I clenched my fingers and swallowed.
“I was just scratching an itch,” I said.
He started the long walk toward me. “Coughing, scratching. You sure do squirm around a lot. What the hell?” He saw Beth in my hand. And my cut hair. He raised his gun. “She’s—she’s—she’s free! Code butterfly! CODE BUTTERFLY!”
I leapt up so suddenly that my chains popped out of the concrete in explosions of dust. The soldier’s eyes grew as big as dinner plates, and he fired a warning shot at the ceiling. A skylight exploded, and shards of glass rained around us.
I froze. That would’ve been me. My blood splattering on the floor.
The soldier lowered his gun at my chest, then quickly pointed it at the ground and back up again. “Lie down. Now!”
My legs shook. I looked at the ground where my hair was still fastened to the floor, the bolts of my chains peeled up like Band-Aids. Now that I didn’t have any hair left, they would go to even more extreme measures to subdue me. Like staple my skin.
“I can’t do that,” I said.
“I said lie down!” the soldier screamed.
I could feel Beth trembling in my hand. This must have been what it was like . . . when Emperor Ook held Ma. When all he wanted was to keep her and himself safe. I put my other hand over Beth’s head so that all of her was covered.
“She has a hostage!” the soldier screamed over his shoulder.
None of the other soldiers were coming, and he started to panic.
“Lie down!” he screamed at me. “LIE DOWN NOW!”
He was acting big and mean, but to me, he seemed like a little army toy. Of course, this soldier came with a gun that really fired.
I stood tall, trying to act less afraid than he was. I clutched Beth tight to my chest.
“I’m going to walk out of here,” I said, meeting his eyes, just over the gun barrel. “I know you don’t want to die. So I’m just going to—”
The gun erupted with light. Beth screamed. The bullets struck me in the stomach, and I folded in half, my breath forced out of me in a grunt. I fell to my knees, shielding Beth with my hands. I caught my breath in painful gasps and then looked at my stomach in the moonlight. There was no blood. Only bruises in a little dark constellation. From point blank range, the bullets would make me bleed. But from afar, they couldn’t break the skin.
I lifted my head, scowling. The soldier started to back up. I put Beth behind my back, and I went at him. He fired, and it hurt, it hurt worse than anything I’d felt before, but instead of slowing down, I broke into a run and screamed, my voice booming throughout the hangar, trembling the remaining windows.
When I reached the soldier, I lashed out, slapping his arms and sending his gun skittering. He scrambled to escape, but I caught him by the waist of his pants with my finger and thumb. I lifted him up so he dangled in front of my eyes.
“Please,” he said. “P-please.”
“Look at me,” I said.
He did, face quivering.
“Go sit in the corner,” I told him.
I set him down, and he dutifully did as he was told.
I placed Beth on her feet. She was beaming.
“That was amazing! How do you feel?”
I pressed a fist into my stomach. “Like I belly-flopped on a bed of nails.”
“But you’re still cracking jokes!”
I grunted and picked up the gun from the ground. I was about to crumple it like a paper clip when Beth said, “Wait.”
She held out her hands.
“Really?” I said.
“I’ll only use it in an emergency. And I’ll only shoot them in the legs.”
I handed her the gun, which she strapped over her arm. I picked her up and set her on my shoulder. She threw her leg around my neck and held tight to handfuls of my stubby hair.
Crouching, I exited the hangar and walked down the long hallway, Beth swaying on my shoulders, protected behind my head. A few soldiers came around the corner and started shooting, but I ran forward, covering my head and Beth with my arms. When I reached them, I made big sweeping kicks until I felt my feet connect with their bodies and their gunfire fell silent.
Beth squeezed the back of my head, saying, “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus,” which is what I wanted to be saying, but I figured one of us had to play the hero. I crouched and let the angry swarm of bruises die down a little. I gave a little cough. No blood. I kept on.
At the end of the hallway, I came to another industrial garage door. It was bolted, so I brought my fist down hard on the handle, breaking it off easy as a bottle top. I lifted the door a couple feet with my pointer finger and peeked outside. A wall of soldiers stood before the half-built barricade, their guns pointed at the door.
“She’s got a civilian on her shoulders!” one of them shouted. “Aim low!”
“Ready?” I whispered to Beth.
“I think so,” she said, squeezing my head.
I breathed, nodded, and threw open the garage door.
The world exploded. Machine guns burst to life in blinding sparklers, striking my middle like I’d run into a power line. I lunged forward and lashed out at every flare of light, swatting soldiers to the ground left and right and getting so caught up in the mix that some soldiers stopped shooting to keep from hitting each other.
I continued to bat soldiers to the ground and off their feet like rag dolls. Some grunted. Some whimpered. And some started begging for me to stop when they saw me bearing down on them. I’d nearly batted away every gun, when the general’s voice came booming through the chaos.
“Stand down, men! STAND DOWN, I SAID!”
The soldiers who were still standing saluted. Some of them couldn’t stand very straight. Some couldn’t stand at all.
Spillane paced around his men, face bright as a cherry tomato, nearly chuckling. “Hoo-whee!” He surveyed the scene. “Looks like someone woke up on the wrong side of the airplane hangar!”
A thousand points on my body bloomed to life in sickly pain. I was out of breath, and my ribs felt like they were ready to collapse on my lungs. I couldn’t let the general see that I was a couple dozen bullets away from being finished. So I stood tall and made my voice as big as possible.
“You have to let us out of here,” I said.
The general put his hands on his hips. He didn’t seem to notice Beth, who was still behind my head, holding tight to my ears.
“I have to admit you put on a much better show than I anticipated.” He turned in a circle, appreciating the destruction around him. “But now I’d be a fool to let you go. Especially after this, heh, breathtaking demonstration of force and sheer willpower. This was my best platoon, and you snapped some of ’em easy as Popsicle sticks.” He kicked a soldier who hadn’t been able to stand when called to attention. “Why, with proper training you could be worth a whole army.”
I had to catch my breath again. Something was wrong. Like I might be bleeding on the inside. But it was hard to tell. I’d just been shot a thousand times and survived.
“People are in trouble,” I said. “I need to go save them.”
The general squinted. “Who?”
“The Navajo people,” I said.
The general gave a little laugh. “I gotta tell ya”—he carelessly scratched the back of his neck—“those people are as done as crumbs at a picnic, pardon the expression. Besides, the Indians will help divert the herd away from Pennybrooke. Save a lot more people that way.”
“You could save them all,” Beth said. “You just refuse to try.”
“What’s that you got up there?” the general said, peering around my ear. “A passenger? I’m guessing by your tone, little miss, that you aren’t the giantess’s prisoner.”
“No, I am not,” Beth said, squeezing my ears.
It took just about every last iota of strength left in me to push past the pain and stand up straight. “We’re going to Gray Rock.”
The general gave me an admonishing look, like his daughte
r had just told him she was going to the dance even though he’d forbidden it. “Most powerful human weapon in the world, and she’s got a soft spot for Indians. All right, Phoebe. Have it your way.” He turned to his soldiers. “If she comes at you again, shoot her in the eyeballs.”
The soldiers raised their guns and formed a new wall.
I didn’t need a test to know that if a bullet hit me in the eye, it would probably pop and ooze down my face.
“Beth,” I whispered.
She squeezed my head.
“I need you to tell me where to kick.”
“Okay, yeah,” she said. “I’ll pretend they’re on a clock.”
I covered my eyes with both arms and ran forward, my hands peppered with bullets.
“Eleven o’clock!” Beth screamed.
I kicked to my left and felt a soldier buckle around my foot.
“One o’clock!”
Another soldier went flying.
“Nine!”
I kicked out with my other foot, but it whooshed through air.
“Sorry! Ten!”
I rebounded and realigned, kicking farther to the right. I felt the sick crunch of someone’s jaw against my toe.
“Three o’clock! Fast!”
I pivoted and back-kicked, sending a soldier flying, then rounded to face the wall of soldiers again, huffing.
“Stand down!” the general said. “You made a big mistake, little passenger! By holding that gun, you can officially be considered hostile.”
I peeked between my fingers just as the general unholstered his gun and aimed at my head. There was a bang, and I flinched, but the bullet whizzed past my ear.
Beth made a sound like “Uk!” and I felt her tumble down my back.
“No!” I cried.
I rounded and crouched over Beth’s body. She pressed her hands into her stomach, blood spurting between her fingers.
“Medic!” the general screamed.
“I’m sorry,” I said, petting Beth’s hair. “I’m so so sorry.”
Beth groaned and said a word I’d never heard before. “Shit.” And then . . . and then she laughed. “This hurts so much worse than I ever thought it would. Hold me, Phoebe, would ya?”
I picked her up and cradled her in my hands.
“No need for the long face,” she said, unable to breathe full. “I’m not really dying.”
She was shuddering and pale. Her blood had soaked through her shirt.
“Oh, Beth.”
“I just wanted to give a shot to the little guy, you know? Or the big girl.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wanted to live in a world of black and white—where you could always tell right from wrong.”
“Beth, I . . . I don’t understand.”
“Look around. Isn’t it obvious?”
I looked at the barricade. The desert. The sky. “No.”
“That’s not your fault.” She reached up and touched my chin with her wet fingers. “Do the right thing and don’t die. Give it a good ending. Not a shitty one where the disobedient girls get locked up and all the Native American nations are just part of the background.”
“I don’t understand. Beth . . .”
“Just give it a good ending.” She coughed blood into her hand and laughed again. “The gay girl dies at the end. Figures. It’s the fifties.” She winced and gave me a serious look. “Channel five thirty-two. Remember that.” She took in a deep, ragged breath, and then her hazy eyes looked to the sky, right at Daddy. “The colors. The colors . . .”
And then Beth twinkled and vanished in my hands. I rubbed my fingers together, as if I could make her reappear. The blood was gone. She was gone. I looked up into the sky. Right above Daddy’s head a star sparkled.
“Lie down, Phoebe!” the general called. “It’s over. You’re surrounded.”
I looked around, confused. The medic was no longer on his way. It was as if Beth had never existed.
I didn’t have time to think about that right then. The guns were trained on my eyes. I didn’t have a little passenger on my shoulder to guide me anymore. I put my hands in the air.
“On your back, Phoebe,” the general said. “Close in, boys!”
I lay down as the soldiers gathered in a circle around me bringing their guns close to my skin. In one motion, I made a snow angel in the sand, sweeping my arms and my legs outward, knocking the legs out from under two dozen soldiers. A few guns went off, striking me in the sides, but I leapt to my feet. Before any soldiers could recover, I knocked them down again.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the general retreating, unholstering his walkie-talkie. “Backup! I need backup!”
I ran and caught him around the waist, lifting him, struggling and kicking, high into the sky. Spillane looked at the drop, thirty feet if it was an inch, and understood. If I let go, he’d have a heck of a fall and break both legs. He stopped struggling.
I put his face right up to my nose. “Tell your troops to stand down.”
He scowled.
I nestled my thumbs under his chin. “All I have to do is press up and your head will snap back like a Pez dispenser,” I said. “Obey me.”
“Stand down!” the general screamed.
The soldiers rocked uncertainly, foot to foot. They lowered their guns.
I was free. I could run out to the desert any direction I chose. I could stay safely away until the army of ants swept through and then come back for Ma. I was sure that’s just what the old Phoebe, the normal-size one, would have done. But that was before I met Beth. Her blood was still on the concrete.
“Tell them to get the truck ready,” I said. “We’re riding out to Gray Rock.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re going to bring as many people as we can back to Pennybrooke. You’re not going to use them as a shield.”
The general pressed his tiny nose into mine. “I am not your prisoner. You are under my orders, helping me stem the tide of ants. Is that understood?”
“If it makes you feel better to think of it that way, go right ahead.” I set him down. “Command your soldiers to load up food, too. Every bit they can carry.”
We rode out to Gray Rock, the wind blowing through my cut hair, the truck as wobbly as a giant roller skate beneath my knees, and Frank blowing off my shoulders like Superman’s cape.
“It’s a kind thought, Phoebe,” Eugene said. “But I think we have things handled here.”
A bright skull moon cast shadows along the desert terrain where hundreds of Navajo people were busy fortifying Gray Rock. Men loaded shotguns and hammered wooden planks between the hogans, while old women held their grandchildren, making comforting sounds. The wind carried a rumble like an approaching locomotive. Daddy stuffed a handful of popcorn into his face.
“But the ants will be here any minute,” I said.
Eugene stared out at the horizon to the rising dust storm kicked up by thousands of giant insect legs. “Don’t think we hadn’t noticed.”
“They’ll chew right through the wood of your hogans.”
“That may be.” Eugene nodded and stroked his chin. “But in the past, whenever your people have offered us one thing, we’ve always received another. You invited us into your society when you needed our help to speak code. Then, once the war was finished, you broke every treaty because you had no use for us anymore. Not you personally, of course. But most people around here just don’t trust promises from white people. We feel better relying on ourselves.”
“But Pennybrooke has concrete buildings to hide in,” I said. “The army is there. They have machine guns.”
Eugene gave me a sad smile. “Did you know that Navajo people consider the ant to be sacred?”
I shook my head.
“We’ve studied them, the Willazhini,” he said. “The way they move. The way they sense the world.” He pointed to the sloping hillside where women scattered food between wooden rails built down the hillside. “We’re going to try to
corral the swarm and divert them away from the hogans. Your donation helped, by the way. We’re using it as a kind of crumb trail.” He chuckled. “Sorry we’re wasting it on ants.”
“But these aren’t just normal ants,” I said. “They were zapped in a lab by . . . well, people like me.”
It only took an upward look from Eugene to remember I’d been zapped in the same lab. He gazed off toward the approaching rumble. “Not to mention the fact that those same people forced us to mine the uranium that grew these ants,” he said. “We all played our part.” He crossed his arms and shook his head. “Honestly, I feel sorry for the people of Pennybrooke tonight. Most of them have only ever looked at an ant long enough to squish it. They could probably use your help more than us. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I should really get back to building.”
I nodded and numbly walked back to the rig in the parking lot where the Girl Scouts had parked the station wagon what felt like ages ago, back when my biggest concern in the world was trying to find Ma. I crouched and tapped my giant fingernail on the driver’s-side window. The general had a difficult time rolling down the window with his wrists handcuffed to the steering wheel.
“They don’t want to come,” I said.
“What did you expect?” the general said. “Ingrates.”
“Can you blame them?” I said.
The general cleared his throat. “I didn’t want to make the people of Pennybrooke fill their trousers, but in ’54, the army had a hell of a time bringing these ants down. Bullets ricocheted right off their exoskeletons.”
The thought gave me an ache in my knuckles. “How did you do it?”
“Fire,” he said, eyes shining. “What else? We’ve got flamethrowers back at the base.”
“How many ants are coming?” I said.
“My people counted four hundred from the chopper. That number might have grown since the last sweep.”
“Four hundred?”
The general shrugged. “Pretty soon you and me and everyone here are going to be nothing more than meat sandwiches.” He winked. “Granted, one of us will last a little longer than the rest.”
I ran my hands through my chopped-up hair. Beth had told me to help the Navajo people. To not let them be part of the background, whatever that meant. But it looked like they didn’t need my help.
Attack of the 50 Foot Wallflower Page 19