Carry the Flame (43 page)

“We've got to get out of here.” Burned Fingers knocked hard on the office's outer door. “This is solid. It could hold him. Those other two are crap.”

Not just the doors: Chunga's burned, bleeding head exploded through the ancient drywall where the carpet with the presidential seal had hung. The creature's huge mouth opened a foot from Jessie, and its tongue smacked her in the chest.

“Out!” Burned Fingers yelled.

She jumped over Linden's body and grabbed his foot. “Help me.”

“Leave him. He's dead. Let's just—”

“He was helping us. I'm not letting him get eaten.”

Burned Fingers gripped the other foot, grumbling, “You're too goddamn sentimental.” But he helped drag the body into the hallway, shutting the door quickly. “That'll have to do,” he said.

Jessie agreed. “I better put this out. We're too visible.” She looked for a way to smother the blazing torch, finding a guard lying facedown, legs splayed, about ten feet away. She checked his pulse—dead—and jammed the flame up under his crotch.

“Ouch,” Burned Fingers said. “I take it back about being too sentimental.”

With the cover of night, she checked the guard's body for weapons; he'd already been stripped of whatever guns or knives he'd carried.

They heard footfalls and saw distant torches.

“Let's keep moving,” Burned Fingers whispered, taking out his gun. He still held his sword. Jessie had hers and the cooling torch.

“I've got to find Ananda, too,” she said. In the darkness and chaos, the challenge of finding both daughters seemed almost insurmountable. Then she spied the first hints of daylight on the periphery, and heard Burned Fingers whispering again:

“If anybody's going to know where your kids are, it'll be that big bastard.”

“Where the hell is he?”

“We'll find him.”

“We've got to find him fast.”

“I know,” Burned Fingers said. “But these assholes will talk. I have my own means of persuasion, and I'm not as nice as those guards.” He glanced back at Linden's body.

S
am cradled Yurgen's head, hoping for life, but the weight of evidence was brutal, final.

She kissed his brow and removed his spectacles, a prize so rare that even the most painful grief could not spare the obligation to save them. She also took his gun, sticky with blood, and his knife, hiding them beneath his body for now.

Sam stood and turned toward the pit. “You people down there, do you see or hear anyone?” she shouted. “There are two dead guards up here now, and I'm here to get you out.”

As soon as she quieted, she recognized the foolhardiness of yelling, and wondered if she was so sick with sorrow that she wanted death's reprieve.

“We had just the two guards last night,” answered the same man who'd responded during the gunfight.

More cautiously, Sam moved toward them, taking a torch from a brace on a column. Raising her gun, she peered into the opening, finding adults and boys on one side of the wall, girls on the other, including three young women holding babies.

“How'd you get in there?” she called to the group. “Did they make you jump?”

The African who had answered twice before told her there was a ladder. She spotted it lying against a column. When she lowered it, he lifted his hand for her to pause. “Thank you,” he said solemnly, as if divining the cost of her mission. Or had she wept loudly without realizing it?

She acknowledged him with a nod, and asked, “Are you good with a gun?”

He shook his head.

“I—I—I am,” a man stammered.

When he stepped off the ladder, she gave him one of her pistols. “What's your name?”

“B-B-Brindle.”

“I'm Sam. I'll be right back.”

All the caravaners had escaped the pit by the time she returned with Yurgen's weapons and the satchel. She opened it and held up a gun, calling out, “Who's ready to fight?”

Every one of them surged toward her, even the youngest child, a girl who couldn't have been older than ten. That felt tragic, too, the bitter reminder that vengeance was also blind to age.

C
assie raced past the last raised bed. Jester was so close she had to sprint straight toward the waterfall. Swerving to the punji sticks would have cost her a half step, and that could have meant her life. And her plan had not been to charge into the field of sharpened bones. She'd imagined easing her way past them, then hiding.

The distance to the waterfall shrank with agonizing slowness. She still heard herself wheezing, and the frightening rise of her respiratory whistle. Her chest was closing like a fist, and she felt as deprived of oxygen as she had in the river. But her legs pumped as if they had their own lungs—and a set of terrors that would never let them stop.

Jester lunged at her, his fingertips brushing her damp shirt. He swore, spitting out violent oaths. In the first shadow of morning, she spied his hand raised with a knife. She looked back—she could not help herself—and saw his lips twisting, rage stamped across his burned and beaten face.

The river rushed faster to her right, funneling toward the waterfall. She thought of throwing herself in, letting the swift current carry her the last few feet. But she didn't dare because he might follow and carry her down to the depths with him. So she stayed on the stone. Another shadow showed him trying to stab her again. She leaped out over the churning whitewater, looking back one more time to see him stopping at the very edge.

The water looked soft and pillowy, but when she hit the foaming surface, the impact would have knocked the air out of her—if she'd had a breath to spare.

Cassie plunged deep into the pool, suspended for perilous seconds before drifting upward. With her legs kicking madly and her arms flailing, she felt the current nudging her forward and filling her with hope. Though far from any edge, and unable to grab a single breath, she thought that if she could last just moments more, the water—of all things—might save her.

T
he torch hovered right above Ananda's face, a bright instrument of pain that kept her back flat on the bed, head turned to the side. She heard the white guy stripping down, weapons clunking on the floor. He yanked her pants to her knees and pressed against her bare skin as the torch swung from them: someone had run into the room, yelling, “Cut me loose!”

The Mayor.
“Help me,” she pleaded

The big man glanced at the white guard, pushing himself off her and hurriedly pulling on his pants.

“What are you doing to the little one?” the Mayor demanded.

The guard slowed and lifted his chin, as if refusing to appear guilty. He walked toward the Mayor, boldly cinching his pants, like he was invincible and had nothing to be ashamed of. But Ananda knew better. He'd panicked at first because he'd been doing something really bad. But you wouldn't know it to look at him now. The guard rolled his shoulders, stepped up to the Mayor, and shocked Ananda by smacking the Mayor's face so hard it sounded like a gunshot. Then he smacked him again, back the other way, leaving blood on his lips.

“Cut you loose?” The guard squared off like he was getting ready to punch the Mayor, and then he did—right in the stomach. “I got somebody to thank for tying your black ass up.”

Still on her back, Ananda pulled her pants on. Slowly, she sat up.

The African guard moved the torch closer to the Mayor, who was hunched over from the punch and glaring at the white guy. Then the bound man straightened—his face looked tight—and turned so his hands could take a knife off an old wooden chest. The white guard watched him fumbling with the blade behind his back and taunted him.

“You don't have to do that all by your lonesome.” He pushed the Mayor against the chest and seized the weapon. “Cut you? That's what you want?” He sank the tip into the man's back and dragged the blade all the way down to his behind before the Mayor could twist around. “I'm sorry,” the guard said, now poking the tip into the man's broad belly, “did you want me to cut there instead?”

“You will die for this,” the Mayor growled.

“I've been hearing that shit all night, but guess what?
I'm still here.
But Linden's not. Been to your office yet?” The Mayor didn't respond. “I burned him half to death before I used
his
knife on him. You want to know why?” The guard no longer paused for an answer, which scared Ananda more, like he couldn't wait to do whatever horrible things he had in mind. “ 'Cause he was with the assholes blowing the shit out of this place. But you were too fucking dumb to see that.”

Without warning, he slashed the Mayor's stomach. Not deeply, but Ananda watched blood wash down over the big man's belt. The Mayor spun away, but the guard forced his face over the chest and sliced his back from shoulder to shoulder.

Ananda closed her eyes.
Not even the Mayor can stop him.
That's all she could think. She couldn't watch anymore and turned away. Her foot brushed something hard. She felt it with her toes. The guard's knife. She didn't want to touch it, couldn't bear the thought of what he'd do if she tried to fight him with it.

His gun, she recalled with an immediacy that shook her. There had been a couple of clunks. She glanced at him. Not in his belt. Not that she could see.

He's going to know, soon as you look.

So she searched with her feet, trying not to move her upper body. She didn't dare look back, not even to see if they were watching her.

“Burn him,” she heard the guard say to his buddy. “Give him a good one.”

Curiously, nothing happened. Quiet, except for the crackling torch flame. Then she heard a quick shout, and looked over her shoulder. The African guard was bent over, still holding the torch, though it had fallen forward, too, and the white guy had his hand down by the man's stomach. It looked like he was trying to jerk him up off the ground. But then he pulled out the knife and the African fell, squirming and groaning, but only for seconds.

The white guard picked up the torch, caught Ananda looking at him, and held the bloody blade near the flame. When he pointed the tip at her, the Mayor tried to dart away. The guard turned and grabbed him.

Ananda dropped to the floor, searching for the gun.

“Don't try to hide,” the guard said to her.

That's what he thinks?

She peered over the top of the bed. He had the knife to the Mayor's neck now. She patted around blindly as a strange look appeared on the guard's face. He slapped his belt and stared at it, then forced the Mayor to the floor. “Move, and I'll cut your fucking balls off.”

Ananda looked down. Still too dark to see. She moved her hands in frantic, wide arcs and hit the gun, sliding it under the bed. She cried out in anguish and reached for it, patting blindly again.

The guard rushed closer. She looked up and saw the raised torch rounding the far corner of the bed. Stretching as far as she could, she slapped the floor twice before finding the revolver. Rolling onto her back, she pointed the pistol with two hands, like her parents had trained her, and cocked the hammer.

The single-action clicked loudly in the silence. Ducking low, the guard bolted back across the room before she could aim. Ananda stumbled to her feet as he jerked the Mayor upright and ducked behind him, knife at his back. Then he jammed the torch in a metal stand.

Ananda felt her hands shaking, but
she
had a gun. They didn't.

“Get away from him,” she yelled at the guard.

“Oh, no, you can kill your lover boy, but you're not killing me.”

“He didn't touch me, not like you.”

“And I'm not done!” He sounded gleeful, like he was enjoying himself.

“You are a stupid man,” the Mayor said to him, voice taut with pain. “That is why you are a lowly guard, and why you will die.”

“Stupid?” The guard pushed him toward Ananda. “Go ahead, shoot this fucking asshole,” he said, driving the Mayor ever closer with piercing jabs to his spine; they were more than halfway across the room. “You get your shot, and then I get you.”

J
ester studied the plunge pool, hearing nothing but the pounding water, seeing nothing but a billion goddamn bubbles. Couldn't make hide nor hair of iddy biddy bitch. And just a few seconds ago he was so close he might have nicked her with his knife. But
she
wouldn't have noticed. That's how scared she was. Kids got so scared they wet their fucking pants. He laughed:
She got everything wet, didn't she?

Where is she?
He didn't know much about water, never seen more than a puddle at once before. Maybe if it got you, it kept you. Maybe you just sank when you died and never came up.

There she is.
She was bobbing up like a fish.
'Cept she can't swim and can't get any goddamn air.
Nobody knew how to swim anymore. Him, neither. That's why he didn't go jumping in.
My mama didn't raise no fool.

But he could swear. He stood there cursing her to holy hell and back. He'd been fixing to have his fun. Then he was going to take her sorry sack of bones to the Mayor, dump her on the floor and say, “There! She's all yours. Now give me my gun.”

Not . . . so . . . fast. Look at that.
She was popping up plumb in the center of that thing. Head above water. She could
stand
in it.

What am I waiting for?
If she could stand, he sure as hell could.
I'm a lot bigger than her.

If it had been him, he would have pretended to be drowning.
Help me, Jester. Help me.
That way nobody would have come in. Yeah, that's what he would have done, but that's because he was smart. There she was, giving him a big invitation, and she didn't even know it.
Come get me, Jester. I'm right here for the fucking.
But that was what made life so great—dumbass kids.