Thunder Run

by Daniel José Older

  “Especially one with twelve-inch toenails,” Briggs said. Then he smacked his face. “Aw, man. Sorry, Bijoux.”

  Bijoux waved him off. “A-a-anyway, it was cold that night, so I covered them with a bl-bl-blanket. And the next day, ju-ju-ju-ju-just Milo hatched. The rest, the rest st-st-st-stopped scra-scra-scra-scra-scratching.”

  “You fed that thing, didn’t you?” Toussaint demanded.

  “I —”

  “We were barely making it on hardtack crumbs and the rotten scraps we could salvage from that mansion’s pantries, and you were giving food to the same monster that —”

  “I f-f-f-ed him half of my p-p-p-portion!” Bijoux said. “That’s all! Didn’t t-take away from anyone else.”

  “So you would’ve starved yourself so it could live?”

  “It’s what got him talking again,” Magdalys said quietly. Everyone looked at her. She didn’t know how she knew it, but it was a fact that seemed to just sit there, looking at her. And Toussaint had said Bijoux hadn’t said a word since the attack until they got to the mansion.

  “It’s true,” Bijoux said. “I d-d-don’t understand it, but it’s true.” He held the tiny raptor close and it nuzzled him, still sleeping. “I’m s-s-s-sorry!”

  “Don’t be,” Briggs said. “You didn’t take none of my food. What do I care? I’m just glad you’re talking again.”

  Bijoux smiled at him.

  “I’m going to sleep,” Toussaint said. “Y’all can keep feeding your little pets while we go hungry, but I, for one, plan to get out of this mess alive. Whatever it takes.” He got up, shot a cold glance at Bijoux, and headed off to the tents.

  “Alright, alright,” Wolfgang said. “We all need some shut-eye. Got a long day tomorrow. I’ll explain on the way. And, Private Roca?”

  “Sir, yes sir!” Magdalys and Montez both said.

  Wolfgang sighed. “This is gonna take some getting used to, huh? Private Girl Roca.”

  “Sir, yes sir!”

  He handed her General Grant’s letter. “That won’t do either. Anyway, you’ve still got some explaining to do. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  “YOU KNOW,” MAPPER said as they trudged along through the swampy wilderness at dawn the next morning, “we’re actually going directly toward the enemy encampment.”

  “Girl Private Roca!” Corporal Hands hollered.

  Magdalys jogged a few steps forward so she was beside Wolfgang and Mapper. “Sir, yes sir!”

  “No, that’s not it either. We’ll figure it out. When did you acquire the friendship of this peculiar little genius?”

  “Sir, you mean Private Mapper, sir? Er … Private Kyle? Ah …”

  “Mapper will do fine,” Wolfgang said. “We in the Louisiana 9th believe in nicknames, as you may have noticed.”

  “RECONNAISSANCE!” a voice yelled from up ahead.

  “Not you, Briggs!” Wolfgang growled. “How does one expect to be good at reconnaissance when one can’t keep one’s mouth shut?”

  “One heard that,” Briggs called.

  “Good!” Wolfgang retorted. “That’s why I said it. Anyway.” He glanced at Magdalys. “Yes, Mapper.”

  “We’ve known each other for …” She thought back. Mapper had been around for as long as she could remember, and he’d been plotting mischief and studying atlases in the library since before he knew how to read. “Forever.”

  “And how exactly do you deal with him being a know-it-all?” Wolfgang asked.

  “Aw, man,” Mapper said.

  Magdalys rolled her eyes. “You just get used to it, I guess. Thing is, it’s easier to put up with a know-it-all when he really does know it all. Plus, I’m positive I never would’ve made it here if it wasn’t for him.”

  Mapper raised one shoulder and then the other like he didn’t know what to do with himself. “Geez, Mags …”

  “He’s one of my best friends,” she finished.

  Wolfgang nodded approvingly. “Very good, then. In fact, Mapper, you are correct: We are headed directly back toward the enemy encampment.” He glanced around. “Louisiana 9th, squad up! I want you all to hear this.”

  Montez and Tom double-timed it from behind them, and up ahead, Bijoux, Briggs, and Toussaint slowed down. Magdalys noticed Toussaint hadn’t said a word to Bijoux since the night before; in fact, he’d barely said a word at all. But Milo the raptor was perched happily on Bijoux’s shoulder, blinking at the bright forest around them without a care in the world.

  They all kept marching, but slower now, in a tight formation around Wolfgang.

  “The enemy is dead ahead,” he said. “And beyond them lies our beloved city, the only place most of us call home. And home matters more than just about anything else in this world besides your name, the ones you love, and your honor. Ya hear?”

  “Sir, yes sir!” Magdalys, Mapper, and the Louisiana 9th said as one.

  “Good. But keep it down a little. We’re getting a little too close to be that loud.”

  “Sir, yes sir!” they all whispered.

  “Now, we’ve been through some things, all of us.” His eyes met with each of the soldiers’ in his squad, then Mapper’s and Magdalys’s. “And I know all we want to do is get home and wash up and sleep in a real bed without these racists shooting at us everywhere we go.”

  “Amen, amen,” Briggs said.

  “But the fact is, we may not have a home to come back to if what appears to be going down is really what’s going down.”

  “You think they getting ready to move on New Orleans?” Bijoux asked, amidst mutters and groans.

  “They better not,” Toussaint said. “They’ll get the whupping of their lives if they try.”

  “That is what I think,” Wolfgang said. “We’ve never seen a troop amassment in Louisiana of that size. Not since the Union took New Orleans, anyway. But with Vicksburg fallen and whatever defeat our boys just suffered in Tennessee, well, there’s probably some freed-up brigands roaming around now, the way I figure it, and we know the state militia has been begging Richmond for troops for a while now. Looks like they finally got ’em. And I wouldn’t be so sure they won’t be able to, Private Toussaint. They nearly recaptured Baton Rouge a few months back, and if it wasn’t for our sauropod fleet, they would’ve.”

  “He has a point,” Briggs said.

  “And last I heard,” Wolfgang went on, “Banks had orders to send most of the soldiers they do have out of New Orleans.”

  “That’s right!” Magdalys said suddenly, remembering her conversation in the Saint Charles Hotel. “General Grant told me that Emperor Maximilian is massing troops at a town called Matamoros on the Mexican border, so General Banks has to deal with that with whatever units he has left. That’s why he couldn’t spare any to send on the rescue mission to get you guys.”

  Some grumbling rose up as the soldiers exchanged irritated glances.

  “They was really about to let us die for some foreign-policy mess,” Toussaint mumbled. “Problems in a whole other country more important than their own soldiers.”

  “You surprised?” Briggs scoffed. “We nothin’ to them.” He swatted the air, disgust on his face. “Ditchdiggers and cannon fodder.”

  “It ain’t that,” Wolfgang said. “But I hear where y’all coming from.”

  “What is it, then?” Toussaint demanded.

  “The French put Emperor Maximilian in place, toppled President Juárez’s government to do it. Juárez’s men been fighting back, but they all in retreat now, from what I hear. Hiding in the mountains and launching guerrilla attacks. Point is, the French been flirting with the idea of supporting the Confederacy for a while now. If they get a foothold in Mexico, that’ll open up a whole trade route of arms and supplies to the enemy, see? And then they’ll attack from the south and we’ll be caught between two massive armies: the Franco-Mexican Imperialists and the newly reinvigorated Confederates. The Union will fall and the dream of those Knights of the Golden Circle that Magdalys told us about will come
true: a slavery empire reaching across the Americas.”

  Everyone got quiet for a moment, and the click and buzz of the swamp rose around them. Grant had said something to that effect, Magdalys remembered now, but she’d been so caught up in her anger — the very army that Montez had risked his life for was abandoning him! — that she hadn’t really wrapped her mind around what that meant.

  But the corporal was right: With the Imperial Army massing at the Mexican border, the Golden Circle was on the brink of going from a conspiracy whispered in back channels, a shadow, to something very real. And with the Knights’ dinomasters in the fight, they’d be nearly unstoppable.

  “What that means,” Wolfgang said, breaking everyone out of their worried reveries, “is that New Orleans really is about to fall. They’ve surely gotten word about the plans to send troops to the border — the Confederates have eyes and ears in every gin joint and back alley of that city. It’s probably part of their plan: get the troops sent off to deal with the French and then amass troops and invade while no one’s there to defend New Orleans.”

  “Which means …” Montez said.

  “We have some important work to do,” Wolfgang said.

  Everyone looked at Briggs, who was staring off into space.

  “Very important work,” Wolfgang said.

  “What kind of work?” Montez asked pointedly.

  “Work that involves scoping out enemy positions and reporting back, perhaps?” Tom suggested.

  Briggs blinked but didn’t seem to be listening.

  Wolfgang threw his hands up. “Oh my goodness! I give up! Briggs!”

  Briggs snapped a salute. “Sir, yes sir!”

  “As long as we’ve known you, you haven’t shut up about —”

  “RECONNAISSANCE!!”

  “And now, finally! We come to a moment when —”

  Briggs widened his eyes and glanced around. “RECONNAISSANCE? Sir?”

  Wolfgang sighed. “Yes, Briggs. Reconnaissance.”

  “RECONNAISSANCE BRIGGS, REPORTING FOR DUTY!”

  Toussaint rubbed his eyes. “Can we leave him behind?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” Wolfgang said. “We’re gonna need all hands on deck for this one. Especially” — he turned his glare directly on Magdalys — “this young lady.”

  JUST A DISTURBANCE, not an attack, Wolfgang had said. But a big disturbance. Huge, even.

  Magdalys sat very still on a thick oak tree branch and scowled. It was only a day earlier, fending off the legions of dinoattacks that Drek sent her way, that she’d realized just how much deeper her powers really were; she still didn’t know the full extent of them. She could break through his hold on a dino’s mind. She could sway the paths of multiple attacking pteros at once. What else was she capable of?

  “You ready?” Montez asked from the next branch over. Wolfgang had detailed him and Bijoux as her protection unit.

  “What’s the signal for me to start?” Magdalys had asked just before they split up.

  “There is none,” Wolfgang said with a chuckle. “You’re the signal for us to start.”

  She’d grimaced. “Right.” Then she dapped Mapper and waved at the others as they walked off into the thick woods.

  Now the marsh seemed very, very quiet from way up in this tree. Magdalys had spent most of her time in the Atchafalaya either soaring above the canopy or down in the swampy terrain. This in-between place was a whole new and peaceful side of it. Too peaceful. They were on a recon mission, after all, and the world around them being quiet meant that they had to be extra, extra quiet if they didn’t want to get caught and blow the whole thing.

  She looked at Montez and nodded. He raised his rifle and clicked the scope into place. “Thanks for saving us, by the way.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You’ve already thanked me like a million times, big bro. It’s cool.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t know the whole thing about the army giving us up for dead so they could concentrate on Mexico. It just … it’s another level to it, you know? You came to get us anyway, just you and Mapper.”

  She wobbled her head, not sure what to do with his words.

  “Hey, Private R-R-R-Roca,” Bijoux said from the branch on her other side. They both looked over to find him snickering. “Ah, never g-g-g-gets old. I meant the gi — the gi — the gi — the g-girl one though.”

  “It got old the first time it happened,” Montez grumbled.

  “What’s up, Bijoux?” Magdalys asked.

  “I had a — a — a favor to ask.” He clicked his own rifle scope into position and started loading bullets into the opened barrel. With a shuffle and squeak, Milo shoved his little snout out from Bijoux’s collar and glanced around.

  “Don’t send Milo into the fray?” Magdalys asked. “I would never.” She winked at him. “He’s part of the Louisiana 9th now. That’s a United States service member. Can’t just have him rolling around like some common swamp dino.”

  The smile that broke out across Bijoux’s face was bigger than any she’d seen on him. “Good lookin’, lil’ sis.”

  “Hey, hey,” Montez called. “She’s got one big brother in this squad and he’s me, buddy.”

  “Alright, guys, quiet down,” Magdalys warned. “I’d rather get this done without you both having to pick off attacking Confederates while I’m trying to concentrate, thank you very much.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Montez mumbled.

  She closed her eyes. Let the click and clack of more bullets being loaded fade away amidst the other chirps and buzzes of the underbrush. Tuned into the wider, deeper rumble of the living universe around her. Quieted her fast-beating heart. Searched.

  Dizz’s quiet, bubbly fubba fubba came first. He stood at the ready on a branch a few feet above them. Then the gentle breekas of little Milo, nuzzled in Bijoux’s coat pocket.

  She left them and sent her wandering thoughts out farther into the dank underbrush around them.

  There. It didn’t take long. She’d figured it wouldn’t be hard to find dinos in such a dense and wild forest, but you never knew…. War had a way of toppling the natural order of things.

  Pateeeeeeee patee pateeeeeee, crooned a nearby duckbill. She didn’t know how she knew what it was, but the image appeared so suddenly and clearly in her mind, it had to be. Another responded from not far away: Pateeeeeee pateeeeeee.

  What else? A twittering, snarling family of sinorniths — wild ones, not the Bog Marauder mounts — was perched in a tree not far away. And a whole crew of microdactyls fluttered overhead.

  That should do it.

  The Confederate camp was a little ways north of them and a little to the east, according to Mapper. She tried to imagine it from the glimpse she’d seen yesterday: rows and rows of gray-clad soldiers standing in formation amidst shabby tents. A few divisions of ironclad artillery stegos stomping impatiently in the dust. One command brachy, its long neck reaching up over the treetops. And spinebacks, those long snouts and sharp teeth gnashing.

  Drek was in there somewhere, plotting and conspiring. She’d have to find him, somehow.

  But she also couldn’t get distracted. There was one task before her now, and it would take all her focus.

  Taking a deep breath, she sent her thoughts back out to the dinos around her: three, no, four duckbills, twelve sinorniths, and, hardest of all, about three dozen microdactyls.

  She’d do them one group at a time, she decided, rather than try to send them all at once. That way they’d crash through in waves and add to the confusion. That’s what she hoped anyway. Plus, she wasn’t sure if she could manage them all at once. Not yet …

  With an exhale, she snapped the duckbills to attention and felt their curiosity turn to a strange kind of … was that respect? as her mind clicked with theirs. I need your help, she thought toward them. They probably didn’t understand English — she knew that — but the meaning of her words would carry over.

  With a little swivel of her head, she indicated where the
y were to go, her thoughts wandering northward through the trees.

  Run! Magdalys thought. Trample! Charge!

  An eruption of stomps and hoots and rustling trees off to her left let her know the message had been received.

  Magdalys smiled and opened her eyes to shoot Montez a knowing glance.

  He just blinked and shook his head. “Amazing.”

  Eyes closed. Another reach through the forest. The sudden run of the duckbills had spooked the sinorniths some — they had fluttered up to the top level of the canopy and were flapping their wings and cawing, getting ready to soar off to a less dicey part of the forest.

  No you don’t, Magdalys thought, feeling them fall within her mind’s grasp one by one. How ’bout this way instead …

  All seven leapt into the sky at the same time. She glanced up as their dark brown bodies glided past overhead, wings spread.

  “Beautiful,” Magdalys whispered. “Now for the —”

  Gunshots rang out up ahead, then the low rumble of mortar fire.

  “Hooboy,” Bijoux said, raising his rifle.

  She looked back and forth between him and her brother. “What does it mean? What do we do?”

  “You have more dinos to send?” Montez asked.

  She nodded. “Pteros actually. But —”

  “Stick to the plan,” he said, aiming at the forest below.

  “St-stick to the p-plan,” Bijoux confirmed, swinging his rifle up toward the sky.

  Magdalys nodded, tried not to think about Mapper, and Wolfgang, and Tom, and —

  She closed her eyes. C’mon, little guys, Magdalys urged, her thoughts blipping between the fussy coos and squawks of the microdactyl swarm. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.

  More gunfire kept blasting out in sudden staccato bursts, and every few minutes another artillery shell would whistle and bang up ahead. But she couldn’t get distracted. Couldn’t get caught up thinking about what might be happening to Mapper, or —