Warchild: Pawn (The Warchild Series) (8 page)

CHAPTER ● ELEVEN

It takes me a moment to notice the
other Republicons slinking out of the forest. They’re as filthy as the man in
front of me. There are holes in their clothes and the rips in their packs are
sewn together with thick twine. What used to be white faces are now brown with
mud, and I can’t help but wonder why they don’t bother washing down at the
river like we used to do every other week.

Then it occurs to me that they
probably don’t clean themselves on purpose. Better cover in the woods. Better
to hide their scent when they’re hunting prey.

I count six men and four women, in a
range of ages, shapes, and sizes. Two of the men are nearly as large as the one
in front of me, and another is a thin as a sapling. Three of the women are
close to Mother’s age when she left, and the fourth is more of a girl, closer
to me in her years.

Finn puts his hand on my lower back
and taps me with a finger in the same repetitive pattern. He’s trying to tell
me something.

Tap, tap, tap. One, two, three. Tap,
tap, tap.

There’s a small voice inside my
head, quieter than my own thoughts, saying, “
Should we run
?” Tap, tap,
tap. “
Should we run
?” It gets louder, loud enough for me to recognize
that it’s Finn’s voice that I’m hearing. I quickly look over at him, and he’s
focused on the group of people congregating behind the man in front of us. His
lips aren’t moving.

Tap, tap, tap. “
Should we run
?”

What’s happening? Am I hearing his
thoughts?

“No, we shouldn’t,” I say out loud. “Now
stop it.”

Finn whips his head around. “You
heard me?”

“Yeah…maybe…just stop.”

The giant Republicon in front of us angles
his head. “What’re you up to?”

I try to distract him. “Nothing. What’s
your name?”

Maybe I’m trying to distract myself,
too. I heard Finn’s voice inside my head. I
know
I did. Something like
that has never happened to me before, and right now, it’s too strange to think
about.

“James,” the giant says, and it
reminds me of a story the Elders told about a little boy and a humongous peach.
I never believed that one. “What’s yours?”

“Caroline. And this is Finn.”

“Caroline. Pretty name. That’s the
same as my—”

He pauses mid-sentence and cocks an
ear. The others behind him turn around, focusing their eyes northward. I look
past them, trying to see what caught their attention.

“Drums,” James says, and then I hear
them, too.

Softer than when I heard them in the
woods, but they’re closer, so close that we can hear them in the encampment.

Boom, boom, ba-boom.

Finn walks in front of the crowd,
unafraid of being so close to a clan of Republicons. He doesn’t understand how
dangerous this is—or used to be—but after what they did for us, maybe I don’t
have to be afraid either. “That’s the vanguard.”

James pushes through his group and
joins Finn. “What’s a vanguard?”

“The lead company of soldiers.”

“How many?”

“Didn’t you see them in the forest?”

“No, we came up from the south. Are
there a lot of them?”

“Too many,” Finn says. “Five hundred
at least. Ten thousand behind that.”

“We don’t have enough arrows.”

“You think?”

I step around the gaggle of
Republicons and move to James’s side. He and Finn are both staring north, hands
on their hips. Man and boy, pondering. I reach out and touch James on the
arm—it’s strange, feeling the need to do this but realizing that I’m touching a
dreaded Republicon. And until this morning, as far as enemies go, he’s all I’ve
ever known. “We have to leave. You and your friends have to go. Get back into
the woods where it’s safe. Hide, or run, whatever you have to do.”

“What about you two?”

“We’re going south, back to the capitol.
It’s my job to warn them.”

Finn says, “But you don’t have an
army, Caroline. The PRV can’t protect itself, not from them. They’re coming, no
matter what. Maybe we should…”

“Should what?”

“Maybe we should save ourselves.”

“Look at what happened here, Finn,
all those people deserve better than this. They don’t deserve to become
slaves—they—they deserve a chance to run. I don’t care who they are or if I
don’t know them, we have to give them a chance.”

“We’ll go with you,” James says.

“You don’t have to do that. If you
go now, you’ll have plenty of time to disappear, and if we travel in a big
group like this, it’ll just slow us all down.”

James laughs. “Slow you down, huh? You
hear that,” he says to his people, “she thinks we’ll slow her down.”

“But—”

“We may not look like it, but we can
move. Fast. And you’ll need protection. If we go with you, if we protect you,
will they offer us a reward?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible.”

“It’s a five-day run from here to
your capitol, and trust me, I know you can’t go that whole way without resting.
No one could. You’ll
have
to rest. Who’ll protect you?
We
will.
And you’ll
tell
them we did. I don’t care how well you know these woods
this far north—have you ever been outside of this valley?”

“Yes. Just over the hills to the
abandoned towns. Salvage runs.”

“Uh-huh, see? Here’s what you don’t
know—there’s more like us, plenty more, that you’ve never seen. You’ll need
someone to walk you past them. You need our help. If you try to go alone, what
happens if you come across more like us, huh, without us around? Or another
band of these little blackcoats catches up to you? What then?”

He’s right. I
know
he’s
right, and I don’t want to admit it. I know the surrounding area well and could
navigate it blindfolded, but I’ve only been as far south as that spot where the
river forks. There’s good fishing there. I was there last week and brought home
three trout that Grandfather and I cooked for dinner. Beyond that, the woods
are a mystery. The scouts never went further than the river fork.

Finn and I could make it on our own,
I’m sure of it. We’ve been scouting long enough to find the best paths and the
best places to hide, where to find food and how to build a shelter to use for
one night.

That’s the problem. It’s too far. We’ll
have
to rest. We could take turns staying on watch while the other
sleeps, but after days of running, we’ll get tired. We’ll wear out, and we
can’t risk the fact that the one on guard might fall asleep.

The Republicons down south may not
know that war is coming, but they won’t care. If they don’t kill us, they’ll
strip us of everything we have, which won’t be much, and I have no desire to
run naked and cold through the woods all the way to Warrenville.

Admitting that we could use the help
is the only answer. “Safety in numbers,” like Grandfather used to say.

And look where that got us. Numbers
didn’t mean anything. Not against guns, not against Captain Tanner and his
goons, not against Hawkins’s betrayal.

Hawkins
. I forgot about him.

He’s still alive, writhing in pain,
lying on the ground with his huge, round belly poking out from underneath his
shirt. Seeing the fat, blobby flesh gives me an idea.

“We’ll go together on two conditions.”

“And what’s that?” James asks.

“Follow me. I’ll show you.”

***

We hurry, because the drums are
growing louder behind us, but it doesn’t take long for James and his gang of
Republicons to help me with what I want.

When we’re finished, Hawkins has
been stripped down to his underclothes and tied to the podium in the middle of
The Center. I want him to be humiliated, and so far, it’s working.

He’s pleading for me not to do this,
to let him go. Begging like a child with a blubbering bottom lip and tears
streaming down his face. “You’ll never see me again,” he says. “I’ll disappear.
I promise.”

“I’m sure you’ll disappear,” I say,
“but probably not in the way you’d like.”

I hang the sign I made around his
neck. The black letters, scrawled on the wood with a burnt hickory log I found
in a nearby shack, won’t easily wash away in the rain. It reads, “Traitor,” on
the first line and “Long live the PRV!” on the second.

It’s my hope that when the vanguard
arrives, they’ll see all the eliminated DAV soldiers and think that Hawkins
betrayed Captain Tanner. I’m taking a huge risk by leaving him alive, but I’m
sure they’re aware that a bound and practically naked man will say anything to
stay alive, and he’ll be dealt a punishment far more severe than what we have
time for.

“Caroline,” he says, “please don’t
leave me.”

“Look at what you did,” I say,
pointing. I shout at him. “You caused this. You were General Chief. You were
supposed to protect us! Why? Tell me why you did it!”

“They can’t be stopped. I had to—it
was the only way to—”

“To not become a slave?”

“I wouldn’t survive, I know I
wouldn’t.”

There’s nothing left to say, nothing
that will change my past or his future. I don’t owe him the courtesy of any
prophetic words. I say nothing more than, “Goodbye, Hawkins,” and then turn
away from him to face the Republicons behind me. Some are smiling at Hawkins, others
are staring intently at me, waiting for instructions, like I’m the one to lead
them.

I approach James. “If you and your
people help us get back to the capitol, if you help us warn our citizens and
protect us from the other Republicons, I’ll do whatever I can to get you a
reward, but I’m a duly appointed representative of the PRV, and you’ll follow
my orders. Agreed?”

“How much of a reward?”

“Whatever I can manage. As much as I
can.” Saving my people’s lives is worth it, and it’s strange, feeling this
strength inside me, making demands of an adult.

James glances over his shoulder at
the ten men and women. They shrug, nod, and say yes when he asks if they’re up
for a hike to the capitol. “Lead the way,” he says.

I feel horrible for what I’m about
to do next, but if we want to survive, if we want to get back to Warrenville as
fast as we can, pillaging my own kind will be necessary. We won’t have time to
hunt or fish. “Finn, James, all of you, find the packs filled with the most
food. Take the ones from the families. They’ll have more than the others.” I
step over to Finn and grab his arm before he can leave. “Grab one for me, okay?
I’ll be back.”

“Where are you going?”

“I have to say goodbye.”

He doesn’t question me. He
understands.

Finn hugs me and then pushes me in
the direction of my shack. “Hurry. They’re getting closer.”

I run back through The Center,
averting my eyes, ignoring the remainders of what’s left around me. I try not
to think about the past. If I allow myself to remember their smiles, their
laughter, the stories they told, I know I’ll break down into a sobbing mess of
tears.

I stop in front of the place I’ve
called home since the day Mother and Father left. It’s strange to pause for a
second and really
look
at it. When you look at something over and over,
every day of your life, it blends into the surroundings and you fail to see all
the imperfections that make it what it is, so now that I’m about to leave it
behind, I see it differently.

It leans to the side, slightly, but
enough to make me wonder how I could’ve missed that for so many years.

The wooden walls have grayed more
than most of the other shacks around us. Moss has taken root and grows in tight
green bunches down near the foundation. Three swirling knots, to the left of
the where the door used to be, form what looks like two eyes and a gaping
mouth. Rain runs off the metal roof, splashing into rivulets along the sides.

I can feel my eyes beginning to
water with the realization that this is no longer my home. By tomorrow, it’ll
be an empty shell, void of the lives that were lived there. If the DAV army can
get their torches hot enough to burn the soaking wet wood, and it’s doubtful
they will, all that will be left is a pile of black, smoldering timbers.

I can’t allow the loss of my past to
consume me. My future is the only thing that remains, and I have to get this
over with so I can move on. Rushing inside, I find Grandfather where I left him
when Finn killed the DAV infantryman, who’s lying beside him. This man, this
invader, broke into my home, and his presence there sends me into an
uncontrollable rage. He violated our home, and I want him gone. I grab his leg
and begin pulling, yanking, trying to drag him. At first, he’s too heavy. I
pull and pull, and nothing happens. I curse at his body, demanding him to move.

A warmness fills my legs and my
arms, this sensation I’ve never had before, and when I yank his leg again, his
body slides across the floor. He’s almost light, like I’m dragging a sack full
of deer hides.