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The rain starts, a cold, heavy rain. In no time at all I’m soaked to the bone. Blood leaks from Henri’s gut. He’s aiming the shotgun into the darkness, but all of the scouts have moved into the shadows, away from us, so that Henri can’t get a good enough aim. They’re no longer interested in attacking, knowing that two of us have retreated and a third has been wounded. Six is still reaching for the sky. The storm has grown; the wind is begi
“What is it?” I ask.
Henri hobbles, the shotgun hanging limply at his side. He’s breathing heavily, a gash on his cheek below his right eye, a circular puddle of blood on his gray sweater from the knife wound.
“It’s the rest of them, isn’t it?” Henri asks Six.
Six looks at him, stricken, her hair wet and clinging to the sides of her face.
“The beasts,” she says. “And the soldiers. They’re here.”
Henri cocks the shotgun and takes a deep breath. “And so the real war begins,” he says. “I don’t know about you two, but if this is it, then this is it. I, for one…,” he says, and trails off. “Well, I’ll be damned if I’ll go down without a fight.”
Six nods. “Our people fought back till the end. And so shall I,” she says.
A mile off the smoke still rises.Live cargo, I think.That is how they transport them, by oversized semi-trucks. Six and I follow Henri back down the steps. I yell for Bernie Kosar but he’s nowhere to be seen.
“We can’t wait for him again,” Henri says. “There isn’t time.”
I look around one final time, and slam the cellar doors shut. We rush back through the tu
Henri and I open it. Six takes the healing stone out and thrusts it against Henri’s gut. He is silent, his eyes closed, holding his breath. His face is red under the strain but not a single sound escapes. A minute of this and Six pulls the stone away. The cut has healed. Henri exhales, his forehead covered in sweat. Then it’s my turn. She presses it to the gash on my head and a pain far greater than anything I’ve ever felt before rips through me. I grunt and groan, every muscle in my body flexing. I can’t breathe until it’s over, and when it finally is, I bend over and catch my breath for a full minute.
Outside the mechanical groan has stopped. The semi is hidden from view. While Henri closes up the Chest and places it back in the same oven as before, I look out the window hoping to catch sight of Bernie Kosar. I don’t see him. Another set of headlights passes by the school. As before, I can’t tell if it’s a car or truck, and it slows as it drives by the entrance, then quickly speeds away without turning in.
Henri pushes his shirt down, picks up the shotgun. As we move towards the door, a sound stops the three of us dead in our tracks.
A roar comes from outside, loud, animal-like, a sinister roar unlike anything I have ever heard before, followed by the sound of the metallic clicks of a gate being unlocked, lowered, and opened. A loud bang snaps us all back to attention. I take another deep breath. Henri shakes his head and sighs in what is an almost hopeless gesture, a gesture made when the fight is lost.
“There’s always hope, Henri,” I say. He turns and looks at me. “New developments have yet to present themselves. Not all the information is in. Don’t give up hope just yet.”
He nods and the tiniest trace of a smile forms. He looks at Six, a new development that I don’t think either of us could have imagined. Who’s to say that there aren’t more waiting? And then he picks up where I left off, quoting the exact words he spoke to me when I was the one who was discouraged, the day I asked how we could possibly expect to win this fight, alone and outnumbered, far from home—against the Mogadorians, who seem to take great joy in war and death. “It’s the last thing to go,” Henri says. “When you have lost hope, you have lost everything. And when you think all is lost, when all is dire and bleak, there is always hope.”
“Exactly,” I say.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
ANOTHER ROAR CUTS THROUGH THE NIGHT AIR.through the walls of the school, a roar that makes my blood turn cold. The ground begins to rumble under the footsteps of the beast that must now be on the loose. I shake my head. I saw firsthand how big they were during the flashbacks of the war on Lorien.
“For your friends’ sake and ours,” Six says, “we better get the hell out of this school while there’s still time. They’ll destroy the entire building trying to get to us.”
We nod to one another.
“Our only hope is to get to the woods,” Henri says. “Whatever that thing is, we might be able to escape it if we can stay invisible.”
Six nods. “Just keep ahold of my hands.”
Needing no other motivation than that, Henri and I each take a hand.
“As quietly as we can,” Henri says.
The hallway is dark and silent. We walk with a quiet urgency, moving as swiftly as we can while making little noise. Another roar, and in the middle of it, another roar begins. We stop. Not one beast, buttwo .
We continue on and enter the gymnasium. No sign of the scouts. When we reach the very center of the court, Henri stops. I look over but can’t see him.
“Why are we stopped?” I whisper.
“Shh,” he says. “Listen.”
I strain to listen, but hear nothing aside from the steady hum of blood filling my ears.
“The beasts have stopped moving,” Henri says.
“So what?”
“Shh,” he says. “There’s something else out there.”
And then I hear it too, slight high-pitched yipping sounds as though coming from small animals. The sounds are muffled, though obviously growing louder.
“What the hell?” I ask.
Something begins banging at the stage hatch, the hatch we are hoping to escape through.
“Turn your lights on,” he says.
I let go of Six’s hand, snap them on, and aim them towards the stage. Henri looks down the end of the shotgun barrel. The hatch bounces up as though something is trying to force itself through but lacks the strength to do so.The weasels, I think,the stout-bodied little creatures that the guys in Athens were terrified of. One of them hits the hatch so hard that it breaks away from the stage and rattles across the floor. So much for thinking they lacked strength. Two of them come bursting forth, and upon catching sight of us, come racing our way so swiftly that I can hardly make them out. Henri stands watching with the gun aimed, an amused grin on his face. Their paths diverge and both leap from about twenty feet away, one jumping at Henri, the other coming at me. Henri fires once and the weasel explodes and covers him with its blood and guts; and just as I’m about to rip apart the second with telekinesis, it is snatched out of midair by Six’s unseen hand and spiked to the ground like a football, killing it instantly.