Page 49 of The Infinite Glade
Orange fired shots from the balcony; Minho fired from the first floor. As soldiers fell in the front lines, Minho shot at the next in line, but it was useless and he knew it. No matter how skilled Orange and Minho were, and how well they worked together, the numbers were against them. And the Orphan Army marched closer, with a hunger for war that only the Remnant Nation could have.
In the darkness outside the Villa, shots sailed in both directions, certainly. But the barrage of bullets from the Remnant Nation would never end. Even if every single islander were a trained soldier like him, they wouldn’t have stood a chance. It wasn’t their war to fight. And winning wasn’t an option.
“There’s too many of them,” he whispered to himself between shots. In between the trees and atop the fallen snow, Orange and Minho had downed at least two dozen soldiers of the Remnant Nation, but twenty more were behind them, and twenty more to the left of them, and a dozen more to the right.
“Orange!” Minho couldn’t hear anything from upstairs but the fire of weaponry and incessant thud of bullets. He kept at it, downing one after another of his ex-comrades. Back when he was on the wall, shooting trespassers, he never thought about anything he saw in the scope except the distance between their eyes. But now when he looked through the scope, one by one, even if he didn’t recognize them,and especially if he did, he felt a twinge of something he never felt when killing anyone before. More than the gun kicking back and bruising his shoulder, he felt something in his chest.
Back on the wall he’d never had a pain in his chest when he shot rounds. He didn’t feel this heaviness when he shot the Crank-soldiers chained together on the coast. But with each shot he fired into a fellow Orphan, Minho felt a deep loss there, on the inside.
“Dammit!” He couldn’t stop them from advancing no matter how many he shot, but he also couldn’t stop himself.
One by one, he took away from each felled Orphan soldier the opportunity to find freedom, or family, or friends. He ushered them to death instead. The pain in his chest amplified, knowing it was all over for him and Orange, the others. The freedom they’d known the last several months, the time away from the clutches of the Remnant Nation—it was all vanishing as the army closed in on them.
Traitors. They’d be treated worse than any enemy that ever existed.
Glass windows blew out in the Villa.
Sadina and Trish screamed.
Minho braced himself to die a traitor’s death.
Erros pulled Isaac back to his feet and pushed him against the wall of the Berg. His neck flung back and his right leg hung in the air. “You’re crazy! You could have killed us!”
Isaac thought about apologizing, but the notion seemed absurd. He wasn’t sorry for trying to save his friends. Erros pushed Isaac harder against the Berg’s interior. Rivets jammed into his back.
“We’re okay.” Old Man Frypan tried to step between the two. “The boy’s emotions just got out of hand there. He’s okay, aren’t you boy?”
Isaac nodded. He wasn’t okay, not even close, but he didn’t want to get thrown out of the Berg in mid-flight. “Please, just land and drop me off, I need?—”
“You need your head checked!” Erros let go of him, dropping him to the floor. “Get in the back and stay there.”
Isaac crawled across the floor of the Berg until Jackie scooped him up. “Isaac, what the hell? I know you want to get to them, but it’d be great if we were alive, ya know?”
“I know.” He fell into Jackie’s lap in defeat. “We can’t lose everyone . . .” He didn’t have to finish his thought, but he knew that Jackie knew. Being kidnapped. Carson and Lacy dying. And now the fires. Isaac couldn’t take any more loss.
She placed her palm against Isaac’s chest. “I know. . . . We’ll figure it out.”
He took a deep breath, fought back the tears.
Cian spoke from the controls. “Look, the fires are spreading to other islands, but we’ll find one with enough cleared brush to land—and then we’re done with you people. You can find your friends or your death, whichever you come across first.”
“Fair enough,” Old Man Frypan said in defeat.
“I’m sorry,” Isaac whispered to Jackie. He’d never felt so helpless in his life. Jackie’s hand over Isaac’s chest helped to calm him until Ximena’s words pierced through.
“How big was theMaze Cutter? Forty feet? Sixty?”
Erros leaned forward over the front controls. “That’s a sixty-footer.”
Isaac shot to his feet. They’d seen their ship, surely. “They made it to Alaska,” he told Jackie and they rushed to the window to look for themselves.
Ximena pointed at some licking flames of fire below the Berg. For a second it looked like theMaze Cutter’s outline above it . . . but it couldn’t be. Not on fire. “No.” Isaac tried to quiet his fears out loud. “There’s no way, right?” He spun around to Jackie. “It’s not them, right?” He looked back out the window, “It can’t be . . .”
Erros noticed Isaac, then grabbed him, pushing him away from the window. “I told you to get in the back! The back!” He pushed him again.
Isaac slowly walked away from Erros’ gaze, but he needed Jackie to see it and tell him that Ximena was wrong. “Jackie?” he asked timidly.
“I feel sick . . .” Her words dripped out before she covered her mouth and stepped back from the window.
