“I didn’t get a great look at it, Milo, but I don’t think it was a real wolf.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s probably someone’s dog. Maybe it looks like a wolf or it’s part wolf. I don’t know,” said Shark. “But, c’mon, dude. Wild animals don’t just up and rescue kids from alien mutants.”
Milo said nothing.
A few minutes passed. The colors of the sunset became more intense, more bloody.
Shark said, “The exoskel tech?”
“What about it?”
“Do you believe that’s what it was? That rock guy, I mean?”
Milo chewed his lip.
Shark nudged him. “Say something.”
“Okay,” said Milo. “I got to tell you some stuff, but you got to promise not to say I’m crazy.”
Shark ticked some items off on his fingers. “Wolf. Pyramid. Cold zone. Stomp marks all over a crash site. Stinger. Wolf again. And maybe new tech or maybe a man made out of rocks. Crazy? I don’t know, man. How much crazier can today get?”
Milo almost laughed at that.
Then he told Shark everything.
This time he held nothing back. He told Shark every word of the strange conversations with Evangelyne Winter. Her obscure references to the orphans and the spirits of darkness. His dreams about the Witch of the World. Everything Lizabeth said about the round footprints where they’d had the fight with the Stinger. And what he really saw when the Stinger was killed.
It was the very first time Milo had ever totally opened up to anyone. The first time he’d ever mentioned the things he wrote in his dream diary. The whole story took a while. The sunset burned brighter and stranger. Shadows began to grow under the parked vehicles and beneath the reaching branches of the trees. The air around them seemed unnaturally still.
When Milo was done, the two boys sat there and didn’t look at each other for a very long time.
Eventually, Shark said, “Wow.”
“I know.”
“Those round footprints were from the rock boy?”
“I . . . think so.”
Shark grunted. “Makes me wonder if that’s what the scouts found.”
“What do you mean?”
“The patrol your mom and Aunt Jenny went out on. They found two shocktroopers who’d been clawed up and smashed flat, right? Who does that sound like? A wolf and a kid made out of rocks. If that’s even possible.”
“You think I’m nuts, right?”
Shark shook his head slowly, though Milo didn’t know if that meant his friend didn’t think he was crazy, didn’t believe him, or didn’t know how to answer.
Milo never found out.
Killer suddenly jumped to his feet and stared at the sky. His fur stood up, stiff as a bristle brush along his spine. The unused forks on their plates began to rattle again. Then the plates themselves started to shake.
To tremble.
“What the heck is . . . ?” asked Shark, but his words trailed off.
They both heard it then.
A low, heavy rumble.
Milo felt his mouth instantly go dry.
He looked up through the gaps in the camouflage netting stretched from tree to tree over the camp. He could see the wispy clouds far above.
But as they watched, those clouds thickened and darkened. The white edges seemed to boil. The sun grew abruptly dimmer and then vanished behind a pall of darkness.
They were not storm clouds.
This was not thunder.
“Oh no . . . ,” he breathed.
He had never seen this in real life. Neither had Shark.
But in dreams . . .
In last night’s dream.
They stared in slack-jawed horror as the clouds suddenly boiled away to reveal a dark patchwork of fused metal. It filled the whole sky. So huge. So ugly.
So close.
“God . . . ,” he heard Shark say in a tiny, faraway voice.
This was no dream.
It was a hive ship.
Someone yelled, “They found us!”
That’s when the screaming started.
And the gunfire.
Milo was trapped inside the moment, unable to determine if this was really happening or if he was dreaming. Was he still back where he’d found the Stinger? Was this another nightmare?
It had to be.
This was exactly what happened in his dreams. He’d written this down a hundred times. Even though the camp had been moved so often and was so well hidden under the camouflage canopy, the Dissosterins had found them.
That was always the fear. The Bugs never stopped looking. Never. They were as relentless as they were merciless. They hunted for EA camps to steal supplies, to end resistance, to take captives. To destroy.
Milo’s heart sank.
The hive ship burst through the clouds. The swarms of hunter-killer machines. Soon the shocktroopers themselves would come flying over the trees, squads of them clinging to the sides of their drop-ships like wasps on a nest.
This was only a dream.
Except that it wasn’t.
The sounds were different. Everything was more confused. Muddier, overlapping, deafening. There was the stink of smoke in the air, and he never remembered smells from his dreams. Goose bumps rose on his skin. His heart began racing.
Real.
This was real.
Oh my God. This is real!
Suddenly, Milo was in motion.
He flung his plate away and jumped off the tailgate. The ground seemed to ripple under him as the shock waves shook the camp. A hunter-killer drinker—a flying foot-long tick that could suck all the life out of a person—flew directly at him, and Milo swatted it out of the air. The impact numbed his hand. The drinker struck the fender of the truck and dropped to the dirt, the wings beating furiously to regain altitude. Milo stomped down on it. Once, twice, again and again until the metal shell split apart and the green lifelight burst into a cloud of glittering crystal dust. Fire and sparks shot upward from the machine.
The sky seemed to be filled with glowing green lights. There were more of the hunter-killers in the air. So many kinds. More of the drinkers as well as iron-toothed biters that were as big as bobcats and clouds of mechanized gnats whose tiny mouths carried drops of a neurotoxin that could paralyze a grown man. Poppers exploded in the air, blowing apart the camouflage netting, exposing the camp to the Swarm.
“Shark!” yelled Milo as he grabbed his friend’s arm. “We got to go!”
He pulled Shark off the tailgate, but Shark was still so sick and weak that he stumbled two steps and dropped to his knees.
“Go!” gasped Shark. “Milo, run. Don’t worry about me.”
“Oh, shut up!” Milo grunted as he jerked Shark to his feet again, wrapped his arm over his shoulders, and began to half carry him.
A grinder—nine feet long and driven by a frenzied high-speed engine—ripped across the camp, the chain-saw blades scything through poles that supported clotheslines and tents. It whipsawed in the air like a snake, and when it caught their movement, it changed direction and flew straight for them.
“We’ll never make it. Get out of here,” insisted Shark, trying to shove Milo away.
Milo grabbed him and spun Shark’s bulk around and down just as the grinder tore through the air where they’d been standing. Milo felt the grinder’s whirling blades snip off a good inch of his hair as they fell. The hunter-killer slammed into the truck and immediately began chewing its way through the metal and glass.
A jumper—a hunter-killer shaped like a rabbit-sized grasshopper with rotating rows of steel teeth—came hopping toward them. Just as Shark began to fight his way to his feet, Milo shoved him down again and half pushed, half kicked him under the truck.
“Sorry!” cried Milo, but he wasn’t. Not really. All he cared about was getting them both to safety. Killer was barking furiously at the approaching craft.
Milo tore the slingshot from his belt, snatched up a
chunk of torn metal that the grinder had spat out as it devoured the top of the truck, slapped it into the pad, pulled, and fired. The metal was lumpy and awkward, but it also heavy and sharp. It hit the jumper in the mouth from seven feet away. Hard. The steel teeth chomped down on it but couldn’t bite through it. Milo could hear the engines racing as they tried to bite through something as tough as its own teeth.
Milo stepped forward and kicked the jumper in the side of the head, and when it fell, he jumped up and down on it until it burst apart.
A boomer—a machine like a yard-long metal centipede—raced toward them on a hundred tiny red legs. Milo didn’t dare kick that one because each segment of the boomer was actually a small explosive. Killer made a dash for it, barking his head off, but Milo shot a hand out, grabbed the edge of the little canvas harness the dog wore, and jerked the terrier off its feet. With his other hand, he scooped up the boomer, twisted, and flung it at the grinder atop the truck.
He was hoping for them to destroy each other, but as the two machines collided, they switched off and fell inert on the ruined truck hood. Aunt Jenny had told them about this. The Bugs had programmed their machines to go into a temporary safe mode at times to prevent damaging one another. As soon as the two hunter-killers rolled apart, though, their green lifelights flared back on. The boomer scuttled over the far side of the truck and disappeared. A second after it was gone, the grinder fired up again.
Above them, something exploded with such sudden force that the truck rocked side to side on its tires, one set of wheels lifting completely off the ground. Then it thumped down and jounced on its tired old springs. A moment later, a string of smaller explosions popped all around them.
“We got to get out of here!” cried Shark weakly, his eyes wild with fear.
Milo wormed to the edge of the chassis and peered out at a scene of absolute horror. The camp was under full assault. He couldn’t see any place to run to.
Then he saw the worst thing of all.
An attack by hunter-killers could be dealt with. Most of these soldiers had faced that before in different camps across the American south. But now there were shapes moving at the edge of the burning camp. Hunched, nightmare shapes that scuttled on four spidery legs, but instead of the bulbous bodies of arachnids, they had torsos like men. Big and muscular and coated with a blend of their natural insect armor and alloy plating. Each of them had a green lifelight glowing on their chests and blue pulse rifles in their deformed hands.
Milo mouthed the word.
Shocktroopers.
There had to be a hundred of them, with more descending on steel lines from the drop-ships.
Their armor was as ugly and patchwork as their ships.
People were running everywhere. Some of them had guns; others were trying to find guns. The old people were herding the little kids toward the armored vehicles. All around them, and filling the whole sky, were machines of every kind. Dragonfly buzzers that dropped grenades. Short-range jabbers that looked like hornets and attacked with stingers as long as bayonets. Jumpers that bounded like wolf spiders and exploded as they landed. Spitters that shot tiny marble-sized stunner devices from their tubelike mouths.
These and so many others. Too many for his reeling mind to catalog.
It was a full-scale invasion of the camp.
This was the end of his camp.
This was the end of everything.
FROM MILO’S DREAM DIARY
I had another one of those dreams about the Witch of the World. She kept trying to whisper stuff to me. Things that didn’t make sense.
Stuff about evil. Stuff about saving all the worlds. That’s how she put it: “all the worlds.”
I asked her why she thinks I could do anything about that. I mean, who am I? I’m nobody special.
She laughed at me. Or maybe she thought the question was funny.
Then she said something I didn’t really understand.
She said, “Not everyone is the hero of his own tale. But everyone should try to be.”
Before I could ask her what she meant, I woke up.
A figure broke from cover and ran toward him, zigging and zagging to dodge explosions and frustrate any attempt to hit him. It was Barnaby. One side of his face was bloody, but his eyes were clear and filled with anger and determination. He had a Dissosterin pulse rifle in his hands and fired as he ran, blowing jumpers and grinders to fiery bits.
Now, that’s a hero, thought Milo, envying Barnaby for being everything he felt he himself was not.
Barnaby skidded to a halt and ducked low to peer at them.
“Bonsoir, mes amis,” he said as he half slid under the truck. “You alive or dead, you?”
“Alive,” they gasped.
“Well, you’re gonna be dead if you stay here. Dem Bugs mean it dis time.”
“I don’t think I can make it,” said Shark. “Can’t . . . breathe . . . and my arm . . .”
“Yeah, yeah, your arm. Dat’s what you get for standing too close to a Stinger, you. Now, come on, chunky. We got to get your butt out of here before we all Bug food.”
A pair of soldiers ran past the truck, both of them firing heavy machine guns. Beyond them, lost in the swirling smoke, a Stinger screamed in pain.
“Are we winning?” asked Milo hopefully.
“Dat’s a hive ship up there,” said Barnaby. “Dey probably got a million Bugs on dat. Do you tink we gonna beat dat with machine guns and a few rocket launchers, you?”
“What do we do?”
Barnaby didn’t look at him and didn’t answer. Instead he began pulling at Shark. “Come on, Mr. Big. We need to get you out of here.”
“I can’t . . .”
“Shut up and try, you,” said Barnaby; then he flinched as a nearby stack of crates exploded. “We can try for da bolt-hole or head northwest to rendezvous point Delta. Take your pick.”
“What about the others?”
“Pretty much every man for himself,” said Barnaby. “C’mon. Less talk and more walk, you. Or, run.”
When Shark still hesitated, Milo leaned close and said, “You can lean on us. C’mon. We can do it.”
Killer barked loudly as if agreeing.
There was so much fear in Shark’s eyes that Milo didn’t think his friend would—or perhaps even could—move; but he did. He clamped his jaw shut, pulled his mouth into a tight line, and began to crawl.
There wasn’t a lot of room under the truck, and Shark filled most of it. The pipes and struts impeded their progress, but together they crawled through the dirt toward the front of the truck. The closer they got, the more of the battle Milo could see.
It wasn’t good.
It didn’t look like they were winning.
Trucks and equipment carts lay on their sides, or were wreathed in flame, or exploded as the hunter-killers targeted them. People ran and fired.
And died.
Milo saw soldiers go down. Shot. Speared by Stinger barbs. Blown to gray dust by the pulse weapons fired by the shocktroopers. Here and there lay a fallen Stinger or a crumpled hunter-killer.
There were no dead ’troopers, though. Milo saw bullets ping off their armor and ricochet into the smoke. He saw an arrow whistle through the air to strike one in the chest two inches from a lifelight and then be plucked out and cast aside by the ’trooper as if it were as harmless as morning dew. A few of the ’troopers stood on two powerful legs, firing strange little guns that fitted around their four insectoid hands.
He heard a small sound and turned to see Barnaby’s dead-pale face beside him. The Cajun was muttering a string of prayers.
“How come nobody’s trying to hit the shocktroopers’ lifelights?” demanded Milo.
“Dem things are shielded. I hit one dead square with a shotgun, but I might as well have been trowin’ kisses at it, me. Din’ do nothing.” He shook his head. “Dey must know we got some pulse rifles. Dey came ready for dis fight.”
Then they all jumped as a grinder smashed through
the cab of the truck and began chewing its way through the metal.
Downward.
Toward them.
“Got to go,” grunted Barnaby in a voice that was all fake calm.
“Shark, c’mon, move,” yelled Milo as he twisted around and pushed, shoved, and kicked Shark out from under. Barnaby scrambled out, nimble as a monkey. He hooked Shark under the armpit, hauled him to his feet, and instantly they set off together, calling for Milo to catch up.
Milo tried to slide out, but his belt caught on something in the undercarriage. He jerked to a stop, unable to pull free.
“Milo—come on!” screamed Shark.
“Haul it, you!” yelled Barnaby.
“I’m trying!” cried Milo. He tried to tear loose, but he was caught fast. So he dug his knife out of its sheath and twisted it behind him so he could saw at the belt.
Shark and Barnaby were heading for the far side of the camp, where a path led off to a game trail at the end of which was a bolt-hole. BH-2. They kept turning to wave at him, urging him to hurry up.
The world needs a hero.
The Witch of the World’s voice was right there in his mind.
“I’m not a freaking hero,” Milo growled back.
The blade sliced through a belt loop and then through the belt itself, and he dropped flat on his stomach. Free.
“Coming!” he said as he crawled like a frog out from under the truck. “Wait for me!”
But they were gone, and there was too much noise for them to hear.
Screams of rage and pain filled the air as the soldiers and students and camp followers fought for their lives and tried to flee. A soldier ran at him and shoved Milo away from the truck.
“Get back, kid,” he yelled as he brought his rifle up and fired at the grinder. It twitched under the assault and turned toward the soldier the way an angry snake would, its body coiling, blades whirling. Then the soldier hit the lifelight on its central column.
The grinder exploded.
Everything has a weak spot, his mom had said. Find it, and you have a real chance to win.
For the hunter-killers, the green disk was the key. He turned to watch the soldier fire at several other devices. Most of the rounds did nothing beyond surface damage. Until a bullet found the right spot, then—boom!