t survive them times, just like the machines,” Jerome said. “How come you here?”
“They lie,” Pepper said. “Those of us well protected, those who knew what was about to happen, survived while the Pulse, nukes, and engineered diseases took everyone else. A few survived: some Teotl, Loa, and others like me. Many marooned in hardened escape pods. Three hundred years of floating in space, though, that’ll screw you up.” He snorted. “Here’s the result around us. Mostly only onplanet islanders survived.”
“And Azteca.”
“Yes, them too. When I left, the Azteca were religious fanatics who worshiped the Teotl. Who started breeding and using them as cheap, savage troops. The Teotl love using our weaknesses against us.” Pepper shook his head. “I hope you all have the resources to buck them off the mountains.”
The conversation had returned to things that made sense to Jerome.
“Most of the mongoose-men up in Mafolie Pass, or back around Capitol City them,” he said. This was common knowledge. There were squads scattered all throughout the mountains and lands.
Pepper leaned over and splashed some salt water on his face.
“What we doing now?” Jerome asked. “Hiding on Frenchi Island?”
“No. I’m dropping you off. Giving myself some time to think. Then I need to start looking for John.”
Jerome swallowed. Pepper had saved his life, and he seemed to be honest. “Mr. Pepper.” Pepper raised an eyebrow. “I fibbed you. I know where John deBrun is.”
“You seemed to be holding something back.”
“He …” Jerome’s voice quivered. “That’s my dad, see? He in the house, outside town, last night.” Jerome looked down at the brackish water sloshing about the boards by his feet.
Pepper hit the seat with a fist “That complicates things.”
“I’m … sorry.”
Pepper leaned forward and looked at Jerome, straight in his eyes. “I never would have taken John for the settlingdown kind.”
Jerome avoided the gray eyes. Maybe he should tell Pepper about his dad’s memory loss. Dad and his mother did their best to hide it from him, but he picked it up from their whispered conversations when they thought he wasn’t listening. And the way she looked at Dad’s paintings sometimes. As if they scared her.
But that was something personal. Jerome figured his dad and Pepper could sort that out if they ever met.
If his dad was alive.
Pepper adjusted the tiller. “Tell me what your dad looks like. Describe him to me. I haven’t seen him in a long time.”
Jerome struggled. Dad was just dad. But he did his best and told Pepper about Mom, Dad, his family, and the airship that had floated into the trees behind their house. When he finished telling Pepper about Dad’s hook, Pepper turned his attention back to sailing, which relieved Jerome. He wanted to go sit on the bow and pretend he was alone on the boat.
Frenchi stood waiting when Lucita’s bow struck the sand. Troy walked forward. “Something wrong?” he asked. “Ms. Smith say she see smoke from Brungstun when she was out fishing.”
Pepper splashed into the water, his coattails floating on the surface. “Azteca attacked Brungstun. They’re moving along the coast now towards Capitol City, is my best guess.”
Troy had a shotgun behind his back. He pulled it out and aimed it at Pepper. “I know Jerome, here. I don’t know you.”
Pepper held his hands in the air. “Easy. I’m not staying. I’m dropping the kid off.” Jerome bristled at being called a kid. Pepper walked backward. “Jerome, jump off.”
Jerome leapt onto the sand, and Troy put an arm around his shoulder. “You okay?”
Jerome nodded.
“I’m going to leave,” Pepper explained. “I have things to do. But I would appreciate some food. Preferably salted.”
One of the men behind Troy asked, “You going back to fight Azteca?”
Pepper nodded. Then he frowned. “You look familiar,” he told Troy.
Troy ignored him. “Give he all the saltfish and jerky he need. And some johnnycake.” He put down his gun. “That man hard,” he told Jerome. “A killer. Better we help he leave.” He walked back up to his store.
Jerome stood shakily on the beach, his feet sinking into the sand as the occasional wave washed up and wet them.
Troy and one of his cousins helped pack several canvas bags for Pepper, placing them in Lucita’s forward stowhatch. Pepper told the Frenchi that they needed to have somewhere to run to, or some defense against the Azteca, as they would eventually come.
“There is reef we can hide behind, sand and coconut trees, we boat them to run in.”
“You can last a month or two like that, maybe, if you were well prepared,” Pepper said. “What then?”
They smiled. “That go be long enough to see what happen. Any longer, and all Nanagada done for anyway.”
“True.” Pepper nodded.
Jerome watched them all nod as despair rolled over him. What he wanted to tell Troy and everyone else was that it wasn’t worth it. The Azteca would come for them all anyway, and they could do nothing to stop that. They could only make a stand and fight, he thought. Bash them back something wicked. But running was futile.
He looked out over water and clenched his fists. He felt utterly unprepared in any sense for the new shape of the world that had dropped on him.
Pepper waited until the sun started slipping beneath the far-off reefs and breaking waves before he seemed ready to leave. He walked down the beach to where Jerome sat alone by a coconut tree.
“You leaving?” Jerome said.
“Yes.”
“I want to go with you.”
“And do what? What skills do you have that I need? I know what I need to know, I have the boat. It is up to me to track down your father, if he’s still alive.”
Jerome banged his head against the tree’s rough bark. “What I can do?” he cried. “What?”
“You can tell me this.” Pepper loomed over Jerome, dreads dangling down like snakes. “Did John ever talk to you about the Ma Wi Jung?”
Jerome shook his head. “I dunno.”
Pepper grabbed him by his shirt and picked him up. He pushed Jerome against the coconut tree, hard enough that Jerome’s spine hurt when it scraped against the bumps in the trunk.
“Look right here at me,” Pepper hissed, “and tell me if your father ever told you anything about the Ma Wi Jung.”
Jerom
e squirmed, scared at the sudden ferocity. He had no doubt that Pepper could snap his back against the tree and leave him for dead.
“I swear,” Jerome wailed, a tear rolling down his cheek.
“No coordinates? No secret rhymes that give its location that you’ve sworn never to tell anyone?”
“No! Never.” Jerome sobbed, scared for his life again, scared of Pepper. In a night his world had been flipped. What was once safe had become dangerous. And people he had thought safe were dangerous.
Pepper dropped Jerome to the sand. “I’m sorry. If I see your father, I will tell him you are alive. Tell Troy I’ll sink any boats in Nanagada; make it harder for the Azteca to come out here.”
That was it.
Pepper had that calm face Jerome remembered. When he’d shot the Azteca. Jerome watched Pepper walk down the beach to the Lucita, coat swishing. He pushed off, pulled the sail up, and never looked back.
Jerome sat by the coconut tree, watching the sail grow smaller back toward the Nanagadan coastline, where a long, black pillar of smoke, lit orange at the base, snaked up over Brungstun. Somewhere at the foot of that fire Schmitti, Swagga, and Daseki were alone with Azteca. Along with his mom, they would die, or be savaged by the Azteca, or … he didn’t know what.
Jerome could not take his eyes away. He didn’t move until Troy came over with a wool blanket, picked him up, and carried him back to one of the shacks by the beach.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
John stood up and rested his wrists on the mango tree to hold himself up. His leg muscles cramped. The Azteca holding the rope to his neck tugged a warning. John glared at him. The Azteca hollered and walked up to him, the rope drooping to the ground between them.
“What?” John spat.
He got a solid punch straight to the face. Spitting blood, his upper lip throbbing, John stared right back at his captor. The Azteca smiled and pointed his head at a point just past the tree. Seven Azteca warriors stood waiting. A handful more stood around the clearing’s edges watching the scene. Campfire smoke trailed over the trees nearby. Another couple hundred Azteca nearby?
“Ompa.”
John looked in the direction of the black rock. The two bodies from earlier in the morning lay next to it.
“We dead,” Alex said, next to him. “We dead.”
The stone was soaked black with dried blood.
“Will they kill everyone?” John coughed as he was pulled forward.
“Not everyone.” They shuffled around the fallen tree’s branches and leaves to approach the sacrificial stone. “Healthy people first. They save women and children for later. Some end up slave.”
The Azteca standing by the stone took off his mask. Extra feathers swung from his unbraided, clumped hair as he walked forward and pulled out a long, black knife. It soaked up the late-afternoon sun.
The warriors around John backed away reverently.
“Warrior-priest,” Alex whispered.
The warrior-priest walked forward. He grabbed Alex’s head and pricked his left earlobe with the obsidian knife. Blood ran down Alex’s neck. He jerked back, trying to kick at him, but the warriors stepped forward and hit him until he stopped struggling.
I can’t just watch this, John thought.
He took a breath and ran backward until the noose choked him. The Azteca stepped forward and beat him to the ground with fists, quickly and calmly, accustomed to the antics of those about to be sacrificed.
Gasping and bruised, John watched from the ground as they untied Alex’s hands. Four warriors stepped forward and threw Alex to the ground. They grabbed his hands and feet, picked him up, and carried him up onto the stone. They crouched as they pulled on his feet and his hands, keeping Alex still and giving room to the warrior-priest.
“Nopuluca,” one chuckled.
The priest straddled Alex, looked up into the sun, then plunged the knife deep into the supine man’s ribs. Alex screamed. He screamed as the priest cut and snapped bone, and he didn’t stop until the priest grunted with satisfaction. The tearing sounds continued until a final whimper, and then the priest held Alex’s dripping heart up toward the sun.
The clearing erupted in Azteca cheers as the priest shoved Alex’s limp body off the stone and two warriors grabbed John’s hair. He felt tugging on the back of his wrists as they untied him. Before he could move, warriors had his hand, his hook, and his two legs in firm grasp. They swung him up into the air and then downward. John’s back slapped against the sacrificial stone.
It was warm.
He looked up at the fluffy clouds above him, the sun off to the right. This was the last thing he would see. His frantic straining and pulling couldn’t dislodge the sinewy hands holding him down. He was trapped. Helpless. Waiting for the knife.
When the priest stood over him, John fought the desire to shut his eyes. He tried to stare down the priest. One last tiny act of defiance.
Someone in the distance shouted.
Something hissed. The priest turned and then crumpled to the ground, impaled by a four-foot-long spear. The warriors froze, stunned.
They let go of John and reached out toward the priest. Only one warrior paused to scan for the spear thrower, shock still on his face.
Waste no opportunity, John thought.
He sat up and swung his hook into the belly of the closest Azteca. It punctured thick cotton and finally skin with an extra shove, then a pop. The warrior hiccuped and looked down.
John yanked the hook out to disembowel him.
The man’s ropy intestines slithered out onto the ground. John rolled off the sacrificial stone to grab the dying Azteca’s gun.
Another spear hissed through the air. Another Azteca was pierced and thrown backward. John pulled the gun barrel up with his bloodied hook and fired point-blank at the only Azteca on his side of the stone.
Not sure how to reload Azteca-designed guns, he threw it aside and picked up the one dropped at the impaled warrior’s side.
With a scream an Azteca leaped over the stone. John blew a good-sized hole in the man’s chest, then turned and ran. He heard a scream and a thud, another spear no doubt, and kept running.
He tasted sweat. It burned his eyes, but he didn’t slow down from his full, zigzagged sprint until pricker branches started slapping his face and he tripped over a vine.
His right knee popped when he stood back up. He ached all over, and a good nick on his shoulder must have come from a close bullet.
But he was alive.
If it wouldn’t have spelled death, he would have shouted with elation. But the Azteca who had been watching from a distance would start tracking him or calling their brothers nearby to come help.
John hobbled through the bush, getting deeper in.
After a good half an hour, he slowed down and rested against a tree. He used a large leaf to clean the blood from his hook. Then he used the hook to cut at the rope around his neck. He threw the strands onto the ground.
“You are lucky to be alive,” said a voice.
John jumped up.
“Easy.” The man stood just behind John with a spear pointed down at the ground. He looked unmistakably Azteca, with high cheekbones and smooth brown skin. He wore his hair brushed forward, the neat trim bordering his forehead.
But he wore mongoose gray, complete with pieces of glued-on bush.
“My name is Oaxyctl.” O-ash-k-tul, he pronounced it. He looked down at John’s hook, then back up.
“You threw the spears?” John asked, eyeing the barbed point near the dirt and leaves. His hook remained by his side, ready to try to knock the spear aside if needed.
Oaxyctl nodded.
“Who are you?” John asked, alert. Carelessness meant death. Then it dawned on him. “The mongoose-men in my house last night said they were looking for you.”
“What’d they say?”
“They were worried. You went missing with some other mongoose-men.”
“Yes. We were attacked. I made it. They didn�
��t. I work for the mongoose-men. I teach them about Azteca and sometimes spy for them.” Oaxyctl looked back past John toward the clearing. “You did well back there. They get confused if you get the priest first. But scouts will be coming quickly. We need to move out of here if we want to live.”
“Okay.” John dropped his hook slightly. “But thank you, thank you for intervening.”
Oaxyctl smiled tightly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t rescue the men with you.” He edged forward. “Now, what did you say your name was?”
“John. John deBrun.”
“Ahh. Good. A very good name. Good.” Oaxyctl sounded relieved.
The Azteca-turned-mongoose-man trotted between the trees, and John followed him. “I’m from Brungstun.”
Oaxyctl used his spear to push aside a branch for John. “Brungstun is occupied. If we go south, and then east, we can skirt the invading army and make our way towards Capitol City. It will be safer there.”
The words sucked the elation of being alive from John. Brungstun gone? Shanta, and Jerome, dead or slaves? His chest hurt. He followed Oaxyctl numbly, trying to organize his thoughts. Going to Brungstun would just kill him as well, as cold as it sounded …
Capitol City. “I would like to travel there with you,” John said.
At Capitol City he could join any fight to push the Azteca back, recapture Brungstun. Oaxyctl was his best chance to live.
“Good.” Oaxyctl sounded pleased with that.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
During a small pause to catch their breaths, John watched chitter-birds swoop around the trees in sudden bursts, moving from one tree branch to another. In the distance a monkey chattered angrily from the treetops. Shadows crept out as twilight approached.
“How did you end up near the clearing?” John asked, voice low.
“I was skirting Brungstun looking for the quimichtin who killed my friends,” Oaxyctl said. “Then I heard the screams.”
“Quimichtin?”
“Spies,” Oaxyctl whispered. “Like me, but that look like you.”
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