The Orphan Army (11 page)

The Dissosterin targeted those next.

The military fought back. Everyone's military did.

Dad said that there were some mistakes at first. The Americans thought that it was an invasion by the Chinese or North Koreans. The Chinese and North Koreans thought it was the Americans. The British thought it was the Russians. The Israelis and the Arabs thought it was each other. That was bad. Dad said that a lot of countries launched missiles—­some regular, some nuclear—and did almost as much damage to the world as the aliens were doing. Maybe more. Dad called it “typical human paranoia.”

Milo barely understood that because when he was six he didn't know much about those countries. Since the invasion, the whole idea of a “country” was kind of dumb. It was all “the world” or “Earth” or just “us.” The humans and the Bugs.

Us and
them.

The adults in camp, though, still sometimes talked about things as if the world were the way it was when they were growing up. Borders and all that. Milo understood that it had mattered to them at the time. It had mattered in the first hours of the invasion. Borders mattered a lot in the kinds of war that happened before the hive ships arrived.

Soon, though, everyone knew that this wasn't the kind of war anyone on Earth had ever fought before. All of the things countries and people used to fight about suddenly didn't matter. Everyone was being attacked.

Everyone.

So, everyone tried to fight back.

The next wave of missiles were launched against the
real
enemy.

People said that some of those missiles did their job, though Milo had never seen a wrecked hive ship.

Mom made sure of that.

There were plenty of other wrecks, though. The aliens were winning, but they were having to work really hard at it. Humans—especially now that they were all working together—were hard to beat.

Earth Alliance camps like this one were key to human survival. They were combination homes, training centers, repositories of scavenged tech, research and development field stations, and schools. The camps were always moving, though. Settling down and planting roots was too dangerous. The Dissosterin were always hunting.

Their camp was always moving in order to scavenge new tech, launch strategic strikes, and avoid detection. It was the ultimate game of hide-and-seek.

Milo walked over to the duty officer's tent and told him about the girl. Not the whole story—because he didn't think anyone would believe it—but the basic facts.

“You think she's a rogue?” asked the officer.

“I don't know,” admitted Milo. “Maybe.”

The officer had Milo sit with a soldier who used to be a police sketch artist back when there were police. The result was a good likeness of the girl. Milo took it and pinned it to the side of the food cart, where pictures of all suspected rogues and refugees were placed. That way everyone would see it and be on the lookout for a lost girl.

Feeling depressed about his mom and thoroughly confused about the events at the crash site, he drifted around the fringes of the camp, making a couple of slow circuits before ending up near the food cart again. Spending time inside his thoughts helped only a little. The day still made no sense.

Something moved, and it snapped Milo momentarily out of his glum thoughts. He peered into the shadows near the old falafel cart that was used as a portable kitchen for the camp.

Was someone there?

For a moment—just one quick moment—he thought he saw a familiar pair of luminous ice-pale eyes staring at him.

Fear clamped a cold hand around Milo's heart, and his breath caught in his throat.

The wolf!

There was a wolf right here in camp.

Though in that split second, the word in his head wasn't “wolf.”

It was a
rougarou.

What was it Barnaby had said?

If you knew someone's true name, you could stir it up like ingredients in a gumbo pot. Dat's how dey make a spell. Dat's how dem bad people control you.

Milo reached for his slingshot and dug a sharp stone out of his pouch. He opened his mouth to give the owl cry that was the camp's alarm call.

Then the eyes were gone.

That fast.

The darkness was nothing but lightless air again.

He found his flashlight and switched it on as he approached the cart.

Nothing. The falafel cart stood there on its bald tires, the window closed and locked. No wolf. No eyes.

No girl, either.

A hand came down on his shoulder and a voice said, “Boo!”

Milo screamed and jumped.

“Geez,” said Shark. “You look like you've seen a ghost.”

M
ilo wanted to punch his friend. Very hard.

Instead he stood there, quivering and breathless, while Shark grinned at him.

“What's
wrong
with you?” demanded Milo. “You keep doing that.”

“It keeps working,” explained Shark. “Besides, I called your name first. Twice.”

“I—didn't hear you.”

“No kidding.”

Milo picked up the flashlight that had fallen when he'd jumped. His fingers trembled as he shoved it into his pocket. “I thought I saw the wolf again.”

Shark widened his eyes and wiggled his fingers. “Ooooh . . . Was it a real wolf or a
rougarou
?”

“Don't joke.”

“You're almost as bad as Lizabeth. She swears she saw a monster today.”

“A
rougarou
?” asked Milo, smiling in spite of himself.

“Nope.”

“What, then? Bigfoot? A
chupacabra
?”

Shark grinned too, because Lizabeth Rose was always seeing stuff like that. She once claimed to have seen the Loch Ness Monster raising its head out of Bayou Teche. “Not this time. She said she saw a Stinger.”

Milo stared at him. “No way.”

“That's what she told Aunt Jenny. It was after we got back from the scavenger hunt. She was off by herself for a minute, picking pecans in the woods. She said she climbed a tree and one went by right below her.”

“Oh, come on. A
Stinger
?”

Shark spread his hands in a “what can I say” gesture. “She said she could see its lifelight glowing. Aunt Jenny had her give a full report to the patrol sergeant. She sent some guys out to look.”

“Your aunt thinks this is real?”

Shark shrugged. “Real enough, I guess, but there was nothing.”

“If Lizabeth really saw one, then how come there's no alert?”

“You know how it is. They went looking because they have to look. Doesn't mean anyone really believes her. Lizabeth makes a lot of stuff up. She could get in trouble for this.”

Milo nodded. That much was true. Once Lizabeth said she saw a Dissosterin shocktrooper in the swamp. She said it was running on all fours, meaning it was using its secondary set of arms as legs in order to run faster. Two full squads were scrambled to check it out and they found nothing. Not a trace. Lizabeth had some serious “alone time” after that. A week of it. And some kitchen duty. Oddly, she never budged from her story. And the description she gave about what she'd seen was eerily accurate. It was still something she could have gotten from a picture or a sketch, but even so . . .

“Like I said, nobody's seen anything,” Shark concluded. “Probably just Lizzie being Lizzie.”

“Maybe,” murmured Milo.

“Be scary if she was telling the truth, though.”

“I know.”

Shark changed the subject. “That wolf you keep seeing? You sure it was the same one you saw at the crash site?”

“All I saw just now was a pair of eyes. Same eyes, though. But, like, how many wolves can there actually be out here?”

“Not counting
rougarous
?”

“Come on, man . . .”

“If it was the wolf,” Shark asked as he looked around, “where'd it go?”

Milo sighed. “I don't even know if it was really here. My head's all scrambled today. Come on. Help me look for prints.”

They switched on their flashlights and hunted around the food cart, but they found nothing.

“Must have been the light reflecting on something else,” concluded Shark.

“Sure,” agreed Milo, though he didn't agree at all.

They walked back to the tent but stopped and stood outside, listening to the night.

“I overheard Aunt Jenny and one of the scouts talking about the two dead shocktroopers,” said Shark after a while. “I was in my bunk, and they must have thought I was asleep. The scout said that the shocktroopers weren't shot or anything like that.”

“Okay, then maybe their flyer was shot down. What's the big?”

“No,” Shark said again. “The scout said that it looked like the 'troopers had been attacked by an animal.”

“Yeah,” agreed Milo, “I heard that from Mom. What do you think? Gator?”

Shark's expression was mysterious. “Something with claws,” he said. “Great big claws that can somehow tear through shocktrooper armor. Sure as heck not your wolf. Whatever this was, it had to be huge.”

Milo thought about it. “Barnaby said he's seen cougars.”

“Sure, okay, but when have you ever heard of a cougar taking on two armed shocktroopers?”

Milo grunted, remembering his mother's similar comment about a wolf taking on 'troopers.

“Besides,” continued Shark, “if it was just some big cat, then why send out a whole patrol? And why would your mom go? She's a colonel. Something like that, they'd send a sergeant like Aunt Jenny.”

Neither of them had an answer, so they stood side by side and watched the darkness. There was nothing to see—the squad was gone—but they faced that direction anyway. Shark had no parents. They'd gone missing during the initial invasion. His guardian was a woman who used to be his kindergarten teacher. Jenny Lu, now a sergeant in the Louisiana Chapter of the Earth Alliance. He called her Aunt Jenny.

“I don't know,” said Milo.

“Yeah, me neither, but something weird's happening. That pyramid thing. Whatever stomped all over the crash site. That wolf, and now this? This is all really, really, really weird.”

Shark's level of distress could always be measured by how many “reallys” he added.

“I wish the patrol didn't have to go out,” muttered Milo.

“I know. This bites,” said Shark. “I mean really bites. Like with big gator teeth.”

“Yeah,” agreed Milo. “I wish I could go with them.”

That wasn't the truth and he knew it. Milo didn't want to go at all. He didn't want to go within a million miles of the hive ship, the crawler camps, Stingers, or anything even remotely related to those monsters. No way.

What he really meant was that he wished he was big enough and tough enough to do something to protect his mother. To keep her from going missing. Like Dad had gone missing.

In a few years, when he was fifteen or sixteen, he'd be allowed to go on patrols. At eleven? Not a chance.

Even though he was three inches taller than Shark, Milo was as skinny as his friend was big. Everyone always made jokes about him having no meat on his bones, about how his shadow looked like a pencil with shaggy hair.

Shark sighed and said, “I wish I could wake up and this whole thing—the invasion, the Bugs, all of it—is just a bad dream.”

“Yeah,” agreed Milo sadly. “I think Lizzie'll see a live unicorn first.”

Shark unclipped the canteen from his belt, took a sip, winced, took another sip.

“What's that?” asked Milo.

“Some kind of herb tea.”

“Taste good?”

“Tastes like boiled snot. Aunt Jenny says it'll help my asthma.”

“Oh.”

“Want some?”

“No thanks.”

Shark nodded philosophically, took one more sip, recapped the canteen, and clipped it to his belt.

“Who do you think she is?” asked Shark, nodding to the picture tacked to the side of the cart.

“I have no idea.”

“I told Aunt Jenny about her, and she thinks she's from a rogue family. Maybe staking out that area. Could be why she told you to get lost.”

Milo grunted. He didn't want to talk about the girl. It scared him to even think about what happened to him. Every time he tried to apply scavenger logic to the experience, he hit a wall. The hands that had held him made no sense at all.

It frightened him as much as thoughts of the Bugs did.

The whole world seemed filled with shadows and mysteries and monsters.

“We have another hike tomorrow,” said Shark, interrupting his thoughts.

“What? Since when?”

“Since this evening. It was on the schedule in the mess tent.”

“How long?” asked Milo, dreading another trip into those woods.

“Five miles, I think.”

“Oh. That's not too bad.”

Five miles was within the normal radius of the foot patrols. Not even wolves could do much against soldiers with rifles.