Rising by Patrick Sean Lee (sneezy the snowman read aloud .txt) 📖

right. How long would it be until another squadron notices the burning wreckage, and then gather by the dozens before we make it to safety inside the huge stone pipe. Whatever Mondra is planning, she’s right. Right now the sky is our enemy.

“So? What do we do?” I ask her.

“We get back to the cover of the forest as fast as we can. I know a trail that will take us around the west perimeter of the city. The prison stands at the northernmost edge, right? A few miles south of it, though, is the air port complex. We go there; take it out first.”

“We backtrack?”

“No, not necessarily. We can go straight across Black. We have a thousand shacks to use as cover.”

Sant is shaking his head in agreement.

“I say we get to their air port, do like Mondra says…but we leave one ship undamaged. You wreck the rest, and then…and afterward, somehow we go back and get your family and Gerstam. Bring them to the unwrecked ship, and then get out of here. Go back to Folly. Without Heliceres, they can’t follow us.”

“Abandon our home and whoever has survived to their troops? I won’t do that!”

“One thing at a time,” Mondra says. “Clear the skies. Kill their army next, and then if we want, destroy the prison and the city.”

Another group of gunships comes into view, heading toward us from over the sea. They move swiftly, and I curse myself for taking this route. I know they’ve spotted us when at a few hundred yards away they slow, and then hover. The first burst of deadly gunfire strikes the wall a couple of feet over Mondra’s head. She screams and tries to duck lower, for whatever good that will do her. Sant throws himself over her. I raise my hands.

Gods, shield us for half a second more!

 

 

THIRTEEN

I close my eyes. Wave my outstretched palms in an arc. Feel the electric rush that jars my senses. And then I hear the explosions. I don’t want to look, seriously. Don’t want to see the huge ships falling in thousands of fiery pieces straight down on us, and so I squint tighter, forced back against the legs and tangled torsos of Sant and Mondra in a heap.

I flash back to the forest of Catanar when that lone Helicere hovered thirty feet above me on the path. The young Polit soldier sent flying when Faerborn gathered me up, and smashed into him in the process. The valley where the Jades were gathering that night, and I barbecued the lot of them. Dizziness. Strange regrets. Death everywhere.

They begin to crash. One, two, three heavy thuds, and more explosions like bursts thunder. The sounds of debris whizzing too near my head, crashing into the wall, sending rock shrapnel back in an angry staccato echo. A final boom when another of the ships crashes far away. And then a kind of angry silence, broken only by a mass hissing as the remnants of the attacking force dies.

I open my eyes. There is black smoke everywhere. Tangled pieces of the ships, most spewing flames, most of them lying in the swamp. On the dry land, just that side of the road, an arm reaches out through the knee-high weeds. I hear a low groan over the hissing off to the left. A body, face up, in a blood-spattered uniform. His leg moves a little, but the way he's twisted, I know he's going to die soon. Mondra rises, pushes past Sant and me, and snatches a hand-sized rock as she runs toward the guy lying in the reeds across the road.

“Mondra, no!” I scream. He’s going to die, for the gods’ sake, why bash his head in? There is a mean streak in my sister that sometimes approaches the ugliness of the Polits. Defending yourself is one thing, but…

“Why? He’s one of them, ‘Lana. I’m just going to put him out of his misery.”

“Let her do it,” Sant says. “Think back on Catanar.”

“No! Let’s just get out of here.” I’m disheartened by my sister’s heartlessness, but worse by Sant’s. Mondra drops the rock, but not before spitting on the dying man. And then she rushes back to Sant and me. More ships will appear before we can disappear, I have no doubt about that. We don’t have time to taunt or torture the injured and dying. I don’t have the stomach for it anyway.

A hundred yards ahead of us, one of the Heliceres crashed down into the wall, opening it in a long slash. If we’re going back to the far side of Black, and then from there find the air port—and I think my sister was right in that change of plans—the doorway has opened. I lead the way, running as fast as I can; dodging twisted wreckage and the gruesome remains of Polit airmen. Through curtains of smoke that gusher from the ruins. Around broken rocks.

I glance back at Mondra and Sant a second before reaching the hole in the hated wall. Mondra leads, with Sant close behind her. He breaks stride, snatches two weapons that were ejected from one of the Heliceres. I step over the shattered stones, and under the mangled rear hold of the smoking craft. They’re quickly beside me. We’re together again, back in the ghetto.

The stiff breeze from off the sea pushes plumes of black smoke over my old home ahead of us, and at first it’s hard to see the damage done yesterday by the invading ships and foot soldiers. But the breeze is capricious. Its sudden changes of mind poke holes in the sullen black veil, revealing an eerie portrait of the once-despairing hovel-homes intermixed with absolute destruction. The devastation is a brother to the wind—here a home untouched, across the debris-strewn path, a splintered roof lying haphazardly on a collapsed wall. We meet our first dead body within minutes into our flight. A child whose name and laughter I’ll never know.

I want to stop, but I don’t. There is no need to tell him how sorry I am that he had to suffer death on my account. No, no! On our account! Because of men like Darra. Well, he’s dead now, too, the gods damn his soul.

Battered in doors. Gates lying in tangles on the ground. Fences beaten over. Surely, more unfortunate Blacks inside many of the wrecks of homes we race by. The main road running north and south is just ahead, and I slow near the corner of the last house where I crouch and wait for my sister and Sant to join me. Mondra slips down beside me, banging with a shoulder into the fence laced with weeds. Sant arrives a split second later, as quiet as a cat stalking a rat. Without a word, he pushes the gun into her hands.

“What?” she whispers.

I crawl cautiously forward until I reach the end of the road, and peer in both directions. A Skirter is parked sideways on the main road fifty feet away, one door open, but no soldiers are in sight. Our old home is farther north, maybe a hundred feet beyond it. They’re still here somewhere. Maybe going house to house to rout out any survivors.

I turn and crawl back to them. “We have to cross, but I think we have company. I’ll go first. Wait here until I signal you.”

Mondra is fiddling with the short weapon. She raises it. Turns it a little, looking at the bolt, the trigger and ring of metal surrounding it, and then glances over at me with a question mark on her face.

Seriously, Mondra? You?

“Just point and pull the trigger,” Sant says with a small laugh. “At them,” he adds.

“Like this?” she says, pointing the short barrel at his head.

“No!” I say too loudly. Sant reacts by raising his hands to push the gun aside. “Are you crazy!” Too loud, too loud! What on earth is my sister thinking?

“Just kidding,” she replies, lowering the weapon. “I don’t have my finger on the trigger.”

“Stop it! Shut up!” I say.

“Don’t ever do that again,” Sant snarls.

“You’re such a woos,” she laughs at him.

“They’re here! Quiet down!” Too loud. If we survive this it will be a miracle. I give Mondra a nasty look, then when she answers with a puppy-dog I know I was a bad little boy, and a lowering of her eyes, I rise and take one more peek over the top of the rotted fence. No movement anywhere. I take off as fast as I can, back and shoulders low, and cross the road.

I’ve crossed this road a thousand times, but it never seemed as wide as it does right now. More haphazard destruction over here. The Pistor's house I’m in front of is no more of a wreck than it was last time I was here a few days ago, except that, like so many others, the front door is hanging like a broken branch, half open. I whisk behind the overgrown, scarggily bushes near the dirt of the street. Poke my head over the tops of them, and scan the area. Wait, scan some more. Wait. It’s filled with ghosts. My dead town.

Mondra is staring at me, gun in one hand, almost leaning forward with her left shoulder, ready to sprint. Sant has thrown his weapon over a shoulder by the strap. He has a hand on Mondra’s arm, as though trying to hold her in place until I give the signal.

I motion with a wave of my hand for them to go, then wish immediately that I hadn’t.

FOURTEEN

A soldier, the black visor of his helmet retracted, steps through the doorway of my old home onto the short walkway leading to the road the same time they bolt onto it. He appears agitated, looks south in the direction of the noise and smoke. I’m wondering what took him so long to vacate the house, but I’m in no doubt that he’s spotted the cause—or two parts of it—sprinting across the dirt toward my hiding place.

Neither Mondra nor Sant notices him, half-hidden, now, by the sideways-parked Skirter between them. Do I lift my hands and blow him away?

“Stop!” he yells.

I’ve no choice. I have to take him out. Sant shoves Mondra when he hears the raspy command, and then dives into the dirt, rolling over sideways. With a swift, graceful motion, he rips the weapon off his shoulder and takes aim, lying half on his back, his head craned in this weird, unnatural position. A