In the fading daylight of evening, the main entrance to New Wilderness swarmed with activity, torches, flashlights, and a few idling vehicles bunched around the bulky steel gates. Over a dozen armed rangers stood in a semi-circle in front of two patrol vehicles, and more ringed the parapets above, weapons at the ready. Twice their number of Ark River warriors milled around with rifles at hand, and people trickled in from all around, curious at the commotion. For a remote settlement surrounded by the unknown, such attention only came from something bad.
On reflex, I reached for my trusty submachinegun, and remembered that I’d left it behind during my mad dash to be on time for dinner.
Great. I’ve got a crumpled pair of underwear in my pocket, but not so much as a pocketknife. Good job, Hannah, way to think on your feet.
“Dekker, over here.” Sean Hammond waved us closer from the inner ring of the crowd. An imposing figure in his own right with the physique of a Hellenic statue, Sean’s handsome face bore a mask of concern that couldn’t mean anything good, his pose as rigid as I expected a former police officer’s to be.
Still dressed in his nice clothes, Chris slid through the mass of people, his dark brows knit together in similar puzzlement. “Hey. We came as soon as we could. What’s going on?”
At our approach, the sea of onlookers parted, and I froze in shock.
Sitting on the ground with their hands clapped to the tops of their bedraggled heads were seven children, varying in age from eight to fifteen. They were dressed in the aged fashions of an era long gone by, a time of seafaring brigands and tricorn hats, most of the clothes too big for their scrawny limbs. Coats with tails, knee-high boots, and button-down tunic shirts blended with sneakers, blue jeans, and T-shirts in a bizarre array. However, their pants were muddy and torn, their boots scuffed from many days of walking, and the bright sashes they so loved were bespeckled with burs from countless shrubs. On the cracked asphalt in front of the children, weapons lay in a heap where they’d been surrendered, modern firearms mixed with old-fashioned swords, axes, pikes, and daggers.
Sean scratched the back of his regal head with a sigh. “Apparently, they walked up on our Eldar Crossing outpost out of nowhere, threw down their guns, and demanded to see you three. They used your names, so the patrol leader brought them in. I take it you know each other?”
Most of the huddled prisoners kept their eyes on the ground, a few trembling in either fear or cold, but one of the boys stared straight ahead with a calm defiance that smacked of indifference. He didn’t flinch at the weapons pointed his way, nor did he avoid the many suspicious gazes in fear. The boy’s shaggy black hair lay tied back under his bandana, and beneath his officer’s coat, I spotted a familiar black T-shirt with a white skull and crossbones emblazoned on the front.
What on earth . . .
“Peter?” I leaned forward with a squint, the bright headlights casting long shadows whenever anyone moved in front of them.
Thanks to the strange effects of the Breach, much of Barron County had changed, and Maple Lake was no exception. Once a small oblong body of water in the southwest, it had been expanding on its own thanks to shifts in tectonic plates under our feet, and now much of the south had become a large inland sea. It was in this unpredictable sea that Captain ‘Grapeshot’ Roberts and his crew had made themselves at home aboard a historical reenactment schooner, preying on refugees for supplies and selling captives to ELSAR in exchange for weapons. Of all the pirates that had been aboard the Harper’s Vengeance, First Mate Peter had been the only officer who treated us with relative kindness when Jamie, Chris, and I had been captured. As the second oldest of the group at fifteen years old, he already had the hard glint of death in his eye, and it chilled me to think about what he’d been forced to do to survive. Still, Peter was nowhere near as brutal as Captain Roberts, and he’d been instrumental in keeping Roberts from selling us to ELSAR. To see him here blew my mind, as I knew how tight knit the little band of orphans were.
Something had to have happened. Did the Leviathan attack? Is Grapeshot dead?
Some of the tension eased from his rigid lower jaw, and Peter threw me a wily grin that held traces of his former charisma. “So, you made it after all, eh? Looks like the boatswain owes me. I had five to one odds on you.”
Chris and I exchanged glances, and I could read the same surprise on his face. How they had made it this far north, on foot, I didn’t know, but there were definitely less of them than had been on board the Harper’s Vengeance.
“What are you doing here?” I shook my head in bewilderment and crouched to be eye level with him. “Where’s the rest of the crew?”
Peter’s expression rippled with bitter remorse as he spat onto the cold asphalt. “With the captain. By now, I’d say he’s about three days behind us, maybe four at most. This is all that would come with me.”
“So, a mutiny then?” Jamie pulled out her canteen and unscrewed the cap to offer it to Peter. “Why come here? There’s plenty of coves and hideaways you could have settled in where you were.”
Peter accepted the stainless-steel vessel, and instead of drinking from it, passed it off to a boy on his left, who gulped the water greedily. He then handed it down the line to another, and only once the water made its way around the entire group did Peter take a draught of his own.
“Have you seen Tarren?” He coughed, and cast his head back to gulp down more.
Oh no.
At Peter’s words, my stomach flip-flopped, and I rocked back on my heels. “Should we have?”
Wiping his unshaven face with one hand, Peter stared at me for a tense few moments, his dark irises searching mine.
Some of the fierceness crumpled into disappointment, and he handed the canteen to me like we were drinking buddies at a tavern. “That’s what I thought.”
“Did she run away?” Jamie knelt beside him with a pair of blue latex gloves on and began to swab at a crusty wound on Peter’s right jaw with some gauze.
“No.” He winced at her scrubbing, but Peter held still, and I watched the color drain from his cheeks as he hissed the words in dread. “She was taken.”
Stunned silence followed, the murmurs dying amongst the crowd, nothing on the wind but the rumble of nearby engines, and the faint smell of exhaust. Few others knew who Tarren was enough to appreciate such words, but for me, it hit like a brick to the gut. I’d been fond of the little girl who played in the cargo hold of the pirate ship. The youngest of their band, she’d been spared the brutality of their lifestyle, and had remained the only innocent one of them all. Grapeshot in particular had doted on her, and if something had happened to her, I couldn’t begin to imagine the captain’s reaction.
In a guilty wince, Peter hung his head, and lowered his arms to his sides. “About a week ago, we put in on the eastern bank, gathering timber to build our winter base. One of our sentries went missing near dark, so Grapeshot took seven boys out to find him, and left the rest of us to finish with the wood. A half hour later, one of the girls on ship started screaming, and by the time we rowed back to it, they’d all gone quiet.”
Something about the way his voice dropped an octave sent ice through my veins, and I let my eyes roam the other children to see a similar hunch of fear in their shoulders, a desperate gleam in their gaze that held no deceit. They were afraid, deathly so, and if such ruthless members of the slave-trading crew were scared, what could that mean for us?
He sniffed, and Peter blinked at a thinly veiled frustration that dripped with pain. “Every one of the six we’d left to guard the ship was gone. Nothing else was missing, no weapons, no loot. Never saw any boats, never heard any roars, or shouts. What we did find was footprints, lots of bare muddy prints tracked all up and down the decks. There were more on the shoreline, about a hundred yards to our east, leading north into the forest. Someone took them . . . and they got Tarren as well.”
You cannot hide.
The words flashed through my head like lightning, and my body broke out in a cold sweat. I remembered those smiles in the fuzzy corner of my camera screen, the upright fiends in the shadow of the trees watching me. They’d been so quiet, unseen by our rangers as we ambushed their brethren, and had the patience to draw their symbol on our trucks without launching a deranged attack. If they could do that, was it so outlandish to assume that Puppets could sneak on board a sailing ship, and abduct a child?
But why? Why would they do any of this? It can’t be for food, why pass up more victims just to pick off the smallest of the group?
Tapping his fingers on one meaty bicep, Sean cleared his throat. “Could’ve been a team of ELSAR swimmers. With scuba gear they could get really close and scale the side of the boat. There are plenty of former spec-ops guys who know how to do that sort of thing.”
“Thought of that.” Peter pried a chunk of mud from his pantleg with a dismal tone. “We called them on a satellite phone they’d given us, a special one that is supposed to always work no matter what. They said they didn’t have her, but they dropped us some weapons from a helicopter and told us it was our problem to deal with.”
Chris sighed, as if he already knew what was coming, both hands on his hips. “My guess is the captain didn’t take that very well?”
Peter’s face went ashen with melancholy, and around him, the other children drooped in reflex. “Soon as he found out Tarren was gone, he cursed us all, said we were cowardly dogs for staying on shore when the girls needed help, said he’d shoot a man for every day they weren’t found. I tried to calm him down, told him we should go to the golden heads under a flag of truce to see if they had her, but he threatened to hang me if I so much as tried. I knew he was beyond reasoning with, so late one night I got the crew together, and asked for volunteers to follow the tracks north. There were fifteen of us then.”
I hugged my arms around myself, wishing I’d brought a jacket as the evening air dipped in temperature. Making the trek through the southlands with Jamie and Chris had been daunting enough, but I couldn’t imagine the ragged little band, many of them no older than thirteen, slogging through the desolate expanse with mutants all around. Sure, they had more than earned the moniker of ‘pirate’ with their indiscriminate cruelty, but they were still children, and there were beasts out there that seemed to prefer feeding on the young.
Fifteen at the start, and only seven left. Grapeshot’s temper killed more of his crew than any mutant ever did. His drinking habit probably didn’t help.
Jamie pressed a bandage to the treated cut on Peter’s face and picked up her medical bag to move on to the next pirate. “You said the captain is three days behind you?”
“Aye.” Peter rubbed at his neck, and I noted a few raw marks there, as if he’d been whipped by long thin cords. “And he’s got twice the number we had before. We raided a camp of some stragglers not long back, killed all but the kids and forced them into the crew. Those that didn’t take to it fed the fish, and those that are left have been trained to follow him without question. I’d say he’s got close to a hundred fighters with him, if he left the rest at the boat.”
“But why chase you?” I jerked my head at the rest of his companions. “I mean, if he forbid you to go after Tarren before, why follow now?”
“He’s lost his mind.” The admission seemed to sap Peter of his resolve, and the boy sat back on the ground to rest both arms on his knees. “He was going to hit the golden heads at their camp, but once we took off, he started chasing us. The captain blames us for what happened and wants revenge on someone, even if it’s one of his own. If I know Grapeshot, he’s got the whole crew whipped up in a frenzy, ready to burn this place to the ground once they get here.”
“And we’ll be ready when he does.” Adam strode out from the ranks of the Ark River fighters, his hand on his sword, both eyes narrowed at the pirate with visceral distrust. “Without his ship, Captain Roberts is as good as dead, even if he does make it over the ridgeline. Our cavalry will make quick work of him.”
His eyebrow rose, and Peter put on a cynical smirk. “Those deer of yours rocket-proof? No? The greybacks dropped us loads of new toys before we set out, green things that can blow up tanks and planes with one shot. How long do you think your little fort here will hold out? A day? Two?”
“Maybe we should send them your head in a basket to find out.” Eve emerged beside her husband, golden eyes sparking in a rare anger that brooked no testing.
“Do your worst.” Peter’s countenance hardened into more of the old stoicism I’d seen aboard the Harper’s Vengeance, proud and vindictive, with enough spite to poison a snake. “I’ve lived with death my whole life. The others are more of the same. Everything you have was handed to you, but we at Sunbright, we had to fight for scraps since we could walk. They’ll throw themselves at these walls until they break, and Grapeshot will crucify everyone who’s left.”
His words rang out among the onlookers, prompting various reactions. Some whispered, some sneered, others exchanged worried glances. Most of the Ark River people wore hateful glares, as their tribe had been on the receiving end of the pirates’ attacks long before we’d met them. Tension ran high in the air, and I caught the audible click of more than one weapon safety being thumbed off.
I stood, and backed up so that I could be closer to Chris, my arms breaking out in goosebumps.
If Peter keeps talking that way, he’s going to get lynched.
Doubtless reading the escalation in the crowd, Sean stepped closer to the pirate, ensuring that no one could open fire without risk of hitting him as well. “Okay kid. You’ve got our attention. What do you want?”
At that, Peter flicked his eyes to the others crouched with him, and he fidgeted in a nervous twitch. “I want it known that these others are done with pirating. If you need someone to face the noose, I’ll go without a fight. Just leave the rest alive.”
“No, Peter, don’t—” One of the other boys lifted his head with a small shake, but Peter cut him off in the pseudo-Caribbean accent all the pirates had adopted in their transformation from orphans to criminals.
“That’s an order, ya hear? None of you lot say a word, not to a judge, nor a priest.” He turned back to Chris, and Peter squared his shoulders, his chin stuck out in iron-clad stubbornness. “Roberts is a few days away, but he’s moving slow, on account of all the heavy gear he’s got with him. If you help us find Tarren before then, the boys can bring her to the captain and convince him to head south again. You get to live, and we get our sister back. I’ll face whatever comes after, as payment for the entire crew.”
“One man cannot pay for the crimes of a hundred.” Sean raised an eyebrow, though his voice held a deadly seriousness that told me our leader had no intention of being intimidated.
“That so?” Peter angled his neck to look at Eve. “Is that what it says in your holy book, goldy-locks? If a perfect man can die for the whole rotten world, why can’t an evil one hang for a few dozen?”
Eve’s face lost some of its disdain, and her luminous eyes traveled over the disheveled faces.
She turned to Adam and shuffled uncomfortably on her feet. “Ameca mei . . .”
“It isn’t for us to decide.” Adam fixed his stern gaze on Sean and waved a gauntleted hand at the groveling pirates. “They’re your prisoners. Keep in mind, they’ve killed, tortured, and worse. If we let this kind of behavior stand, it sets a precedence for whatever comes after.”
Sean stared down at Peter for a moment, his brow furrowed. “And you, Dekker? You’re head of security now. What do you think we should do?”
At that, Chris’s face soured, as if he’d rather not answer the question, and his pushed both hands into his trouser pockets. “I think we should follow the laws we fought for in the uprising. A man’s life doesn’t depend on one faction leader, but all of them. This is a decision for the council in a criminal trial.”
“Your vote will still have to be cast for the trial.” Jamie peeled her gloves off and cast him a sideways glance. “And you’re head of security, so you decide if we go to trial or initiate an early release. This is your call.”
Chris’s eyes wandered to mine, the sky-blue irises heavy with conflict. Peter had been key to him and Jamie escaping the pirate ship, he’d protected all three of us from the abuses of the crew, and engineered my mission into the smoldering ashes of Collingswood. True, he was a pirate, one that had admitted to heinous crimes, but he’d saved our lives. That had to count for something.
Especially if it meant avoiding a second front in our miniature ground war.
“Whatever took Tarren might come after our people next.” I leaned closer to whisper to Chris and tried not to think about the symbol I’d found on the trucks. “Besides, are we really going to hang a bunch of kids? I know they’re murderers, but . . . jeez, Chris, I don’t know if I can watch that.”
His broad shoulders hitched, and Chris rubbed his chin, as if searching the air for some answer to his predicament. He had a stubborn side, could be bull-headed about getting his way, and had a habit of overworking himself, but of all his flaws, Christopher Dekker was not unjust. He knew as well as I did that someone had to be punished for what the pirates had done, but I doubted he wanted to swing the sword of justice anymore than the next person. Still, a decision had to be made, and he’d been elected to make it.
“I’ll help you find your missing girls.” Crossing his arms, Chris nodded down at Peter with a grave frown. “And you will negotiate the surrender of the rest of your crew. All that give themselves up will get a fair trial.”
“A fair trial isn’t what I want for them.” Peter growled back, his teeth bared like a cornered animal. “A fair trial sees them all dead.”
Chris held up a hand to stop him. “You have my word, I’ll vote to give them life sentences. But since he was old enough to have known better, Grapeshot will face the firing squad . . . and so will you. Slaving can’t go unpunished.”
Peter’s fire melted into stunned despair, and the other boys and girls looked at him with hollow, waiting eyes. I had no doubt they would follow him to the death, even if he commanded them to spring to their feet now and throw themselves into our gunfire. These kids had been through hell, and yet had become hell themselves in the lives of others. Would it be more or less of a mercy to gun them all down?
Rodney Carter is probably rolling in his grave with laughter. He said this would happen, he knew how this would play out. Damn the man, but he was right.
Peter drew a deep breath and his eyes rose to meet mine in a hoarse plea. “You’ll get Tarren back? You swear it?”
My heart thudded beneath my ribcage, and I cringed at the smothering multitude of eyes that converged on me. I had no enemy in the tousle-headed little girl with her wooden sword and shooting-star T-shirt. What scared me was what we would find once we tracked her down. The tracks led north . . . the same direction as the key coordinates.
I don’t have much of a choice then, do I?
“I promise.’ Balling my hands up to keep from trembling, I knew I had just signed his death warrant, yet I couldn’t be sure I hadn’t done the same for myself. My entire plan to uncover the spy had just gone up in smoke, as there would be no time for me to interview the other officials and faction members now. Even if we were going in the same direction as the coordinates, peeling off on my own to investigate would be nigh impossible, but secret or no, a little girl’s life was at stake. I couldn’t turn my back on her.
Satisfied with my answer, Peter flashed Chris a toothy buccaneer’s grin. “You’ve got yourself a deal, mate.”