by Arthur Butt
I stayed on the ground to prevent them from rolling away. "What are you going to do with this?" I asked as they prepared to shove the first spool to me.
"Hook each up to the town's electrical supply," he replied. "Ever hear the warning, 'Don't touch a live wire'?" He smirked and made a shaking motion. "This is what we are going to hand Morgan when he hits the wall." He and Kat shoved the spool off the wagon. I braced myself to stop it from running down the street.
The cows bucked and the wire sprang off the lip into the air. The spool landed, bounced, knocking me on my backside, almost crushing my good leg before it rocked off. I picked myself up and limped back to catch the next one.
"I think you better scoot out of the way, Hunter," Bill advised. "I don't want you hurt if you can't move fast enough if need be." He pointed. "We're about finished here, anyway. Maybe your dad needs a hand."
Pop and Mr. Brennan had everything under control. They wheeled saws and drills building – something.
"Can I help?" I asked, wandering over and watching Pop cut through a beam.
"I do not think so, not right now, anyway," He replied. "This calls for a lot of hauling and dragging." He stood and brushed sawdust off his pants. "I'll need you later, though. Maybe Roy can use you. Go ask."
I had the feeling I was in everybody's way, and becoming miffed they thought I couldn't handle any hard jobs because of my leg, but nevertheless I limped over to Roy. He was in the process of pushing barrels to the end of the trailer.
"Ah, sir – Roy – do you need –"
"STAY BACK." He was wearing a gas mask and it muffled his voice. He took it off and said, "Don't come too near. This stuff is dangerous."
The back of the trailer had a lift. He slipped his mask back on, and lowered four barrels to the ground, removing the mask again.
"Chlorine from the town's water supply," he explained, slapping the barrels. "I'm going to see what I can do about making it deadlier for our friends out there."
It sounded cool. "Need help? I'm pretty good at chemistry and mixing stuff."
"Afraid not, son," he replied. He walked the barrels off the lift. "These things are heavy, and if I mess up you would have to scat fast. Besides, there's only one gas mask. Sorry."
"Oh."
I shoved my hands in my pockets and wandered off. If no one wanted my help, I wasn't about to run around begging them. I watched Kat and Bill struggle with a roll of wire as they pushed it out the town's gate and along the wall, unwinding it as they went, and returned to Bev.
"What's the matter, sailor, lonely?" she said as I sat on the edge of her hatch and watched everyone work. "Wanna have some fun?"
"Nah – mad. They think I can't do anything heavy because of my screwed up leg," I replied. I gave it a rub; it felt as if I touched a cut log. "If they'd only let me help! I get things done, in a different way, but I still do it."
Bev was silent for a few minutes, her electronic chips working. When she spoke, her voice shifted next to me and she acted chipper. "I know what you mean," she whispered, "I have no feet, I don't know if you noticed, but I get things accomplished too."
In spite of myself I laughed. "Yeah, but you were built this way, I wasn't. Sometimes I feel so useless."
"Well, we can't have you obsolete. What is it you want to do?"
I was still watching Kat and Roy. They'd stopped to take a breather, the first spool barely unrolled. "Well, I guess help those two," I gestured, "but they're right, I couldn't. I'm not too good at pushing with one leg."
"Nonsense," Bev replied primly, "I don't have any legs, and I'm great at pulling and pushing. Let's go and show everyone what two legless wonders can do."
Bev rumbled out the gate to Roy and Kat. "There's a storage compartment under my deck," she said to me. "There should be a pry bar and chain. Drag 'em outside, and I bet you'll figure out what to do from there."
I strode into her cargo bay and searched the floor. Sure enough, a small cutout with a ring for a trapdoor was nestled in the deck. Pulling it up, I dug around inside until I unearthed a steel bar and the rest of the gear. I struggled to haul the chain out – the bar came next. "Why are you carrying around all of this junk?" I asked, slamming the door shut.
"Doctor Krumboton tried to prepare me for every emergency. I'm a suspenders and belt girl."
I studied the bar and chain, and it dawned on me. I wondered why the thought hadn't occurred before.
"Uh, yeah. Okay." I yelled out the doorway, "Hey, Kat – Roy, wait up. There's a better way."
Between the three of us, we devised a harness for Bev and hooked her tail end up to the chain. When everything was ready, I crawled into the cargo bay with my head sticking out to watch and act as a go between. I shouted to Bev, "All right, slow and steady! Let's see what happens."
She inched forward, the spool rolling behind her, the wire unraveling as we drove.
"It's working!" Kat yelled to me. She waved her hand, "Keep going."
We made a wide, weaving pattern, back and forth and up and down, changing spools as we crawled along. Once we completed one circuit, Roy left Kat, Bev, and I in charge to unravel the wire, staying behind to splice each section together. Bev's only comment was, "You know, I feel ridiculous. People will think I'm a giant inchworm."
"You're doing fantastic," I assured her. "An inchworm would be envious of you, and Doctor Krumboton would be proud."
"Yeah," she replied, "but I don't think he designed me to shoot wire off my butt."
By the end of the day, we used up all the spools, and covered a wide section of earth in front of the main gate, extending left and right along the town's wall.
"All finished kids," Roy announced with satisfaction, as he wiped sweat off his nose with a dirty rag. He strolled over to Bev and patted her hull, and declared, "We couldn't have done it without you two. I should have figured this out for myself. Connect the city's electrical supply, and we're all set. Let Morgan and his men step on the wire and we'll have French fried soldiers."
Kat and I drove Bev into town to see what Pop and Mr. Brennan were building. To our surprise, they'd constructed a wooden edifice resembling a giant lacrosse stick, which reached up into the sky. Even stranger, they backed up their pickup truck to the frame, the rear end lifted off the pavement on blocks.
Besides all of this, they began work on a series of metal pipes. Mr. Brennan welded one end shut, while Pop drilled holes in the ends. They stopped working when they saw us approach.
"What in the world are you making, Pop?" I asked, doing a slow walk around the smoking cylinders. "And what the heck is this?" I gestured to the contraption they built.
"These," Pop gestured to the tubes with pride, "are the beginnings of giant potato guns." He chuckled dubiously, "if they work right, I mean. We will see. And this," he motioned to their wooden monstrosity, "is called a trebuchet." He said to me, "You should know how this operates, remember?"
"A who?" Kat said. She and Roy sauntered over to a support, gazing into the air. "What does it do?" Kat asked.
"This," Pop banged on the long, upright arm, "is the same as a fishing rod." He stuck his hand up in the air. "The rope at the bottom with the metal sling is the line." He went over and slapped a huge chunk of concrete scavenged from the wrecked buildings, which hung from another rope acting as a counterweight. "We wench the arm down using the axil of the truck, this rises in the air, and we lock the arm in place. When we pull the trigger, the concrete drops, the arm whips forward, and whatever is in the sling is snapped around and thrown out into the air." He made a hurling motion as if casting a fishing rod. "If it works the way it's supposed to," he said with a laugh.
I wandered away while Pop continued to explain the operation of the trebuchet. Once he said its name and reminded me, I knew what he built. Pop and I made a miniature one two years ago and I knew how they worked. What threw me off was the mammoth size of the one they constructed.
More interesting was this, "potato gun" they were banging together. I
t was neat, but I couldn't imagine what we'd shoot at Morgan's men. Hash browns, maybe? I wanted to learn how they operated.
"Mr. Brennan, what are potato guns?" I smirked and made a lobbing motion, "We gonna shoot spuds at Morgan, or invite him to dinner?"
He shut off his torch and pushed back his mask. "No, not dinner," he replied, "and we're planning to shoot something more dangerous than potatoes – you can rest assured we will."
The metal cooled enough for me to touch one and run my fingers over the holes and open end. I asked, "How do they work, the same as a cannon? I've never seen one before."
Mr. Brennan picked up a cylinder and laid it on his lap. "They're not hard to use, see here." He touched the holes Pop drilled. "Basically we stick two screws through the openings, and connect wires to their tops, fill the pipe with propane, and jam in whatever we want to shoot, send a spark through the wires – Pow!" He slapped his hands together with a laugh. "Ignite the gas and off it goes, or at least this is the way it operates in principle."
"Where did you learn to make those, in the Middle Guard?" I asked. I couldn't imagine potato guns being part of their equipment.
He frowned. "I use to build these when I was a kid growing up, but never this big or powerful. In my day it was plastic piping and hairspray," he chuckled to himself, "and a real potato – was hit with one once – believe me, it hurt. I hope they don't burst apart on us. We'll see – still have to test each one."
"Wow!" He made potato guns sound identical to artillery pieces. I pictured charging soldiers on horseback with explosions in the air. "What are you gonna shoot?"
"What Roy is cooking up." He gestured to the other man, who was dropping crushed chlorine tablets into metal canisters. Alongside him, he had the cardboard cartons piled on top of each other filled with plastic bottles. Each contained a clear liquid. "Making chlorine bombs," Mr. Brennan said.
"Chlorine bombs? Never heard of those, either," I admitted. Bomb making wasn't one of the things we studied in chemistry class. "I guess they explode?"
"Oh, yes." Mr. Brennan's face changed into a grimace and he nodded. "Explodes and releases a poisonous gas. Nasty stuff I'm told, was used against the United States in a few wars on our troops." He sat the barrel of his potato gun down. "Hope they don't blow up before we're ready to use them."
"Me neither." I tried not to think about what would happen if all those tablets Roy used went off at once. I understood why he didn't want me too close. "Are those what you and Pop are gonna stick in the trebuchet?"
"No, well maybe, but we were planning on using big hunks of concrete." He waved at the rubble littering parts of the town. "We'll have plenty of ammunition."
I was skeptical and I guess it showed on my face. He added, "Get wacked with a hundred pound chunk of cement traveling fifty miles an hour, you'll know about it, right? Especially when it shatters and shoots little fragments of flying shrapnel."
He had a point.
By the evening, our traps were set and ready to use, the bombs Roy built and the potato guns, tested. Pop and Mr. Brennan had trouble adjusting their trebuchet, how to target it, and how far their concrete would fly, but they solved those problems too. Bill finished his connections and threw the switch to check if the grid worked.
It did.
After we'd debugged everything, and eaten, Kat and I took a stroll to the city wall to watch the sunset. We climbed up on top, enjoying the cool breeze and the chirping of birds before they roosted for the night.
Kat challenged me to a game of who-could-hit-the- bush-with-a-rock. After it became obvious I was winning, she lost interest and stared at the red sky. I continued, making five more hits with seven rocks. When it grew too dark to see, I aimed at the rats crawling out of the wall searching for food.
"Hunter, over there!" Kat clutched my arm and pointed into the distance. Off on the black horizon two faint lines of light shone, one along the west, the other stretching into the northeast – the glow from campfires.
Morgan's armies had arrived.
Chapter Sixteen
"Hunter, I think this was a bad idea." Kat licked her lips as we watched Bill from the wall double-checking his wire and connections. The sun was up and the early morning fog covering the field had burnt off.
"It seemed a pretty good plan to me." I scanned the horizon with a pair of binoculars I'd found in Bev's locker. The two rows of lights from last night were gone, replaced by smoke, which converged into a single long line. High above, a helicopter hovered – Black Morgan's command ship, directing the army's movement.
"Everything is ready to go. We give Morgan a bloody nose and run for the hills." I said in surprise, "Why? What's the matter?"
"Well, first of all, we aren't the ones who give Morgan a fight. Our dads and the other men are. We're supposed to stay out of this battle remember?" She squirmed on the block she sat on.
"This is what I meant."
"Yeah, until you decide to change your mind," she replied with a frown. "You know we're not supposed to get involved, right?"
"I promise." I held my hand up. I'd rather be fighting, or at least help the others defend the town. They were having us act wimpy, but I'd sworn to do what they said. I don't know where Kat got the idea I'd decided to do something else. "Our pops have everything laid out, and we've been over this a hundred times; lure Morgan's men to the front gate. Do you think I'm stupid?"
"Another thing," she said, "Point two, Morgan isn't dumb. What if he doesn't take the bait and sends men downriver to sneak up behind us? They could be doing it right now and we'd never know, would we?"
Kat was acting really upset. She twisted around, glanced in the direction of the high school, as if soldiers floated down the river toward us on boats as we talked. "He might attack so fast we couldn't escape in time, have you ever thought of what would happen? What do we do?"
"We discussed it already, remember? Pop and the others abandon the boat and we all bail out in Bev," I replied. Kat was making me worried, too. The more she spoke the more shaken I became.
She snatched the binoculars out of my hands, fought neck strap out of her face, and shoved the glasses up against her eyes.
"Something else," she said, studying the horizon, "Doctor Krumboton gave us all those spider bombs. What good are they if we don't use one or two? You're the one who wanted to stay and fight. All we're going to do is sit and watch?" She put the glasses down, picked them up again, hesitated, and shoved them back into my lap.
"Will you make sense, please?" Kat was driving me nuts. First, she acted as if she wanted to run. Now she talked as if she was thinking about fighting. "You know you're making me crazy, don't you?"
To hide my confusion I scanned the horizon again with the glasses and checked the progress of the soldiers. "They're still advancing," I confirmed, more apprehensive than ever, "and I think, yeah, they have tanks."
"Oh, great."
"You kids better climb down from there!" Pop shouted to us and waved. "As soon as Bill finishes you have to go into your act and trick Morgan's men this way. Things will become hot around here soon."
"Okay, Pop," I shouted back. "Ready, Kat? Let's see if we can help."
We scrambled down. Pop, Mr. Brennan, and Roy waited for us. "You two better start moving," Mr. Brennan said. "Remember, one quick pass in front of the army and then straight back. You are to wait down by the river, understand?" He ticked off points on his fingers. "This way when it's time to scoot we'll be all together, okay?" His tone made it clear he didn't expect any argument.
"Do you want us to do anything before we leave?" I asked. I was hoping they'd changed their minds at the last minute and decided they needed us in the fight. "Help load, or make bombs? Anything?"
"No, too dangerous," Pop replied. "Do as we asked; a quick run out, up and down the wall so they see you, and zip right back inside." He said, serious, "As it is I don't enjoy exposing you to harm. You've been hurt enough already," he glanced at my leg, "and both of you are kids."
"Yeah, sure Pop, I understand." I said to Kat, "Let's get this over with and go hide."
We entered Bev and strapped ourselves down – I felt my face burning red.
Kat said, "Hunter? You know your dad didn't mean anything about your leg, don't you? He's worried about us, both our dads are. They want us to be safe."
"Yeah, sure," I muttered. "Bev? We ready to roll?"
"Rockin' and rollin', handsome," she replied. "Where to?"
"Take us outside the gate and straight for the army," I ordered.
"What?"
Kat gasped as if I'd lost my mind. "Our dads said –"
"Yeah, I know what they said," I replied. "I may be a cripple, but I can still fight. Bev, let's go before I change my mind."
Bev started. Kat muttered under her breath, "Oh. My. God." When we kept traveling away from the gate, Pop and Mr. Brennan waved at us from the top of the wall, letting us know we were heading the wrong way. They pointed left and right, and then cupped their hands and shouted. We passed Bill walking in and he watched us in shock, started running alongside, and banged on Bev's hull screaming for us to stop.
I ignored them all.
"Where are we going, handsome?" Bev chirped, "A stroll through the flowers to say hello to those nice men coming to visit?"
"Yeah, sort of – keep moving straight for the line of soldiers and machines." I tried not to think of what I was doing.
"Hunter, this is the stupidest thing –"
"Are they joining us for a party?" Bev asked as she sped up. "Let's invite them to a party, I love parties. I hope they've brought lots of presents for me."
"They're not here for a party, Bev," Kat said furiously. "Hunter's being a stupid jerk. He wants to fight those men all by himself."
I glanced out of the corner of my eye. Kat's face was a mask of terror.
"What? Hunter, I don't think it's a good idea," Bev said in a serious voice. "You might get hurt. There are a lot of them and only one of you."
"Okay, no more – I've heard enough wisecracks," I replied. "Kat, I'll leave you here and you can walk back to town, we're not too far out yet," I shouted into the air, "and Bev, I'm not going to be hurt. I have you around me, right?" I patted the instrument panel. "This is what you're for."