Dena blew out a long breath, as if she had been holding it.
“They would never use the warheads as a first line of defense,” Jack said quickly. “Their first strike will be with conventional weapons.”
“Conventional weapons?”
“Guns, maybe grenades…a drone.”
“What’s a drone?”
“A remotely operated aircraft equipped with surveillance and weapons.”
Dena let out a short, sarcastic laugh. “Lucky for us they won’t be using the nuclear weapons.” She sobered. “We’ve had some clashes with recruiters and a few run-ins with hunters, but never an enemy this strong.”
“Recruiters?” asked Jack. I remembered Jin mentioning recruiters and hunters.
“Ryder’s men,” she said. She stared back at our blank expressions. “Forgive me. I forget that even though you’re from around here, you’re not from around here. Thomas Ryder is the self-proclaimed leader of the biggest settlement in the south. He’s power hungry and wants to control the territory. He demands rent payments from anyone setting up a home or a farm on what he’s declared to be his lands. Payment must be made in the form of food, fuel, pieces of technology, or whatever they happen to have—although most have nothing. Our nation has grown a lot in the past few years because of him.”
“Why does he need recruits?” Jack asked.
“About fifteen years ago, northerners came south during the winter months in search of food. Some of the farmers that pay Ryder rent complained, so Ryder sent his men to chase them back north. It caused bad blood and they’ve been fighting ever since.”
“Let me guess,” Jack said. “He’s not exactly asking people to join his army.”
“No. He recruits by force,” Dena said.
“What about the north? Do they recruit too?” I asked.
“Daemon leads the north and from what we hear, he’s worse than Ryder. It’s rumored he sends children into battle—that he hides behind them.”
Every word she spoke was like a boulder being dropped on to my childhood fantasies, smashing them to little bits. Summer and I had always imagined that once we were released from the bonds of the treaty, we would live a peaceful, free life on a sun-drenched Earth. The world Dena was describing was anything but peaceful. It was more like the war was still being fought.
“Three hundred years later, and we’re still fighting,” I said.
“We were always taught that, with the exception of us, humanity had been wiped from the planet,” Jack said. “It’s hard for me to comprehend that the population is already large enough to be fighting over territory.”
“It’s not about territory,” Dena said. “Thousands of kilometers of uninhabited land separate the south from the north. Their fight is over dominance and it’s fuelled by hatred.”
She paused when Yean-Kuan returned with a tray of steaming bowls and a basket of bread. My stomach growled in anticipation. I couldn’t remember the last time I ate. I plucked a piece of bread from the offered basket with my thanks.
“Thank you, Yean,” Dena said with affection. Yean gave her a warm smile and sat next to her. “The war did almost wipe out humanity. We’ve found diaries describing the years right after the bombs and it gives a grim picture. Those lucky enough to survive the immediate fallout had the nuclear winter to face, and that lasted over two years. Without sunlight, nothing grew. Attempts to make greenhouses out of salvaged technology were somewhat successful, but ultimately it was the death of some who served as bread for others that allowed humanity to survive.”
It took a moment for her meaning to penetrate. The bread I was chewing suddenly dried up into a hard, gummy knot in my mouth. I wasn’t sure I could swallow. Yean must have noticed my distress because she poured me a cup of water. Gratefully, I drank. When I took the cup away from my mouth, Jack took it and finished it off. He handed me back the empty cup.
Our discomfort wasn’t lost on Dena. “Their deaths could have been meaningless. Instead, the memory of their sacrifice lives on.”
Suddenly, I had a better understanding of the choice that had faced Benjamin Reyes and the group he led into the Dome.
Dena picked up her spoon and dipped into her soup. I looked down at my own bowl. It looked like vegetables in some kind of broth. Even though my appetite had waned, I forced myself to take a mouthful. By the third bite, my hunger had returned.
Yean was looking at us again.
“It’s delicious,” I said of the soup. “Thank you.”
Her eyes brightened with curiosity. “It’s probably not like your food, is it?”
I thought of the stew, made from bourge leftovers, that was served three times a day in the Pit. “It’s much better,” I assured her.
“Much better,” Jack agreed.
Yean looked pleased.
“The Elders will be arriving this evening and I expect a long debate. At my request, our army has already started gathering in the tournament field to prepare for confrontation. Amini won’t like it. She’ll see it as an aggressive act instead of a defensive one. I’m hoping both of you can help convince her otherwise.”
Jack put his spoon in his empty bowl. “The problem is I’m not sure I disagree with Amini.”
Surprised by his change of heart, I snapped around to look at him. “Jack!” What was he thinking? We had already discussed that they were our only hope of freeing my people.
He put a hand on my leg. “I’m not comfortable being the one to convince a group of people armed with only arrows to go up against automatic weapons. It’s suicide.”
Dena sat back in her chair, crossing her arms. “To the south of us is Ryder’s territory; to the north is Daemon; and the east coast is nothing but scorched lands. A lot of our ancestors arrived from the far west, so if that were a good place to settle they would’ve stayed. So where do we go, Jack? And how far do we have to go to outrun nuclear warheads and drones?”
Jack closed his eyes and pinched the skin at the bridge of his nose. “You can’t outrun the warheads or the drones.” He opened his eyes and dragged his hand through his hair. “But if you leave now, it would buy you time to get better prepared to go up against Holt’s forces.”
Abruptly, Dena pushed away from the table and stood up. “Perhaps I can get your opinion on something.” She bent and kissed the top of her wife’s head. “The soup was delicious.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” Yean said. “I’d best get back to making the arrangements for the Elders. They’ll be here soon.”
Jack and I stood as well, offering our own thanks for the soup.
The dark clouds that had been so distant earlier were now almost on top of the barangay. As we left the courtyard and made our way down a rocky path, I felt humidity pressing in on me. Beads of perspiration broke out on my forehead.
“My ancestors came to this valley seeking refuge from persecution. Our nation grew out of the need to protect ourselves from hatred. For us, defense isn’t an exercise. It’s a way of life,” she explained as we walked.
We crested a peak and she swept an arm toward the view below. In a large clearing, surrounded by dense forest, was an army of a few hundred.
They were training for battle.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“It’s an army of Protectors,” I said.
“Not just Protectors,” Dena responded. “We all learn from a young age how to defend ourselves. Protectors are those who demonstrate remarkable ability. In times of need we all pull together.”
“You’re a Protector, aren’t you?” asked Jack.
Dena smiled. “Since I was eighteen.” She began to make her way down the cliff side. It was steep and the number of small, round pebbles made it treacherous, but Dena navigat
ed it expertly. Jack and I were a bit slower. “In order to become an Elder, one must possess a specialty that is of benefit to the nation. Mine is defense. I lead the army.”
The farther down the path we went, the more it smoothed out. From this distance I could clearly see that the army was separated into four groups. Each group was practicing something different. The archers were the most imposing. They moved together in rows, as if performing a choreographed dance. As the first row loosed their arrows, they crouched low to the ground and the second row let fly their arrows, and they crouched and the next row sent theirs flying. Wave after wave of arrows flew high, arced, and raced toward the ground.
As I stopped to admire their skill, Jack pressed close behind me. “That’s impressive,” he said against my ear.
“Do you think they stand a chance?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“I heard that,” Dena called out as she continued down the path. Without stopping to look back, she made a come on motion with her arm.
Jack and I shared a look of surprise. “She’s not only spry, she’s got superhuman hearing,” he whispered.
There was an electric feeling on the field, as if the anticipation of battle had coalesced into something solid. Keeping a good distance away from the archers, Dena led us toward a small squadron sparring with long poles.
“Hapkido is a Korean art,” she said.
“I’m familiar with it,” Jack said.
Dena cocked an eyebrow. “Really? Have you practiced it?”
“A mix of martial arts is taught at our military academy,” he said.
Dena looked delighted by his answer. “Then perhaps you wouldn’t mind demonstrating your abilities for us.”
Jack attempted to decline, but she put her fingers to her mouth and whistled hard. The participants stopped sparring and moved to the sidelines.
“Ryan,” Dena called out. A young man about the same size as Jack stepped from the sidelines and moved to the center of the field.
Jack looked confused. “You want me to fight?”
“Of course. How else can I gauge your skill?”
“But…” He turned to me, pleading with his eyes for me to help him.
I took a step back. “Don’t look at me. I suck at fighting, remember?” He gave me an eye roll. Ignoring it, I smiled. “I’m rooting for you, Jack!”
Someone cheered him on and a few more voices chimed in. Hesitantly he moved into the clearing to face Ryan. Dena dropped her arm. Ryan sprinted at him, jumped, and landed a foot squarely on Jack’s chest. I heard a whoosh of air leave him as he hit the ground.
“What was that?!” Jack demanded.
Ryan shrugged. “A kick to the chest.”
Jack picked himself up, rubbing a hand across his chest. “I wasn’t ready.”
“I know,” he said.
Ryan came at him again, jumping high into a spin, one leg out. Jack’s eyes widened and he ducked, just barely escaping a foot to his head. As Ryan’s feet touched ground, he dropped into a crouch and, spinning on his heel, picked up a long, thick stick from the ground and used it to sweep Jack’s legs out from under him. Jack went down again.
This time Ryan didn’t give Jack a chance to get up. He came at him with the pole and Jack rolled to avoid it. In one fluid movement, Jack pushed himself up off the ground onto his feet. Someone threw him a stick and he grabbed it just in time to block Ryan’s next assault. A loud crack reverberated through the air and I cringed, thinking that had almost made contact with Jack’s head. Jack had told me the first rule in sparring is to not actually hurt your partner. They weren’t playing by the rules.
Jack became more aggressive, trying to push Ryan back with each contact their poles made. Ryan used it to his advantage by levering his pole against Jack, flipped in the air, landed behind him and used his stick to put Jack in a chokehold.
Jack dropped his pole and grabbed at the one pressed against his throat. He was turning a little red in the face. I bit my lip. It wasn’t looking good for Jack. Dena wouldn’t let Ryan kill him, would she? I looked at her, waiting for her to call off Ryan. She didn’t. My heart pounded harder.
What if they fought to the death here? I took a step toward the men, not really sure what I was going to do. But then Jack dropped a hand away from the pole and did something that made Ryan scream and drop his hold.
Dena laughed and called a halt to the fight. “I pinch to the thigh! Well done,” she said.
Ryan walked back to the sidelines, massaging his thigh, and Jack came to stand beside me, gently rubbing his throat. His face was red and I knew it wasn’t just from the chokehold. Ryan had kicked his butt. For someone like Jack, the darling of his academy, his pride must be hurting. Not that I would ever say anything. In the Pit, it was just good manners to ignore a beating if the victim was capable of walking away.
“So am I right in assuming all of Powell’s soldiers have the same training as you?” she asked.
I knew the answer to her question. Jack had admitted himself that he and his brother were the best the academy had ever produced. It stood to reason that the rest of Powell’s soldiers weren’t as good.
I looked at Jack to see how he would respond. A mix of emotions played across his face. “Yes,” he said, sullenly. “But with all due respect Dena, a battle with Holt’s army won’t be fought hand-to-hand. It’ll be waged with automatic weapons, some of them long-range. All they have to do is find you.”
Dena nodded. “So you’ve said.”
A drop of water hit my nose, startling me. Another one hit my shoulder, soaking through my t-shirt. Jack held out his hands and looked skyward. “The storm’s here?”
“Almost,” Dena said. “Come on. I’ll show you the rest of the army.”
We followed her to a group engaged in throwing knives. The blades whistled as they sailed through the air, making a dull thump as they hit the target. Throwers moved in quick succession, one after the other, sending a barrage of knives at the wooden stump with deadly accuracy. One thrower barely had time to step out of the way before another was aiming for the target. That required a lot of trust in the skill of the person behind.
The big fat drops of water falling from the sky became more frequent, plopping onto my head and rolling across my scalp in thin rivulets.
Dena moved on to the last two squadrons. She stopped at each one to critique their skills and seek Jack’s input. With every question he answered, she learned more about the bourge and their fighting techniques. I know she did, because I learned too. And it seemed to me the bourge relied heavily on their weapons, whereas Dena’s soldiers were skilled in the art of defense.
The drops soon gathered speed and turned into a downpour, as if someone had turned on a showerhead. It made a drumming noise against the hard-packed earth, which came as a surprise. I had no idea rain made a sound.
Everyone on the training field carried on as though there wasn’t a storm in progress. Dena continued with her tour. It wasn’t until a flash of light lit up the sky that Dena said it was time to go inside. The unexpected flash was blinding, but it was the booming noise that followed that sent me careening into Jack’s side. For just an instant I wondered if it was an attack.
Jack’s shoulders shook with barely concealed laughter. I shot him a look. “As if you’ve ever been in a storm,” I said.
The trek back up to the courtyard was a little trickier on wet ground. As we went, the lightning became brighter and the thunder louder. Jack’s sunglasses weren’t much protection. I never thought I’d be relieved to go back inside a mountain again, but I was.
Pausing inside the entranceway to shake the water off, I took in the big empty room—what was once the lobby of the hotel. The grotto was made entirely of stone tile with hi
gh arched ceilings. The ghostly outlines of bygone furniture hinted that the hotel was once quite grand, but now crumbling tiles and dark stains ground into the stone had robbed it of its beauty. I rubbed the toe of my boot against one of the dark stains, wondering what it was.
“Human misery is a stubborn stain,” Dena said. “A lot of skeletons were found here, the floor darkened by their decay.”
A shiver went down my spine when her meaning registered. How many people had sought refuge here after the war, only to die a slow horrible death? Were they from the valley? Were they the same people who had been turned away from the Dome by the bourge? The stains of decay were everywhere. For a moment I closed my eyes against the mental image of what they must have had to clear out of here in order to reclaim this building.
Behind me the door opened and a few people entered the lobby. They glanced in our direction and continued to the far side of the room.
“The entire hotel is built inside the mountain, hidden to the outside world,” Dena said.
I watched the small group open the bags they carried and spread out blankets on the floor.
Jack pointed to the artificial lighting. “You’ve made your own light?”
Dena smiled. “It’s not nuclear science. It’s just a filament.”
Jack looked a little embarrassed by his question. I had thought the same thing until Jin-Sook had corrected me. As much as I professed that these people weren’t heathens, I still made assumptions about them, as though they wouldn’t be as smart as we were. But as we walked through the reclaimed ruins, I was reminded of the ingenuity of the human spirit. As someone who came from the Pit, this was not something I should’ve forgotten.
“Amini’s barangay didn’t have electric light,” I said. Even though Jin-Sook had already explained why it didn’t have electricity, I wanted to come to Jack’s rescue.
“Amini’s is one of the newest outposts and we’re still in the process of extending power there. All the plumbing is in place though, so they have heat and hot water,” Dena said. “And we don’t generate a lot of voltage with the plant. Only enough to power a few lights in the common areas, run the air exchanger and other necessities. It’s still a work in progress.”
Worlds Collide: Sunset Rising, Book Two Page 24