Carry the Flame (42 page)

She wheeled and fired twice at a tall, sinewy-looking guard stealing from behind a column. Brick chips exploded into the air inches from him. She ducked back, then peered out to see that he had done likewise, but without returning fire.

Glancing to her left, she saw that her gunshots were slowly rousing the sleeping guard from his stupor. The other man, behind the column, yelled at him to shoot her. But his minion looked too drunk or tired to respond to the command quickly.

Two of them.
Maybe more to come, though she assumed the sentient guard would have called others, if any were nearby. She clung to the reasonable hope that her gunplay would fade into the periodic shooting that formed the night's deadly backdrop. Looking at the supine man, who appeared deep in slumber once again, she thought it might have happened already.

“You're outgunned.” The man she'd missed spoke coolly from behind his column, evidently unable to see that the other guard had never reacted to his order. He didn't sound drunk, but knowing he hadn't moved gave her seconds to brace her left hand on the bricks that hid her. Then she rested her pistol on her forearm to steady her aim at the head of the man still lying by the fire, and held her breath to still herself even more. But before she could shoot, her target did himself an enormous disservice by sitting up. He looked alarmed, as if the command to kill someone had just registered. She gunned him down so fast he might never have fully awakened.

“Not anymore,” she replied.

“Keep thinking that.”

Reflexively, she cocked the hammer and shouted, “Anyone in the pit know how many guards are here?”

“Two,” a man yelled.

“Thank you,” she shouted back. “Now that we have that clear,” she said to the sinewy guard, “do you know your men are getting wiped out by us over at Fight Night? We dropped the roof right on their heads. You must have heard the explosions. Huge packs of us are hunting you guys down. They'll be working their way here real soon.” She inched one eye past the column and caught the guard looking at her. “You don't have to die,” she lied.

“But you do,” he snapped.

She sighed, louder and more theatrically than she'd intended, then heard movement at the city's rear, and once more regretted the footprints she'd left so stupidly on the dimly lit sand.

Was that another step? She was sure of it.
Where?

A bead of sweat cold as the moon slid down her spine. It defied logic that the city would deploy guards to protect the smaller pit. By now all of the men at Fight Night had to know they were targeted for death, and wouldn't want to give up a single gunner.

She almost convinced herself of this when torchlight wavered for a beat. She pulled out a second revolver to try to cover both of her flanks. She even glanced at the long-haired guard, wondering if he'd miraculously rallied. Not at all.

A flurry of gunshots had her looking in as many directions at once. Then the tall guard was backpedaling into the open, firing at a shadow advancing from behind his column.

He glanced at her just before she shot him twice in the torso. He fell screaming, and she delivered a carefully aimed head shot that shut him up.

Yurgen stepped into the light, his gait hesitant. He might have been uncertain whether the guard was dead.

“He's finished,” Sam said, stepping closer to her husband. That's when she saw him pressing the hand with his gun to his chest. A bloodstain swelled rapidly on his shirt. He dropped to his knees and pitched onto his face, setting off the round that killed him.

“W
e . . . have . . . to . . . get . . . out.” Ananda punctuated each pause by pounding her fist against the door of a big wooden box, or whatever the guards had thrown them into. Maybe it was a jail without bars or windows. They were pushed in so fast it had been hard to see anything, especially with the black guy waving around a torch like a maniac.

Leisha grabbed her arm. “Stop that. He said they're going to hurt us bad if we do that.”

Kaisha had yet to say a word. Ananda thought she might be too terrified to talk. Supposedly, that had happened to tons of people, even grown-ups, when the collapse came and nothing worked anymore. Millions had walked around in a daze till they died. Her mom and dad had told her about it.

“They're going to hurt us real bad anyway,” she said to Leisha. “Don't you know that? Let
go.”
She jerked her arm loose. “And start helping me.”

She and the twins had been locked up for at least an hour. Maybe two. Ananda didn't know for sure. A long time. The guy who shoved them in there was white, strong, rough, and superscary. He'd grabbed the torch and put it so close to her face that she had to turn away, sure he would burn her. Then he laughed: “You see what I see? She's gotta be the porn queen's sister. I heard she had one.”

“What?” she'd asked, thinking he had to be talking about Bliss.

He whipped the torch back at her. She had to duck. The heat still hurt bad. What he'd said was even worse: “I'll show you all about porn queens just as soon as I get back.” Then he warned them about escaping and locked them up.

Moments later, Leisha had swatted her head and shouted, “Your hair's on fire!”

Seeing sparks flying in the dark, Ananda grabbed her braid, smacking and squeezing it while the twins beat out and smothered the flames on the back of her head. The burns weren't as bad as others she'd suffered.

Now, she needed Leisha and Kaisha to beat on the door. “Come on,” she said to them.

The twins gave up after a fitful effort, but Ananda leaned against the rear wall and continued to bash the wood as hard as she could with her heels. In seconds the door flew open.

“See!” she exclaimed, although she could scarcely believe what she'd done.

But before she could straighten, she saw torchlight again, and the white guard reached in and dragged her out.

“I told you not to do dick, didn't I?” he snapped.

She was too frightened to say a word, then saw it wouldn't have mattered; he was already waving the torch closer.

C
assie tried to stay as still as possible as the murderer rose to his feet, knowing that if she could see him, he could see her. But he wasn't turning in her direction. He was heading toward the raised beds.

Her relief vanished the moment she looked behind her. The cavern she'd just left was still mostly dark; there were only two openings in the ceiling, and they weren't nearly as big as the ones above the garden. She realized the Komodo could be roaming around thirty feet away and she wouldn't know it, unless she got a good whiff of the beast. And she couldn't kid herself anymore about hiding in the water. The safer parts—if there were any—lay farther upriver, and she had no desire to backtrack along the bank, where the dragon could be waiting. No way. Besides, she was too cold to want to climb into the water.

She glanced toward the garden. The killer, Jester, had disappeared in there. What she wanted was to bundle up somewhere, hug her knees to her chest and hide.

For now, she huddled close to the wall and tried to review every step of Miranda's tour of the caverns. She couldn't think of a single good hiding place anywhere nearby. Then she remembered the punji sticks in the smaller cavern near the waterfall.

Not totally safe, but it was plenty dark in there, and she was skinny enough to make her way among those sharp points.
Just don't fall,
she told herself. She figured the lizard would stab itself a hundred times if it tried to run over those bones. Plus, who would even think of hiding in a place like that?

Me,
she told herself with no little pride.

If the murderer did come in there, what could he do? Chase her? That would be hard for a grown-up. If he tripped, he'd die. Or get all bloody and turn into dragon bait.

Same goes for you.

A sobering thought, but the punji stick cavern was the best place she could think of. First, she had to get past the garden.

Moving so stealthily she couldn't hear her own footsteps, Cassie edged along the wall in the tall passageway that led to the cavern with the raised beds. When she reached the opening, she spied him rushing around the last of them on the far side. He'd covered a lot of ground fast, but the sky had paled to a light gray, which made it easier to see.

She crawled to the nearest bed, then scurried from one to another, checking behind her every few seconds to make sure the dragon wasn't tracking her.
He can't,
she reassured herself.
You stopped bleeding.
She doubted she even smelled after spending so much time in the river. Still, she kept looking back, unable to shake the fear that something was following her.

After reaching a bed in the middle of the cavern, she rested. The sky loomed above her, and gave her hope. She heard Jester's footsteps, but they didn't rattle her because he was heading back toward the darker cavern, the one he couldn't have searched during the night. She hoped Miranda and Steph weren't hiding in there, or had climbed out. And then she smiled—did she ever!—when she recalled what
was
in there. The biggest surprise of all because he didn't know anything about a dragon. But now he sure would.

The prospect delighted her, and she put off crawling to the punji sticks, figuring that the dragon would get him any minute now.
Just wait for the screams.
She peeked again.
There he goes.
She watched him head out, almost squealing with anticipation.

He stopped just short of the passageway. Maybe the dragon was already there, she thought. He was looking down. But not for long. He started back toward the raised beds, following the same path she'd taken, except she'd crawled and he was hurrying.

I'm not bleeding. How's he—

Her mind went blank when she looked down, too, and saw the watery trail she'd left. Something
had
followed her—her own hand, knee, and footprints. The Komodo might have ignored them, but not the murderer.

Jester started running then, and she raced off, fleeing from him. He was yelling something weird as she zigzagged around the beds, wishing they were laid out in a straight line, and doing all she could to keep taking air.

Now he was screaming the same weird words over and over: “Hey, iddy biddy bitch. Hey, iddy biddy bitch . . .”

She heard a sharp noise, and then again, and again. Looking back, she thought it might be Jester, and saw him closing in on her. He looked like a fiend. His face and neck were burned, nose squashed, and one eye was scalded shut, crusted with blood and yellow stuff.

The sharp noise got even louder. Only then did she recognize it as the telling sound of her own wheezing.

T
he slaves hauled Bliss over to Linden's body. X-ray held a torch over each of the grisly insults.

“Did you do this?” he asked her.

“No,” she said, although who was he to talk? He'd strapped her and Ananda's legs into a harness with barbed wire, and was just as ruthless to the twins. “I don't even have a torch. I came from the tunnel. I had to feel my way in here.” She hoped her mother and Burned Fingers would follow the same path—and fast. “I sure don't have a gun.” She forced herself to look down and point to the dead man's legs.

X-ray nodded. “What happened to your mother and father?”

He's not my father!
she almost screamed, but swore to herself instead. Maybe it was better if the slave thought Burned Fingers was her dad. She shrugged. “We got separated.”

A hairy-faced man leaned close to Linden's body. “He wasn't just killed. This was revenge.”

“Cuts both ways,” X-ray said, without any apparent irony. “He was a good man. Let's go find the bastard.”

“Who?” Bliss asked as they dragged her from the room.

“The Mayor. Who else?” X-ray replied.

C
hunga advanced on Jessie and Burned Fingers, the reptile's attack was accelerating with every step. The two retreated ten feet, twenty. Burned Fingers jammed the gun with its lonely bullet into his belt and tried to use his sword, while Jessie jabbed the dragon repeatedly with the torch.

“Go for his eyes,” he shouted. Only then did she see that he'd been trying to blind the lizard with his thrusts.

“You want him even more insane?” she shouted back.

The dragon had continued to bite anything he slammed into. He'd even taken a chunk out of the ceiling when he tried to stand on his hind legs. Burned Fingers had pulled out the pistol, but even Chunga's most maddening pain couldn't drive the beast high enough for a shot to his heart.

Jessie spotted the open door. “Behind you,” she shouted. “On the left. See it?”

“Yeah.” He looked back at the lizard, sank his sword into Chunga's gum and then wrenched the tip out. Blood drooled from the dragon's jaw.

Jessie kicked the door open. “Go on. I'll—”

“No, you first.”

She didn't argue. Burned Fingers jumped in behind her, banging the door shut so hard she worried it would break or bounce open. The latch held, but the giant lizard smashed his head through the wood.

Jessie and Burned Fingers spilled over furniture on their way out another door on the other side of the room. She slammed it, then saw they'd rushed into the Mayor's office. She recognized the big table where the tyrant had held court yesterday and Burned Fingers tangled with Pie, the frizzy-haired marauder.

Her companion's scarred fingers tapped the door she'd just closed. “That beast will come through this, too,” he said, “in nothing flat. It's hollow-core.”

“I know. Let's go,” she said, backing away. “But did you see that couch? It looked like Bliss was searching in there.”

“I did see—”

“Linden!” She held the torch over a dead, tortured body, and heard Chunga bash his way into the room with the chairs and eviscerated couch.