The Benders (16 page)

I blow out a breath, relieved. Auntie. She’s okay.

“So then, that’s the favor. I need to see her. I need to see her tonight.”

When the bomb explodes, the whole world crumbles. At least that’s what it feels like. There’s a flash of fire and then a
boom
that I feel more than hear. The Jeep rocks and I crumple into the seat. Everything shakes for long slow seconds.

Smoke and heat. Light and sound.

A bomb. A goddamn bomb.

My ears ring. I shake my dazed head and try to focus. Slowly, I pull myself out of the Jeep and seek out the Hercules.

One gray-green wing burns on the tarmac. Beside it, one of the military men rolls around on fire. A huge plume of smoke curls into the sky from the plane husk. The plane looks like an eviscerated chicken carcass with the meat picked off. Her nose is curled open like a flower and folded down to the pavement. Her back has been stripped away, layin’ bare the smokin’ wreckage of her insides. Much of it burns and so do the men, any who survived the initial blast, that is. Some lie like cooked meat on the pavement. Some run around like candles on legs. Thank God we’re so far back it’s hard to see the carnage.

Mikey stands up beside me, blood meanderin’ from his ear. He glances at me and then at the wreckage. For once he doesn’t sneer or mock, just stares at the destruction. Then he gets up and walks toward his broken comrades.

Mikey, my guard, has just walked away.

I still can’t hear and my head spins, but I know opportunity before it bites me on the ass. My eyes flick to Nessa. She’s lying in the driver’s seat with her head back, eyes closed. From the red goose egg on her forehead, it looks like she smacked her noggin on the steerin’ wheel in the explosion. Without thinkin’, I jump out of the Jeep, staggerin’ only a little, and come around to the front for Ethan.

He’s awake and totally terrified, his eyes on the crumpled plane like he can’t look away. When I grab him, he flinches, but then falls into my arms. With him hangin’ on my chest, I turn and run.

The buildings are mostly vacant ’round. I could hide in one, but then I’m a sittin’ duck for whenever Nessa wants to come huntin’. With the distraction of their fallen comrades and the exploded bird, this is the perfect time to escape, but I have a long way to run with a nine-year-old on my chest and my hearing almost gone. Still, I run down the street the best I can until flashin’ red and white lights draw my attention. A fire truck I don’t hear comin’ barrels onto the street and almost takes me out before I jump into the dirt, nearly droppin’ Ethan. I stagger behind one of the abandoned buildings on the compound, some two-story concrete building with a sloped roof and an American flag flutterin’ from a pole out front. I set Ethan down and grab his shoulders.

“Hey,” I say, though I feel like I’m shoutin’. “Can you hear?”

He opens his mouth to say something, but I shake my head. “Don’t talk,” I say. “Just nod if you can hear me.”

He shrugs, then nods, shows me a thumb and forefinger an inch apart to say, a little.

I pat his shoulder. “You have to hear for us both,” I say. “Tap me if you hear someone comin’ or a truck like that last one. Okay?”

He nods and gives me a thumbs up. No smile, though. The terror of what we just saw and what we’re gonna face still hangs on him. I take his hand.

“Let’s go, bud.”

We stay off the main road, windin’ around buildings—schools, defunct trade shops, and service stations. We duck into the shadows when Ethan taps my shoulder and hunker close to the hot brick, pantin’ and wishin’ for a truck. When Ethan signals it’s clear, we scoot around again through more deserted parts of the compound and as far away from the Jeep and Nessa Vandewater as we can.

Slowly, my hearing returns, though the ringing is annoyin’ as hell. Ethan seems to be gettin’ his back, too, because he taps me hard and yanks me back behind a corner just before two grunts with a stretcher nearly run into us. It’s my turn to give him a thumbs up. This time he gives me a weak smile.

After about an hour of hide and seek like this, I lose steam. My headache’s back with a vengeance, squeezin’ my temples like a gorilla’s cracked my skull. My shoeless feet bleed through my socks. I rest longer than feels wise; as I pant and gasp. Ethan looks at me with a worried expression.

“S’okay, buddy.” I try to breathe as normal as I can and not vomit from the pain in my head. Needles the size of drinkin’ straws seem to be wormin’ their way through my gray matter.

“You gonna make it?” he asks. “Can I help?”

I smile, glad I can finally hear him, and pat his shoulder again. Then I close my eyes and try to stop the spinnin’. “Sure, bud. Sure. Just give me a minute.”

Ethan stands beside me worried as I take one minute, two, three to settle my brain. My vision clears and my hearing is comin’ back, but I can’t keep my head from spinnin’. Doesn’t matter. We hear a truck engine gunnin’ our way. I tug Ethan and we jog between buildings low and quick.

I pull up to the shaded side of a building that looks like it was a post office at one time. The engine noise is louder and now I hear voices. I glance around the corner and see a Jeep with two soldiers talking to a third on the sidewalk. It ain’t hard to discern from their faces that they’re lookin’ for someone. And they’ve blocked the only exit that don’t back-track to where we were.

Another Jeep trundles our way. More voices. They’re closin’ in.

Ethan tugs my arm and points. There, across the shadowed backyard of our building, a side door stands open. The building looks dark and abandoned. We can hide out until the search dies down. They can’t comb through every building and hidey-hole before dark.

We slink across the twenty feet of dusty yard and slip through the open door. The tile hallway is silent and dusty. Our footsteps leave prints in the thick dust on the floor that I take pains to wipe away with my socks. Still, if anyone looks hard, they’ll know someone has been here. Ethan and I tiptoe down the unlit hallway, glancin’ in open doorways as we inch past. Each room’s nearly empty except for bits of trash, fallen plaster, and the odd chair or dusty desk. It’s clear this was some sort of trainin’ facility. A few rooms have green chalkboards. One still has the five rows of student desks, all neat and tidy, facin’ the front like any moment a class might rush in. But the rest of the rooms have been looted, any valuable goods and materials taken and redistributed to the other buildings. Each space we pass is too empty to make a good hidin’ spot. I nod at Ethan to keep walkin’. What I don’t say is these empty rooms give me the creeps and curlin’ up in one will feel like takin’ refuge in a gator’s jaws. This building feels dead.

Our hallway ends and two more branch off, right and left. We glance both ways, seein’ more of the same as far as I’m concerned.

“Which way?” I whisper to Ethan.

He shrugs and points a tentative finger left.

“Good as any,” I whisper, before takin’ the lead.

We creep down another hallway identical to the last. All the rooms are bare, no place to hide. I’m ready to double back when, down the hall, a door squeaks on its hinges. Someone’s here.

I turn the knob on the door closest to us and slowly crack it open. I pull Ethan in, which seems like a good idea until I turn around.

The room is larger than the others, with stadium-style seats.
Lecture hall
, I think, though how I know that term I can’t quite pinpoint. There’s a dusty desk center stage with someone on it.

Betsy sits on the dusty desktop, holding a sandal in each hand. As we walk in, she’s rockin’ ‘em and pretendin’ to feed ‘em from inside her shirt. When she sees us, she whips the sandal out of her top, embarrased. We stare, too, shocked to find anyone, let alone Betsy breastfeedin’ a shoe.

The footsteps in the hall get closer. I slide Ethan away from the little window in the door and lift a finger to my lips, a silent plea to Betsy to keep quiet as the grunts search the rest of the building. If they come in, we’re toast, but maybe, just maybe—

Betsy opens her big fat maw of a mouth and sucks in a tremblin’ breath. I shake my head, wave my hands in a
No, don’t
gesture.

It has no effect. A huge wail slaloms from her throat.

Guards pour in the door.

“What exactly did you think you were doing?” Nessa asks once I’m back in my tiny hospital room and strapped to the bed. The guards captured and cuffed us, but thank God no taser. Still, the look on Ethan’s face when they dragged him away could’ve fried my heart.

“You were free to walk around,” Nessa continues angrily, “come to breakfast, see the compound.” She slams a hand down on the metal tray by the bed and a few instruments go flyin’. “Why, Clay?”

I stare up at the cracked plaster. I don’t answer her question. She doesn’t ask again.

“You are making this
so
much harder than it has to be,” Nessa says, an angry vein pulsin’ on her forehead. She stops fiddlin’ with the buttons on her shirt and looks me hard in the face. “Can’t you see what I’m trying to do here?”

Flash pan anger sizzles through me when she says this. I ball my fists and meet her gaze. “Why is it you keep pretendin’ you’re a martyr when really you’re the mad scientist? You really that delusional?”

She stares at me, blue eyes wide with shock. Maybe she
is
that delusional. Maybe in her head this is what a mother is supposed to act like. But I don’t care. I won’t be manipulated.

“If you’d get Riley—”

“Stop it!” she shrieks, shoving the metal cart into the wall. The cart clangs off the concrete wall and instruments clatter onto the tile floor. She grips the wall as if it’s the only thing that steadies her.

“What is it about Riley that scares you so goddamned much?” I ask quietly.

Her cold stare serves as her answer. I look up at the plaster crack on the ceiling, like a map to a faraway land, a place where my insane mother isn’t starin’ at me like she wants to kill me.

When she says nothing, I decide to poke just a little farther. “Who bombed the Hercules?”

The heavy question seems to fall flat in the room. She straightens her shirt. “That’s classified.”

“You ain’t military,” I say, almost gettin’ a kick outta how flustered she seems. “Why don’t you let your baby boy in on who it is we’re fightin’?”

She gives a mocking smile before stridin’ to the door. “Start acting like my baby boy and then we’ll talk.” She strides out the door and slams it behind her.

Just when I think she’s gone, the door pops back open, and Nessa pokes her head in. I think she’ll say something awful to hurt me, but instead she throws an object at my lap. I flinch, ready for a bomb or a knife, but it’s a gun, a toy about the size and shape of a real revolver, but made of plastic with a bright orange muzzle.

“For practice,” she says, then shuts the door again.

I lift the revolver with my mended hand. My fingers close around the grip stiffly like it’s the first time. Still, the gun feels good. Real good.

Nada and I are spared work for a few hours while they clean up from Shali and the fire. Nada lays on her bunk not moving. I spend the time thinking about my lost family. Ethan, Clay, and Auntie. How is it we’re always separated? I remember Auntie teaching me about magnetic fields and how polar opposites attract, but the other side of a magnet will repel its twin every time. That’s what my family feels like lately. We’re always being thrust in opposite directions by a giant malevolent hand. Not this time, I think, gritting my teeth. When I get my family back together, we’re going to stay together come hell or high water.

A guard comes to get us at lunch time. Nada slides down the bunk and walks beside me without a word or a glance. When we get into the mess hall, the meal is already in full swing. More gruel sits on the plates. Here food is just to keep your body running. It makes me miss my mama’s cooking something fierce.

Nada and I get our trays and find a corner near the back. Mister eyes me as I walk past, but I keep my gaze forward. No sense in poking a bear, especially one who already has me in its sights.

Not more than five minutes into the meal, Lord Merek and his entourage enter, with a flourish of trumpets again. This time Doc is among them, looking nervous, his eyes scanning the crowd, probably for Nada. She keeps her eyes down.

Merek looks ridiculous once again, wearing another medieval king’s outfit—purple velvet coat and britches and a frilled collar, an outfit that must be stifling in this heat. If he sweats, I can’t see it, but then it looks like he’s put powder on his bald head and red neck.

“Hear ye, hear ye. The good Lord Merek will now entertain contestants for his birthday tournament. Those of you who wish to enter, please rise. Pay mind though, once your name is inked on the scroll, you may not back out. Your fate,” he pauses and looks around the mess hall for effect, “is sealed.” The trumpeter makes a flourish with his hand and then holds out a yellow parchment and a pen.

Nada bolts upright beside me and her hand shoots in the air. “Me,” she says, striding forward.

Doc’s eyes zip to her and he shakes his head. Keeping her eyes on the parchment, Nada walks through the staring benders and up to Lord Merek and his men.

“I want to enter,” she says, her chin jutted, her split lip tight with determination.

Lord Merek looks her up and down, then bursts into laughter. His counterparts join.

“That’s ridiculous,” Merek says, waving a dismissive hand. “You’ll be killed in the first round.”

“Let her play,” says one of the guards. “A few scrawny ones’ll add variety. Keep it going longer.”

Merek looks over at his guard and back at Nada. His gloved hands flex over his golden scepter like he’s enjoying this whole exchange. Doc leans over and whispers in Merek’s ear. Nada frowns.

Merek begins to shake his head.
That’ll be it then
, I think.
Nada can’t enter.

Nada doesn’t wait for his pronouncement. Her head swivels and her eyes scan the crowd of benders sitting with lunches in their laps. Her gaze locks on the largest bender sitting near her, Dareen, a massive bender about a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier. Nada bolts toward Dareen with her teeth bared, arms pumping.