The Fight for Kidsboro (39 page)

“Come on, people! Move! This will prepare you for running through deep snow.”

Then she had us crawl in groups of three. We had to fall to our knees in the snow, crawl a hundred feet to a tree, and then head back. My turn came, and I fell to the ground. A hundred feet suddenly looked like a mile. By the time I had neared the tree, my gloves were soaked through. My hands froze up on the turn. By the end of the course, I had to watch my hands carefully because I couldn't feel where I was putting them. I stood up and went back to the end of the line. I looked at Jill as if to say, “When are we ever going to need to crawl through the snow?”

By the time Pete had finished his round, his face was caked with snow. He acted as if he didn't notice. The entire company had collapsed by the end of the exercise.

Next, we did snowball-throwing exercises. Alice had placed five targets on trees. Each soldier had to make snow balls, throw them, and hit all five targets in 25 seconds. Those who didn't make it would be pelted mercilessly by the rest of the company.

“Roberto! You're first!” Alice yelled. Roberto stepped forward reluctantly. The rest of us bent down and retrieved handfuls of snow. He watched us all very closely and cleared his throat.

So far, the exercises had been much harder for Roberto because of his eight layers of clothing. For him, crawling through the snow meant pretty much rolling through the snow. He dropped to his knees with a heavy plop and wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his soggy glove. He looked down at the snow and waited for the signal.

“Go!” Alice yelled. Roberto frantically grabbed a handful of snow and began packing it with his already numb hands. He packed it four times and created a loose ball. He turned, ready to throw his ammunition, but he got in too big a hurry. His follow-through was awkward because he couldn't lift his arm over his head, and he missed the target by four feet.

“Miss!” Alice shouted.

Time to panic.

He rolled over on his knees to make a new snowball and pounded it between his hands.

“The enemy's coming! Hurry up!” Alice yelled.

Roberto threw a desperation shot from his knees.

“Miss!”

No time to pack now. Roberto frantically clutched some snow in between his hands and threw it loose toward the target. The wind blew it back in his face.

“That's not gonna hurt anyone, come on!”

He lunged at the ground.

“They're coming at you with a catapult!”

He packed with reckless abandon.

“They're gonna bury you!”

He threw.

“Five seconds!”

Hit.

“They're on top of you!”

Too late.

“Time!” We all threw our snowballs, and Roberto was hit on every side of his body. Driven every direction by the force, he fell prostrate onto the ground. It grew quiet as we all looked down at Roberto, flat on his back as if he were about to make a snow angel. Alice shook her head and walked slowly toward him. She stood over him and stared down into his face.

“You're dead, soldier.”

After we all took turns suffering the humiliation of that drill (Valerie was the only one who beat the timer), Alice took us over to our command post where we would make and store our arsenal of snowballs hidden behind two clubhouses and a bed sheet. Making snowballs and putting them in a pile was a welcome diversion from the workout we had just been put through, even though none of us could really feel our hands.

As I laboriously packed and stacked, Nelson came over to show me his plans.

“Here's my anti-missile device.” He showed me a picture. It was a map of Kidsboro with something that looked like a net over it. “A mesh screen,” he said. “We hang this in the trees over strategic targets—our houses, the base, and anything they catapult over here will be sifted into harmless flakes when it hits this.”

“That looks good. How are we gonna get the mesh?”

“I'm working on it. Now, look at this.” He showed me a rough sketch of some kind of launching device. “This is a salt shooter. I have bags of snow salt at my house. This device will send them—a few salt pellets at a time—into enemy territory and into their arsenal of snowballs. Now, it'll take a while, but after a couple of hours, the salt should have melted a good portion of the pile, or at least the snow will stick together and be worthless for throwing.”

“How are you going to get it to be that accurate?”

“I'm working on that, too. I'll test it in my backyard before I bring it over. But listen, this way we can deplete their arsenal virtually undetected, since we're doing it just a few salt pellets at a time.”

“That's brilliant,” I said, holding the plans with both hands.

“Cummings!” Alice shouted at me. “Get back to work!” I guess she figured that she outranked me now that we were at war.

“You'd better show these plans to Alice,” I told Nelson.

“All right.”

After we had made a pile of snowballs about three feet high and seven feet wide, Alice marched us to the little league baseball field in Mc Alister Park and had us climb the backstop. She told us It was good training for climbing the wall between Kidsboro and Bettertown. I had no idea why we would need to do that, since I had told her that we weren't going to attack, but she seemed to think it was necessary.

This exercise was especially difficult because our hands were numb. But everyone managed to climb it anyway.

After that, we went back to the 25-second snowball drill, and this time, Roberto hit three of the targets before his time ran out. Eight people, instead of one, actually hit all five, and everyone came a little closer than they had before. Alice looked satisfied for the first time all day.

Alice dismissed us to our homes as the sun went down. Strangely enough, no one complained about the day, and no one hung his head low. Perhaps surviving the training exercises made us feel as if we had accomplished something.

Maybe we felt like we were ready.

The success of the day before may have been the reason I was a little too cocky for my own good the next morning. Max was reclined in my office chair when I walked in.

“Get any sleep last night?” he asked, smiling.

“Plenty.” This was true. I had slept like a baby after the workout Alice had given me.

“Didn't stare at the ceiling last night, wondering when we're gonna strike and annihilate your little town?”

“Not at all.”

“That's surprising, Ryan. You being so worried about your citizens like you always are. I figured you'd be a little more concerned about their wellbeing.”

“I think you ought to be a little concerned yourself.”

“Oh, really?” He sat up, ready to get down to business. “Do you enjoy war, Ryan?”

“Of course not,” I replied.

“Of course not, no. You're a man of peace, 't you? So, what would you say if I told you we could prevent this inevitable conflict between our two fair cities?”

“How?”

“I'll make you a deal. I'll call off my dogs, we sign a treaty, and the two of us live in peace and harmony.”

“If?”

“If you give me back my wood.”

I wasn't surprised by this request. Ever since I'd noticed that his “school” was made out of bed sheets instead of wood, I knew that Max was getting low on building material. Of course, across the creek, he saw our houses made of wood that used to be his. Naturally, he would ask for it back.

“Are you crazy?”

“It's
my
wood.”

“We bought that wood from you.”

“You don't need it now anyway. You've got your tarp and all that. Why don't you just use that?”

“That's not the point. You're talking about our houses. They belong to us.”

“But isn't it a small price to pay for peace?”

I stiffened. “You're not taking our wood.”

He stood up and smiled again. He acted as if he had come as an instrument of peace and had been thwarted by a war-mongering dictator. He shook his head and said, “Then I'm sorry to say this, but … I'm afraid we're at war.” He slapped me gently on the shoulder, and then turned and left.

8

THE RESCUE SQUAD

A
BOUT THREE MORE INCHES
of snow had fallen during the night, so our arsenal had to be dug out a bit. The footprints from the day before were gone. Evidence of our training had been buried.

Alice put us through more drills. We all ached from the day before, but none of us cared. We all seemed a little sharper, a little more determined, a little more excited about being there. Every person—except James the doctor—hit all five targets before time ran out. We were suddenly a well-oiled machine, a team of trained soldiers taught to protect each other with every freezing, pained bone in our bodies.

Halfway through target practice, I heard a
psst
! I was apparently the only one who had heard it. I looked around, but didn't see anyone. Thinking I had imagined it, I went back to the drill. Then I heard it again: “
Psst
!” I turned again and saw a small bit of a black jacket sticking out from behind a tree. I glanced around to see if anyone noticed me, and then I went to investigate.

It was Marcy.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“You gotta call this off,” she said, her eyes darting all around her.

“Call what off?”

“The war. Just give Max whatever he wants and forget it.”

“Why?”

“He's brought in ringers.”

“What?”

“He went around town yesterday and recruited a bunch of hoodlums—Rodney Rathbone, Luke Antonelli, Jerry Wilmott, and lots of others.” Jerry and Luke were pitchers on the Odyssey Middle School baseball team. Rodney wasn't the athletic type, but he could probably give the Bettertown army some tips on cheating.

“What do those guys have to do with this? Why did they even want to be involved?”

“Are you kidding? This is a war. There might be an opportunity to pound someone. You think they'd pass that up?”