Warchild: Pawn (The Warchild Series) (15 page)

CHAPTER ● NINETEEN

Unbelievably, the night passes
without incident, and we all wake feeling refreshed and ready to get on the
move.

Even Crockett and her men appear to
be in good spirits, but they’re flush with the spoils of pillaging the dead DAV
runners, so I can see why they’re happily singing and telling stories over a
breakfast of trout from the river and wild green apples.

Aside from the rain picking up into
a downpour and drenching the items we left exposed, we’re packing up our things
and getting ready for another day’s march. I even see a few smiles scattered
throughout the grubby, stained faces. Moods are high. We have fresh water from
the river. Fish and squirrels cook over campfires. The smell of searing meat
sends my stomach into uncontrollable growling, but I leave the best nourishing food
for those who need it the most.

I make my breakfast of nuts and
berries, watching everyone. There are so many of these people that I’ve never
met, belonging to the same movement, and I’m at once proud of myself for
getting them this far and amazed at the fact, too. It’s a miracle that we
haven’t lost more than we have. I’m surprised they’re still with me.

I get up and walk through the crowd,
stopping beside a teenage boy and his mother. He’s struggling to get a sleep
sack into a shoulder bag, and I ask if I can help.

When he turns to see who asked, he
straightens his back, puffs out his chest, and salutes me. To do so, his bag
falls in the slurry at our feet. “Ma’am,” he says.

I help him get the sleep sack
secured in its place and then return his salute. I smile and say, “Carry on,
soldier.”

When I walk away I can hear the excitement
in his voice. “Do you know who that was, Mama? That was Caroline!”

Maybe it
is
possible to lead
these people as a normal person. None of my special abilities have appeared
since I was racing through the forest, attempting to reach Teresa in her perch,
and I’m thankful for it. I don’t want, or need, to feel confused and distracted
about the changes happening to my body. All I want to do is focus and get this
long march over with. I want to get my citizens into the hands of someone who’s
really
in charge.

We’re only two days away from the capitol.
The end is close, and the overnight lookouts report no movement at our backs,
save a couple of deer that spooked one of James’s men around dawn.

I give everyone another half hour to
pack up and prepare. It’s too much time, truly, because every second ticking by
is another second wasted, but they need it. They’ve been harried to their tired
bones for days, and a good leader knows when to appease her people.

I walk to the river’s edge and study
the currents. Marla and the village boy reported back the night before, and
there’s no better spot to cross within miles.

We’re good where we are. We’ll go
straight across in thigh-deep water. We can’t get any wetter than we already are.

When everyone is packed and standing
in clusters—cliques have formed of villagers and families sticking
together—awaiting orders and looking expectant, I climb up the tallest boulder
I can find. It’s slick with rain and moss, and I struggle to keep my balance at
first. I know some of them are already questioning my judgment from the
whispers I’ve overheard, and the last thing I need is to fall and look like an
incompetent fool.

I hold my arms out for balance,
secretly hoping that it looks like I’m addressing my people. It’s the first time
I’ve spoken to them directly like this, all at once, as if I’m the leader they
think I am.

I pause to gather my thoughts
because I don’t know what to say. They’re looking to me for guidance, and,
after all this time, I still don’t understand why. Maybe it’s because I’m
wearing the official government uniform of a PRV scout. Maybe it’s because
someone has to be a light in the dark. Whatever the case, I have to choose my
words carefully.

We’ve made it this far, yet
retreating to the capitol doesn’t mean we’ll be safe. Not in the slightest. Not
with ten thousand men marching south who are well-armed. They have tanks and
guns. They’re trained for this sort of thing.

I don’t want to tell everyone that
we’re doing nothing more than delaying the eventual outcome because I can see
something in their faces that hasn’t been there during this whole retreat:
hope.

It’s there in the way they’re
looking up at me with upturned mouths instead of judging scowls. Rain pours,
never-ending, but the mood feels lighter. I can tell that some of them have
washed their faces in the river—their once dirt-browned skin is now white and
pale again. Taking the time to clean themselves is a sign of having something
to look forward to, and I’m not about to take that away from anyone—no matter
how futile it may be.

“I am Caroline Mathers,” I finally
say, lifting my voice so that everyone can hear me. “With the help of my
friends, we have brought you this far.” Murmurs of approval ripple through the
crowd. “It hasn’t been easy, and we’ve had trouble along the way. For those of
you who have been injured, for those of you who have lost loved ones, you have
my regrets, and I’m sorry. But, I only have one thing to say about that—war is
coming. We have made it this far because of our strength and our determination.
We are two days away from the capitol, and I promise you, we
will
make
it. This river is our last barrier to safety. We’ll cross it, we’ll go
together, and then we’ll run. I know you’re exhausted. I know you’re hungry,
and you’re weak, but you have nothing left to lose except your freedom, and I
swear on my heart…that won’t happen, not as long as I’m leading you.” Cheers
erupt, followed by clapping and fists pumping in the air.

I look down to my right. James has
his head tilted back, staring up at me. He’s smiling. To my left, Finn and
Teresa are doing the same.

This approval lifts my spirits, and
for the first time since we left my encampment, I can almost feel what they’re
feeling: that we have a chance.

I scream, “We will make it. We will
survive. We will fight back, and we
will
win!”

More cheers. More joy. More praise.

I’m lying, but they don’t need to
know that. Not now. Haven’t we all heard them before? The false promises?

I lift both of my arms into the air,
fingers closed tightly into fists, and then I watch as their faces go from
elation to surprise. Shouting mouths meld into gaping confusion as they go
silent. I wonder what happened. Did I say something wrong?

Is something behind me?

They’re looking at my feet. Why?

I peek down. I’m floating a foot
above the rock.

Whispers travel from ear to ear
throughout the crowd, and I can make out a single word.

“
Kinder
.”

***

Traversing the river isn’t that bad,
and only a fraction of the group’s numbers have a hard time. They fall, they
trip, they slip on the rocks in the riverbed, but mostly, everyone is fine.

Marla, Crockett, and some of the
other Republicons form a barrier downstream to prevent anyone from washing away
if they fall. I had to promise Crockett and her men extra rations, but they’re
helping, and that’s better than nothing.

I can imagine a time, before the
rains came, when this river was nothing more than a stream trickling through
the valley. With the runoff, it’s thigh-deep in most spots and up to their
waists in others.

I watch from a distance and out of
sight. After my flying exhibition, or whatever that was, I dropped to the rock,
climbed down, and walked away from everyone. The slack jaws and wide eyes revealed
their confusion and uneasiness. More than likely, these people have all heard
the same stories we were told as children. And, like us, we assumed there were
none left, except for Ellery, and even then it was something we whispered about
around campfires.

It occurred to me as I was walking
away that maybe my little display had benefitted me. I don’t want them to be
afraid, but it would also be nice to have them revere me. It makes having them
obey orders much simpler.

However, as I crouch up here on the
hillside, watching them hold their children and backpacks high above their
heads, it’s evident that something has changed.

During my speech, they had hope. Now
they’re in awe. I can tell by how animated everyone is. They’re talking
rapidly, holding their hands apart at just the right distance to show how far my
feet were off the rock.

I left James in charge, and I can
see him on the far side of the river, waving people across, grabbing hands and
helping the feeble ones up the embankment.

Of all the times for something
insane to happen, I had to fly while I was standing in front of hundreds of
people.

I shake my head at how ridiculous
the idea is. I flew. I was floating. There were twelve inches of empty space
between the soles of my boots and the rock.

And I didn’t even know it. That’s
the scary part. What if something like that happens when I least expect it? What
if these uncontrollable occurrences happen while I’m walking across a bridge,
and I fall hundreds of feet? Would I bounce, then get up and act like nothing
happened? What if I lift up, float away, and can’t get myself back down?

I wish there was someone who could
answer these questions for me.

As far as I know, that person died
in the village. Ellery gave me this…blessing, this curse, and then she left me.
Damn her.

I sense movement to my right. When I
spring up and turn, preparing myself, I see that it’s Finn. We haven’t talked
much in the past couple of days. He’s been busy guiding the retreat, and I’ve
been busy trying to be a leader.

“Hey,” he says. “You okay?”

I lean up against a tree and look
down at my hands, as if the answer is contained there. I ask a question that he
won’t have an answer for. “What’s happening to me?”

“That was crazy, Caroline. You were
flying.” He’s excited about it. Of course he is. It’s not happening to him. “What
else can you do?”

“I don’t know.”

“I mean, I saw you do those other
things, like how fast you moved and the way you threw James like he was a
feather pillow…but that down there, do you even know what that was?”

There is no explanation that’ll make
sense, at least none that won’t make me sound like a raving madwoman. “I’ve
been dreaming this same thing each night. I’m in my parents’ hut, only I’m not
there, right? I can see and hear everyone like I’m right there. They can’t see
me though. I see myself as a baby in a crib—this is insane. Forget it.” Why
bother? He won’t understand. It’s a dream. Or was it?

“Tell me,” he says.

I’m trying not to cry. I can feel
the lump welling up in my throat. I don’t have anyone to talk to about this,
and I don’t want the only person I consider a friend to think I’m crazy. But, I
need someone, anyone, to tell me
some
thing. “The dream goes on and
on—they’re talking about whether or not it’s right, whatever it is they plan to
do, and then Ellery—she’s the mystic from our village—she pricks her finger and
I drink the blood.”

“The invisible you?”

“No, the one in the crib. It has to
be me. I can feel my stomach getting full, you know? That’s it, really. It felt
so real, like I was a part of something that actually happened, like I was
seeing the past instead of feeling like I was in a dream.”

“So what’re you saying?”

“I-I think that maybe she turned me
into a Kinder.” There’s no stopping the tears. I rub my cheeks with the back of
my hand, pushing them away.

Finn stares at me so long that it makes
me uncomfortable.

“Stop looking at me like that. I
already feel like a freak.”

“Sorry. It’s just that I’ve never
met one before.”

“A Kinder? How could you? They’re
all gone. Ellery was the last.”

Finn shakes his head. “That’s not
true.”

I roll my eyes and turn away. “How
do
you
know?”

“Well, I guess what I should’ve said
was, I’ve never met
another
one before.”

“Finn, I don’t need this right now—”

He shushes me and points down at his
feet. “Watch.”

I do, and then I stumble backward
and away from him as his heels come off the ground, then the balls of his feet.
He’s on the tips of his toes, and then he lifts up, rising a foot into the air
before he slowly descends.

“Are you…” I ask. I can’t find the
words.

He nods. He doesn’t need to say
anything. I pounce and practically smother him in a hug.

 
CHAPTER ● TWENTY

James takes point and has Teresa
join him. He says it’s to keep him company, to get to know her, but I’m sure
that he wants to watch her every move. We give Marla and another one of the
Republicons the responsibility of watching the sides while Finn and I bring up
the rear. Sure, I’m now the revered leader, but I can’t stand all those curious
eyes boring holes into my flesh.

They look at me as if they can spot
something special, or something wrong, and it’s frustrating because I know
there isn’t. My body is the same body I had a few days ago. I look no different
now than when I sat on that hillside near the lake and heard the beat of the
war rhythm for the first time.

Plus, I have so many questions for
Finn. I want to discuss our secret with him, away from curious ears.

First, he says, “Why do you think I
was so far south when we first met?”

“You told me you were spying. You
said you were following orders.”

He shakes his head. “Uh-uh. I was
running away.”

“You were?”

“All these weird things kept
happening to me, and I thought that if I tried to explain it to anyone, they’d
throw me in an asylum—especially the military leaders. They don’t
like…unordinary. My only option was to disappear.”

“Then why did you go back?”

He grins sheepishly. “I wanted
another reason to come see you again.”

I suspected that might be the motive.
“Couldn’t you—I don’t know, couldn’t you defect like you did this time?”

“Your people would’ve tied a rope
around my neck and dragged me through the streets—once from the DAV, always
from the DAV. But, when I found out about the invasion, I had to come warn you,
no matter what the consequences were.”

“Wait…you were worried they would
kill
you? Why would it matter if you’re a Kinder? Aren’t we supposed to be…I don’t
know…invincible or something?”

“Not exactly, but no, that’s not the
reason why. I wasn’t sure at first. I’d had a similar dream, except I was in a
hospital, and I watched this nurse sneak into my mother’s room. She wore a pink
uniform, I remember that, and when she walked past me in the dream, I smelled
cinnamon. I watched her inject something blue into the baby version of me, just
like in your dream, because I could feel it in my own arm. And, as crazy as it
sounds, on the morning of my fifteenth birthday, about a week before I came to
warn you, I woke up knowing.”

“Knowing what?”

“That I was…special, I guess. I
looked exactly the same, but I felt different. Clean, maybe. Pure. And I could do
all of this amazing stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Superhuman things. Ridiculous
speed. Jumping crazy distances. I can’t exactly fly, but I can float, like you
saw. Um, what else? There are things that I can feel and
know
they’re
true. It’s not like reading minds—more like sensing truth. I learned to speak
French in thirty minutes, so that was fun.”

“Is that a language?”

“Yeah. Dead language from a dead
country.”

“How do you control your…abilities?”

“It’s more like I believe I can do
something, and it happens,
but
, it only works for things I’m actually
capable of doing.”

“Did anyone else know? Did you tell
your parents?”

“Not a soul. My mother didn’t wake
up in the dream, and the nurse slipped out.”

“Why you?” I ask.

“Why
you
?”

“Fair enough. My grandfather told me,
‘
She gave you strength for a reason
,’ right before he died and never got
a chance to explain what he meant. Who gave me what? I didn’t understand what
he was talking about until after the dreams began. Did…did anything like that
ever happen to you?”

“About a year ago, I was buying
apples in a market, and this woman comes up to me. I swear it was the nurse
from my dreams, but she looked older. Gray hair, wrinkles around her eyes. The
only thing that made it certain was that she smelled like cinnamon.”

“Weird.”

“Yeah. She said, ‘You’ll need to
fight one day. Use what I gave you.’”

“Really?”

“Exact words. She squeezed past me,
disappeared into the crowd, and then I never saw her again.”

“Finn, this is… I don’t even know
what to say or what to ask. How crazy is it that you found me so far away?”

“Maybe I was drawn to you. If we’re
the same, then maybe we have some connection.”

“Yeah, maybe.” I stop along the
trail and pick up an ancient stuffed animal that someone has dropped. A teddy
bear with one missing eye and disgusting, dirty fur.

It reminds me of home. It triggers a
memory. “Oh my God, do you remember back in the village? You were talking to me
in your mind. I could hear your thoughts. Can we communicate that way?” Then,
it’s strange to think that he might be able to hear what’s in my head, which
makes hiding the fact that I’m staring at his blue eyes and thinking about how
beautiful they are almost impossible to control.

He shakes his head. “I can’t. And if
you
can, stay out of my head, okay?” He laughs and playfully squeezes my
neck. “I wondered how you knew exactly what I was saying when we first met
James.”

“Why can’t you if we’re the same?”

“How much do you know about
Kinders?”

“Only the stories we’ve heard. The
Elders used to tell us these ridiculous things around the campfires at night,
and we always thought they were trying to scare us. We never saw Ellery do any
of the things they mentioned. She was an old blind woman with milky eyes, not
this superhuman person that could run like a deer and jump like a squirrel.”

“There’s more than that. They taught
us in school what happened. A lot of it might not be true, though, because my
dad says people mold history to fit their beliefs.”

And this is what Finn tells me: back
before the world ended, when the government of the United States still
pretended to have some level of control over their people, they took secret precautions
in case of a real revolution. Things were bad. There was barely any clean water
to drink. Pollution had ruined nearly all the fresh water lakes and rivers. When
snow melted on the mountains, and ran down into the valleys, it was acidic and
undrinkable. The same thing happened with the rain. They had ways of filtering
it for drinking and cooking, but it took days to get it safe enough.

Crops were useless, and meat
supplies had been ruined from drinking the tainted water. The remaining
population, of what used to be fifty states, was on the brink of collapse. Some
place called Hawaii had fought for, and won, its independence. So did some
faraway land called Alaska.

The remaining states wanted change. They
needed help, and the government was either unwilling to assist, or maybe they
were simply incapable.

Something had to bend to stubborn
wills. People were assembling. They were overtaking small towns and complete
sections of cities. They overthrew local governments as if it would make a
difference, as if having someone new sitting behind a desk would cause the
water supply to be drinkable.

At first, the resistance was
minimal, and nothing that the privileged politicians of Washington, D.C.
couldn’t control. They sent in army reserves to quell the uprisings, but where
they saw small victories and a reestablishment of peace, it only served to
ignite the fires of rebellion even more.

The people tried again in larger
numbers, and again they were beaten back into submission. It happened numerous
times over decades, and nothing ever improved. They survived on scraps and
water dripping through a filter. For years, they were quiet and accepting.

Then, a man named Daniel Allen lost
his wife and son to some contaminated food that had been provided by the
government. Furious that the supplies that were supposed to be safe had become
poisonous, he took to the streets, marching from town to town gathering up
followers. It was a quiet, subtle movement of people that demanded for things
to change, but they did it with words and wisdom, not bombs and bullets.

Daniel Allen was furious, but he was
also against violence. He fought with his mind. People understood him. They
believed in him. They left their homes and followed him wherever he went. Their
numbers grew into the thousands, then thousands more.

The government left them alone. They
let Allen’s followers have their say because their weapons were words, and
words were not worth the limited resources. The government had wasted so much
over the years, attempting to stamp out the smallest of rebellions, and Daniel
Allen, at that point, had not cost them anything. The public perception of the
government was bad—Daniel Allen’s words couldn’t make it much worse.

His group became known as the
Peaceful Change Movement. People came from as far away as Oregon to be a part
of it. One of the members donated thousands of acres of land in the middle of
Kansas where the pollution had done the least damage. The PCM built homes
there. They tried to start new lives. They declared themselves independent from
a failing government that would do nothing to save its people.

Two years passed, and some of the
members were beginning to get restless.

The
promise
of change did not
make up for the lack of change.

On a crisp November afternoon, Daniel
Allen was murdered by a man named Carter Rash, who felt that the peaceful
approach wasn’t doing enough. Like Daniel, he was excellent in front of a
crowd, whipping them into a frenzy with his words of revolution.

He had twenty-five thousand people
collected together and angry, ready to fight back with weapons they’d salvaged
and brought from home. They were prepared, they were ready, and they were going
to march a thousand miles from Kansas to northern Virginia. They were going to
gather more followers. They were going to take control. They were going to make
things right again.

That’s when the government unleashed
the inappropriately named response called The Kindness Project, genetically
altered humans who were originally designed for battle against foreign nations:
one thousand men and women who had either volunteered or had been forced to
participate. These instruments of war had lain in wait for years, ready to be
called into action. They never expected it would happen against their own
people—the republic of New China or Canada, possibly, but never against their
own.

Kinders, as they came to be known, had
been given a serum that enhanced a person’s skills depending on their natural
abilities. If a man was physically gifted, he could jump, fly, and run with
unbelievable speed and power. If a woman had been a brilliant scientist or
thinker, her mind could see thousands of different outcomes, veritably
predicting the future. Some developed superhuman strength. Some could read a
sentence in a book from miles away.

While these Kinders had been trained
to defend our home soil against foreign invasions using weapons along with
their exceptional abilities, they were sent weaponless against the Peaceful
Change Movement.
Do not kill
was their only order. Capture, turn away,
convince…whatever was necessary.

It didn’t take long for the
government to realize they had made a drastic error in judgment. They never
counted on the Kinders siding with Carter Rash.

Battles were fought. Millions of
people died.

Against the odds, the government
won. They maintained control.

Maybe it was because they had bigger
guns.

Or, it could’ve been because a
Kinder named Ellery Speck was a traitor to the Peaceful Change Movement, which
was no longer peaceful at all.

Outside of Manassas, Virginia,
Carter Rash, his PCM followers, and one thousand Kinders were amassing for a
final attack on Washington, D.C.

Some states had built and sent their
own armies to help. Some had erected massive fences around their borders that stretched
for thousands of miles. They didn’t want to fight. They just wanted to be left
alone because they believed they could do better by themselves.

The government was crippled. They
would fall soon, and Rash had his sights set on becoming the President of the
United Republic. All but one of the Kinders believed in Rash. All but one saw
him as a hallowed leader instead of the violent wretch that he was. All but one
had been brainwashed by his vitriol.

Ellery Speck.

Historical records are inaccurate,
but it’s believed that Ellery Speck was in contact with a member of the
national government, who provided her with a deadly anti-serum that would only
affect the Kinders. She sneaked into the massive tents that served as mess
halls and poisoned the water supplies, and then she disappeared.

In one afternoon, nine hundred and
ninety-nine Kinders fell to the ground and never got up again. Without their
superior abilities, without their superhuman skills and near invincibility,
Rash had no chance to take the capitol, but he tried anyway.