Thunder Run

by Daniel José Older

  She coughed, wiped her mouth, then rolled onto her back, panting, and stared at the darkening sky.

  How much time had passed? Where were the others? She tried to get up, couldn’t.

  “Hey!” someone yelled nearby. “There’s another! C’mon!”

  What side of the lake had the toad dropped her off on? Terror swept over her. She rolled her head to one side, tried to make out who the approaching soldiers were, but in the dim twilight it was impossible to tell blue from gray.

  “You there!” one of them yelled, holding up his sidearm and breaking into a run toward her.

  Magdalys closed her eyes. There was no way she could escape; she couldn’t even stand. But maybe there was a dino nearby …

  Rough hands grabbed her and pulled her to her feet. “What are you doing here, girl? Who are you with?”

  Who was she with? What were they talking about?

  She stumbled, shaking her head, the whole world a blurry mess of dark trees and the gentle lapping of the lake. “C’mon, get a move on!”

  She had to run. Whoever these men were, they weren’t friendly. They wouldn’t keep her safe. They might capture or kill her. She had to … She took two feeble steps, tripped, and collapsed into the mud, coughing.

  “Hey! What’s the matter with you, girl? Get her up! C’mon, then!”

  The hands that clenched tight to either one of Magdalys’s arms didn’t care about her. She wasn’t a person to them, just a broken object that might hurt them, might be useful somehow, but mostly was just a nuisance. They yanked her to her feet and shoved her forward into a stumbling walk.

  “Take her to the general,” one said. “That’s where the others are. Maybe we’ll make sense out of what happened tonight.”

  The others, Magdalys thought. At least, wherever she was going, some of her friends would be there. She stilled the raging storm inside herself and walked forward through the gathering night.

  THEY LED MAGDALYS through a dim, scattered campsite to an elaborate tent with soldiers standing guard out front.

  “Found another contraband,” one of the men who’d captured her said.

  Contraband. That was the word they used to describe people who had escaped from slavery and made their way to the Union lines. Up above, the American flag seemed to preside over the campsite. Magdalys exhaled. So she hadn’t been snatched by the enemy, at least, although she sure didn’t feel like she was with friends either.

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” a familiar voice said from inside the tent.

  “Mapper!” Magdalys yelled, shrugging off the men’s heavy hands on her shoulders and making a break for the entranceway.

  “Mags?” Mapper called. “You’re alive!”

  The guards stepped in front of her, blocking her way. “Ho there, girl.”

  “Let me through!” Magdalys demanded. “Mapper!”

  “Sir!” Wolfgang’s gruff voice boomed. “That is a member of my troop! I demand you allow her entrance.”

  A sullen pause filled the air.

  “A girl,” a quiet voice said, “a member of your troop, Corporal Hands? I don’t recall the United States Army allowing women to serve in our ranks, let alone Negro ones.”

  “General Banks, sir,” Wolfgang insisted. “I can explain everything. Please.”

  “Very well,” Banks said. “Bring her in.”

  The guards stepped back, and Magdalys ran through the tent flaps and stood panting in an elaborate office, lit on all sides by flickering lanterns. General Banks sat in a fancy wooden chair at the far end, his feet propped up on the table tortoise. He was a middle-aged man with plain brown hair, a plain brown mustache, and a plain, indistinguishable face. If he ever committed a crime, Magdalys thought, the only thing a witness would be able to say about him was that he was a regular white guy with a mustache. There was simply nothing else to report. He raised one eyebrow at Magdalys, looking, quite simply, bored out of his mind. “What exactly are you supposed to be?” Banks asked.

  Mapper, Montez, Wolfgang, Tom Summers, Toussaint, Briggs, and Bijoux stood at attention in front of the general. They looked bedraggled and exhausted, and some of them were soaking wet like Magdalys was, but they were alive! They’d made it! And Mapper had her satchel slung over one shoulder. She wanted to hug each of them with all her might, but she knew it wasn’t the time for that.

  “Major General, sir,” Magdalys pleaded, “the Confederates are massing for an attack! You have to —”

  “I literally don’t have to do anything at all,” he scoffed. “Do you think you get to give orders here?”

  “No, I —”

  “You know who does get to give orders here?”

  “Sir, if you’d just —”

  “I do!” Banks huffed. “That’s it. I give orders. Now, I asked you a direct question and I expect an answer to that question and not a single word that is not an answer to that question. Is that clear?”

  Fighting down the burst of anger within her, Magdalys tightened her lips and nodded. “I’m … Ma … Private Magdalys Roca, sir!” She snapped a salute.

  “Reeeeally?” Banks stood, cocked his head at her. “How fascinating. What makes you think you’re allowed to serve in my army, I wonder?”

  She shouldn’t have said private. She wasn’t sure what rank General Grant’s offer made her exactly, but it was more than a foot soldier. “I’m part of a newly created top secret special division, sir. Brought in by General Grant. He asked me to run it, really. So, I’m not technically part of your army, exactly. Sir.” That came out ruder than she’d meant it to. “But, sir —”

  Banks, who had been bemusedly studying the far corner of the command tent, whirled on her. “Excuse me?”

  “I meant —”

  “You would like me to believe, young lady, that the high commander of the combined United States military forces saw fit to create a secret special unit” — he crinkled up his face as he said it, making it abundantly clear he didn’t buy one word she said — “and put a little Negro child in charge of it, hm?”

  “Yes, I ha —”

  “And what is it, exactly, that qualifies you to be the head of this super secret special division, hm?”

  “I have a letter from General Grant that explains everything.” She reached into her jacket pocket, pulled out the soaked, crinkled parchment, and unfolded it. Her heart sank.

  “A letter from General Grant that explains everything,” Banks parroted. “How amusing.”

  Except she didn’t, not anymore. All Magdalys had was a soggy scrap of paper with faded ink stains splotched across it. The lake water had destroyed her one piece of proof of what she said.

  “Is that your little letter?” Banks asked.

  Magdalys shook her head as the tent seemed to close in on her. “It’s … But …”

  “General Banks, sir!” Montez barked. “This is my si —”

  “I don’t remember giving you permission to speak, Private,” Banks snapped.

  “Permission to speak, General Banks?” Wolfgang said.

  Banks nodded.

  “I saw the letter myself, sir. The child is telling the truth.”

  “And who are you” — Banks peered at Wolfgang’s uniform — “Corporal?”

  “We don’t have time for this!” Magdalys yelled. “The Confederates are about to mount an attack! You have to stop them!”

  “It’s true!” Mapper said. “She’s not lying!”

  Banks shook his head. “Take her away,” he snarled, and heavy hands wrapped once again around Magdalys’s arms, yanking her backward.

  “No!” she yelled. “Let me go!”

  “And send out the scouts,” Banks added grudgingly as Magdalys was dragged out the door. “Find out what all this mess is about.”

  EVERYTHING WAS WET and dripping and the thick swampiness covered the dingy room like a nasty moist blanket, and mosquitoes and that endless dripping and the sound of sloshing water nearby — the bayou or the lake or wha
tever it was just kept sloshing — and the trinkling song of some stream too, and the drips and more mosquitoes and heat and near darkness, it just didn’t end, any of it, it just went on and on and on forever into the night.

  Magdalys slumped onto the rickety wooden bench — the only bit of furniture in the old shack they’d shoved her in. Probably a boathouse, she figured, eyeing the pulleys, hooks, and ropes dangling in the darkness above. Or maybe something much creepier …

  She shook off the growing sense of dread. Stood up. Sat back down. Rolled her eyes.

  There were most likely dinos nearby. It was a Union outpost, after all. They had to have some mounts. But she didn’t even have it in her to concentrate and try to find them. What was the point? She was a prisoner of her own army. Captured by the people who were supposed to be the good guys. Captured, humiliated, and locked in a creepy murder shack. Or boathouse. Or whatever.

  And what had happened to her dactyls?

  Dizz and Beans were probably alright. She hadn’t had time to ask Mapper or Bijoux about them, but she felt like they would’ve tried to say something if anything had happened. Right? But Grappler … Grappler, who had saved Magdalys’s life more than once since they’d left New York and even when wounded had managed to help encourage the toad to get them to safety. Grappler, who might not be able to swim …

  Magdalys was pacing and she hadn’t even realized she’d stood up.

  Maybe the toad helped Grappler just like he’d helped Magdalys.

  Maybe.

  And anyway, the Confederates would launch their attack at any moment and none of this would matter, because this puny Union outpost would be overrun and New Orleans taken and then whatever Emperor Maximilian was plotting with the French in Mexico would go down unimpeded and their armies would all join forces to create that massive slavery empire the Knights of the Golden Circle were so excited about. And — Magdalys smacked her own forehead — those secret documents Milo had stolen for her! She’d told Mapper to give them to General Banks, but Banks would probably just destroy them or forget about them; he’d never believe that a devastating plot was afoot.

  Magdalys’s pacing had brought her in front of the door. She had to do something. But what? Nothing made sense. There were no right answers, and all the people she trusted were either scattered across this war-torn world or in the same predicament as her. Or dead.

  She raised her fist to bang on the wooden planks, and the door swung open.

  “Whoa!” Magdalys said.

  “Whoa!” Mapper said, his face lit by torchlight.

  A white soldier stood behind him, frowning severely. “In.” The soldier shoved Mapper unceremoniously through the door and then slammed it.

  Magdalys wrapped around him and sniffed once, then simply burst into tears. He smelled like swamp and dirt, but he also smelled like Mapper, which meant, in a weird sort of way, like home. It was strange to think of the time Magdalys had spent at the orphanage as peaceful, but compared to what she’d been through over the past couple of months, New York seemed like a whole other life.

  Mapper was crying too. She felt his little hiccuped sobs against her shoulder; they mixed with her own. Neither needed to explain their tears, they’d been through it all together, fought off the panic and frenzy of battle, the terror of being about to die at any given moment, the thrill of surviving another day when it seemed like the whole world wanted to kill you.

  When there was no more crying to do, Magdalys and Mapper sat beside each other on the bench and shook their heads in the darkness.

  “I think the breaking point for me,” Mapper said, wiping his nose, “was being captured and roughed up by our own team.”

  Magdalys nodded. “That was mine too. If I’d known what a useless doofus Banks was gonna be, I never would’ve told you to give those secret Golden Circle documents to him.”

  “What, these?” Mapper lifted his shirt where, instead of the dark brown of his skin, Magdalys saw the yellowish beige of parchment paper.

  She leapt up. “Mapper, you genius! How did you — What did you — ?”

  He made a figure eight with his head, raising one eyebrow and shrugging his shoulders. “I had a feeling that guy wasn’t gonna be trustworthy, just from the way the soldiers from the 9th talked about him. So I stashed ’em here just in case. And lo and behold, my hunch was correct!”

  “Mapper, you are the greatest!”

  “Yeah, thanks to me, when the Knights take over the whole world, we’ll already know their secret plan, so that’s cool.”

  He chuckled, and so did Magdalys, and then they were both laughing hysterically and neither knew exactly why, except everything had become so horrible and absurd and terrifying at the same time, and even their allies couldn’t be trusted and nothing made any sense.

  When the door flew open and two soldiers stomped in, Mapper and Magdalys had slid down to the floor in wild giggle fits.

  “TEN-HUT!” one of the soldiers barked, and they did their best to get themselves together, finally making it off the floor and into some semblance of standing at attention by the time General Banks walked in, looking extremely put out around that mediocre mustache.

  Magdalys and Mapper saluted, both of them still panting and sweating and bedraggled in almost every way.

  “Well!” General Banks snorted.

  “Sir, yes sir!” Mapper yelled, and then Magdalys spat out an uncontrollable guffaw through lips squeezed so tight together they made it sound exactly like a pterofart.

  That did both of them back in: Any semblance of having it together was splattered, and they both fell out laughing once again.

  “This is the child I’m supposed to believe General Grant has entrusted an entire top secret division of the United States Armed Forces to?” Banks mused. “How interesting.”

  Magdalys sobered her expression quickly as anger and shame duked it out inside her. How could she have ruined that letter? Especially when she was within the clutches of such a senseless dullard! “He did, sir!” she insisted, hating the pleading tone in her own voice. “I swear he did!”

  “It’s true,” Mapper said, finally calming down too.

  Banks waved them off. “That’s lovely, children. I didn’t come here to rehash this argument though, which you’ve already lost, anyway.”

  Magdalys tried not to slump.

  “However!” Banks arched an eyebrow. “I sent out an elite mounted scout unit to scour the nearby swamplands.”

  An elite mounted scout unit, Magdalys thought. How cool … She wondered what they’d ridden. It would have to be something fast, of course, but also amphibious and skilled at complicated maneuvers, because the forest terrain was so swampy. A lot of the fast-moving dinos were better on plains and drier landscapes.

  “I decided, since you all seemed so convinced of your discovery and since some of the reconnaissance collected by your little group was actually quite precise, to double-check the data.”

  Magdalys hoped the general had said as much to the men and that Briggs was there to hear it — it would make his whole day!

  “As it turns out,” Banks continued, “there are indeed indications of a sizable force massing at the far side of the lake.” He said it like it was just another update in this long ridiculous life, not a direct threat to his entire army. But maybe, Magdalys reasoned, imminent destruction was just another daily event during wartime.

  He also said it like it was actually true for the first time, like he was the one telling them something new, not confirming what they’d seen with their own eyes. It made Magdalys want to spit. She took a deep breath and swallowed back all the sarcasm she wanted to let loose on him.

  “Um, we know that!” Mapper snipped. “We barely escaped them alive!”

  Magdalys did her best not to fall out laughing again.

  “Well, now it’s officially confirmed!” Banks retorted. “By official US military sources!”

  “What are the Louisiana 9th?” Magdalys said. “Hired mercen
aries?”

  “Young lady!” Banks growled.

  No, Magdalys realized. The Louisiana 9th are black. That’s why their intelligence doesn’t count. When Banks had said official US military sources, what he’d really meant were white ones.

  “And what are we?” Mapper demanded. “Dinopoop?”

  Banks rounded on them. “That’s the point I was trying to get to and am already regretting!”

  “What?” Magdalys and Mapper said together.

  “I had decided to delay our westerly march until next year, for reasons, and that appears to have been the prudent decision. However! We can’t have threats on the outskirts of our city, you know. Since your intelligence has proven to be useful.” He paused, glanced away with a frown. “Potentially crucial, even, to the survival of our southern army.”

  “Sir, yes sir!” Mapper agreed enthusiastically.

  “And since the soldiers of the Louisiana 9th vouched for you both and swore you’d mustered in under their watch and were competent, distinguished even, under fire —”

  “They said that?” Magdalys said.

  “Stop interrupting me or I promise I will take back what I’m about to say before I even say it!” Banks barked.

  “Sir, yes sir!” Magdalys and Mapper said.

  “Because of all that, and in spite of everything else including my better judgment, I’ve decided to allow you to remain in my army as privates.”

  He really said it like he was doing them a favor, Magdalys marveled. She supposed it was better than the alternative. She still planned on dismantling the Knights of the Golden Circle, one way or another, and being forced out of the Union Army almost as soon as she’d joined wouldn’t be a great start. Plus, Banks had sounded like she might have even more dire consequences to face if things had turned out another way …

  “You are to report to the French Quarter barracks in the morning and receive your assignments,” Banks said. “Is that clear, children?”

  “Sir, yes sir!”

  “And there will be no more talk of top secret units or General Grant!”