The Orphan Army (6 page)

The egg got brighter all of a sudden. Then it seemed to shut off and go dark. Not completely dark, though, because when I looked real close I could still see a little spark. But even that was creepy, because the spark moved. Wiggled, like a maggot.

The witch said, “Now you've done it.”

All the other eggs on the plate did the same thing. They all started getting dark.

“They'll hate you for this,” said the witch. “That's the only emotion they have left. They'll hate you and they'll never stop looking for you. They'll tear up mountains to find you.”

“What's going on?” I said. “Why is this happening?”

“The world is broken,” she said. “The people of the sun—your people, my child—hammered in the first cracks. Now the Swarm has come from behind the stars to kill what is already dying.”

I told her I didn't know what that meant. And I told her that it wasn't true, because even though I didn't understand her, I didn't want what she said to be true.

“The truth is the truth,” she said. Then she reached out and touched me. Her hand was cold and damp, like she was dead. So creepy. She said, “The world does not want to die.”

That really scared me. “It can't die!” I said.

“It can. But it wants to fight back. It needs an army, child. It needs champions.”

“Like who? My mom is a good fighter.”

“The world needs a hero.” And the way she said it, I knew she meant me, which is stupid. I told her how stupid that was.

The witch squeezed my arm. “You are a dreamer, child of the sun, but it is time to wake up and take a stand. Will you fight to save the world?”

“Yes,” I said, but just saying that scared me silly. I didn't know what I was saying.

Then she said, “The world is always half in shadows and half in the sunlight. That's what makes a world. If there were only shadows, the world would die in the cold. If there was only sunlight, it would burn up. It needs both sunlight and shadow to survive. Do you understand?”

I said no, I didn't.

She asked, “Would you walk in the shadows if it meant saving the world?”

I turned away to find Mom and Dad, to tell them about this crazy old lady. But even though I kept yelling at them, they didn't hear me.

When I turned back to the witch, she was gone.

That's when everyone at the table seemed to all hear the thunder at the same time. Except that we all knew it wasn't thunder.

We all looked up and saw that there was a dark rain cloud up there. Then the rain cloud broke open and something came out of it.

Something big and dark.

A hive ship.

It wasn't alone, though. There were a hundred drop-ships and one red one. That's weird because the Bug ships aren't any color. Just metal colored. This one was dark red and it scares me more than anything. Even more than the hive ships. That one flew right toward us.

Then all the ships began shooting and everything caught fire.

H
ey, loser,” said a voice, and Milo jumped three feet in the air.

He landed, whirled, and glared as a big chunk of the shadows detached itself from the gloom between the storm-darkened trees. It resolved into a shape that was short and almost as wide as it was tall. Except for height, everything about Shark was big. Big hands, big feet, big belly, big neck, and a head that looked like a big bucket. Skin the color of dark chocolate, intensely brown eyes flecked with gold, and hair that—after he lost a bet last week—was tied into neat little cornrows.

William Sharkey. Shark to everyone.

A second, much smaller shadow followed at his heels. Killer. A tiny Jack Russell terrier Shark's aunt Jenny had brought back from a patrol. It was about the size of a good meat loaf and seemed to think that all humans existed to either feed him or pet him. In Milo's experience, most humans tended to accept this as the way things should be.

“Yo,” called Shark, grinning broadly enough to show a lot of teeth. “Wow. What's your damage?”

Milo cleared his throat. “Oh. Hey.”

Shark ambled up, hands shoved into his pockets. He glanced at Milo's face. “Geez, what's wrong with you, dude? You look like you seen a ghost.”

Milo pointed to the clearing. “What's wrong? Didn't you see it?”

“See what?” Shark was the same age as Milo. Almost twelve. Though unlike Milo, Shark already had the beginnings of black smudging on his upper lip. He had armpit hair, too. A lot of it. As the camp cook, Mr. Mustapha, once said, “Shark didn't hit puberty. Puberty ran that boy down with a truck.”

“The wolf!” exclaimed Milo. “And the girl?”

“What wolf? What girl?” Shark began to smile, waiting for this to turn into a joke. When it didn't, he said, “You serious?”

Milo explained what happened. Not all of it, though. He told him the bare facts—finding the crash, seeing the eyes, meeting the girl, being grabbed, then seeing the wolf. For reasons he couldn't even explain to himself, he didn't go into all the details. He found himself deliberately holding some things back and didn't know why.

He told Shark about Oakenayl and the orphans and all of that, but he didn't mention the witch. Not yet, even though the girl's words rang in his head.

Tell them the witch was right.
That's what she'd said. He tried to tell himself that there was no way she could possibly have meant the Witch of the World, that strange old crone who'd been haunting his dreams.

Though . . . more than once things from his dreams had appeared in the waking world. This was one thing he did
not
want intruding into real life. A witch? Seriously. No.

It all sounded too bizarre, too crazy, and he knew Shark—who was very smart and very sharp—would ask a lot of questions that Milo simply could not answer. The whole story would go into his dream diary. That's where he always stored away the absolute truth.

Even the abbreviated version of the story was strange enough, though. As Shark listened, his face became more serious. When Milo was done with his story, Shark grunted.

“Okay, that's really, really weird.”

“I know.”

“You never saw who grabbed you? This Oakenwhatever jerk?”

“Oakenayl, and . . . no. Or whoever was with him. Had to be a bunch of them.”

“And that Heart of Darkness stuff? That make any sense to you?”

“Absolutely none.”

“That's . . . nuts.”

“I know.”

They stood there for a moment in silence, neither of them knowing how to talk about it.

“You sure the girl wasn't from camp?” asked Shark. “There's two new rogue families that just came in from—”

“She's not from camp. I never saw her before.”

“She cute?” asked Shark, who was starting to take some interest in girls as girls rather than as other kids.

Milo, who didn't much care about any of that, simply shrugged.

“Is she or isn't she?”

“I guess. For a freak. But that doesn't matter, Shark. She's out here all alone, and she's totally loony-bird crazy. Not to mention there's a freaking wolf out there.”

Shark gave him a sideways look. “And you're sure it was a wolf?”

“I think so.”

“Could it have been a husky? Or a malamute? Maybe an Akita? They look like wolves.”

“It was a wolf.”

Shark laughed. “In Louisiana?”

“Yeah.”

“No way, dude. There aren't any wolves around here.”

“Yeah, well, there weren't Stingers or alien invasion fleets either,” retorted Milo, “until there were.”

“Oh, so you're saying it's an alien wolf? Did it have a green lifelight?”

“No. And I'm not saying it was a Bug.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I'm saying I don't know
what
it was.”

“I never heard anyone in camp talk about wolves,” mused Shark. “None of the guys on patrol ever said anything. Barnaby never said anything.”

“Maybe it just got here,” said Milo. “I really don't think it's Dissosterin at all. Maybe it came from somewhere else?”

“Where?” asked Shark. “Mars? Jupiter? Uranus?”

He deliberately mispronounced the last one.

“No, blockhead. I mean somewhere else in America. You heard about the fires and the attacks up north? People are clearing out of whole areas. Maybe animals are, too.”

Shark thought about it and gave a shrug of agreement. He wore a cut-off denim vest over a sweat-soaked T-shirt with O
LE
M
ISS
printed on it in faded letters. His jeans were as heavily patched as Milo's, and their sneakers had been looted from the same destroyed shopping mall. He was carrying a chunk of twisted metal that was smoke-stained and pitted. He dropped it unceremoniously on the ground.

“Okay. So maybe it
was
a wolf. So what? Why are you obsessing on it? Why's that more important than someone nearly choking you to death?”

“It wasn't that bad,” lied Milo. He wasn't sure why he lied, but he passed it off as if it were nothing of any real consequence. “Just a couple of refugees out in the woods. They didn't hurt me. I'm okay.”

Shark gave him a shrewd glance. “You don't look okay.”

“I am.”

“You don't sound okay, either.”

“Will you let it drop? I'm fine.”

Shark held his hands up. “Okay, okay. Don't bite my head off—
boy
.”

“Shark . . . ,” warned Milo.

His friend chuckled, then added, “Seriously, dude, I think you should tell Barnaby.”

Milo shrugged. “If I do that, then we're going to spend the rest of the day looking for that girl, and we're not going to get any salvage done.”

“So?”

“So, that's not why we came out here.”

Shark snorted. “Oh, suddenly you're Mr. Salvage, and getting jumped in the woods by a pack of weirdos is nothing?”

“I'll tell my mom about it when we get back, okay?”

Shark sighed but didn't press him on it. However, he continued to search Milo's face with skeptical eyes.

Milo avoided his gaze by squatting down to scratch Killer's neck. “Hey, boy, catch any Bugs lately?”

Killer gave his hand a thorough licking.

Shark walked over to the far side of the clearing and looked at the ruined pyramid. Milo rose and joined him. They both clicked on their flashlights and stood looking at the thing that had caused the girl such distress.

“A pyramid?” murmured Shark. “In the swamp?”

“Yeah,” said Milo. “Weird, huh?”

“What do you think it is?” asked Shark.

The shrine.

That's what the girl had called it, but Milo didn't say that to Shark. His friend was already looking at him like he was nuts.

“I don't know.”

Without realizing it, they had begun speaking in hushed voices.

With both lights on it, Milo was able to pick out details of the shrine he'd missed earlier. Aside from the carved stones, there were small figures made from woven cane. They looked like corn dollies, but smaller and stranger. Their faces were smeared with colored pigment in dark reds and browns and greens. Despite the unseasonable heat of the day, Milo shivered.

Shark began to reach for one, but Milo touched his hand.

“Don't.”

His friend glanced at him, then withdrew his hand without making a joke or asking a question.

Keeping their hands back, they both leaned toward the stones and peered down to see that there was a small empty space revealed by the top stones being knocked off.

“Hunh,” grunted Shark. “Kind of looks like there was something in there.”

Milo said, “The Heart of Darkness is gone. I think this is what she meant.”

Shark gave him an uneasy look, then nodded slowly. “So weird.”

They studied the empty space inside the broken pyramid. Whatever had been in there was smaller than a tennis ball. It was impossible to tell if it was round or square. The stones were too badly knocked out of shape to make that call. However, the insides of some of the stones were glazed to a glasslike finish.

“See that?” he said, pointing.

Shark nodded. “The stone's melted. Maybe the crash melted it.”

“No,” said Milo. “Whatever hit the pyramid crashed over there. This thing was hit by debris, but this area wasn't on fire. I think whatever was inside did this.”

“Inside?” echoed Shark; then he cut a look at Milo. “The Heart of Darkness?”

“Maybe. Whatever that is.”

“How, though?”

“I don't know.”

They looked at each other.

“That's freaky.”

“You think?”

After a few seconds, Shark leaned back and said, “Is it me or is it like . . .
cold
. . . all of a sudden?”

Milo shook his head. Not in denial, but because he was feeling the same thing. He took a couple of steps back and, even though he was still in the shadows under the trees, it was definitely warmer. Twenty degrees warmer, or more. Nearly eighty. Then he stepped forward again, and in the space of two paces, it dropped down to a chilly sixty. Or maybe colder. The humidity stayed the same, but in the heat, it was normal swamp air, and near the pyramid, it was clammy and sticky, like being in a damp root cellar.