Praise and Awards for
DACTYL HILL SQUAD
A New York Times Notable Book
An NPR Best Book of the Year
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year
A Washington Post Best Book of the Year
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
An American Indians in Children’s Literature Best Book of the Year
“Older fascinatingly blends thunder-lizard thrills with lesser-known but important aspects of American history … Readers will adore Magdalys Roca … There’s another installment of this mind-bendingly original series coming, sure to be eagerly awaited.” —New York Times Book Review
★ “Epic … This high-energy title is perfect for middle graders, with its strong female protagonist, a fresh perspective on history, helpful notes and resources, and an honest portrayal of the complex topics of race and gender.” —School Library Journal, starred review
★ “Delightful historical fantasy … Rooted in real events and attitudes, and appended with facts about the time, this fast-paced adventure makes for a memorable tale in which numerous characters of color take the lead.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“This book is true fire. It is everything I didn’t even know I needed.” —Jacqueline Woodson, National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature
“This is the story that would’ve made me fall in love with reading when I was a kid.” —Tomi Adeyemi, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Children of Blood and Bone
“Older’s uprising of sheroes and heroes grips, stomps, and soars from start to finish.” —Rita Williams-Garcia, New York Times bestselling author of One Crazy Summer
“Dactyl Hill Squad is an engaging, lively adventure with a heroine I wish I were, in a world I didn’t want to leave.” —Jesmyn Ward, two-time National Book Award–winning author of Sing, Unburied, Sing
“This incredible story brings history to life with power, honesty, and fun.”—Laurie Halse Anderson, New York Times bestselling author of Chains
“Kids, the Civil War, and dinosaurs—action doesn’t get any better than this!” —Tamora Pierce, New York Times bestselling author of The Song of the Lioness
“A crackling fantasy adventure full of thrilling scenes.” —James McPherson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom
Praise and Awards for
FREEDOM FIRE
A Publishers Weekly Best of Summer Reading
“An unforgettable historical, high-octane adventure.”—Dav Pilkey, author/illustrator of the Dog Man series
★ “Blisteringly paced, thought- provoking adventure.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
★ “Intelligent, rousing, and abundantly diverse, this is every bit as satisfying as the first installment.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Older has middle-graders’ number with this dino-charged series. Stampedes are likely!” —Booklist
Praise for
THUNDER RUN
“Older infuses what could have been a basic romp with depth, using a critical social justice lens to examine the past while also embedding in it representation that we can aspire to in the future.” —Kirkus Reviews
PRAISE
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
PART 1
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
PART 2
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
PART 3
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
DACTYL HILL SQUAD TEASER
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT
Max Salazar and his older sister, Yala, burst out of their twentieth-floor apartment and sped into the still-gray sky over Flood City. Side by side, they plummeted toward the jagged ground. The wind screamed against their ears, sent Yala’s locs flying out behind her, and made Max’s stomach turn somersaults. The broken buildings around them sped past, faster and faster, until everything blurred into one soggy gray-brown smudge. Then (finally) Yala yelled, “Now!” and zipped out of sight with an explosion of fire and smoke. Max pushed both his heels down inside his jetboots, waiting for that heart-stopping jolt as the rocket engines propelled him skyward.
Nothing happened.
Uh-oh.
The ground flew up toward Max like an angry monster. He pushed his heels down again and felt the ignition pedals drop uselessly against the boot soles.
“Max!” Yala yelled from far up above. Max could already make out the mountains of scrap metal between the crumbling buildings. A peaceful stream wandered amidst the detritus beneath him. He dug his heels in again, this time getting a shallow sputtering. It was better than nothing. If he could get ignited, he still might be able to …
FWOOOOOM!!!
The jetboots exploded to life. Max jolted forward, bounced off a tire mountain, and zipped just inches over a pile of razor-sharp metal shards before speeding back up, up, up, past Yala’s bemused face and higher than their apartment building, straight into the early morning sky and way above Flood City, which glimmered and shone below. There was the cliff at the far edge that separated their neighborhood from the other areas. Beyond it, the main downtown section had already begun to bustle, and past that lay the open plaza outside the Music Hall where the pageant would happen that night. A little ways below it, the front end of a huge ocean liner stuck straight up into the air, marking Barge Annex. Off in the distance, Max could just make out the Tumbled Together Towers.
He took it all in for a single sweet moment, then let himself drift back down to where his sister hovered, looking unimpressed.
“Close call, space cadet,” Yala said. “You forget to take off the ignition lock?”
“Maybe.”
Yala had programmed Max’s jetboots to bypass the ignition lock if he pressed down on the heel pedals a few times in a row. It wasn’t the first time that had come in handy. She rolled her eyes at him and then blasted off.
Sometimes Yala would sneak out of their house and just sit in the tunnel late at night to let her thoughts wander. Today though, her mind was cramped around a secret, and even the fresh ocean air in her favorite hideaway wasn’t enough to cheer her up. Max was so absentminde
d. Another near-death experience for the records. And what was he going to do when she was gone?
“Yala! Wait up!” Max flitted into the circular tunnel that gaped out of the rock wall across from the fifteenth floor of their building. His flickering headlight made him look like a dizzy firefly as he veered too close to the wall. Yala had already glided in and clicked on her headlight. It was still early, so no one else was around. The darkness was peaceful. Occasional drip-drops accompanied the shushing waves not far away.
“Hurry up, slowpoke!” Yala called over her shoulder. Before Max had time to let the calmness of the passageway seep in, the bright lights of downtown Flood City were dancing toward him. He zipped out and was instantly surrounded by the daily ebb and flow of jetbooted commuters bustling off to work. The smell of Mr. Sanpedro’s freshly baked goods filled the air just outside the tunnel, and sure enough, a sizable crowd had gathered around the window to get their morning snacks. Mr. Sanpedro ran his bakery from inside a half-destroyed train car that jutted out of the rocky slope.
“Yo, I want some dougies,” Yala said as Max floated up beside her.
“I don’t know,” Max panted. “That line is pretty long.”
“I don’t think I can take another day of these ration packs.”
Max eyed the little gray package that dangled from his knapsack. Inside was the blandest of bland food ever: stale bread with some sickly gray pudding on it and a bag of flaky cracker things. It was the same meal the Star Guard provided to every Flood City household, day after day after day since they’d stopped the Chemical Baron attack and taken over the one city left on Earth. Just thinking about the ration pack made Max want to barf his guts out.
No one knew how Mr. Sanpedro did what he did, but if you brought him your ration, he’d hand it over to his team of hunterfly helpers and a few minutes later they’d send it back up transformed into a delicious, steamy hot pastry called a dougie. It even had gobs of thick, sweet sauce dripping off it.
It was worth the long line, but they were already running late. Max looked out toward the ocean, past the Tumbled Together Towers, to where Saint Solomon’s Hospital hovered over the ocean. “Mom’s shift is ending soon and I don’t want to miss her.”
Yala shrugged. “I guess since the pageant’s tonight we probably shouldn’t—”
“I don’t wanna talk about the—” Max didn’t finish because he was too busy ducking out of the way. Something blurred past his head and smashed into the rock wall behind him. “What the—?”
“Tinibu!” Yala yelled.
A small orange head with a long beak appeared from the brand-new hole in the mountainside. With two tiny hands, the creature adjusted the ornately carved mask on his face, shook off a cloud of dust, and then popped fully out.
“Jeez, Tinibu, you almost knocked my head off,” Max said, brushing debris off the little hunterfly.
“What are you doing up so early anyway?” Yala asked. “You usually don’t leave the house till long after we do.”
Tinibu flitted his wings and nodded his head in the direction of the bakery.
“Right,” Yala said. “For the big concert tonight, of course! Mr. Sanpedro asked for extra hunterflies to help him out with deliveries and baking so he could prepare for the feast. What’s wrong, Max?”
Max had turned an uneasy shade of green at the mention of the concert. It would be his first time playing lead in the horn section. What was worse, the whole entire city would be watching. Even worse than that, Djinna, the holographer’s daughter, was leading the percussion ensemble. She’d probably be right next to him in fact, and she’d know every single time he messed up. Max’s tummy squirmed like it was trying to break loose and wander freely around his body. “I’m fine.”
Yala rolled her eyes and turned back to Tinibu. “Yo, can you hook us up? We trying to make it to Mom’s hospital before her shift ends.”
Tinibu twittered irritably.
“I know, I know … but Max’s all nervous about the show tonight …”
“I am not!”
“And doesn’t wanna wait in line.”
The hunterfly raised an eyebrow at Max, made a clicking noise with his tongue, and then flashed off to the bakery.
“Great,” Max groaned. “Now I’m gonna wake up tomorrow with half my hair shaved off or something.”
“You didn’t wanna wait and I wanted dougies. This way, everybody gets what they want and I get to see you with a ridiculous haircut. Now c’mon. Tinibu will catch up to us.”
Yala sped off into the crisscrossing jetboot traffic. Max followed, grumbling. Jetboot repair shops and odds-and-ends bodegas were opening up for business in the sloping rock walls and sea-soaked buildings around them. Iron grates grumbled and clanked back to their resting spots to reveal storefront windows glowing with the first rays of sun.
Old Man Cortinas hovered out in front of his barbershop. He waved at Yala and Max. “Hey, kids!” he yelled, a mischievous grin stretching beneath his big mustache. “You ready for the show tonight, Max?”
Max’s tummy did a cartwheel.
“Hi, Mr. C,” Yala yelled, gliding easily out of the way as a group of chattering kindergartners fluttered past behind their teacher. “He’s—”
“I’m fine!” Max said. “I can’t wait!”
“Right.” Old Man Cortinas nodded. “You’ll be fine!” He took a sip from his tiny coffee cup and chuckled.
Around a corner and down a narrow alleyway, the hustle and bustle of downtown Flood City was only a vague murmur beneath the gnashing ocean waves. Yala had taken them along Max’s least favorite shortcut. “You said you were in a hurry,” she reasoned, springing along the winding corridor.
“But, Yala … so close to the Electric Ghost Yard. I don’t know …”
The Electric Ghost Yard was a no-man’s-land: a mess of tangled electronic cabling spread across an abandoned lot. The Chemical Barons had dumped the wiring as they fled to space after the first Flood City uprising. Everyone said that the cables harbored errant souls of people from the days before the Floods. Rumors or not, the place was creepy. It lay in the shadow of a tall, crumbly row of brownstones. Flashes of blue electrical light crackled between the wires, which seemed to writhe like a slo-mo worm pile.
Max gazed farther down the dark alleyway. He could just make out where the building wall gave way to a jangled barbwire fence. He could hear the snapping currents. The wind brought in a nauseating whiff of burning rubber and something else … something that maybe had been alive once, but was now just charred ickiness.
“Chicken?” Yala said.
“No, I just value my life is all. Unlike some people.”
“You know what’d be even faster? If we just flew directly over the—”
“No! Are you nuts, Yala?”
No one flew over the Electric Ghost Yard. Even the toughest Flood City folks, the ones who scoffed at all the creepy stories, the ones who’d happily zip straight off into an oncoming typhoon to help fortify the city—even they weren’t that nuts.
“Suit yourself.” Yala shrugged. “Around it is.” She sped off.
Max put a palm on his forehead. “How do I let you— Hey, wait up!”
As Max dashed after his sister, something on the alley wall moved ever so slightly. It was practically invisible, a large dark stain on a brick area between tattered posters and exposed pipes. Its motion was languid, could’ve been mistaken for the shadow of some cloth wafting in a gentle breeze. Two long white slits opened along the shape and squinted toward where Max and Yala buzzed around the edge of the Electric Ghost Yard. A crease folded through the middle of the shadow, its edges turned upward into a smile.
Somewhere in the sky far above Flood City, a cloud cruiser hovered silently. It was long and gray, its sleek body designed for speed and camouflage in the thick haze of pollution that had covered Earth since before the Floods. Four laser cannons glared out from its lower hull; each sent tiny red beams of light dancing through the cloud banks.
The lasers circled endlessly, leaving faded ghost lights in their wake. If any one of them picked up the slightest motion, even a passing butterfly or iguanagull, all four would immediately focus on that spot and the cannons would begin charging up. It was beautiful and creepy at the same time, Ato thought, gazing out the window at the swirling vigil.
Everyone else was asleep, zonked out after a long night of planning their surveillance run, and besides the slow drifting of gray-brown clouds, the lasers were the only things moving. The mission was a few hours away still—Mephim’s maps and charts calculating every last detail were splattered haphazardly across the table—but for some reason Ato felt a terror rising up inside of him every time he thought about it.
It’s not like it was his first run. Even though Ato and his twin brother, Get, were only twelve and by far the youngest Barons in the ruling Chemical Dynasty, they’d been on more than their fair share of missions. The first few were terrifying: flack from the Star Guard ground guns exploding all around the cloud cruiser, that rising nauseous feeling coupled with the utter helplessness of being in a ship that someone else was driving and not being able to see anything that was going on, and being only twelve. But once the booming and rattling died down and both brothers were still alive and intact, they were flushed with the thrill of having survived such an ordeal. All they wanted was to do it again. Ato still remembered that exhilaration coursing through his body, the look in his brother’s wide eyes, Mephim gazing proudly from the commander’s chair.
In the past few months, missions had become a routine part of life for Ato and Get, like dodging Star Guard potshots was just another thing that happened in the day. It still rattled Ato, but at least the regularity had steeled him a little to the constant thought of death.
An urgent beeping from one of the control panels pulled Ato from his reverie. The laser seekers had picked up an unusual movement in the sky around them.
Ato glanced out the window. The gray pollution clouds hung in the air like droopy old whales. Nothing seemed to be moving and the lasers were nowhere in sight. He crossed to the other end of the cruiser—nearly tripping over a half-empty coffee mug someone had left on the floor during their planning session the night before—and peered out into the clouds. There it was: a single iguanagull coasting along just a few feet away. Ato could make out its large scaly head, that light green swath of skin flapping along its neck, and the gray feathers lining its wings. The four laser seekers had grouped on its midsection. Ato could imagine the cannons beneath him aiming hungrily at the creature, waiting for the push of a button to unleash their fire.
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