Vault of Shadows (16 page)

“I'll be back,” promised Milo, and then he jackknifed and dove down once more. The flashlight beams were shining all over the place as the survivors tried to fight their way past the gator. Sunlight from outside slanted down through the churning lake water, showing them their route.

But the gator was still there.

It was locked in deadly combat with Mook, who had
wrapped his arms around the thickest part of the alligator's tail. Although the rock boy was powerful and had nothing to fear from the gator, the reptile was much faster and its thrashing body kept bashing Mook against the bulkhead.

Milo dove down below the battling pair and began shoving the drowning survivors out. Then out of the corner of his eye he saw Shark rising from below him, dragging with him a limp form. Evangelyne. Her arms and one leg looked wrong. Crooked.

Broken.

Her eyes were open, but Milo was positive she couldn't see him. Or anything.

There was total panic on Shark's face. Milo's friend was clearly almost out of air. He was dying while trying to save the girl.

How long had all this taken?

Two minutes?

It seemed longer but was probably half that time. Seconds feel like hours when you're struggling to breathe.

Milo kicked hard to reach Shark, grabbed Evangelyne's belt, and together they fought their way through the hatch and out into the lake. Behind them Milo heard a strangled roar of rage and pain. And then there was a bellow of furious triumph.

“Mooooooooooooook!”

There was no time to look. Milo and Shark swam upward. The red ship had settled in about twelve feet
of water, and Milo was sure half the lake was inside his lungs. They broke the surface and tried to bite big chunks of air. It was cool and sweet and wonderful. Around them the heads of the survivors were bobbing. People were coughing and crying and yelling. But that only meant they were alive.

“Can you swim?” cried Milo. “Can you get her to shore?”

Shark sputtered and spat. “I—I think so. But—”

Milo didn't stay to hear what else his friend had to say. He took a big breath and dove back down. He followed the rays of sunlight and reached the flooded hatch just as a broken and twisted form floated out.

The gator.

Mook had not been kind to it. Milo half regretted that the gator had to die, but the alternative was too horrible to imagine. Mook appeared in the doorway and tried to ward him off, but Milo ducked past him and swam as hard as he could in and then up. There was no sound of barking to guide him, and Milo's heart began to sink as he fought to locate the pocket of air.

Above him he saw a tiny figure floating there. Not barking, not swimming. Drifting. And as he approached it, Killer's body began sinking down toward him.

Milo grabbed the dog, twisted around, and swam harder than he ever had in his life. Killer was a limp bundle in his hands.

Mook must have seen him. As Milo swam toward the
hatch, a big rocky hand reached out, caught the strap of his satchel, pulled him out of the wrecked ship, and hurled him upward toward the surface. Milo broke into the air, gasping and sputtering, and turned to hold Killer above him as he began furiously kicking toward the shallows. As soon as he could, Milo stood. He slogged through the water to the muddy bank, then dropped to his knees and began working on the terrier, gently massaging his chest to try to find a spark of life.

“Let me,” said a voice, and he looked up to see Lizabeth standing there. Even though she had just come wading from the water, her hair seemed strangely dry. She took Killer from his hands and laid him on the grass, then knelt and breathed into the dog's slack mouth.

Once.

Twice.

A third time.

And suddenly the dog's little legs kicked out, and he rolled over and vomited a pint of lake water onto the grass. Then he lay there, panting, tongue lolling, with his tail flapping up and down in a pathetic attempt to wag.

Milo knee-walked over to him. “Lizzie—what did you do?”

She didn't answer but simply backed away and headed toward a section of bank where other survivors were crawling out of the water.

Milo bent and kissed Killer's head, then turned to say something else to Lizabeth, but he couldn't see her.
Instead he saw Mook come striding out of the water holding Evangelyne in his arms. A weak, trembling Shark staggered along in his wake and did a graceless belly flop in the reeds.

“God,” said Milo as he got shakily to his feet. He hurried over to where Mook was easing Evangelyne down onto thick grass. “Is she alive?”

“Mook,” said the rock boy doubtfully. Milo reached past him and pressed fingers against the girl's throat.

There it was. A pulse. Surprisingly strong despite the obvious injuries. Milo assessed the damage. Evangelyne's left forearm was badly broken, with the ends of bones nearly ripping through the flesh. Both legs seemed to be more crushed than snapped, which meant that there could be multiple fractures. Her clothes were torn and Milo could see long rips in her skin. She'd been on the side of the bridge closest to where the hull had hit the lake bottom, and the collapsing wall must have crushed her. Milo was no doctor, but from what he could see he didn't think there was even the slightest chance of her ever walking again. Not without a lot of special surgery.

He looked wildly around and saw other survivors kneeling over the badly wounded, each of them fighting their own fear, hurt, and exhaustion to give what first aid they could. Iskiel lay on his back at the edge of the water and Milo couldn't tell if he was even breathing. It was a disaster, and Milo was not at all certain that he and his friends would survive it.

“From caring comes courage.”

—L
AO
-T
ZU

FROM MILO'S DREAM DIARY

I keep dreaming about the lonely little kid living in some strange place called Gadfellyn Hall. I don't know his name or anything about him.

Not until the dream tells me.

All I know is that the dream gets more real every night. And in my dreams I'm reading his story. But it's not like I'm sitting there with a book on my lap. I can hear the story in my head, but it's like I'm telling it to myself.

Does that even make sense?

T
he day was filled with horrors.

And even though none of those horrors involved more Bugs or Stingers or spaceship battles, the horrors were almost more than Milo could bear.

Friends of his were hurt. Bleeding. Broken.

Dying.

Barnaby and Evangelyne were the worst. They lay side by side on beds of soft grass and leaves. Milo didn't care one bit if Oakenayl would have disapproved of him cutting leafy branches down to provide comfort for them. The tree spirit wasn't here, and when he'd had a chance to offer help, all he'd done was walk away. At that moment Milo would have been happy to turn Oakenayl into a nice rocking chair. Or a campfire. The creep.

Iskiel woke from his daze and slithered through the makeshift camp, using his stored fire to ignite the gathered wood. Apparently he didn't care much what Oakenayl might think either.

Mook, likewise, did everything he could. True to his rocky nature he was tireless and steadfast. He carried the wounded into the woods and helped construct
the shelters. And when hungry alligators came sniffing around, Mook picked them up and hurled them into the center of the lake. None of them came back.

The mosquitoes did, though. They swarmed in and brought squadrons of blowflies with them. And as the day wore on, the heat seemed to flow directly out of an oven. The trickiest and most unnerving part of the day for Milo was helping Shark set Evangelyne's broken bones. It was horrific work that made her scream. The pain woke her up, and then the shock slammed her back down into her personal darkness.

When they were finished, Shark sagged back, his face gray and sweaty, his eyes glassy and filled with fear. “That . . . was . . .”

He couldn't finish, and didn't need to. Milo wanted to throw up.

Mook stood over her, standing watch and clearly feeling as helpless as they did.

“Mook?” he inquired softly.

“I don't know,” said Milo. “She got hurt before, when we were fighting the Huntsman, but when she transformed she got better.”

“Then that's what she has to do,” said Shark. “Go all wolfy.”

“Right, but she's unconscious and I'm not really sure if she's strong enough to do her transformation.”

They looked up at Mook.

“Is she?” asked Shark.

The rock boy spread his hands and shrugged his stony shoulders uncertainly. “Mook?”

As he got to his feet, Milo said, “Mook, could Halflight help her? Could she? Do you know where she is? Can we, I don't know,
call
her?”

The rock boy looked away as if not willing to meet Milo's eyes. “Mook,” he said unhelpfully.

“We need help,” insisted Milo.

“Mook,” said the rock boy again, very softly. He turned and walked over to the bank and stood looking out across the water.

Shark, who had overheard, also got to his feet, and wiped his bloody palms on his jeans. He still had no shirt, and his brown skin was crisscrossed with pink scratches and shallow cuts. Nothing that needed stitches, though. Normally Shark would be terribly embarrassed to be seen without a shirt, but the circumstances had canceled that out. “What was that all about?”

“I don't know,” said Milo. “None of them will tell me what's wrong with Halflight. Or where she is.”

“You think she's dead and they're just not saying?”

“I don't know. I mean . . . why would they?”

“Don't ask me.”

They looked around at the big forest. Some of the trees were young, having grown wild since the invasion. Others were very old, suggesting that for the most part these woods had always been here. That might mean it
was state forestland, a park, or the forested edge of someone's property.

“Where do you think we are?” asked Milo, but Shark was one step ahead of him. He removed his compass from a pouch on his belt and studied it. He turned in a slow half circle and then pointed.

“Okay, our old camp is behind us, so Mandeville has to be north and a bit west of where we're standing.”

“How far?”

“No idea. C'mon, let's see if we can find a landmark.”

They walked back to the water's edge and peered through the gloom. The clouds were getting thicker as twilight had begun working its way toward them, and the air smelled like rain. A thick mist was drifting across the lake, but Milo could make out something big and angular farther along the bank. He tapped Shark and pointed.

“Is that the causeway?”

Shark made a sour face. “What's left of it.”

The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, according to their geography teacher, used to be one of the longest bridges in the world. Nearly twenty-four miles. It once connected Metairie, near New Orleans in the south, to Mandeville in the north. That was before the Dissosterin hive ships arrived. Now all that remained were the steel and concrete supports and stubby, jabbing shards of the roadway. The rest had been blasted down to prevent human resistance fighters from moving troops and
equipment. The bridge was crammed with an entire army division when the pulse weapons opened up on it. All those brave soldiers and all those tanks and fighting vehicles had plunged into the water. New Orleans fell the following day, and now a hive ship hovered over it, though currently the monstrous craft was hidden by the clouds.

It was the same hive ship in which Milo and the Orphan Army had fought the Huntsman.

“I'm spitballing it,” said Shark, “but I think we're somewhere in St. Tammany Wildlife Refuge. Nothing else makes sense if we're this close to the causeway.”

“The EA team was supposed to be hiding out in the basement of an old church,” said Milo. “Our Lady of the Lake at the intersection of Lafitte and Jefferson, about a mile east of the causeway. I remember that much, but not much else because my map got soaked.”

“Can't be more than seven or eight miles from here. If we can get there, we can find it,” said Shark confidently. They looked at the thick clouds. “Question is, do we go now before it's dark, before the rain and all, or do we go at first light?”

As if contributing a suggestion to their conversation, Barnaby uttered a pitiable moan. The boys looked at him and then each other.

“Now,” they said at the same time.

But Shark hesitated. “Both of us, though? I think you should stay here.”

“No,”
Milo said at once. “No way I'm going to wait here. I'd go nuts if I had to just sit and wait.”

“But one of us should—”

“I agree,” said Milo, “which is why I'm going and you're staying.”

“Whoa! I didn't mean that.”

“I know, dude. But let's face it, you don't have any equipment except what's on your belt, you got no shirt, and I can move faster.”

“Why, because I'm fat?” demanded Shark, offended.

Milo grinned. “No, because nothing can catch me when I'm scared, and I've never been this scared before.”

Shark angrily kicked a stone into the water. He had his fists balled and his chin stuck out as he fought for some argument that would trump what Milo had said. He kicked another, larger stone way out into the water.

“This really, really,
really
sucks.”

“Yeah,” agreed Milo, “it really, really, really does.”

They spent a few precious minutes going through the meager equipment and supplies belonging to the survivors. The bulk of their supplies had gone down with the ship, including most of the pulse pistols Milo had scavenged from the attack on their camp. He also had the Dissosterin grenades and knives. No food, though, except for some waterlogged power bars and whatever they could find in the nearby woods.