Shot Down
Page 5
“Now, Kyle!” Carter shouted, tightening one arm around the Captain’s neck.
The Captain moaned and let his body drop back, thrusting Carter headfirst into the stream.
The boy pulled a round from his bag and skittered toward the rifle, glancing with each step at his father.
Blood swirled around in my head as I set my feet back on the ground and leaned against the tree. For a moment both men in the water rested a length apart on their hands and knees. Fighting for air.
Kyle kept his back to me and held the men in his sight. He might have been spooked, but he was practiced—he loaded the gun with a few swift movements. A click sounded once the round was inside the rifle.
Both the Captain and Kyle’s father stood soaking in the stream. Their eyes jumped to Kyle at the sound of the click, then jumped back to each other. Another spray of water rose between them as they locked hands, pushing back and forth.
“Any sorta help you can provide right now, Malik,” the Captain said, “would—be much—”
The father shouted again at his son, “Shoot him, Kyle!”
Kyle pointed the rifle the Captain’s way. Everything seemed to slow as I stepped to Kyle’s side, then in front of the gun.
“Please,” I said. “Just please hold on.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
M
y hand shook as I rested it on the snout of the gun. The boy looked scared, and I’m sure I did too. Feet splashed in the water behind me as the Captain and Carter struggled to hold their ground.
“This is ugly,” I said. “Yeah? And stupid. We don’t want to hurt your dad. Believe it or not. We—”
“Don’t listen to him, Kyle!” the man said from the water. “Be strong!”
“Look, you’ve probably seen more awful things than a kid should’ve, than anybody should’ve. And the only way this’ll end safe and not be another awful thing is if you hand me that gun. Trust me. Trusting people—it’s another way to be strong.”
The boy slid his finger off the gun’s trigger, then slid it in again.
“But,” he said, “I enjoy this too,” and—snap—pulled the trigger back.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I
can’t believe you socked a kid,” the Captain said.
“He tried to shoot me,” I replied. “If the canteen hadn’t stopped the bullet, I would be dead.”
“Oh, I was there! Not sayin’ you weren’t justified. He was a vicious little dude, when you total everything up. But—if his dad hadn’t had me in a death grip at the time, I think I woulda fallen over giggling when you socked little Kyle.”
“You’re the one who decided how to dispatch those hunting dogs.”
“Do. Not. Bring up the dogs. That kid made a choice. Those poor dogs didn’t have a say in the matter.”
I sat next to the Captain, arms around my knees, as our raft drifted creakily downriver. We would float until nightfall, then find a place to sleep, to forage.
We had left the man and his son tied up by the shore. Once I took care of the boy, the Captain and I were able to hold down Carter. The man shouted and spat in the shallow water as we roped his wrists together. As I made my way onto the raft, the old man above us began to blow into his whistle again and again in anger. I watched him get smaller and smaller on his spot on the hillside until I couldn’t make out the scowl on his craggy face.
“Yer pretty darn lucky you had that canteen around your neck,” the Captain said. The woods around us looked the same as those where we’d left from, but the sun was getting low. “Maybe a luckier person would’ve gotten this raft moving a little earlier, or wouldn’t have got shot down by a family of Kentucky manhunters in the first place. You might have a net total of bad luck, all things considered. But you got pretty lucky with respect to not getting shot.”
I rubbed my thumb along the dent left in the heavy canteen. After Kyle had fired the rifle, I’d thought, for a few breaths, that I was gone. And maybe Kyle had thought he got me. Or maybe he stood still from shock—had never shot at anyone from that close before.
I had stumbled back, my ears ringing, my arms spinning in circles. And then I had stopped, patted my chest, and felt no blood, no bullet wound—just dirt and sweat and the stinging hot cavern the round had put in the hunk of metal around my neck. Then, like the Captain said, I socked the kid.
I removed the canteen, looping its strap around one of the raft’s bindings, and started to tell the Captain more about earlier. When the boy had pretended to be hurt. How I thought I might’ve got something through to him.
“Maybe you did. The kid’ll probably be thinkin’ about today for a while, anyway. Might dawn on him sometime down the road that his dad’s nuts,” the Captain said. “Oooh—maybe it’s karma you didn’t get plugged, ’specially considering it was the boy’s canteen.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
The air filled with cricket chirps and the coos of owls as the night came on, muffling other, faraway sounds. Every so often I’d think I heard horse hooves, never knowing for sure. I pictured Roman the horse clopping on through the woods, keeping pace with our raft.
When it got dark, we figured we were far enough away to start a fire. Even if Carter or Pop-Pop saw the smoke somehow, they had a long enough walk back to their house. The Captain and I nudged the raft toward shore, then both collapsed for a while before looking for tinder.
That night by the flames the Captain went on predicting mutations to come in the family of manhunters. Extra eyes, suction cups on their palms. I began to drift off, half-hearing him, into a heavy sleep overrun by strange and winding dreams.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jonathan Mary-Todd is a dream weaver from the Twin Cities.
AFTER THE DUST SETTLED
Fight the Wind
Fix has a gift for machines. If he can fix up an old wind turbine, he and his friends will be able to live at their Iowa camp for as long as they want. Cleo says no way. She’d rather try to find a city that’s rumored to be growing in the southwest. But if another rumor is true—that raiders are heading toward the camp—the only real choice will be fight or die.
Pig City
Malik and his friends try to avoid cities, but they look for shelter in downtown Des Moines once a winter storm hits. They’re quickly trapped in the middle of a struggle between the city’s two biggest gangs: the peaceful members of the Coalition and the forces of Pig City, who want to turn everyone else into hog food.
Plague Riders
When Shep’s parents disappeared, he agreed to deliver medicine for the sinister Doctor St. John. The doctor runs the camp of River’s Edge with total control, but the pills he makes are the only defense against the nightpox plague. On one trip, Shep learns that his parents may still be alive. With fellow rider Cara by his side, he prepares to escape from River’s Edge.
River Run
Freya and her sister have spent years as captives in a Minneapolis basement. After her sister disappears, Freya decides to break out—and finds herself heading down the Mississippi River with a strange young boy. Are the boy’s sunny stories about Norlins true? Or will the end of Freya’s journey be the most dangerous part?
Shot Down
Malik and the Captain, a gruff inventor, are on a hot air balloon tour of apocalyptic America—until a bullet sends their ride to the ground. A crash landing is just the beginning of their troubles, as the two travelers discover a family that hunts people for sport and begin a run for their lives across the hills and fields of Kentucky.
Snakebite
Beckley’s crew has made its way from Montana to South Dakota, living off the land and staying out of trouble. But trouble soon finds them. First, a snake sinks its fangs into the moody Hector. Then a clan of savage kids runs off with Beckley’s sister. Will the group’s survival knowledge be enough to get her back?