Alight

  Bang: billowing smoke—my shoulder burns like I ran into a flaming branch.

  It hurt me. It…it shot me.

  (Attack, attack, always attack.)

  I skid to a stop, boots sliding on muddy leaves.

  I face my enemy.

  The Springer takes a hop back, surprised.

  Visca is dead. These creatures killed him. All we wanted to do was talk—these savages murdered my friend.

  My face, so hot. My skin, prickling, poking, from my scalp down my arms, across my neck. My fear dies, drowned by that now-familiar rage. It blossoms up from an internal well of pure hate, threatens to engulf me, control me.

  And this time, I let it.

  The Springer plants the wide end of the club on the ground, fumbles with the bag on its hip. Shaking hands dig inside.

  The club…it’s not like the Grownups’ bracelets that can be fired over and over. The club has to be reloaded every time.

  “Em, come on!” Bishop, calling from the jungle up ahead.

  I ignore him.

  I lower my spear, and I charge.

  The Springer pulls a wad of cloth from the bag, jams it into the club’s metal end.

  I tear through the jungle toward it, spearpoint leading the way.

  Its trembling hands pull a small, round object out of the bag. Thick fingers fumble the ball, catch it, shove it into the end of the club.

  My legs feel perfect, each sprinting step sure and firm. My feet find the soft places.

  The enemy realizes the thin rod is on the ground. It bends, snatches it up along with a few twigs and dried leaves. Three wide eyes snap to me, lock in on my spear tip.

  Ten steps.

  A new scent, like wet charcoal, but so acrid it almost burns—the smell of its weapon.

  My enemy slides the rod into the club’s end, spastically jams it up and down.

  Five steps, so close I see the color of its eyes: dark yellow. Almost like Bishop’s.

  Rod pulled out, tossed away.

  The Springer lifts the club, holds the wide end tight against a narrow shoulder. Wrinkled purple fingers pull back some kind of metal catch, which clacks into place.

  The narrow tip swings up, toward me—

  My spearhead drives through the creature’s belly with a squelching sound that’s almost drowned out by my scream of revenge.

  (Kill your enemy, and you are forever free.)

  The toad-mouth opens. Purple skin, skin that seems young, healthy. Dark-yellow eyes stare out. The look on its face…

  …Visca, lying on the ground, the back of his head ripped apart…

  …Yong, surprised, confused, terrified, betrayed…

  …the pig in the Garden, my knife slicing, blood spraying…

  I yank the spear free. Something wet comes with it, squirts against my chest.

  The Springer’s club falls to the jungle floor.

  A two-fingered hand grabs my shoulder, firm at first, then weaker until it can’t hold on anymore.

  The fish-mouth opens, lets out a deep-throated rasping sound no human mouth could ever make.

  The three eyes blink. I have never seen a creature like this before, yet I know the look in those eyes, I understand the emotion on that face.

  Fear.

  The Springer sags back, rests on its tail for a moment, then slumps to its side.

  Toad-mouth opening, closing. Opening, closing.

  Thick blue fluid spreads across its stomach, staining the rags. Smells like licorice.

  Open. Close.

  Dark-yellow eyes blink once more, slowly, dreamily—I see the life in them fade, then vanish forever.

  A big body skids to a stop next to me.

  “Em, you’re hit!”

  My rage blinks out as if it was never there at all. An alien body lies dead on the jungle floor.

  What have I done?

  I shudder. My stomach convulses—I vomit bitter bile down the front of my black coveralls.

  A low, droning howl from the direction of the clearing: a horn, echoing through the jungle. Another horn answers.

  Bang!

  To my left, chunks of bark scatter, exposing pale white splinters beneath. Four Springers leap over the crater’s edge. Another is already standing still, reloading.

  As one, Bishop and I turn and sprint down the narrow trail.

  I hear bodies crashing through the jungle on our right. A glance—Springers, maybe six of them, moving fast through the underbrush, stopping, aiming…

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Balls whiz through the air, tear through leaves, smack against tree trunks.

  My legs pump on their own, driving me forward, keeping me close to the moving, silent shadow that is Bishop.

  He suddenly turns left, off the trail. I follow him, unthinking. Two shots from my right—I hear a ball crack against wood, see a branch fall. More Springers had cut off the trail: Bishop saw it just in time.

  Another horn rings out from somewhere ahead of us.

  I smell smoke. Not the kind that made me hungry, something else, something heavier, thicker.

  Bishop skids to a halt behind a tree, yanks me in with him. Coyotl appears as if out of nowhere, pulling along a terrified Borjigin. Kalle is right behind them.

  Bishop drops his axe, draws his knife. His hands grab my coveralls, slice and rip: my shoulder is exposed to the air.

  A long gouge, oozing blood, like a single huge fingernail scraped away skin and muscle. My flesh smells cooked, like the meat over the fire.

  “Didn’t hit bone,” Bishop says. He holds my face, makes me look at him. “No time to dress your wound. Be strong until I get you back to the shuttle. Strong and silent. Be the wind.”

  A frozen moment caught up in his stare. I see the real him, he sees the real me. I’m not his friend, his girlfriend, his leader or his follower—we are both soldiers, fighting to keep each other alive.

  Bang! A chunk of tree trunk explodes right next to me, driving splinters into my cheek and neck. Bishop snatches up his axe, plunges deeper into the jungle. Borjigin, Kalle and I follow. Coyotl comes last.

  The smoke smell grows stronger.

  A flash of orange, a sudden heat—in front of us, a wall of fire that makes the jungle crackle and hiss in agony.

  Bishop banks right, and so do we.

  From all over the jungle, I hear the horns calling to each other.

  I feel the heat before I smell the smoke or see the light: another wall of fire rages up in front of us.

  The Springers are herding us, making us go where they want, but the fire will boil the flesh from our bones and we have no choice but to run from it.

  We race through thick underbrush.

  My legs scream at me to stop. My stomach heaves. I’m going to throw up again even though there’s nothing left inside.

  We burst into a wide clearing. A plaza of some kind. Building remnants and tall vine-draped trees rise on all sides. In the middle of the clearing is what looks like a fountain, long since run dry.

  My boots thud on stone tiles, chipped and cracked by age…no vines, no moss, no mud.

  At the plaza’s edges, at least a dozen Springers.

  They level their clubs at us.

  Bishop stops. I stop. My stomach roils, my lungs burn, my legs shudder. Borjigin stumbles, falls hard. He rolls to his back, stomach and chest heaving—he can run no more. Coyotl stands next to me, bone club at the ready. Kalle points her little knife, defiant to the last.

  The Springers that were giving chase tear out of the jungle behind us, cutting off any escape.

  We are surrounded.

  “Borjigin,” Bishop barks, “get on your godsdamned feet or die on your back like a worm.”

  Borjigin finds some final bit of hidden strength. He stands, holds his knife in a trembling hand. The five of us huddle together, weapons ready as the creatures slowly tighten their circle.

  I hear the fires they set to channel us to this place, the crackling of wood and the spitting of
moisture. Thick smoke chokes the air.

  Then, over the fire’s roar, I hear another noise—the sound of something big ripping through the jungle.

  And…the sound of whining.

  The Springers’ orderly approach disintegrates. They turn in place, aiming their clubs into the trees, looking for the source of that sound.

  A giant spider rips out of the jungle and into the clearing.

  Then a second spider. And a third.

  The Springers squeal—a grinding, high-pitched, stuttering thing I’ve never heard before, but there is no mistaking those raw sounds for anything other than screams of horror.

  The first spider scurries forward, kicking up sparks off the stone surface. A pointed foot raises high and plunges down, driving into a Springer’s head, through the body, until the tip chinks into the plaza hard enough to kick up shards of tile.

  Bang!

  Bang!

  Bang!

  Cones of smoke belch forth. I flinch each time, waiting for the tiny rocks to punch holes in my body, but the Springers are shooting at the spiders, not us. My back presses into Coyotl, into Bishop, into Borjigin, into Kalle—we pack together, facing death on all sides.

  Bishop screams out orders.

  “When I say now, we run! Stay behind me, and do not fall. Coyotl, protect our rear.”

  A Springer leaps past us, fleeing for its life. The long hop is beautiful and impressive, but not enough to outrun a chasing spider. The flick of a yellow, three-foot-long foreleg bends the Springer in half like a wet twig, flings it against the long-dry fountain. I hear bones snap on impact. The Springer falls to the ground, twitching, three eyes glassy and unfocused.

  Green eyes…like Spingate’s.

  Another Springer crashes down in front of me, head torn away. The ragged stump of its thick neck gushes blue blood onto the cracked stone.

  Springers flee into the trees. The spiders give chase.

  Bishop’s voice, bellowing, all-powerful: “Now!”

  I feel him go. I follow instantly, letting Kalle step in front of me so I can protect her. We sprint across the plaza toward the trees.

  A spider erupts from the jungle directly in front of us, a ten-foot-tall explosion of spinning leaves and flying branches. Bishop tries to stop too fast; his feet slide out from under him—his head and back smack against the broken tiles.

  The spider lurches forward, torn vines dangling from its legs and body, pointed feet driving down so hard I feel each step. One of its five legs drags limply behind it. The spider towers above us, a specter of unstoppable death.

  I rush forward, plant myself between Bishop and the oncoming spider. I raise my spear and I scream a challenge.

  The spider stops.

  Coyotl is there, his thighbone raised. He shakes with fear, yet he stands beside me. The spider will have to go through both of us to get Bishop.

  The spider doesn’t attack.

  That fast-paced chinking sound again, but from behind. We turn: the other two spiders have closed in. We are trapped between all three of them.

  Kalle and Borjigin struggle to help Bishop stand. Bishop tries to raise his axe, but he can barely hold on to it. The five of us huddle together.

  The spiders are as motionless as the old stone fountain.

  “Bishop,” I say, “what do we do?”

  I feel him shrug. “I was going to ask you.”

  Coyotl’s thighbone clatters on the tiles. He seems dazed. He walks toward the limp-legged spider.

  I grab his arm. “Coyotl, what are you doing?”

  He effortlessly shrugs me off. He shuffles forward, toward the spider, moving like he’s not even fully awake.

  I want to rush in front of him, just like I did with Bishop, I want to attack the spider and save my friend, but suddenly my feet won’t move—whatever bravery I held inside of me has turned tail and fled.

  Coyotl steps between the spider’s long, smooth, deadly yellow legs, legs that are bathed in streaks of blue blood. He sees something. He reaches up slowly—as if a sudden movement might spook the huge beast—and grabs a handful of torn vines dangling from the spider’s body. He gently pulls the vines away, exposing a spot on the yellow shell.

  I see what he saw—the same symbol that’s on his head, that’s on Bishop’s head.

  A circle-star.

  This close, I see details on the yellow shell. Dents, scratches…rivets…rust stains.

  The spider is a machine.

  The Springers killed Visca. They would have killed the rest of us if the spiders hadn’t attacked. The spider outside the wall, the one that I thought bit me…it wasn’t attacking us at all. The spiders don’t want to hurt us—they want to protect us.

  They are metal, yes, but there are no straight lines. The spider is all long curves. Maybe that’s why they look so alive when they move, especially from a distance.

  The yellow color, it’s paint. Rust streaks where that paint is chipped and cracked. Irregular red-brown circles with misshapen globs of metal in the center—the balls fired from the Springer clubs, embedded in the spider’s shell. Dozens of them, far more than were fired just now.

  Around the clearing, I count five dead Springers, their bodies broken and mangled, blue blood soaking into the cracks between the tiles.

  We lost one of ours. They lost five of theirs.

  No…six.

  The memory of my spear thrust comes rushing back. The sound of the blade entering the Springer’s body. The feel of the metal glancing against bone before it punched out the other side. The look in the creature’s intelligent eyes as life faded away.

  Coyotl reaches up, runs his fingers over the circle-star painted on the spider’s thick shell.

  “Like mine,” he says. “They belong to us.”

  One of its legs lies mostly limp. That’s the leg that dragged behind, made the spider move with that funny gait. Coyotl runs his hands over the old, rusted, beat-up metal.

  “The leg is broken,” he says. “Not from a bullet, I don’t think.”

  Bullet. That’s the correct name for the metal balls, Matilda’s memory tells me. And those aren’t clubs, they are guns.

  Bishop rubs the back of his head, unknowingly smears blood across his dirty hair.

  “Coyotl, get up top and keep a lookout,” he says. “Kalle, Borjigin, collect the dead Springers’ weapons and their bags.”

  Coyotl scrambles up a spider leg with balance that surprises me. At the top joint, he stands, arms outstretched, then leaps gracefully onto the machine’s back. Most of him is now hidden by ridges I didn’t notice before—ridges that would protect him from bullets.

  He runs his hands along the front ridge, stops at a triangular notch. Just behind that notch is a stubby metal tube with an opening as big as my head. I see the expression on Coyotl’s face: he’s having a flashfire, recalling something from his creator’s past. He blinks, then wiggles the tube, pushes and pulls at it. It doesn’t move. Finally, he lifts his black boot and gives it a solid kick.

  The tube slides outward with a ringing metal sound and a light shower of dust. It’s not stubby at all: it’s long, longer than I am tall.

  “Like the guns the Springers used to kill Visca,” Coyotl says. “But bigger. This is called…a cannon. I think it’s broken, though. Maybe it’s too old.”

  If the Springers’ clubs shot small bullets, what does that cannon shoot? I look at the other spiders: they have the same ridges, the same triangular notches, the same stubby tube.

  I glance at the ruins surrounding this clearing, wonder what the buildings looked like when they stood tall, when the jungle was pushed back, under control. I imagine an army of shiny spiders. Other kinds of machines as well. Maybe some that fly like blurds. Machines rushing in, cannons firing, buildings burning and crashing, explosions tearing the streets to bits, Springers screaming and fleeing, burning and bleeding, dying.

  “Em,” Bishop says, “I need to dress your wound.”

  He doesn’t wait for p
ermission. He grabs my shoulder firmly, his thick fingers lying on either side of the deep gash. The stinging pain floods in all at once. I’d forgotten about it somehow.

  “Does it hurt?” he asks.

  “Feels great,” I lie. “Do what you have to do.”

  One corner of his mouth turns up. I see pride in his eyes. The stubble on his face has grown thicker—not quite a beard but not far from it.

  He uses his knife to cut my sleeve completely away. He takes a small bottle from one of his coverall pockets, sprays something on the wound that burns even worse than the bullet did. From another pocket, he takes a roll of the purple bandage and wraps it around my shoulder.

  “How do you know how to do that?” I ask.

  Bishop shrugs. “They taught us how to keep each other alive. We need to get you back to Doctor Smith. I can’t lose you, too.”

  Pain in his voice. Not from the cut on the back of his head, but from his soul. I feel it, too—we lost one of our own. It isn’t the first time. Latu, Yong, the El-Saffani twins, Bello, Harris…and now Visca. Seven of us, gone forever. Of those seven, five were circle-stars. They are the first to fight, the first to die.

  “We can’t leave Visca,” I say. “We have to go get his body.”

  Bishop shakes his head. “We don’t know where we are, and the enemy is out there in the jungle.”

  “The pigs ate Latu,” I say. “I won’t leave Visca to be eaten by animals.”

  Bishop leans close to me.

  “You’re wounded and in no shape to fight. We’re heavily outnumbered. Our enemy knows this terrain so well they herded us where they wanted us to go. We try and find that clearing again, we probably die. In the shuttle, you’re the leader. Out here, from now on, you listen to me. Understand? I’m not going to lose anyone else today.”

  Maybe he’s right. If I hadn’t walked to the fire, would Visca be alive? Is this yet another death on my hands? Maybe. But my decision also led to finding the purple fruit.

  Kalle and Borjigin return, burdened down with armfuls of guns and dangling bags. I take the fruit from my pocket. It’s half-squashed, leaking amber-colored juice. I hold it out to her.

  She snatches it, runs her bracer over it. We all watch. The jewels flash different colors, then gleam a shade of pink.