The Last Legend

by Ernie Lindsey

  Sliding through the trees, he doesn’t bother to stop and hide. I’m amazed at how quiet he is. I’ve been with him in the woods before, hunting for deer, and I’ve seen how noiseless he can be when he wants to be, but this is different. It’s almost as if he’s a canoe slipping silently across the surface of a lake.

  I reach for my knife, because it’ll make me feel better to have some sort of weapon in my hand, no matter how far I am from the action.

  But it’s gone. My hand rests on an empty sheath. Brandon must have taken it when he had me distracted. Now I know part of his plan.

  When he’s close to the young DAV soldier, who’s still squatting over the ground, Brandon loads the slingshot, pulls the thick, stringy straps back to his shoulder, aims, and fires. The rock hurtles through the air and hits its mark, dead center in the back of the soldier’s head.

  Knocked out, or at least dazed, the man falls forward with his pants around his ankles, and before I can turn my head, Brandon is upon him. Using my knife, he finishes the job. It happens without a sound. The other soldiers up ahead don’t turn. They walk, clueless, unaware that we’re out here, that we’re coming.

  Brandon glances back and motions for me to join him. I move, rapidly, staying hidden. I look down at the DAV scout—his neck slit from ear to ear—and feel a measure of pity for him. What a horrible way to go.

  Brandon doesn’t share my sentiments. He whispers, “I got him. He never had a chance.” There’s a wild look in his eyes, one that worries me, like maybe he enjoyed it too much. It’s a look of someone different, someone I don’t know, but it’s brief, fleeting, and then my friend—the boy I’ve fantasized about lying beside on cold winter nights—returns. “Three left. Hurry. Here, you take the knife. The next one is yours.”

  It’s red with DAV blood. I watch the raindrops dilute it, washing it away in pink rivulets. “I don’t want—”

  Before I can finish, Brandon moves again, dashing from tree to tree, and I follow in his footsteps.

  The three remaining soldiers aren’t too far ahead of us, and I’m worried we’re getting too close. I try to get Brandon to slow down, but he ignores me.

  Once we’re within fifty feet, Brandon drops behind a boulder and kneels. I squat beside him. The rain has washed most of the dirt from my hands, and probably my face too. As if we’re communicating with our thoughts, Brandon notices the same thing, and we both reapply a fresh layer of mud to our skin.

  He’s not even breathing heavily. I struggle to keep the sound of my inhaling and exhaling under control. For once, I’m relieved that the rain has picked up and the hard pitter-patter against the leaves overhead and the ground below manages to drown out the rest of the ambient noise.

  “What now?” I ask.

  “We wait.”

  “Wait? Why? They’re getting away.”

  “They’ll send one of the others back to look for him. We catch the next one alone, then do the same thing.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “It’s what I would do.”

  “You don’t know that—”

  “Shhhh,” he says. “Listen.”

  Between the rhythm of the downpour, I can hear grunting, heavy breathing, and boots stomping along the forest floor. The soldier, whichever one it is, mumbles to himself, “Just couldn’t wait, could he? Just couldn’t wait until we got back.”

  Brandon flashes a look that says, See? I told you, and scoots nearer to me and away from the edge, where he can’t be seen.

  The footsteps approach. My heart thumps against the inside of my chest. If it pounds any harder, it’ll break through into the outside world.

  The DAV soldier lumbers past us, slowly. He’s heavier than I noticed before, overweight—a sign of privilege, some rich boy plucked from his fancy home to serve his time. He pushes himself forward with his hands on his knees. He’s bent over at the waist, gulping to catch his wind, barely making it up the hill.

  Before he gets too far away, before he has a chance to spot the dead soldier and warn the others, Brandon stands, whips the slingshot back, and fires.

  His aim is off, and I feel my heart leap into my throat when the rock bounces off a fat shoulder.

  The soldier shouts, “Ow!” and spins around.

  Brandon’s next rock finds its mark, striking the soldier between the eyes. He drops, but the damage is done. I can hear the remaining two men yelling behind me.

  I feel an arm at my back, pushing, and I’m thrown forward, off balance. I hear Brandon telling me to hurry, to get it over with, and then his fading footsteps. I fail to stay upright, falling on top of the DAV infantryman. He grunts and looks at me through groggy, watery eyes.

  Before I can change my mind, I bury the knife deep. Once, twice, three times.

  He’s too thick. He’s too layered with fat. It doesn’t do any real damage.

  My jabs send him into a rage, shocking him back to clarity, and he growls, reaching for my throat.

  I scramble away, roll, and avoid his clawing hands. Whatever protection his thick body may have provided him also hinders his movement, and he struggles to get on his feet. He slips on the wet leaves and goes down to one knee, and I lunge, jumping on his back. The sharp blade in my hand goes to his neck, and I drag it across his throat. The feel of skin parting makes me cringe. He gags and falls forward, landing face first in a gaggle of wild mushrooms. A thick, bubbling gurgle erupts from his throat as he grabs at his wound, trying to hold it closed.

  I don’t have time to think about what I’ve done. I turn and search for Brandon among the trees, and I run toward the sounds of a struggle.

  Ahead of me, and behind a cluster of oak trees, I can see flashes of white skin and the red and black of DAV army jackets flailing. I hear Brandon scream. It’s filled with rage and fear, and I’m afraid of what I might see when I get there.

  I run, panting, my lungs clenching closed. I know I’m in better shape than this—years of hiking through the mountains and running back to camp have given me the strength to do my job properly—but it’s the dread, the uncertainty, and the terror that squeeze my chest so tightly. Rain splatters against my face and I taste dirt as it washes into my mouth. I spit a brown glob and keep going.

  On the other side of the massive oaks, the two DAV soldiers—the older, bearded one and his last subordinate—have Brandon on the ground, face down, his arms pinned behind his back. The captain stands over him, smiling, with a boot across his neck, while the younger one straddles him, holding Brandon’s arms, leaning on him with all his weight.

  Brandon struggles to get free, but it doesn’t do any good. They’re too much for him. He screams, “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!” and they laugh.

  I skid to a stop, uncertain, not knowing what to do next. If they managed to capture Brandon so easily, who is as big as a fully grown man, then I have no chance to overtake them. There’s no hope, I think. I should retreat. I should go back and warn the others while there’s still time. But I can’t leave Brandon behind. No way am I leaving him behind. He would fight for me, even if it meant dying. At least he would try.

  The soldiers spot me, and for a moment we’re all frozen in time, staring at one another, trying to decide what comes next. I’m sure they’re surprised to see that a girl my age has been tracking them as well, but from the warnings I’ve heard, it doesn’t matter how old you are, whether you’re male or female, men from the DAV have no mercy.

  The blackcoat leader reaches inside his jacket and removes something. It’s dark gray and dull. He’s gripping it with one hand and steadying it with the other.

  I recognize it. A gun. We have a stash of them back at our camp, tucked away in a small shed, put there by soldiers who ran out of bullets hunting game and never bothered to request more.

  A handgun.

  I’ve seen them, held them, but I’ve never experienced them in action. I know how they work, what they do, and that they’re very, very dangerous.

  “You there,” the
leader says. “Don’t move.”

  I obey. I’m so scared, I don’t think I could move if I wanted to.

  Brandon twists his head around, yelling, “Run, Caroline!”

  “She runs, she’s dead. Stay right there, sweetheart.” The older man takes his foot off Brandon’s neck and takes one step slowly toward me, aiming at my head. “You can’t outrun a bullet. Come on, nice and slow. We won’t hurt you.”

  Some lies don’t need to be questioned.

  6

  Brandon yanks an arm free from the younger soldier’s grasp and reaches out, latching on to the captain’s ankle. The man trips, but doesn’t fall, and he glares down at Brandon, trying to kick his leg loose.

  It’s not much of a distraction, but it gives me enough time to spin my knife around, grab it by the blade, and hurl it. Years of hunting small game, like squirrels and rabbits, has given me deadly accuracy, even with a moving target. The blade slices through the air and buries itself into the bearded man’s chest.

  He howls and falls to the side.

  I move.

  The younger soldier drives an elbow into Brandon’s temple, stunning him, and then climbs off, lunging for the captain’s gun. I get there first, but instead of grabbing the ancient weapon—I’m not entirely sure how to use it—I grab my knife by the hilt and pull it free from the captain’s chest. Then I dive forward, shoving it deep into the younger man’s side.

  He cries out as I slam into him, our bodies meeting, shoulder to shoulder, and I use my legs to shove him over. He lands, rolls down the embankment, and I’m not far behind. Once we come to a stop, I feel an emptiness in my hand. The familiar weight of my knife is gone, and I look behind us. I’ve dropped it, and I can’t see where.

  There’s no time to hunt for the knife. The younger soldier holds his side with one hand and reaches for me with the other. His face is twisted in fury and agony. He bares his teeth like an angry dog, snarling as his hand swipes through empty air, missing. I scramble farther away while he tries to get up.

  As I’m crawling, under my hand I feel the slick surface of a rock, big enough to use as a weapon. I claw at it, easily ripping it free from the loose, wet earth, but it’s bigger than I thought, and as I clamber to my feet, I have to pick it up with two hands. My first impulse is to throw it at him—he’s wounded, in pain, and not moving fast, but what if I miss? What then? He’s alive—his legs still work—and I can’t risk leaving him there or giving him the chance to make it back to his army.

  It’s heavy, but I manage to lift it over my head. I take two steps forward and then fall with all my weight, all the rock’s weight. With everything I have, I drive it down at his head.

  The crunching sound makes me sick to my stomach. I spin away from him, leaving the rock and the blood behind, and try not to vomit. My heart races. My head pounds. My eyes water.

  I sit back, gasping, tasting the vileness on my tongue, and then push myself up to my feet.

  Brandon, I think, and look up at him. He’s coming to, barely, and flips onto his back. He tries to get up and falls to the ground, holding his head. I scramble to him, pat his cheek, try to lift him, to help him up, but he’s too big.

  He squeezes my arm and says, “I’m fine, just give me a second.”

  I wait until he’s ready, and I stand when he does. I hug him and cry into his chest. My shoulders shake while I sob—shaking from the result of my actions, shaking from relief.

  I’ve taken three lives, but we’ve done it. We’ve bought ourselves some time. Who knows how much.

  Brandon looks down at the young soldier lying on the ground. “That’s—” he says, and then stops, unable to find the right words. “You saved my life.”

  Seconds later, I learn that’s not true, and that I’ve only taken two lives.

  A sharp crack, louder than thunder, louder than anything I’ve ever heard, fills the woods around us, and Brandon lurches as if he’s been hit in the back with something large and heavy. Another crack, and he lurches again, falling toward me, his eyes wide with shock. Blood trickles out of his mouth. He coughs, stumbles, and says, “What was that—” before he slumps to the ground.

  I scream, “Brandon!” and whip my head around to see the captain sitting up, holding his hand over the wound where my knife had been, aiming at me.

  He smiles. To my left, up the valley, I hear the drums start up again.

  Boom, boom, ba-boom. Boom, boom, ba-boom.

  I don’t have time to think about why they’re on the move again, so soon, before the man says, “You hear that, sweetheart? That’s the sound of war.”

  He raises the gun higher. Instinctively, I jump to the side. Another ear-piercing crack envelops everything around me, but I feel nothing. He missed.

  I roll, roll, roll, and grab a handful of dirt, slinging it in his direction. It scatters, hits him in the face, fills his eyes and sends him reeling backward. He fires wildly, blindly, shot after shot.

  Crack, crack, crack.

  Dirt kicks up around my feet after the first two; the third slams into a tree behind me, sending shards of bark and oak wood down onto my head.

  How many shots was that? How many more does he have? The Elders taught us these things—useless as they were at the time—but I’m having trouble remembering.

  The drums chill my skin.

  Boom, boom, ba-boom. Boom, boom, ba-boom.

  I climb to my feet, unsure what to do next. I’m too far away from him. I’ll never get there fast enough. He’ll drop me, like Brandon, before I have a chance to try anything.

  He climbs to his knees and tries to get up. He can’t. He grabs his chest, wincing, grinding his teeth together, and then points the gun again. I back up a step, then another. The massive oak stops my retreat. I’m trapped. There’s no room, no time, and nothing for me to do. I’m out of options. I’m dead. I know I’m dead.

  “Please,” I beg. “Please don’t.”

  He laughs. It’s a clattering sound. Raspy. Evil.

  Before he squeezes the trigger, something flies past my head and finds its mark, just to the left of where my blade had been.

  It’s another knife.

  The captain drops his gun. He looks down and reaches for it, fingers searching, and then he tumbles to the ground. Writhing. Dying.

  It’s over.

  I’m safe, but I can’t stop my bottom lip from trembling.

  Where did it come from? Who threw it?

  Behind me, I hear, “Caroline?”

  “Finn!” I shout, whipping around the tree. He’s only a few feet away, and I’m so happy to see him that I fall into his arms.

  He catches me, pulls me close. “Are there more?” he asks. “Caroline, are there any more?”

  I tell him no and grab his shirt with both hands, twisting the material, resting my face in that spot between his neck and his shoulder. I cry harder than I ever have. More than when Mother and Father left and never came back. Harder than when Grandmother died of pneumonia. I cry more tears than the rain falling around us.

  Finn holds me, but Brandon’s gone.

  Gone.

  The word isn’t strong enough, but I can’t make myself say dead.

  The boy I’d promised myself to, the boy who didn’t know.

  Over my sobbing, I hear the drums repeating their menacing rhythm.

  Boom, boom, ba-boom.

  “Let’s go,” Finn says. “They’re moving again.” He tries to pull me with him, but I refuse.

  “We can’t leave Brandon.”

  “We have to. We can’t carry him.”

  “I’m not leaving without him.”

  Finn shakes my shoulders. “Look at me. Look. Listen to those drums. Do you hear how close they are? That’s the vanguard. Plus, they’ll send a small group ahead because they know it won’t take much to destroy your encampment. We’ll never make it. They’ll catch us and we’ll die, Caroline. We have to go.”

  I pull free and run over to Brandon’s body. Leaning down, I kiss him o
n the cheek and touch his hair. I never got to do that when he was alive. “I’m sorry. Maybe in another life, okay?”

  Finn grabs me under my arms and jerks me off the ground, away from Brandon. Reluctantly, I leave him behind. We can’t take him away, but nature will, over time.

  We run, looking over our shoulders, searching for any signs of the DAV forward parties, seeing none.

  We reach the lake trail. I grab Finn’s arm at the fallen pine, the one where the path dips on the other side, remembering this time to go carefully over it, and then we’re running again, down the slippery hill.

  “I didn’t see them,” I say between gasps of air.

  “Who?”

  “Your army. I didn’t see them for myself. Hawkins—he’ll—”

  “I’ll tell him,” Finn says, slowing down. “I’ll tell him exactly what’s coming.”

  “He’ll kill you. You’re part of the DAV.”

  “No he won’t. Not if he wants to know what I know before it gets here.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t know anything?”

  “I know enough to stay alive.”

  I ask him a question that’s been on my mind since he killed the captain. “How’d you get free?”

  “My knife. You guys aren’t very good at taking prisoners. You should’ve checked.”

  “Were you going back?”

  “Where?”

  “Home. To the DAV.”

  He stops in the middle of the trail. “What? Why would I do that?”

  I try to pull him, to keep him moving. He won’t budge until I answer. “I don’t know. You were heading in that direction.”

  He shakes his head, chuckles a little. “I cut myself free just to show you guys I could do it. I wanted to sneak up on you—scare you—and then I saw those two dead soldiers and heard gunfire. That’s when I started running. I saved your life.”

  Finn was so close to the opposite side of the oak tree. He had to have seen what had happened to Brandon. “Why didn’t you save Brandon?”

  “I wasn’t close enough.”

  “Did you see what happened? Did you see that soldier pointing the gun at him? Huh? Did you?” Part of me knows it’s not Finn’s fault—yeah, maybe he was too far away to do anything about Brandon—but I’m not ready to trust him again. Not yet. He was so close. And my rage over Brandon’s death has to go somewhere. I can’t keep it inside me, and Finn is the nearest target. I shove him, and he tries to stay solid, like a tree, but I have the strength of rage on my side, and he topples over when I shove him again.