Carry the Flame (34 page)

He cocked the hammer of his revolver and racked back the slide on the semiautomatic. He hadn't checked his ammo, and didn't dare now because the lead car, flying the Russian flag, raced into view, churning up large chunks of dirt and sand as it pivoted furiously around the dune. In a flash of armor, it fishtailed and sped straight at them.

The Harley rumbled to life.

“Get on!” Esau shouted.

The slave already had his foot on the shifter when the boy jumped onto the back of the saddle, but Esau clearly didn't know much about the motorcycle. It took him critical seconds to engage a gear, then the bike lurched forward—and stalled.

Jaya swore desperately, but before he could look back, Esau sparked the wires and the warmed-up engine snapped back to life. He let out the throttle, and the motorcycle's front wheel rose up. The bike listed left, so unwieldy with the sidecar that it felt like they'd spill over or flip onto their backs. But the wheel slammed down, Esau shifted, and the bike gained speed.

The slave looked over his shoulder and screamed, “Shoot them.”

Jaya twisted around, finding the lead car so close he could see the driver's bearded face and eyeglasses. The passenger was leaning forward, revealing only the top of his head. Jaya feared he was reaching for a weapon, but a metal shield with a narrow horizontal opening, like a knight's eye slit, started lowering over where the windshield had once been.

He fired the semiautomatic three times in rapid succession, so adrenaline-driven he never noticed the pain of his broken thumb. He was shocked when the driver clutched his face and knocked off his glasses, drenching his hands with blood.

“I hit him!” Jaya bellowed in bald wonder, before realizing that a quick death was now preferable to being taken alive.

The driver slumped onto the steering wheel. He must have weighted the gas pedal because the vehicle never slowed as it veered wildly left, heading for a distant dune.

The second car gained on them. With its shield in place, Jaya didn't dare waste any bullets.

“Faster!” he cried, the blood of Russians heavy on his hands.

Esau risked certain capture to try to grab a higher gear. A horrible grinding noise erupted from beneath the seat, but when it ended the bike accelerated swiftly. For the first time, Jaya saw them speeding away from the cars. The last in line turned toward the vehicle peeling off into the desert, but the car in the lead never paused. Neither did the larger one right behind it.

The cage rattled loudly, incessantly, canisters and gas cans banging around. Jaya hoped nothing was leaking; they needed all the fuel and water they carried.

“See that?” Esau yelled, nodding toward what could have been a solid horizon of dunes.

“Yeah, I see it,” the boy shouted back, realizing most of his attention had been on the cars.

“You see that opening?”

“No.”

“You will. I'm going to drive this thing right through there. If we get stuck, they'll get stopped for sure. Just grab ammo, food, and water—whatever you can—and run.”

Jaya saw a narrow valley now. It didn't look promising to him. He turned back, finding the Harley a quarter mile ahead of the two cars still hounding them. As they sped closer to the dunes, Esau increased their lead to almost a half mile. Not nearly enough, as best Jaya could figure.

“Hold on!” the slave yelled.

Jaya braced himself against Esau's back. The dunes loomed large, the valley tight. They hit deep sand almost immediately. The bike slowed so abruptly that Jaya pressed hard against the slave, who fought to keep himself from slamming into the ape-hangers. But they both spotted hardpan about four hundred feet away, a viable-looking corridor between the dunes' soft white shoulders.

“Go-go,” Jaya pleaded, so anguished he squeezed his thighs almost bloodless against the saddle.

The bike labored, rear wheel spewing a furious stream of sand. But it kept rolling, first on momentum, then torque. In moments, though, it floundered. The slave screamed in torment, pushing on the tall hand grips as if will alone could force the cycle forward. The rear tire did find just enough traction to lurch ahead again, jerking along on its few nubs of tread.

Jaya whipped around and saw the lead car slowing, too. Then it stopped, forcing the one behind it to brake. He would have shrieked with joy, but the doors burst open on both cars. A scramble of men jumped out.

“They're coming after us!” he yelled into Esau's ear, panicking when he saw the Harley wasn't moving any faster than the men now chasing them on foot.

Gunshots screamed past the cage. Despite the distance, a bullet ripped away one of the metal bars, setting off a loud clang—and Jaya's intense fear that the Russians would also get lucky with their shots.

He fired back. Now his thumb ached horrendously. The men dropped to the sand. He saw no evidence that he'd hit anyone, but the bike was inching closer to firmer ground. Dead earth had never looked more inviting. Just as he let himself believe they'd speed off unscathed, the rear wheel mired itself in sand—less than fifteen feet from the hardpan.

Jaya jumped off. So did Esau. The slave started pushing the bike, making little progress. Jaya turned, aimed, and fired twice more, emptying the semiautomatic. Then he threw his shoulder into the back of the saddle, but moving the Harley was much harder than dragging away Hunt's body. And he had to keep looking back. When he spotted the Russians running boldly toward them, he drew the revolver, worked his swollen thumb around the butt, and kicked up sand near their feet. All three dropped back down, returning fire with their own pistols.

“Help!” Esau gasped.

The slave's badly wounded leg shook visibly. Jaya slammed himself against the bike, torturing his knifed shin to dig his foot into the sand and force the Harley forward. Esau dragged himself onto the saddle.

“Wait!” Jaya shouted when he saw Esau move his foot to shift. The youth barely climbed aboard before the bike roared off.

“Cover us,” Esau said in a voice so weak Jaya hardly heard him.

He fired the revolver's last load at a muzzle flash, doubting he hit his target. Another bullet clipped the cage, but the growing distance silenced the Russian guns.

Esau didn't slow. Jaya was grateful. Every second of flight made him feel safer. And he'd killed one of them, all by himself. Not confirmed, and maybe the man wasn't dead yet, but nobody survived a head wound anymore.

“My first real kill,”
he whispered to himself.

No remorse. Only relief.

S
am and William crossed the gray beams to the other side of the underground river. Cassie tarried on the jury-rigged bridge, staring at the water flowing under her feet. She remembered its cool velvety touch, and wondered whether she'd ever feel it again.

She looked up, saw the grown-ups waiting, and walked toward them. But as soon as she glimpsed the catacombs, she closed her eyes, imagination feverish with all the death hiding in the dark.

Sam rested her hand on Cassie's shoulder. “It's going to be okay, and it'll be over before you know it.”

She wanted it over now. Dread thickened her limbs, made them heavy with the imminence of bombs and battle—and all the shooting and killing and screaming and crying to come. Like the Army of God. Her eyes lifted to the colorful cavern ceiling. Rock. But it looked thin and fragile to her, and she worried it would shatter and fall like the roof they planned to blow up.

Sam crouched and hugged her. William watched them, weighted down by a backpack stuffed with land mines and a spool of wire as big as a small boulder.

“I can't wait to see you again.” Sam ran her hand over Cassie's short, light-colored hair.

“Me, too,” the girl said longingly, expecting William to butt in any second to say they had to leave. “Are you going to get hurt?” she asked Sam, who shook her head.

“I promise you, I won't.”

But how do you know?
Cassie was scared for herself, too. There were so many ways to get hurt and die. She'd seen it happen lots. To kids even. And she knew it
would
happen to her if she dropped a land mine. She didn't have the strength to pull the pins, so William would have to get them set to blow up, and then she'd have to be supercareful. Even after she laid them down—“Like they're babies,” Sam had said—she knew she couldn't so much as breathe on them. What if she happened to hiccup or sneeze?

“Can I . . .” She couldn't find the words for the most important question of her life.

“Can you what?” Sam said, smiling.

Cassie shook her head.
Never mind.
Why was she even asking?

Sam cupped Cassie's cheeks with her warm hands and looked into the girl's alert blue eyes. “Ask me. There's nothing you can't ask me. I promise you that, too.”

Nothing?
She wasn't so sure of that. She'd never gotten what she wanted most: Mom, Dad, Jenny, Maul. Why would asking for this make any difference? But the words to finish her question did come to her: “Can I stay with you when it's all over?”

“Yes,” Sam said. “I'd love that. I
want
you to stay with me more than anything.” Sam hugged her again, this time long enough to moisten both their cheeks. Then she stood, and Cassie knew it was time to follow William into the catacombs.

When it's all over,
she repeated to herself, looking back one more time at Sam and the river.

After only a few steps, William asked her to walk in front of him. “I know bones bother you, but we can't have any surprises, as far as my footing goes.”

Cassie led them deeper into the catacombs, glad the lantern didn't light more than a strip of darkness. The path narrowed quickly, and she caught sight of small skulls and bones piled hip-high on both sides. She couldn't avoid brushing against them, cringing each time. It felt like she had bugs crawling on her body. She didn't let herself think of snakes at all.

William warned that the path would steepen, and in minutes she had to lean forward to climb the trail. Even so, she slipped and bumped the lantern against the bones. The candle almost went out. She held her breath till the flickering flame bloomed again, afraid exhaling would somehow snuff the precious light.

“You okay?” William asked. She nodded. “Go ahead and use your free hand to get up this last bit. It's going to get harder. We braced some things in the ground so we could get a better grip.”

Things?
They were
bones,
placed evenly, like rungs on a ladder. Sickening to feel in bare feet, but they did keep her from sliding backward. She made her way up into a wide, dug-out space that resembled a cave. Tall enough for her to stand, but William had to bend over.

Waving her away, he carefully slid off the pack. Then he asked her to move straight ahead. She took a few tentative steps before spotting the two bowed-out bars in the middle of a wall built of them. The two didn't appear wide enough, even for her. And when she peered past them, the darkness looked black as death.

Duck walking, William lifted the pack and eased it down ahead of him. In this awkward manner, he moved up beside her.

“Just squeeze through there,” he said to her. “I'll hold the lantern for you.”

She stared at the tight opening and shook her head without realizing it.

“Cassie, you
have
to do this.”

In his sudden desperation, she recognized the panicky words of so many adults she'd known. Or maybe—and this frightened her far more—she'd just heard a man who didn't want to do anything violent, but would.

She lay on her side and slipped between the bars, more easily than she wished until her bottom lodged against the cool metal. Relieved, she said, “I can't. It's too—”

William shoved her buttocks through, scraping her hip on the hard ground.

“That hurt,” she cried out.

“I'm sorry, but we don't have time for games. From now on, if you tell me something's wrong, it had better be wrong. My life and yours depend on you being straight with me.”

Cassie was angry, but shifted her head to the side to slip all the way through. She took the lantern from him. Slowly, she raised it, revealing a cracked concrete ceiling pressing down on the two bars that had let her pass. Then she turned and spotted her first cage. She didn't know what else to call it. Two skeletons lay with their arms entwined, as if they'd died hugging.

“Cassie.” She jumped at the sound of her name. “Look at me.”

She turned back to him, staring through the bars, realizing
she
was in prison, like the skeletons she'd just seen.

“You have to get started,” he told her. “Think of the maps I showed you. You have to walk through this room. You'll see all the cells on your right. When you come to the end, try to find the stairs. They should be on your right, too. Remember? Unless they've collapsed.”

“You mean you don't know?”
How did I miss that?

“No, we don't, but there's a good chance they're there because that's where the tower was, and we're sure this is the top tier.”

“So anything could be here. Snakes. Animals. Somebody else.” Her throat pinched tighter with each new threat.

“Cassie, move. We don't have any time. You need to make sure you have a clear path up into that tower, and then you've got to come back and get the mines.”

Stunned by every terrifying possibility, she stood as still as the earth that surrounded her. William reached through the bars and took her arm. She flinched, expecting another shove—or worse—but he held her gently.

“Listen to me, Cassie. What you're about to do could be the most important thing you'll ever do in your whole life. I don't know how else to tell you that.”

She believed him. She didn't want to, but his words rang with an honesty so raw they could have peeled her open. He wasn't just desperate. He was pleading for his life and the lives of everyone he cared about. Cassie nodded. As a child of privation, she grasped all the feral underpinnings of extinction.