A Town Called Dust: The Territory 1 (21 page)

Lynn tried with all her might to reach Lieutenant Walter, but there were just too many ghouls and Diggers and horses and bodies in the way. As she paused at the outskirts of the battle, looking for a way through the crush, she saw Lieutenant Walter urge Peanut forward, his sword swinging relentlessly. There was a scream from his left, the scream of a man. The sergeant who had brought the news about General Connor was being dragged from his horse. Swordless, arms flailing, he was pulled down by dozens of gray hands. The ghouls were pulling at his uniform, trying to rip off his armor and get at the promise of moisture beneath. Two ghouls, one from either side, sank their dry rotten mouths around his neck, piercing his skin with their half-broken teeth and sucking in the red juice from inside. Others were grabbing at his mouth, pushing their fingers in or clawing at his eyes. He was pulled from sight soon enough, dragged down to ground level, but his leg, stuck in a stirrup, continued to kick for a moment before it fell still.

Ghouls had swarmed around Lieutenant Walter in greater numbers. Peanut, so sturdy until now, was beginning to waiver. Lynn knew the horse must be tired and that he must have been bitten and clawed by the ghouls. She watched the lieutenant touch him on the neck as he balanced himself, swinging his sword through the skull of a ghoul who was grabbing Peanut’s mane. Lynn willed Peanut to keep going, but an awful feeling of hopelessness was worming its way into her.

The Diggers had killed so many ghouls, thousands upon thousands, but still they kept coming. Lynn saw Apprentices riding bravely into battle, but they fell quickly, and those ghouls that couldn’t get close enough to the body turned on another Digger or Apprentice who still lived to swing steel. The result was that the ghouls concentrated around those left fighting, each of whom was like an island of moisture and heat among the cold dry desert of ghouls. They were soon all but isolated from each other.

With a strangled cry, Lynn saw Peanut begin to fall underneath Lieutenant Walter. The great warhorse had nothing left. Through a brief gap in the ghoul onslaught, Lynn saw why: the ghouls had torn a great hole in the horse’s hide. Lieutenant Walter leaned forward and touched his horse on the neck, the strong horse who had kept him above the throng for so long. Lynn saw the Digger whisper gently into his horse’s ear, and then he stood in the saddle and jumped as Peanut fell.

Landing in a patch of open area Lieutenant Walter stood quickly and held his sword at the ready. The ghouls were coming at him from all angles and he had nowhere to run. He began cutting them down but it was too late, the army was all but encircled by the horde. He swung his sword at one ghoul, then another and another and another, but in the end he wasn’t fast enough.

With tears in her eyes, Lynn thought,
He should have ordered the retreat
.

Squid ran. Before he even reached the fighting he passed hundreds and hundreds of fallen ghouls. The Diggers had managed to push quite a long way forward and had left a mass of headless ghouls behind. He wanted to believe they could still win, but ahead of him he could see only the inevitable. The ghouls had enveloped the army and they would squeeze in on them like hands around a neck. He ran through the soft sand, having to jump once to avoid the grasp of a ghoul which, legless, was pulling its way through the sand, trying to grab him as he passed.

As he approached the fighting Squid could see the Apprentices trying their best to attack the ghouls from behind, pressing into their flank, but already the ghouls had turned and were beginning to overwhelm them. Squid held his sword in front of him and ran into the battle. He swung the sword haphazardly, taking the nose off one ghoul and a large portion of the arm from another. He had to keep moving; if he was moving they couldn’t grab him. Being the smallest member of the army was suddenly an advantage for Squid. He hurried, ducking beneath Diggers swinging their swords or diving under the groping hands of the ghouls. He lunged to the side to avoid a falling ghoul and found himself face to face with Darius Canum.

He was different.

Squid noticed it instantly. Even during their checkered history at the Academy, Darius’s eyes had looked nothing like they did now. They were hollow and dark and revealed an insatiable anger. As he stood for that brief moment before the ghouls descended on them Squid knew the anger wasn’t directed at him.

“Darius, look out!” Squid called as a ghoul moved up like a clockwork man behind Darius.

Darius turned and sliced at it. The blade of the sword met it in the temple and took off the top of its scalp. The ghoul fell toward Squid so that he got the unpleasant view of the shriveled brain matter inside the cracked-open eggshell of its head before it hit the red dust.

“We need to get out of here,” Squid said to Darius.

“No,” Darius said as he lifted his sword to strike the fallen ghoul. Squid could see it was still moving; enough of its brain must have been intact. “They all have to die.”

Darius struck what remained of the ghoul’s head with his sword.

“Die,” Darius said as he struck the fallen ghoul again. “Die. Die. Die,” he repeated as he continued to slice at it. “Die. Die. Die.”

He struck again and again until all he was doing was pushing broken skull and dry brain tissue further into the dirt.

“Darius, come on,” Squid said, aware of the ghouls bearing down on them.

“No!” Darius said, but he looked up and began lashing out at the ghouls around them. “They killed them.”

Squid cut at the arms that reached toward him. He had to go. He had to keep moving. He had to find Max. But just as he was about to explain this to Darius a ghoul grabbed the boy from behind, its arms wrapping around him like a bear hug. Darius struggled but another ghoul grabbed him as well, forcing him to the ground. They began to claw at him, trying to bite him as more moved in. Squid stepped forward and hacked at the ghouls on top of Darius.
The head
, he was thinking,
I have to take off the head
. He could see where he had to hit, and just like chopping firewood on the farm, he knew what he had to do. But if he missed this time he might hit Darius. Darius cried out. Squid couldn’t hesitate. He aimed his stroke and this time he hit it right on the mark. He cut the head clean from the shoulders of one ghoul and then continued, cutting at the necks of the others. The heads rolled off into the soft sand. He grabbed Darius’s hand and pulled.

“Get up,” he said, “get up!”

Darius rose, stumbling to his feet. Squid turned, cutting at the ghouls around him. Darius’s sword was somewhere in the dirt, beneath the feet of the next wave of ghouls closing in on them.

“Come on,” Squid said, pushing the dazed Darius into action. “Move!”

“My sword,” Darius said, turning back.

“No, just keep moving.”

Squid did his best to guide Darius through the mass of ghouls. He tried pushing him at first but Darius seemed to keep tripping over his own feet. Squid tried to move in front of him, pulling him along by the arm. but his grip kept slipping. It was no use. He couldn’t move fast enough dragging Darius with him. Squid could feel the ghouls bearing down on them. He lifted his sword and started hacking at them, trying to beat them off, but it was like fighting back the sand: kick some aside and the wind blew in more to replace it. Squid knew the sand would soon engulf them, cover them all like rolling dunes. Even as Darius seemed to regain some composure, picking up a sword from a fallen Apprentice and swinging it, Squid knew there was no way they could keep the ghouls at bay. Their dry, rotting faces would just keep coming.

Then he heard the pounding of hooves. He knew there were still some Diggers on horseback, but not many. When he looked toward the sound he saw who it was. Cadbury, Max still on his back, came riding toward them, cutting a swathe through the ghouls.

As Squid watched, awed at the perfect timing of Max’s arrival, he was grabbed from behind by a ghoul. He struggled forward. The ghoul’s hand, which had clasped his shoulder, came away from its arm in a light spray of dust. In a panicked movement that made him think of his aunt, Squid brushed the hand off his shoulder as though it were a spider. Without thinking, he reversed his sword and plunged it backward into the belly of the ghoul. He instantly knew that he’d done the wrong thing. The head, you had to go for the head! Stumbling backward, Squid turned and looked into the face of the ghoul. The creature’s skin was gray and the end of its nose had fallen off, but even as the dry flesh flaked away Squid recognized the squeezed-in features of that round face.

Uncle.

Squid fell away, landing on his back.

“No!”

He scrabbled backward like a crab as Uncle came stutter-stopping toward him. Squid felt a scream building inside him; it built and built but it wouldn’t come out of his lungs. He felt a sudden nausea rising within him and thought he might vomit right there.

Other ghouls were moving in on him too. He knew they must be but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Uncle as he shuffled toward him. The sword that was still lodged in his stomach slowly worked loose with Uncle’s jerking movements until it fell into the dirt at his feet, claggy dust-thickened ooze spilling out from the wound. Squid looked at the blade at Uncle’s feet, and a cold panic ran through him when he saw what rested in the sand next to it. He felt for the key around his neck but sure enough, it was gone. Because there it was beneath the feet of his ghoulish uncle.

Cadbury burst into the slowly shrinking space around Darius and Squid.

“Get on,” Max called.

“My key,” Squid said, vaguely gesturing in the direction of Uncle and the other ghouls that were stumbling over the key behind him.

“Just leave it and come on!” Max said impatiently. “There’s no time.”

Darius was already climbing up onto Cadbury’s back. Squid was looking toward the small object as it was trodden deeper into the sand.

“It was my mother’s,” Squid said, not necessarily to Max and Darius.

“It’s not important, you little turd,” Darius said encouragingly.

“It is,” Squid said. He couldn’t have said why, but he knew the key was important, something about it told him so. He scrambled to his feet, sand kicking out behind him.

“Thank the Ancestors,” Darius said. “The idiot is coming.”

“No, he’s not,” Max said.

Squid was terrified, he was perfectly well aware of this, in fact he was utterly petrified, but still these feelings seemed distant. He forced aside the thought that one of these monsters was Uncle and moved toward the ghouls as if some external force was pulling his muscles and pushing his bones. Some part of him realized that all this had to do with the key. He knew with sudden certainty that it was much more than just a keepsake his mother had left him. In an act that was the exact opposite of what Squid would once have believed he could do, he ran headlong into the ghouls and dived at his uncle’s feet, causing him and several other ghouls to topple over. He grabbed the key through a handful of sand but the ghouls were on top of him. He could feel their cold dry breath as they grabbed at him. He rolled onto his back and kicked wildly to avoid being bitten.

Then he began to feel the weight of the ghouls lifting. He realized his eyes were closed and when he opened them he saw Max and Darius hacking and slashing at the ghouls, actually grabbing them and pulling them off him. When they could reach him they grabbed his arms and pulled him up.

“You’d better not have been bitten,” Max said as they ran toward Cadbury who, loyal to the end, was waiting for them even as the ghouls closed in.

Squid looked behind him, hunting for Uncle among the ghouls, but he couldn’t see him.

“That had better be the most important key on the Ancestors’ sweet damn earth,” Darius said as they clambered, all three of them, onto Cadbury.

Squid, still dazed, squeezed the key in his hand as Max kicked Cadbury into motion. He had to find a better way to tie this around his neck. They rode hard, and at first Squid didn’t know what they were doing but soon he realized with relief that Max was riding out of the battle. Max didn’t bother to fight his way out; he had sheathed his sword and instead just kept flicking the reins sharply down on Cadbury’s neck, willing him to move faster and faster. A few times they managed to get airborne as Cadbury jumped to clear a pile of fallen ghouls. Darius took a few swings with his sword but stopped after he nearly lost his balance and fell. It seemed obvious that Max wasn’t going to stop for anything.

Eventually they were clear of the battle and out in the moat of headless ghouls and corpses of men that surrounded the fighting like fallen autumn leaves, but they continued on. They hit open ground, Cadbury’s hooves pounding through the sandy topsoil until they reached the scattering of abandoned equipment where they had stopped earlier to prepare. But still they continued on. Cadbury was blowing hard, sucking deep breaths in through his nose, and beginning to struggle with the heat and the load on his back. Max collapsed forward, his face in the horse’s mane. At first Squid thought he must have been hurt, but then he saw that he was crying.

“Max,” he said, “Max, stop the horse.”

Squid reached past Max to grab the reins and this time met no resistance. He pulled gently and Cadbury slowed. Even before the horse came to a complete stop Max rolled from the saddle. He landed on his feet and dropped to his knees. His face hit his hands and his shoulders rose and fell in jagged sobs.

Squid slipped down from Cadbury. He was dizzy. Uncle was a ghoul. In all the years of sunburned work on the farm, through all the wood chopping and the plowing and the cleaning and the mucking out of stables, through all the slaps and all the abuse, in spite of all that he never would have wished this fate upon him. Squid’s mind reeled. He vomited.

Max had blood splattered from his waist to his forehead; it covered him in large claggy spots, thick with the dust of disintegrating ghouls. Squid, wiping his mouth clean, stumbled to him. Max looked up at Squid, his eyes brimming with tears, runs of them dripping through the dust on his face. Unexpectedly Max stood and threw his arms around Squid, holding him in a powerful hug. Squid could feel Max’s body shaking with gulping breaths, his wet face pressing into the side of his neck.

“Squid,” he said.

“It’s okay,” Squid said, tapping him uncomfortably on the back with his palm. “It’s okay, Max.”

Darius stood some distance away and watched.

“I had to kill him,” Max said.

“Who?” Squid asked, but he knew.

Max pulled away from his neck and sniffed. “He was bitten,” he said. “I thought I’d reached him in time but they bit him.”

“It’s all right.”

“He was dead on the ground, sucked dry and then … He looked right at me as he stood up. I had no choice, I had to kill him.”

“It’s okay, Max,” Squid said again, patting him on the back. He opened his mouth to say more but then decided he wouldn’t tell Max what he’d seen. Instead he just repeated, “It’s okay.”

“I’m not Max,” Max said as he pulled away and looked Squid in the eyes. “My name isn’t Max,” he said. “It’s Lynn, Lynnette Hermannsburg.”

Squid didn’t reply but Darius, who had been eavesdropping, did.

“
Lynn?
”

“Yes,” he, or rather, she said.

Lynn wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, cleaning the dust-thickened tears from her cheeks. Squid was staring at her.

“Squid? Are you all right?”

“Lynn,” Squid said.

“Yes.”

“Lynnette.”

“That’s right, Squid.”

“But that’s,” Squid started, “that’s a girl’s name.”

“Yes,” Lynn said, “that’s because I’m a girl.”

“No you’re not.”

“I’m afraid I am.”

“No,” Squid said, “no.”

Squid felt his back teeth grinding together. A girl, Max was a girl. He couldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t believe it. There was a feeling inside him, a feeling like hot and cold all churning together in his stomach. His breathing was shallow and rapid. It took him a moment to realize what this meant. He was angry. That was it, this was anger.

“No,” he said again with absolute finality.

“I can prove it if I really have to,” Lynn said, “but I’m sure that would make all of us uncomfortable.”

Squid stared at her. “You … you’ve been lying to me.”

“Squid, I’m sorry,” Lynn said. “I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“I think you should prove it,” Darius interrupted.

“Shut your mouth, Darius, or I’ll shut it for you.”

“Yes, my lady,” Darius mocked, but then his expression changed, and all of a sudden he wore a look something between fear and guilt. He added, “You’re a girl? Like a proper one? Am I going to get in trouble or something? I mean, I thought you were a boy.”

“Yes, Darius,” Lynn said. “I’m an actual girl. Lynnette Hermannsburg, daughter of Colonel Alfred Hermannsburg, citizen of the Alice Inside.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes. “At least I was. I can’t go back to Alice or the Sisters will have me up for treason.”