The Orphan Army (29 page)

T
here was no time to talk it through. Night was passing, and Halflight's bat spies said that the red ship was nearly operational.

“We need to go now,” said Milo, and he realized that he was pitching his voice to sound like an adult, a grown-up soldier. It was no different from what Evangelyne always did.

It turned out that the cave in which they hid was near the bayou. Milo didn't ask how there could be a rocky cave in an area that was so marshy. He figured the word “magic” was going to be part of any explanation, so he left it for later.

They emerged from between the tangled roots of an old cypress tree, and when Milo turned back to look for the door, there was none to be seen.

Cool.

The night was lit by starlight, and when they passed under the canopy of overlapping tree limbs, Halflight popped small fireworks in the air to light their way.

This is a dream
, thought Milo.

No, child of the sun, this is the world.

It was the voice of the witch, and when Milo tried to get her to say more, there was nothing else. Even those words seemed to come from farther away than before, as if she was somehow fading back into his dream life.

Would have been pretty freaking useful for you to hang around longer,
he thought.
Just saying.

All he heard in his head—or thought he heard—was a faint whisper that might have been the echo of an echo of a laugh.

Their path took them half a mile from the camp where Milo had lived for the last several months. Even now, hours later, fires burned sluggishly, painting the curling towers of smoke in shades of Halloween orange and brick red. Milo slowed to a stop and stood for a moment, feeling the weight of all that he'd lost. The others, realizing he wasn't following, stopped too. Halflight buzzed over and landed her hummingbird on Milo's left shoulder. Evangelyne touched his right arm.

“I hung around your camp all day yesterday,” she said, “watching to see if you really had stolen the Heart. And I followed your hike into the woods. I saw you with your friends. I . . . I'm sorry that you lost them.”

Milo wiped tears from his eyes and said nothing.

“Was your mother there too?” asked the wolf girl.

Milo cleared his throat and explained about the patrol.

“Then there's still a chance that she's safe,” said Halflight.

“Yeah. I guess. But how am I going to find her?”

No one had an answer for that.

“We have to go,” said Evangelyne. He was happy she didn't call him “boy” again. He was already feeling very young and lost.

They moved quickly through the woods for another half hour before Milo realized that it was just Evangelyne and Halflight traveling with him.

“Hey—where's Mook and Oakenayl?”

“They transitioned from their constructs,” said the sprite.

“They whatted from their whats?”

“I told you before,” said Evangelyne. “Their bodies are only for convenience. They make new ones when they need them. The stones and wood they used back in the cave have been dropped, and they'll make new bodies when they need them. As long as some part of their constructs remain in contact with the earth, they can make a new body.”

“That is right there between very cool and freak me out.”

He caught a hint of a smile.

They hurried on.

There was a whispery sound in the air, and suddenly they were surrounded by a flock of bats fluttering in hysterical directions. Evangelyne and Halflight paused as if listening.

“Oh no!” gasped the little sprite.

“What's wrong?” Milo asked.

“The Huntsman's ship is powering up,” she said. “He is about to take off. We can't let him take the Heart to the Swarm. All will be lost!”

There was no further conversation needed. They ran. Evangelyne moved like the night wind—silent and without effort, never tripping over a shadowy root, never walking into a darkened branch.

Milo, less so.

Eventually, he stopped trying to run next to her and fell into line behind her. Even then he tripped and collided a few times, but far less often. Halflight buzzed ahead, her hummingbird tireless and clearly able to navigate at high speeds in the dark.

For a while the task of running was enough to fill Milo's whole attention, but every once in a while he realized what he was running toward and who he was running with. At those times he was far more likely to run into a tree or fall flat on his face.

This is nuts
, he thought.
This is totally off the chain. Running with a werewolf to fight an alien and save the world. Yeah. Like I ever saw
this
coming. Jeez.

Then Evangelyne suddenly stopped, and before Milo could go smashing through the night, she grabbed his sleeve and pulled him down behind a bush.

“We're here,” she whispered.

They slid onto their bellies and wormed their way forward under the shrubs. Beyond the branches, past the overlapping leaves, there was a faint glow. Milo gently parted the foliage and peered out.

There it was.

The red craft was still there, ringed by yellow and white lights. The eight metal legs all looked sturdy now, and the loading ramp was down. Bizarre figures moved in and out of the ship, carrying bundles and supplies. They were repellent five-foot-tall insects, their glistening shells the color of rust, the emerald lifelights burning on their chests.

As if sensing his question, Evangelyne leaned close and whispered, “Drones. They're like a slave race. Not sure if they even have their own personalities. They do the manual labor for the Bugs. I saw them once before, when my aunt Clara took me to one of the strip mines. There were thousands of them.”

“Eww . . . They're like big cockroaches.”

“What's wrong with cockroaches?” asked Evangelyne.

“Um . . . they're disgusting?”

She shook her head. “You people are weird.”

He tried to figure a good way to respond to that but came up short and let it go.

Then Milo stiffened when he realized that some of the bundles being moved onto the Huntsman's ship were boxed supplies taken from his own camp. Crates of goods, cases of weapons, big jugs of water. Everything that could be salvaged after the attack had apparently been looted by the Bugs. It made Milo so angry.

“They take
everything
,” he growled quietly.

“It is worse than that!” whispered Halflight in a shrill little voice. She hovered between them and pointed. Milo followed the angle of her finger and saw something that hit him like a punch to the face.

In a makeshift pen between two of the landing struts were dozens of figures. Not drones or shocktroopers. Not Stingers, ether. These were humans. Every prisoner had a thin metal collar clamped around his neck, and each collar had a ring set in front and another in the back. The Bugs had threaded these rings with tough cable that connected them all in a long line, one to the other.

Milo recognized every single one of them. Survivors of the camp. Milo counted them. Thirty-eight. Mostly children and older camp followers. No soldiers.

They were ragged, soot-stained, frightened, and desperate.

And among them, unmistakably, was one diminutive figure with pale hair, one tall, gaunt figure with wild brown hair, and one short, chubby figure.

Lizabeth.

Barnaby.

And Shark.

They were alive!

Then his heart sank. They were alive for now.

His friends were penned and bound. Waiting to be taken aboard the Huntsman's ship.

As what?

Slaves?

Or food?

Milo felt his blood turn to icy slush. But deep in his chest, a small and angry fire began to burn.

“Change of plan,” he said grimly.

M
ilo stood up and walked right into the clearing.

He didn't try to hide. He didn't have his slingshot in his hand. No grenades, either. He walked slowly from the night-dark woods to the ramp that stretched like a black tongue from the mouth of the Huntsman's red ship. He paused only for a moment as he approached the steady line of cockroachlike drones. They passed him by without so much as a quiver of their antennae. Milo waited for a break in the line, passed through, and crossed to the pen where the captives were kept. The guard was distracted, looking at a bunch of fireflies that had dropped from the trees and swirled around him. While his head was turned, Milo walked past and entered the pen.

The captives were huddled down and didn't notice anyone or anything. It was as if he were completely invisible to them.

Milo found a place to sit and lowered himself to the ground.

As the cluster of fireflies broke apart, the shocktrooper spotted a trio of drones who were clustered by the edge of the woods. The 'trooper made a series of loud and irritable clicking noises at these drones and pointed to the pile of boxes. The drones hurried over, picked up bundles, and joined the line of shuffling insects.

Satisfied, the shocktrooper glanced at the pen of prisoners and saw nothing out of the ordinary. It adjusted its grip on the batonlike shock rod it held and went on guarding the captives the way it had for hours.

It took another ten minutes for the cockroach drones to finish loading the stolen goods. Then the guard was joined by three other 'troopers. They each held a shock rod before them as they opened the gate to the pen.

One of the prisoners, a tall, gawky teenager with wild brown hair, spread his arms protectively in front of the others.

“Y'all stay back,” he warned, speaking both to the 'troopers and his fellow prisoners.

A 'trooper scuttled forward on four legs and gestured to the ramp. Once, twice. The movements jerky and terse.

“I don't tink so, me,” growled the teenager in a thick Cajun accent. “I wasn't born to be Sunday roast for a bunch of overgrown head lice.”

Then, out of the side of his mouth, in a tight whisper, he said, “When I rush him, make a break for it. Head to da closest bolt-hole and—”

Before the teenager could even finish, the shocktrooper jabbed him in the chest. There was a huge
snapping
sound as the electric charge shot through the Cajun's body. The air was suddenly filled with the smell of ozone and the sound of screams. The teenager dropped to his knees, his face going slack, eyes rolling white. Other guards reached out to try to shock him again, and they would have succeeded if not for a short, chubby kid who caught the Cajun and dragged him backward out of reach.

“Leave him alone!” shouted the fat kid.

The 'troopers stood their ground, each of them making loud clicking noises. They showed the business ends of their shock rods to the rest of the prisoners. They pointed to the ramp. The Dissosterin couldn't speak English, but they made their point with perfect clarity.

The prisoners shivered and wailed, frightened to the point of despair. However, they began shuffling forward, each of them tethered by the collars and steel cable. The fat kid wrapped the Cajun's arm over his shoulder and lifted him to his feet with a grunt of effort. Together they shambled out of the pen toward the ship. Soon all thirty-­nine captives moved up the ramp and vanished inside.

Then the Huntsman himself came and mounted the ramp. The ramp retracted, the door slid shut, the engines throbbed with energy, and the big craft rose away from the Louisiana swamps. The air beneath it shimmered and swirled.

Within moments, the red craft was gone, soaring through the night sky.

S
hark wrapped his arm around Lizabeth and held her close. The little girl was weeping uncontrollably. Barnaby lay with his head in her lap, his face tight with pain.

“It'll be okay,” murmured Shark over and over again. However, the haunted look in his eyes told what he truly felt about their chances. There were dried tear tracks on his grimy cheeks.

“We're going to die,” said Lizabeth in a tiny voice. “They're going to eat us.”