Battlecry

by Emerald Dodge

  I could understand gratitude for saving the life of his loved ones, as Lawrence had expressed just yesterday, but as far as I knew, I’d never assisted Father Kokoski, nor had any member of my team. Someone would’ve mentioned rescuing a man in a black dress.

  Benjamin folded his arms on the table. “I told you yesterday—people think superheroes are virtuous do-gooders. I have to admit, you’ve got an amazing PR strategy going on. Schools teach an extraordinarily sanitized version of your lives. There are documentaries, books, TV shows, movies, all this crap about how wonderful you guys are.” He sipped his juice. “But nothing about the cult.”

  “What’s a cult?” we asked in unison.

  “I don’t know if ‘cult’ is really the right word, but I can’t think of a better one.” He chewed on his lip while he thought. “It’s like…a group of people who are totally controlled by someone, and they usually believe weird stuff about themselves, like they’re superior or have special knowledge or something.”

  “That doesn’t sound remotely like us,” Ember said, affronted.

  “Okay, fine. Why can’t you guys read books or magazines?” His tone bordered on challenging.

  Reid held up a hand to Ember, who was turning red. “Most civilian media can corrupt us. Superheroes have to be pure of mind and heart. God knows where Patrick went wrong, though.”

  Ember deflated and shook her head. “Patrick was always a mess. A couple of years ago, he asked his father if he could marry me someday. Elder Campbell said no because we were too closely related, and I kid you not, Patrick threatened to leave the camp and live as a civilian. His father dragged him to the center of the camp and beat him in front of everyone.”

  “He wanted to marry you?” Marco asked, before he mimed vomiting on the floor.

  Reid scowled at the table top. I’d never heard this story before, but I suspected he had.

  “Yeah. He never bothered to actually court me, though. He was never interested in anything I had to say or how I felt. Well, except once.” She turned to Reid. “We arrived a week before you came, remember? When we got to the base camp, Patrick just kept walking around the house, touching everything and saying ‘oh my God, oh my God.’ When he saw a bathroom for the first time, he turned to me and asked the strangest question.” She screwed up her face into an uncanny mockery of Patrick’s permanent scowl. “’Ember, did you know that civilians lived like this?’ He looked like a kicked puppy.”

  Everyone except Benjamin cracked up. I wasn’t surprised that Benjamin didn’t see the humor; he didn’t understand the strangeness of Patrick revealing any sort of weakness or ignorance.

  However, I was surprised when he frowned and said, “I feel sorry for him.”

  There was complete silence at the table for several long seconds.

  “We’re not going to kick you off the team for saying that, but what?” Marco stared at Benjamin like he’d just grown a third eye.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I think Patrick is a terrible person, and I’m not excusing his actions one bit, but I can’t help but see why he’d be upset. You guys grew up in totally avoidable poverty, and it sounds like Patrick’s dad is a dick. It must’ve been difficult coming to civilization after, what, twenty-something years of being beaten and starved and finding out that hey, indoor plumbing is a real thing, and his father had kept it from him for no reason.”

  “There is a reason, though,” I insisted. “If you knew our history, you’d understand.”

  Our complex history, starting before World War I, would take many days to lay out. How could I quickly explain the current philosophy without explaining the dark days of the 1960s?

  And if I explained the great upheaval of the first Battlecry’s generation, I would have to ultimately explain the rise of the superheroes in the first place. Until Benjamin knew all this, he’d ask these questions. I’d have to be patient.

  Still, I was uncomfortable with, well, not how often Benjamin asked questions—as I enjoyed teaching him—but how he asked them. His questions usually sounded more like he was interrogating us, with an air of judgment, a speck of sarcasm that made me feel that he knew something I didn’t.

  I’d allowed it when he wasn’t on the team. Now that he was, I was going to put my foot down.

  Benjamin took a bite of his sandwich and chewed, his eyebrows drawn together. “Help me understand.”

  I was ready. “The short version is that after my grandma died, there was a lot of unrest in the camps. People couldn’t figure out why we’d been humiliated so badly, or how a team as strong as Battlecry’s had been defeated. There was this one guy—”

  “Garrett Williamson,” Ember said, nodding. “He was from Oconee camp. We call him Elder Williamson, even though he wasn’t actually an elder. He died when we were all kids.”

  “I remember the memorial,” Reid said thoughtfully. “We burned an effigy of him in his honor, even though he wasn’t a superhero and hadn’t died in combat.”

  “Anyway,” I went on, making a face at my interrupting teammates. “Garrett said he knew why Battlecry’s team had died: we’d gotten soft with our comfortable lives. Superheroes had to be hard, like the Spartans from the stories. He took the principles that Christina St. James had compiled and fixed their definitions, wrote down the four traits, and came up with our new laws and way of life. No buildings, no women leaders, no medicine, no civilian media, no nonessential education—”

  “No dancing, no red if you’re a woman,” Reid said calmly.

  Wait, what?

  “What the heck?” Marco burst out.

  Ember and I looked at each other. I’d never heard those rules, and Ember’s open mouth indicated that she hadn’t, either. Reid’s quizzical expression only deepened my own confusion.

  Benjamin leaned back in his chair, watching the scene unfold.

  “What do you mean, no dancing or red for women?” Ember sounded disgusted.

  Reid’s gaze darted between us. “Isn’t…isn’t that how it is in every camp?”

  “Oh, yeah, these are the faces of people who know what you’re talking about,” Marco retorted, pointing to the rest of us.

  “What’s wrong with dancing?” I demanded. “Or red?”

  “Well, dancing tempts people to lust. It’s just wiggling your body around. Women can’t wear red because it’s the color of passion, and men are more likely to be inflamed by passion than women.”

  Ember slammed her hands on the table and jumped to her feet. “My hair is red. Do you think I’m some kind of whore because I was literally born wearing the evil, inflammatory color?”

  “Holy sh—no! That’s not what I meant!” He jumped to his feet. “Please, Ember, that’s really not what I meant!”

  Benjamin watched this all with interest. “I suppose now would be a bad time to tell you that your new leader loves to dance. We danced at the park.” The corners of his lips turned up. “That was nice. Less wiggling, more standing close and enjoying each other’s presence.”

  Reid stared daggers at Benjamin, then looked at Ember and me, his hands held up in a placating gesture. “Obviously my camp has different rules. You all can dance, and I don’t care. I’m sure there’s something you can’t do that I can.”

  “Yeah, lead,” Benjamin grunted. “But since Jillian broke that glass ceiling, maybe you should ask Ember to dance with you and see if wiggling your body really is as bad as you think.”

  “I doubt Reid wants to dance with a red-haired wanton woman,” Ember replied silkily. “Dancing while being in proximity to that much scarlet? Who knows what you might do, all overcome with passion.” She practically spat the last word.

  Red flags flew up all over my brain—Ember and Reid weren’t talking about dancing or rules. There was something more to this conversation, something prowling at the edges of my comprehension.

  “Stop it,” Reid ordered, though his voice trembled. “Just stop.”

  Ember’s mocking expression hardened into the steeliest glare I�
��d ever seen on her face. She squinted at Reid, undoubtedly throwing a silent barb at him.

  Whatever she said, it was enough to make him jump to his feet and almost run out of the room.

  Benjamin rose partially from his chair. “What was that? Do you want me to go get him?”

  Ember threw herself back into her chair. “Screw him. Let him sulk. He deserves to feel like a turd after…” She trailed off, breathing raggedly. She banged her fist on the table, startling us. “Patrick used to say that my hair was a distraction to him during combat. He said one day I’d get what was coming to me for tempting men. My hair is an ‘eye trap’, apparently. He was always thinking about…about…” She grabbed her spoon and tried to finish her applesauce.

  When it was halfway to her mouth, she broke down, her spoon clattering to the floor.

  “Ember!” I turned my chair so I could hug her, but she shoved me away.

  “D-don’t t-t-touch me.” Her voice was shaking so much I could hardly understand her. “Reid!”

  Reid sprinted into the kitchen door. “What is it?” His eyes darted towards Benjamin.

  Ember fled to him, throwing herself against his chest and sobbing without restraint.

  He wrapped his arms around her, stroking her hair with such tenderness that once again I felt as though I were witnessing something not intended for my eyes. A flash of a memory, barely tangible, seared through my mind: terror. Ember had projected complete and utter terror.

  “Someone needs to explain,” I said, my tone underlining that it wasn’t a request.

  “You do it,” Ember groaned. “I…I can’t. I don’t want to think about it.”

  Reid grabbed a sleeping bag from the pile. “Why don’t you lie down.” He guided Ember into the living room. “Just shut your eyes and rest for a while.”

  She nodded, sniffling and wiping her eyes. They disappeared into the living room. Marco shrugged at me, his eyes wide. Benjamin simply sat with his hand over his mouth.

  Reid returned a minute later and quietly cleared away our dishes. When they were in the sink, he sat back down in his chair, his shoulders slumped.

  “I have Ember’s permission to tell you this. God, I feel like a piece of crap for what I said earlier.”

  I doubted that’s what he needed Ember’s permission to tell us. “We’re listening.”

  He cleared his throat, not taking his eyes off the table. “I’m sure you guys were wondering how Patrick found you after your little stunt with the hostages.”

  I had wondered, but between the events later that day and Eleanor’s hypothesis that we’d been recognized, I hadn’t spared it an extra thought.

  “When Patrick saw Marco’s flash on the news, he knew you were still in town, and operating on top of it. He looked for you in that neighborhood, but he couldn’t find you. When he got back to base camp, I was at the convenience store, but Ember was in the kitchen.” His eyes darkened. “He cornered her and demanded she tell him where you were. She said no. He got so angry at her that he…he tried to…”

  I felt the slightest tremor in the earth.

  Benjamin leaned forward and put his good hand on Reid’s shoulder. “We understand. Go on.”

  “She sent out a cry for help. It was a scream.”

  “Oh,” I breathed. “I heard that in the library. I thought it was a dream.”

  Bizarre guilt washed over me; while I’d been happily reuniting with Benjamin, Ember had been trying to fight off Patrick. I imagined how that fight would go, and no matter how generous I was to Ember in my head, I couldn’t avoid the fact that six-foot-four, muscular, and telekinetic dominated five-nine, frail, and telepathic in every scenario.

  I didn’t have a mirror on hand, but I was certain my face was green. I was going to kill him, and I was going to start with very specific dismemberment.

  “I ran home as fast as I could. She actually was able to land some good hits on him, and managed to kick him a few times in the face. But it wasn’t enough, and she was so terrified, she told him you were at the library. But even that didn’t stop him.” He looked at me with pleading eyes. “Jill, please, don’t be angry at her. She loves you so much. She must have been out of her mind with fear.”

  “Believe me, nobody’s angry at her.” Marco’s words were low with barely-contained fury. “I’d rather Patrick have a round with me or Jill than Ember.”

  “Like I said, he didn’t stop when she told him where you were. I got him off her before he could actually rape her, but it was a very clear attempt.”

  I stood up, then turned on my heel and left the kitchen, striding past Ember’s still form in the living room, heading to my new, empty office.

  The blank space offered nothing to distract me from my homicidal musings, so I gazed out the window into the convent’s muddy fenced-in backyard, unconcerned about being spotted.

  I watched squirrels scamper around the shady trees, forcing myself to give them names and stories, anything to take my mind off of the memory of Ember’s scream.

  “Jillian?” Benjamin’s voice pulled me back to my ugly reality.

  I turned to see him standing in the doorway. “What do you want?”

  “Marco thinks you’re going to sneak off and look for Patrick.”

  “And you’re here to stop me.”

  “Like I could. But I would rather you didn’t go.”

  “Why? You don’t think I can take him?”

  “You’re sleep-deprived, emotionally compromised, and weaponless. So…no.”

  I went back to looking at the squirrels, my forehead pressed against the cool windowpane. “Tell Marco I’m going to stay here like a good little girl.”

  “Tell me yourself.” Marco strode into the room, stopping only when he was next to me. “You have a history of barreling head-first into fights against Patrick. You were thinking about going after him back there, weren’t you?”

  I let out a disgusted sigh. “Yeah, well, when has that ever worked out for me.”

  Reid joined us. “To be fair, it worked once.”

  I cursed under my breath—I wanted to simmer in my Patrick-hatred alone. Why were they all here, anyway? Were the men all going to lecture me on being overemotional and impulsive?

  And why was Reid holding a pair of scissors?

  “We’ll do that later,” Benjamin said, eyeing the scissors. “Let’s focus on the issue at hand. She’s upset enough right now.”

  “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” I growled. “Someone had better tell me what’s going on.”

  Benjamin held his hands up. “I’m sorry, that was rude. We just want to make sure you won’t run off and try to fight Patrick on your own.”

  I put my hand on my hips. “Here I am, not running off. Are you going to post a night watch while I sleep tonight?”

  Wait a second...what was this “we” business?

  “Have you guys been talking about me?”

  Their exchanged sheepish expressions confirmed it.

  “Are you kidding me? You guys all got together and talked about how I would probably go off half-cocked and get my ass handed to me? And when did you even have this conversation?”

  Marco stepped forward. “We never said that. When you were sleeping, and Ember was setting up your bathroom, we got to talking about how you’d be a better leader than Patrick. Honest! But we all agreed that Patrick’s identified a weak—”

  “A tendency of yours,” Reid said quickly. “You’re really protective of people close to you. And when you left the kitchen just now, we were worried that you’d sneak out the window.”

  The craving to slowly push a butterfly knife into Patrick’s forehead was nearly all-consuming. But something had changed in the last twenty-four hours. I’d witnessed my best friend being suspended in the air, twisting and gasping for oxygen. I’d endured taunted hints that Reid and Ember had been hurt or even killed. All to manipulate me, and I’d fallen for it each time.

  My hands fell from my hips. “I promised
to exercise self-control when I said my oath. I meant it. I might need help sometimes, but I meant what I said.” Sunlight glinted off the scissor blades in Reid’s hand, diverting my attention. “What are the scissors for?”

  Once again, the three of them shared significant glances.

  I crossed my arms. “What is it now?”

  “I think you should tell her,” Reid said to Benjamin. “She likes you best.”

  “No, she likes Marco best.”

  “Actually, right now I hate all of you just about equally. The next person who acts like I can’t hear you is sleeping in the bathtub tonight. Marco, talk.”

  Marco rubbed his head, reminiscent of Benjamin’s nervous tic. “When you were sleeping, we also got to talking about how we’re going to shop and stuff while we’re in hiding. Civilian clothes are great and all, but….”

  “But?”

  “But you and Ember’s hair sticks out too much.”

  Reid’s grip on the scissors tightened, and understanding crashed down on me like a bag of bricks.

  I backed away from them. “No. Hell no.”

  “Jill, please think about this,” Marco begged. “It’s for everyone’s protection. It’ll grow back.”

  “I’m always going to think you’re beautiful,” Benjamin said. “And we’re not asking for you to shave your head, just cut it, so your hair isn’t the first thing people notice. Maybe shoulder-length, like Eleanor’s. Don’t you think she’s pretty?”

  I backed into the wall. They couldn’t cut my hair if I was pressed up against something, right? I wasn’t going to let them cut my hair like I was a dishonored daughter of the camps.

  Superheroines who slept around had their hair cut. Camp girls who embarrassed their families had their hair cut. My hair was my glory, my most prized physical feature. My curves were unremarkable, my eyebrows were ridiculous, and my fingers were thin and knobby. But my hair? My hair was my one stunning feature, several luscious feet of dark brown beauty.