by Tracey Ward
“Cren, it’s not too late. Vin will still be there when this is done. Trust me, he’s too terrible to die. The devil doesn’t want him.”
He turns to face me. When I see his eyes, I take a step back. They’re hard. Fierce. I’ve only seen him like this once before and that time he pulled a weapon on me. I may not be well educated, but I am a fast learner. I’m not getting stabbed today.
“If you remember anything I’ve ever told you, child, make it this: there is never enough time. You may have years, you may have days. You may have a matter of seconds. No one knows, but no matter how much time you have, you’ll always wish it was more. Do not put off what needs doing.” He grabs my hand and squeezes it urgently. “Leave tomorrow for the cowards. Today you must be fearless.”
Chapter Twenty
My favorite part about the plan for taking the southern Colony is that I’m not in it. Not really. We have over three hundred people here ready and willing to fight to the death to overthrow these pompous, pampered zealots, and we don’t need more than twenty-five of them to lift a finger. The rest of us are here only to make them sweat.
Ryan, Trent, Bray, and Crenshaw are our explosives experts. They’ll work the trebuchet with a team of three other guys from the island who know how to use it. Give them a spot to hit and if it’s in the machine’s range, they’ll nail it. First try. The Vashons don’t play.
Elijah, Andy, and seventeen of their people are going underground. They’ll get inside from the tunnels, somewhere I hope I never have to go again. Each one of them will be packing a bag full of explosives compliments of Cren and his apprentices, and I’m sure every one of them will be sweating bullets the whole way there wondering if they’re jostling that Bag-O-Boom too much. One false move, just a little too much pressure on the wrong spot, and BAM! We’ll remember you fondly. I’m sure you’ll make a wonderful BBQ for your cannibal buddies to doggy bag home.
As the sun begins to set, we light torches up and down the shore. Trent says it’s sort of a filter. Even if we have more light behind the torches, it’ll be hard for the Colonists to see what we’re doing through the glare and smoke of the line of fire near the water. And what we’re doing is nothing. We’re wandering around, we shout to each other now and then. Sometimes a group will be sent running and yelling for no reason, going nowhere. It’s all meant to confuse the Colonists and keep their attention on us. They need to be frantic, on edge, always wondering what we’ll do next or how many of us there are. We don’t want them aware of the moles creeping into their home through their floor or the housewarming gift we’ve brought them that’s slowly making its way down the barricaded street toward the gate. That’ll be a fun surprise for them.
“Athena!” Crenshaw shouts to me from across the camp. “It is time!”
I jog toward him, making sure to keep up my routine of looking busy.
“Time for what?”
Crenshaw’s eyes are bright and wild with excitement. His face is flushed, his mouth pulled taught in a manic grin. He looks the maddest I’ve ever seen him and for some reason, I love it. Crazy suits him.
“Magic,” he whispers dramatically, his eyes going wide.
I chuckle, shaking my head. “I’m not in the magic show, Cren. Alvarez told me it was tunnels or crowd. I chose crowd.”
“A wise choice. The tunnels are fraught with danger. Men will die in there tonight.”
“That’s chilling.”
“I wish you to join me,” he says, falling serious. His smile is gone but the light is still wild in his eyes.
“Why?”
“For protection.”
I fight the urge to sigh. To roll my eyes and tell him I can take care of myself, that I don’t need protection from anyone or anything. It’s Vin pushing me behind him at the first sign of danger. It’s Ryan sleeping between me and doors. How does everyone so easily forget that I lived alone and survived for years without any help from anyone?
No one but Crenshaw.
And that’s how I manage to keep my eyes steady and my breathing even. I remind myself that Crenshaw has always been there for me. He took care of me when I was sick, he gave me medicine when I was hurt, he kept me company when I craved it and let me walk away when I couldn’t handle it anymore. And I didn’t realize it until now, but he let me take care of him too. He took meats from me, he listened when I warned him about outside dangers creeping close. He kept me talking when there was no one to hear me. He saw me when no one else could.
Cren kept me from being a ghost.
He kept me alive.
“All right,” I agree with a smile, trying to bring his smile back. “I’ll stick with you. Thank you for protecting me.”
I don’t understand it when he doesn’t smile like I hoped. In fact, he frowns, his face looking suddenly so long and tired that I worry I’ve made some serious social error. If I have, I have no clue what it was.
“Come,” he says, turning to go and repeating softly, “it is time.”
He leads me through the camp until we stand at its edge underneath the long shadow of the trebuchet. It dances over us as the fire from the torches flickers in the wind. It’s cold here by the water. I pull my coat tighter around myself, my hand accidentally slipping through the rip in the sleeve—the one I got when a wolf nearly took a chunk out of my arm thanks to Ryan.
He’s there on the other side of the machine. He, Trent, Bray, and the Vashons helping them work the thing are standing patiently, watching Crenshaw and I approach. They’re waiting on orders from the wizard.
My wizard.
“Gentleman,” Crenshaw greets them heavily. “Are we ready?”
Ryan bows slightly. “We wait on your signal, Master Crenshaw.”
Cren nods slowly, looking at each of them. I expect him to give a speech or offer some words of wisdom or encouragement—something about courage, bravery, honor, intelligence, peanut butter. Anything. But they get nothing.
“Load it.”
I watch as the guys snap into action. I lock eyes with Ryan for a small second, and while he smiles at me confidently, I feel cold inside. The sick feeling that’s haunted me all day is back with a vengeance, slipping under my skin and chasing away the warm fuzzies I was just feeling a second ago. I don’t know what’s changed. Maybe the wind shifted or I’m registering the magnitude of what’s happening. I don’t know. All I know for sure is that I’m grateful Crenshaw asked me to come here with him.
You cannot be separated, Athena. To succeed you must remain together. It is how I have seen it.
Seen what?
The End.
Do I believe Crenshaw can see the future? No. I’m not nuts. But do his ominous words sink into my brain and make me nervous? Maybe even paranoid?
I wish you to join me.
Why?
For protection.
Yeah, they sure as shit do.
I watch Ryan closely as he works with the other men to prep the weapon. His hands move quick and strong as they bring the arm down to the ground, a large net of bulky stones rising into the air across from it. He’s slow and gentle as he helps load a small, dark ball of deadly into a basket at the opposite end of the arm. As I watch him handle the explosives my sight goes fuzzy at the edges and I can see my pulse vibrating my vision. I realize I’m holding my breath.
I let it out in a loud burst of air, gasping a little after.
“Are you okay?” Trent asks, looking genuinely concerned.
I nod. “I forgot to breathe.”
“Maybe biology will be our first lesson?”
“It’s beginning to sound like I’ll be going to school for the rest of my life.”
“It’s not unlikely.” He gestures to the trebuchet standing between us. “Do you want to know how it works?”
“I’ll wait and see.”
“Seeing something is one thing. Knowing the mechanics of how and why it does what it does is completely different.”
I shrug. “I don’t know why it rains but
it still does. The world is doing fine without me poking around in its underwear drawer.”
“Ready!” a Vashon cries loudly.
I take a few steps back from the machine. Trent is right—I don’t know how it works and I’m suddenly worried I’m about to get my head snapped off.
“Fire!”
There’s a sharp snap! followed by a groan. I watch the net of stones drop rapidly, forcing the arm to shoot up into the air. It drags a long rope behind it, arcing it up and over the machine. At the end of the rope is the bag of explosives. It swings out high above us. At the tip of the arc, I watch in amazement as a small, round shadow flies out of the bag and soars far down the shore. It’s headed straight for the gates.
I lose sight of it in the dark. I’m worried it missed its mark and hit the water, but then I find it again. I catch it for just a split second as it’s haloed against the lights around the Colony gate. I don’t even have time to process that I’ve seen it when it explodes.
It’s immediately very clear that these are not flash grenades.
The night lights up in a blaze of angry red and orange, but it doesn’t fade out immediately the way the grenades did. This is meant to burn. It’s meant to destroy and it does its job. They haven’t hit the gate. We’re waiting on that. We’re drawing them out and bringing them running the way we did with the stadiums to make it easier for the cannibals to do their job on the inside. This was their signal. Right now they should be running around like the phantom ninjas they are, slipping through shadows and leaving behind lit fuses at every corner of the Colony. They’ll destroy a lot of buildings, but the important thing is that they’ll send people running into the open. Then they’ll disappear back into the tunnels, blowing the exit behind them and heading home.
That’s when the boys will hit the gates.
“How long do we give Elijah and his people?” I ask.
Ryan’s brow shoots up in surprise. “They’re people now, huh?”
“People who eat people, but yeah.”
“They have thirty minutes,” a Vashon guy tells me. He’s probably in his forties, short and stocky. He reminds me of Taylor. “We’ll launch two volleys while we wait. Hopefully they remember to stay away from where we’re firing.”
“What’s a volley?”
“It’s like buckshot,” Trent says.
I stare at him, waiting.
He stares back.
“Buckshot,” Ryan begins mercifully, “is scattered fire. Comes from one source, smaller ammunition. It’s less precise but it can be more damaging. We’re gonna do a mix of small explosives along with stones. We don’t want to blow the whole place up right now, but we want to keep them scared.”
“What if we hit someone with a stone?”
“It will kill them,” Trent answers plainly.
“Aim!” Crenshaw shouts to his team.
They move quickly to their places, each of the men taking position around the trebuchet. They roll it over the uneven ground on its large wheels until it’s facing farther inland. They’re aiming closer to the heart of the Colony.
“Load!”
More stones and dark globes are carefully lowered into the waiting bag.
“Fire!”
The trebuchet launches the mix of ammunition toward the center of the peninsula in another high, sweeping arc. I don’t see any of it fly this time. It feels like we wait forever for the impact, but finally it comes. Several small flashes of light explode on the other side of the wall. I can’t see the fires on the ground, but their light flickers against the underside of tree branches, desperate to climb the tall, dry trunks.
The watching crowd of Vashons cheers and shouts across the camp. They’re so loud I can barely hear Crenshaw speak.
“The Page is approaching.”
It’s a girl a few years younger than I am with long, light hair and a very serious expression. She’s panting for breath when she reaches us.
“Master Crenshaw, they’ve given the order!” Her words fly excitedly out of her mouth in one quick rush. She takes a deep breath. “They’re here. The zombies are here. He says to blow the damn gate.”
Cren stares at her, his face pinched with annoyance. “Did he say that word in front of you?”
“Zombies?”
“No, the swear. Did he use that word in front of you?”
“Yeah.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
I smile. This is funny from the outside.
“‘Yes,’ not ‘yeah.’ And I will blow the cursed gate. Please tell him that exactly as I have said it. Do not swear again, young lady. Not until you are older and have a stronger understanding of the weight of the words you use.”
“Yes, sir,” she says meekly.
“Very good. You wil—”
“Return fire!”
I look across the water to see a comet blazing into the sky. It’s a big ball of burning that’s been hurtled into the air, and it’s heading straight for us.
I go to run back, desperate to get out of its way, but suddenly Trent is there. I run smack into him.
“Move!” I shout, struggling with him. “Run!”
“Joss, no!”
“Run toward it!”
Everyone is yelling at once. I can’t understand all of it and I definitely can’t understand why they’d want me to run toward the fireball. I don’t have time to ask or fight about it because Trent easily lifts me up and runs us forward—right into the danger. As he swept me up into his arms I saw Cren take hold of the Page girl. He’s running her right behind us.
The fireball blazes closer to us. It looks large enough to blot out the sky—definitely large enough to crush us all into ash. But just when I think it’s going to drop right on top of us, it soars over our heads and touches down somewhere far behind us. Trent drops to his knees, curling his body over mine to cocoon me between him and the ground. There are screams when it lands, our intentional chaos in the camps suddenly turning very real. I wait, listening to Trent’s breathing against my chest and the sound of dirt and rock raining down around us.
When it stops, I hear fire burning strong and angry. My pulse quickens.
The trebuchet.
“Trent, are you okay?” I whisper.
He nods his head, uncurling from around me. He leaves me sitting on the ground in front of him as he sits up straight on his knees. The fire is burning behind him but I can see the arm of the machine standing up straight into the sky.
“Do you know why you couldn’t run backwards?” he asks seriously.
“Because I’d get smashed by burning death?”
“Because you would have been racing on a path to meet it.”
“It didn’t make sense to run toward danger. I’ve kinda lived my life doing the opposite.”
“We didn’t run toward it. We ran under it.”
“I get that now.”
“Remember it.” He stands, offering me his hand. “The night’s not over.”
I let him help me up. I was right, the machine is still standing, but the fire is dangerously close to it. Crenshaw is watching the Page girl run to the roaring crowd of worried Vashons, shouting for her to get to safety, while the rest of the group is already back at the trebuchet to make sure it doesn’t catch on fire.
“Is it okay?” I ask Ryan.
He looks up from where he’s checking one of the wheels. “I don’t know. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Yeah. Thanks, man,” he says to Trent with a jut of his chin. “I’m glad you were there to stop her.”
“No problem.”
“He’s fine, too, by the way,” I snap, annoyed they’re talking about me like I’m not even here. Let’s move past the fact that I wouldn’t be here if Trent hadn’t stopped me.
Ryan chuckles. “I know he is.”
“We’ve got a problem!” Bray shouts.
Ryan and Trent run around the trebuchet to where Bray is crouched by a rear wheel.
“What is it?” Ryan asks.
“It’s cracked.”
Ryan swears, his hands diving into his hair and rubbing it roughly.
“We can’t reposition it,” Taylor’s stocky twin tells us. “If we move it, that wheel will split in half and it’ll never shoot straight. We’ll have no aim.”
Trent steps up, touching the crack in the wheel. “It’s deep. Almost all the way through. If we fire it at all it’ll snap, most likely while the arm is in motion.”
“Which means our aim is gone anyway,” Ryan says, sounding resigned. Then he swears again and I think he’s lucky Crenshaw is too far away to hear him.
“What do we do?” I ask. No one answers me and I realize that’s my answer. “There’s nothing we can do, is there?”
“No. It’s dead,” Ryan admits.
“But the gate.”
“I know.”
“Maybe the Risen will take it down on their own,” Bray suggests. “There are a lot of them.”
“It’ll take too much time,” Trent tells him.
Ryan nods. “We needed them cruising right through that gate to flush the people out. We can’t give them a chance to defend against the herd.”
“We need to tell Alvarez. He’ll have to send in more people.”
“The tunnels?” I groan.
“Or the water,” one of the Vashons replies. “The cannibals are blowing the sewer tunnel entrance once they’re out. There’s no way to tell them to stop. Tunnels aren’t an option anymore.”
“How long until they do it?”
“Soon,” Bray says.
Ryan looks around urgently. “Where’s the Page? We need to tell Alvarez we can’t blow the gate.”
“She’s gone. Crenshaw told her to go so she ran...” My words taper off as I look around, spinning to search the area. “Where’s Crenshaw?”
“I don’t know,” Ryan answers.
“I don’t see him,” Trent says.
And that’s when I get scared.
“Crenshaw!” I shout, spinning around again.
“Guys,” Bray calls from the explosives table.
“Crenshaw!” Ryan yells.
“Guys.”
