The Portal

by Richard Bowker

  "You sure you want to wear that?" I asked.

  "Why not?"

  "People'll think you're strange, like when we first got here."

  "So what?" he demanded.

  I couldn't think of an answer. It was odd, but the cap seemed to make him look happier. Like putting it on brought him one step closer to going home. "Let's go," I said.

  Apparently Kevin didn't have any more bright ideas, because he just said "Fine."

  We went downstairs, and I could smell food from the mess. That could be the last meal we'd have in a while, I thought. I was hungry, but I didn't suggest stopping, and neither did Kevin. We went outside into the gray morning.

  There was less activity in the courtyard than there had been last night—probably everyone had already left to take up their positions for the battle. The air was bitter cold. The artillery rumbled in the distance.

  We hurried out of the courtyard and onto the street. And there, wouldn't you know, was Peter driving the lieutenant's carriage up to the entrance. "Mornin', lads!" he called out, coming to a halt next to us. "Larry, people've been worried. Where've you been?"

  "Nowhere special," I said. "Gotta go."

  But before we could get away the carriage door opened and Lieutenant Carmody was staring at us. It was the same stare I remembered from the first time we met him. He was only a lieutenant, but it was the gaze of someone who knew how to make people obey him.

  He looked at Kevin's cap, then down at our sneakers. He understood what we had done, and what we were up to. "Planning on going home, lads?" he asked. "Your portal's a long ways off, and the Portuguese army's in the way."

  "It's time," Kevin said. "Time to go home."

  Lieutenant Carmody shook his head. "Believe me, you'll be much better off staying with us than trying to go anywhere today, of all days. Hop in, lads. We'll take care of you."

  Kevin looked at me for a second, and then he took off. I hesitated for another second, then took off right behind him.

  "Peter!" I heard the lieutenant shout. "After them!"

  We headed for a side street. The carriage clattered behind us. I thought: Peter wouldn't shoot us, would he? We made it to the side street, then Kevin dodged into an alley, and I followed. We hopped over a wooden fence and cut through a yard to another street. After a minute I looked back over my shoulder: no carriage. We kept going for a few more minutes, then hid in another alley and tried to catch our breath.

  "Think we're safe?" Kevin gasped.

  "Lost 'em for now," I said. "And they can't chase us all day, can they?"

  "Hope not."

  Kevin didn't look so good. He was hunched over, still gasping for air. Maybe this was going to be too much for him. "You okay, Kev?" I asked him.

  Kevin managed to nod. "Yeah. Kinda out of shape, I guess. Just give me a minute."

  I thought about Lieutenant Carmody. He was right, of course: this was a stupid day to try to get back to Glanbury. But I had a feeling Kevin was right, too. The lieutenant probably didn't want us to go home at all. Maybe he had never really been our friend. We were just a way of helping to win the war. And making him look good.

  "Let's go," Kevin said finally. "Which way is the camp?"

  It took me a minute to get my bearings, but I figured it out—I was really getting to know the city. We start walking. The streets were surprisingly crowded—with people from the camps, I realized.

  "What's happening?" I asked an old man with a burlap bag slung over his shoulder.

  "Soldiers are gone," he said. "Need to find some food."

  "Were you in the Fens camp? Are people still there?"

  "No more camp," he muttered as he wandered away. "Thank God, no more camp."

  Kevin and I looked at each other. "I was afraid of this," I said.

  "What should we do?"

  "Might as well go check out the camp. My family might still be there."

  Kevin agreed, and we kept walking.

  It turned out we weren't far from the park where I had seen the preacher. I pointed it out to Kevin as we went past. "Sure would be good to ask him a few more questions," Kevin said.

  "No kidding."

  "But you know what?"

  "What?"

  "I really don't care all that much. I'm sick of portals and sick of this world. I just want to go home."

  And that was all Kevin had to say about the preacher.

  We kept going. There were no policemen in sight, no soldiers. I tried to spot familiar faces in the people we passed, but I didn't see any. Everyone looked exhausted. Where did they think they were going? They wouldn't find food in the city. It must have felt good to finally get out of the camp, but really, there wasn't anyplace better. Some people had already given up and were just sitting by the side of the road, their eyes dead, waiting—just like they had waited in the camp.

  The crowds were thinner in Cheapside. I don't think people wanted to stop there. I got nervous, but no one bothered us, except for a couple of kids who shouted out comments about Kevin's cap. He didn't seem to mind. We just walked on.

  As we got close to the camp we could see smoke billowing into the air, and we could smell the odor of charred wood. The sun was up now, but there wasn't much sky to be seen.

  All the military buildings had been set on fire: the barracks, the mess, even the food warehouse. Some were still burning, others were smoldering rubble. Beyond them, the gates to the camp stood wide open; the fence had been wrecked. There was no sign of any soldiers.

  "Geez," Kevin muttered.

  There wasn't much to say. We headed into the camp.

  A few people were left, but not many. Old people who looked too weak to go anywhere. Nasty-looking men who were scavenging among the stuff that had been left behind. And animals: a pair of mangy dogs, thin as skeletons, were barking furiously at each other; an equally skinny horse gazed mournfully at them. Ahead of us a wagon lay on its side, its wheels shattered. Everywhere there was trash—books, kitchen utensils, broken toys, a single shoe.

  We wandered through the camp. It was clear that my family wasn't there, but I guess we didn't know what else to do. Finally Kevin pulled at my sleeve and pointed. About twenty yards away from us a body lay face-down on the trampled earth. I shivered. We went over to it. It was an old man, with one hand stretched in front of him as if he were trying to reach for something just out of his grasp. But there was nothing there, just dirt. He lay motionless except for a few wisps of gray hair blowing in the wind. He was dead. "Should we bury him?" Kevin asked.

  I shook my head. "We have to go," I said. There was a lump in my throat. My family was gone. Lieutenant Carmody was chasing us. The enemy was about to attack the city. Everything was falling apart.

  We had to go, but where? We weren't returning to headquarters. And, like the lieutenant said, the Portuguese army stood between us and Glanbury. But we'd made our plan, and I couldn't think of a better one.

  "A lot of people are going to die today," Kevin said, looking down at the corpse. "Maybe us."

  "I know," I said. "Still, we've gotta go."

  He nodded. We were silent for a moment, standing in the ruins of the camp. And then we walked out of the camp and headed south, towards the battle.

  Chapter 23

  For a while it didn't matter which direction we were heading. People were going everywhere, and I suppose no direction was particularly safe. But the further south we got, the louder the artillery sounded, and the more dangerous our journey started to feel. People going the other way kept telling us to turn back, turn back, you'll get caught in the battle. And they had all sorts of rumors: the battle had started, we were losing, we had already lost...

  But there were some people heading south along with us, and they had the same idea we did. "Win or lose, we just want to go home," one woman said to us. "There's nothing left for us in Boston, and we were lucky to get out of that camp alive." She had a couple of little children with her, and a half-dead donkey carrying their possessions. The face o
f one of the girls was pitted with smallpox scars; she looked curiously at Kevin's cap. The woman offered us a couple of hard rolls they had gotten somewhere, and we accepted gratefully. It was our first food of the day, and we didn't know when we'd get our next.

  We pressed on ahead of the family after a while, staying on the main road so we wouldn't get lost. I recalled details of the road from our journey into the city with the Harpers so long ago. I knew we were getting close when we passed by the remnants of another refugee camp on marshland. I remembered how Mr. Harper had scorned the people staying in such an unhealthy place. I wondered if they'd ended up worse off than anyone else. There were still some people there, with their wagons and makeshift tents. Probably they thought we were the fools, heading towards the battle.

  "Should be a big military camp up ahead," Kevin said. "And then the fortifications."

  "Think they'll attack along the main road?"

  "No idea. There's a lot of territory to defend."

  I recalled the discussion in President Gardner's office. The electric fence wasn't powerful enough to replace all the fortifications, so they'd try to trick the enemy into thinking the fence was a weak spot in their defenses. Would that work?

  The road curved inland after a while, and up ahead we saw a crowd of people. When we reached it we asked a woman what was going on. "They won't let us pass," she said. "Say it's too dangerous."

  "Has the battle started?"

  "I don't think so. Someone said when the artillery stops, that's when they'll attack."

  I looked at Kevin. Had we gone as far as we could go?

  "What would happen if we went off the road?" he asked me.

  "I don't know," I said. "What good would that do?"

  "I dunno. Maybe we could sneak through the fortifications somewhere else. Or go around them. Maybe over by the ocean."

  "And have both armies shooting at us?"

  Kevin shrugged. "Let's go see what's happening," he said finally.

  We made our way through the crowd. There were just a couple of soldiers standing guard at a barrier in the road. It wasn't anything like the scene at the Fens camp yesterday. Nobody looked like they wanted to go any further; they were happy to let the army do the fighting.

  One of the soldiers looked familiar. It was Benjamin, our jailer. He was still fat, although not as fat as when we first saw him. I don't think he remembered us at first, but he recognized Kevin's cap. "Ah, the lads with the ciphering machine," he said. "What are you doing here?"

  "Just trying to get home," I replied.

  "Where's home?"

  "Glanbury."

  He laughed. "Good luck to you, then."

  "Has the battle started?"

  "Oh, you'll know when the battle's started. We're all waiting for the battle to start."

  He seemed grateful for someone to talk to. It occurred to me that he was scared. He was sweating, despite the cold, and he flinched every time there was a particularly loud explosion. No wonder they'd stuck him back here, well behind the front line.

  Suddenly someone rode up on horseback. It was Corporal Hennessy, who I'd talked to in the courtyard at headquarters the other night. "I need one of you immediately," he said to the two guards.

  Benjamin looked like he was hoping his partner would volunteer. The other guy was tall and skinny and kind of dopey-looking. Neither of them said anything.

  "All right, you, Benjamin, report to Sergeant Hornbeam," the corporal ordered. Benjamin looked like he wanted to protest, but instead he just sighed, as if he'd expected this all along. Then the corporal noticed us. "Hello, lads," he said. "You two reporting for duty?"

  He was serious, I realized. Was he asking us to fight? Kevin and I looked at each other. And I decided: it's our war, too. "What do you want us to do?" I asked.

  "Go see Sergeant Dryerson, over at the ammunition depot," he replied. "He needs some extra hands. Let's hope you've developed some muscles since you were at the food warehouse." Then he galloped off.

  Benjamin looked at us glumly. "Should've stayed out of it, lads," he said.

  "Which way to the ammunition depot?" I asked.

  He gestured to his left. "Not a good place to be, I think. Fare you well."

  And then he sighed again and trudged off. The other guard let us pass, and we headed into the camp.

  "Why?" Kevin demanded.

  I looked up at the balloon—the balloon we had helped invent—hovering in the air. I thought of Professor Palmer taking a bullet for us on the river. I thought of my family, somewhere in the city, trying to survive—my father over by the Charles, getting ready to fight the Canadians. I thought of all the soldiers who had treated us well. "Because it's the right thing to do," I said.

  He shrugged. "I suppose so."

  The ammunition depot was about half a mile away, well back from the fortifications, which had been built out a lot since we first came into the city. In some places there were now long, high walls of earth; in others there was a wooden fence supported by sandbags. The pathway we walked along was crowded with soldiers on horseback and wagons hauling stuff. Everyone looked tense. Cannonballs kept coming in, but they landed short of where we were.

  The depot was another one of those makeshift buildings that looked like it had been put up overnight. It was filled with cases of ammunition, which soldiers were loading onto small wagons they called caissons. Sergeant Dryerson was a big, burly guy with a droopy mustache. "Always happy to have more assistance," he said when we introduced ourselves. "You," he said, pointing to me, "help old Augustus over there. And you,"—pointing to Kevin—"go with Quentin."

  Kevin and I exchanged a glance. "We—we'd like to stay together," Kevin said to the sergeant.

  "Then go off somewhere and play with your toys," he replied angrily. "I've no time for such nonsense. Keeping you separate doubles the odds one of you'll survive. Consider that."

  We weren't going to argue, so we did as we were told. "Stay safe," Kevin said to me before we split up. "I don't want to spend another day like yesterday."

  "Me too. Meet me back here after we win."

  "Okay."

  Augustus was a short old soldier with a white beard and a messy uniform. He talked nonstop while we were loading his caisson, mostly about the "idiot generals" who were losing the war for us. When we it was full, we hopped up on the bench and drove off. We were headed toward an area called Sector 7, which was somewhere to the west along the fortifications. Meanwhile the bombs kept falling. I wondered what would happen if one fell on our cases of ammunition. I wouldn't live to tell about it, I knew that.

  "Idiot generals spent all their time designing them floating airships and then don't use 'em," Augustus said, pointing up at the balloon.

  "I think they're being used for reconnaissance," I said. "Spotting the enemy's position and stuff."

  Augustus shook his head. "What's to find out? The enemy's on t'other side of the wall, and he's coming. Soon. And look over there—idiot generals left a gap in the fortifications, and all they could find to fill it with is that wire contraption."

  Sure enough, there was the electric fence. And sure enough, it looked like a weak spot where the enemy could just march through. I spotted Professor Foster, standing by some equipment connected to the fence and gesturing wildly at a group of men. I sure hope this works, I thought.

  And this was Sector 7. We were bringing extra ammunition to soldiers in place behind the fence. They were quiet, staring at the fence. Waiting. "Hurry, lad," Augustus said, as we unloaded our boxes. "Don't want to be caught here when it starts. The Portuguese are just going to come pouring through that hole."

  It was dangerous to be anywhere near the fortifications. A cannonball landed about twenty feet from us, kicking up a huge cloud of dirt and gravel and causing our horse to rear back in fear. "Idiot generals," Augustus muttered, as if they were responsible for the cannonball.

  Back at the ammunition depot, there was no sign of Kevin. Augustus and I set to work filling up
the caisson again, when suddenly something changed. Strangely, it took me a couple of seconds to figure out what had happened. There was silence. No more artillery. Augustus paused and shook his head.

  "It's starting," Sergeant Dryerson said. "Let's go, men. This is it. This is the war—right here, right now."

  I thought Augustus might complain about going back to Sector 7, but he didn't. We worked faster to fill the caisson—I had gotten stronger since that awful day in the food warehouse—and then we headed out again. We were silent now as he steered through the waiting soldiers. We were still on the way when we heard a huge, prolonged shout. It wasn't a cheer, it was more like the roaring of animals. Animals getting ready to attack each other.

  We made it to Sector 7, not far back from the fence. Just where Augustus didn't want to be. I caught a glimpse of Professor Foster standing by his generator, looking terrified. How many Portuguese were out there? I wondered. How many soldiers were charging towards the fortifications right now, determined to kill us all?

  And then I saw them: a huge blue wave approaching, ready to break over us. Someone must have given a signal, because our soldiers all fired at the same time. Some of the Portuguese fell, but more kept coming. They were firing too as they ran, and I heard the screams of agony as New England soldiers were hit.

  We had finished unloading the caisson. I turned to Augustus. "Should we go?" I shouted.

  But his eyes were glazed, and he was holding onto his stomach. A dark stain appeared around his hands, and he pitched backward onto the ground. I knelt next to him. He motioned to me to lean closer.

  "Idiots," he muttered in my ear, and then his head fell to one side, and he didn't move.

  I looked around, but no one was going to help. We were in the middle of a battle. I got to my feet and stood behind the caisson. The sounds of the rifle fire and the shouting and the screams were overpowering. The earth was shaking. I was surrounded by dust and smoke. It was a few seconds before I could make sense of anything.

  Then I saw that the first Portuguese soldiers had reached the fence. They grabbed it, ready to push through. And then they were knocked backwards. Every single one of them. I heard a roar of triumph from our side. The Portuguese scrambled to their feet, bewildered, but then most of them were shot down. A second wave reached the fence. Same result.