Chapter 51: Chapter 51

The steady pop pop of gunfire, peppered with the louder, less routine sound of blasts going off and bombs whizzing through the air before they crashed into the buildings in front of them was invigorating to White in a way she couldn’t put into words. The sting of smoke hit her nostrils the way florals enticed most women; the battle raging in front of her was as comforting to her as a warm blanket to a babe on a harsh winter night. She’d been born to wage war; it was in her blood. Though she hadn’t had nearly enough opportunities to stand across the battlefield from a foreign aggressor in her forty-five years, she was here now, having finally talked President Violet in to allowing her to go, and the idea that Dal’s forces would crumble before them so that they could continue in pursuit of the rebels had her full of energy, despite the fact that she hadn’t slept in days.

The helios were staying far back from the line, their only purpose to drop supplies and personnel, but Dal had still managed to send some sort of heat-seeking weapon in their direction, striking one of them in the tail. It had spiraled around a few times before the pilot managed to get it back under control and took off toward Michaelanburg. The trail of smoke following the bird made her think it wouldn’t make it all the way home, but perhaps a crash site further in the forest would prevent Dal and his goons from getting their hands on the equipment. “Make sure I am informed immediately if that helio goes down,” White said to Jaguar, who hadn’t been happy to see White get off of the bird a few hours ago.

“Yes, Mother,” she said, her voice still showing her annoyance at having her command taken from her. It wasn’t necessarily that Jaguar was doing a poor job; it was simply that White needed to be here, to oversee the attack, as much as she needed to breathe.

Not that anyone was particularly impressed with Jaguar’s performance, either. She hadn’t managed to catch up to the four renegades, after all, even though over a week had passed since the insurrection began. White was confident she would’ve already brought them in, had she been the one to initially give chase, but there was no going back in time to fix that now. The task before them was simple enough. Get past Dal and his meager guns so that they could continue their pursuit. It was simple enough. While going around Dafo would be simpler, this was faster, and more entertaining.

Looking through a pair of hand-held magnifiers, White watched as the long-range explosions were hurled through the air at the remains of what used to be powerful skyscrapers, now leaning and broken, only their rusty frames sticking out of the ground, colossal remnants of what used to be a powerful nation. If she could tell where the return fire was coming from, she’d have a much better handle on the situation, but it seemed to float from building to building. Whenever her artillery took out one location, it simply moved to another. It made little sense, unless Dal had so many guns trained on them, he could afford to fire at them one at a time. Perhaps that was what he was doing.

He hadn’t done any major damage, though, other than the shot to the bird. Taking out a couple dozen Mothers here and there wasn’t going to slow them down. If he wanted to stop them, he’d have to hit their transporters, and she didn’t think he had the fire power left to do that. The larger vehicles were kept back away from the city proper, finding routes around the enemy territory rather than through it.

Invading Dafo and finding Dal’s hiding spot would bring her nothing but pure bliss; she’d love to watch the Mothers line his followers up and execute them one by one, in a similar fashion to the way she’d taken out that rebel at the beginning of the insurgence. But she didn’t have that sort of time on her hands at the moment. She needed to get through this hellhole and find Rain and the others. “Press ahead,” she said, leaving it to Jaguar to actually pass the order along. “I want all units to move straight ahead, converging on the road that leads north out of town. Make sure that all tracking devices are turned off on the lead elements. If they have tech that can read our location, we’ll need to make it obsolete.” Something that girl in the holding cell back at headquarters had said made her wonder if there wasn’t a device giving their location away. She’d be leading her troops slightly blind without following them on her own tablet, but it was worth the risk to make sure they weren’t announcing their presence to the renegades.

“Yes, Mother White,” Jaguar said, stepping away to speak to her commanders. Night had fallen, bright flashes from explosions lighting the sky, mostly those fired from the Mothers into the buildings across the way.

Before the women even began to move forward, a loud explosion sounded from the building in front of her, about six hundred yards away, as one of their larger artillery shots hit its mark. The building groaned for a second and then, in a rumble of fury, sank quickly in a ripple, the collision of concrete into the earth shaking the ground beneath her feet as a plume of dust and ash filled the air, slowly drifting their direction. Whether or not that had wounded Dal’s forces remained to be see, but it couldn’t have helped his cause. “Move forward--now!” White shouted. Jaguar’s commanders reacted, and a steady stream of Mothers stepped out of the trees, land riders and motorbikes hurrying some closer to the front. White wanted to get through Dafo and on her way to catching up with the rebels within an hour; the time for playing games had long passed. She was going to find Rain and her companions and put an end to this before they reached the River Red--before the sun rose again.

* * *

The eruption of briskly moving water cut through her raspy breaths as Rain realized they were nearing what had to be a large river in front of them. She imagined it had to be the River Red, but there was no capacity left in her lungs for words. Running at full speed for hours had taken away all conscious thought, all ability to speak or think or pray. The only thing she was capable of at the moment was putting one foot in front of the other as rapidly as humanly possible. And judging by the pain in her muscles and the spasming in her feet, that possibility was about to dry up.

They were back in the forest now and had been for several hours. Behind them, the sound of explosions had faded away as they’d put more distance between themselves and Dafo, but every once in a while a light would reflect off of the shiny rifle slung over Mist’s shoulder, and Rain would get the notion that it was another bomb being hurled at their friends in Dafo. She hoped it was actually Dal’s forces taking down a heliobird or putting an end to a transporter, but in her heart, she had a feeling the Mothers were taking out their anger on the citizens who had given them refuge for only one night. She prayed Dal and his beautiful family were all right but didn’t let her mind linger on their faces, especially not the sweet face of his little daughter, Lyna.

Ahead of her, the noises from the river became even louder. Mist made it out of the forested area first, slowing as she ran down a steep embankment. Rain saw a ribbon of black cutting through the solid green in front of her, illuminated by Mist’s flashtube. It didn’t look red at all at this time of night--or was it morning?--but she had to assume this was it, that they’d made it to the River Red, and on the other side, they’d find the nation of Oklasaw, a country pieced together from remnants of what used to be the United States. Unorganized and wielding no power to speak of, they wouldn’t be much safer there, but at least they’d be out of no-man’s land and further away from Michaelanburg.

“This is it,” Mist said, sucking in air as she tried to slow her heart rate. She stopped a few feet from a steep drop off. “This is the River Red.”

The others came to a stop behind her. “It’s about damn time,” Walt said, his breathing also labored.

“How do we get across?” Adam asked. He didn’t sound quite as winded as the other two. Rain wasn’t even prepared to attempt to speak unless she had to.

“We don’t. Not right now, anyway,” Mist said, turning to face them.

“What do you mean?” Walt asked. “We have to.”

Mist shook her head. “It’s too dangerous to try to cross right now. It’s moving too fast. It must be swollen from the rain. If we try to cross now, we’ll end up drowning, and all of this will have been for nothing.”

“What do you supposed we do then?” Adam asked. “If we stay here with our backs up against the river, we’re sitting ducks for the Mothers, and they’re obviously coming. Dal has done a great job of slowing them down, but we all know he’s no match for them. He said as much.”

Mist was nodding. “We need to find a place to hide for the rest of the night. Tomorrow morning, we’ll assess the situation, see where we can cross, find a safe place, and work our way across.”

“In the daylight?” Rain had found her voice now. “Won’t that be dangerous? They’ll be able to see us?”

Mist looked at the river and then back at her. “Hopefully, they won’t be here yet.” She pulled out her tracker pad. “I don’t see any dots anywhere close to us.”

“For all we know, they are aware that you have that and have turned their trackers off,” Adam pointed out.

“Listen, you guys can see the river as clearly as I can,” Mist said, turning her light up. “It’s moving so fast, there’s no way we can get over it.” She shoved her tablet back inside of her backpack and zipped it up.

“So let’s go down stream a bit and see if there’s a better location there,” Walt suggested. “We can’t just bunk down for the night and hope we aren’t found.”

For the first time since this journey had begun, Mist looked flustered. She glanced from the river, to Walt, and back again, and then dropped her arms down to her sides in frustration. Rain was about to make a suggestion when the roar of an engine caught all of their attention. Immediately, the four of them ducked down beneath the closest trees, and Mist killed her light.

Rain peered out between the leaves of the tree she was cowering behind, Adam next to her behind a shrub. The sound seemed to be coming from in front of them, from the river, but she couldn’t be sure. Maybe they were hiding on the wrong side of the trees, though. The Mothers might be sneaking up on them as they took shelter. She turned the other direction but saw nothing but forest.

The whirring sound grew louder. It was clearly coming from the river then. Rain narrowed her eyes and looked up and down the ribbon of darkness. If it was a boat, she thought it would’ve been louder, but then, she’d never heard a boat in real life before and had no idea what one might truly sound like.

“There it is!” Walt whispered, pointing off to the left. Rain couldn’t see anything at first. She was too far to his right, but eventually a small dark form came into her view. It was a boat, a small one, maybe large enough for five or six people at best, slowly trolling along the riverbank.

“Is it the Mothers?” Adam asked, likely talking to Mist.

“I don’t think so,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve heard that Oklasaw has some defense measures. It might be one of theirs. They might’ve seen the bombs going off and decided they needed to step up some security.”

“Should we flag them down then?” Rain asked. If they were as friendly as the folks from Dafo, maybe they’d help them get across the river.

“No,” Mist said, putting her arm out. “We can’t take the chance. They might not be kind to us.”

“I thought everyone hated the Mothers,” Walt whispered back.

“They might not give us a chance to explain. No, I think the other idea was better. Let’s let them pass, and then we can start looking for a place to cross.”

Rain was about to protest when a loud popping sound caught her attention. The initial burst was followed by several others. She turned to see where the sound was coming from, and then a sharp sting in her shoulder sent her flying into the trees. Confusion washed over her. She peered through the darkness, looking for a face to assign blame to. It had to be a Mother who’d shot her, but where were they?

Pain began to radiate through her arm. Her friends reacted more quickly than Rain could, firing back in the direction from which the bullet that had struck her had come before they all took off running in that direction, facing the enemy head on. Blood was beginning to gush out of her shoulder. Her hand over the wound was doing nothing as the sticky substance squirted between her fingers. If she had a few minutes, she could get the medical kit out of her bag and fix it. She’d be fine. But she didn’t have that kind of time. Instead, she slung her gun around and pointed it into the darkness, praying that whoever had shot her had just been a lone wolf and not the entire military or else that bullet wouldn’t be the last to pierce her skin that night.