The Orphan Army (16 page)

Shark had been stung.

Shark was dying.

The shadow of the Stinger fell across them both.

Milo struggled to his knees.

Shark's mouth worked as he tried to say something. There wasn't any sound, but the word he kept trying to say was:
“Run!”

“Shark!” cried Milo. “No!”

The Stinger loomed above them, tail thrashing, pincer arms snapping, dog muzzle wrinkling in triumph, closing in for the kill. All the little hairs along its side twitched and writhed. It bent toward Milo, and pale yellow drool dripped from its jaws to splash on the boy's face and chest. Milo had no weapons left, no chance left.

All he had left was his hatred for this thing and all that it represented.

“I hope I give you stomach cramps, you cockroach,” he said weakly as the creature closed slowly on him. Then Milo hocked up a loogie and spat it right into the creature's face. The Stinger recoiled in surprise.

And one millionth of a second later, its head exploded.

I
t was an impossible thing to happen.

It
couldn't
happen.

All he did was spit at it.

The Stinger's body remained upright for a moment; then a great shudder swept through it and it toppled sideways to flop onto the ground.

Dead.

Headless.

Ruined.

And it was all impossible.

Then Milo saw that someone stood behind the Stinger.

Only it wasn't someone.

It wasn't a person.

It only looked like a person.

Kind of.

The shape was person-shape. Two arms. Two legs. A torso and a head.

But it was not a person.

It was not . . .
human.

The thing that stood there was made entirely of stone. A statue built of chunks of rock pressed together and held by mud and moss. Wrapped in creeper vines and lichen.

The statue still had its fist raised. A fist of stone with which it had struck the Stinger so hard that the blow exploded the mutant's head.

Except all of that was impossible.

Absolutely impossible.

And since impossible things happened only in dreams, they happened only when he was sleeping, Milo obliged by rolling his eyes up in his head and passing out.

A
voice said, “Come on, now. Don't be dead. Don't be dead.”

Milo wanted to say, “I'm not dead. I'm just having a nightmare.”

He opened his eyes and saw that the speaker was Barnaby, and the Cajun wasn't talking to him.

Barnaby was crouched over Shark.

“Don't be dead,” pleaded Barnaby. “Don't you dare be dead here, you.”

Shark, however, looked dead. His face was slack, his eyes open and staring at nothing.

If this was another dream, Milo didn't like it.

So he passed out again.

FROM MILO'S DREAM DIARY

The other night I dreamed I was dead.

Didn't really want to put that in my dream diary. Other stuff I wrote down came true. But it's been bugging me, so I put it down.

I don't remember a lot of details. Every day it's harder to remember a dream. I just remember that there was a lot of fire, and some explosions, and I was running. Shark and Killer were there too. We were running from a Bug ship. Not an ordinary drop-ship, though.

I kept seeing bits of it above us, through the trees. A round ship, like the Bug drop-ships, but this one was painted red. The one I keep dreaming about. It had rows of pulse cannons sticking out and it kept firing.

We ran like crazy. Even Shark. We ran and ran. What's nuts is that even though we never got tired of running, we never got very far. And even though the thing that was chasing us was only walking, it kept getting closer.

Then there was a fight of some kind. I don't remember all of it except that it hurt and I lost.

That's when I dreamed about dying. Usually I wake up when I die in a dream. Like when I'm dreaming of the hive ship blowing up our camp. Or falling from a hive ship down to the bayou. I always wake up before I hit.

Except this time I didn't.

I was kind of floating there, looking down at my body. I could see me dead on the ground. So freaky. So wrong, wrong, wrong.

I think that maybe I was inside the thing that killed me. Like somehow I
was
the thing that killed me.

How messed up am I?

W
hen Milo woke up again, the world made a little more sense.

There were soldiers everywhere. The perimeter patrol. They tore past him, faces grim and angry as they fanned out and raced up the slope. Looking for more of the deadly Stingers. Barnaby stood a few yards away, his arm around Lizabeth's shoulder. Killer was snugged into the little girl's arms, and her face was streaked with tears.

A medic—a twenty-year-old named Ginnifer—­squatted down beside Shark. Her face was tight with concern as she bent to examine the bleeding wound where the barb had struck. Shark's entire arm had turned a livid red and had swollen so badly it looked like it would burst. His fingers looked like tiny sausages attached to a meat loaf. Shark's face was slack and pale and beaded with sweat.

“Is he dead?” croaked Milo, terrified of the answer.

She glanced at him, surprised that he was awake. “No,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Is he going to die?”

“Not if I can help it.”

She uncapped a syringe, and without even waiting to swab the skin with alcohol, jabbed it into Shark's thigh through the stained fabric of his jeans.

For a terrible moment nothing happened.

Ginnifer muttered, “Come on . . . Come
on
. . .”

Shark lay as still as death.

Milo felt his heart sink.

Then abruptly, Shark arched his back and let out a loud groan of pain and protest.

Ginnifer pushed him back down, pressed her fingers against his throat, waited, counted, then sagged back, nodding.

“He's good,” she said, looking greatly relieved. “He'll make it.”

Milo struggled to sit up, but the world seemed to tilt on its axis and wobble. He sat there for a moment with his head in his hands.

Ginnifer worked on Shark for several minutes. Then she nodded to herself, satisfied, and turned to Milo.

“Let's have a look at you.”

He tried to argue about it, lost, and endured her touches and pokes. There was fresh pain everywhere she touched. She sprayed the back of his head with something cold, used antibacterial swabs to clean the Stinger blood from his face, and checked his pulse, pupil dilation, and blood pressure.

“You're pretty banged up, but you'll live, too.”

“I'm okay,” said Milo, trying to fend her off. “I'm okay.”

For a moment Shark opened his eyes and looked around as if trying to understand the things he saw. His eyes were bloodshot and his face all puffed out.

“M-Milo—?”

“Yeah, man. How are you?”

Shark licked his lips. “This really, really, really, really,
really
sucks.”

Milo took his hand and squeezed it. Shark didn't squeeze back. Instead his eyes drifted closed and his hand flopped back onto the ground.

“No!” cried Milo as he grabbed for Shark to try to shake him, but the medic pushed him gently back.

“It's okay,” said Ginnifer quickly. “If Shark were skinny like you, he'd be a goner. He has greater blood volume. Probably more than I do. After this, no one's going to bust on him for going for second helpings. He's one tough kid.”

Shark groaned like an old man.

“Relatively speaking,” amended the medic. “Mind you, he'll be sore, dizzy, and sick to his stomach for a few days. The Stinger's venom causes an allergic reaction, but the epinephrine I gave him is already working. See? The swelling is already down a little. Give it time and he'll be right as rain.” Ginnifer studied Shark for a moment and then glanced at Milo. “Tell me again how all this happened.”

When Barnaby and Lizabeth realized that Milo was awake, they hurried over and squatted down. Killer jumped from her arms and tried to lick Shark awake. When that didn't work, he snuggled against Shark's side and whimpered quietly.

“What happened?” asked Barnaby. “How you do dat to da Stinger?”

“Yes,” agreed Ginnifer. “How on earth did you do that?”

“Do . . . what?”

“How'd you kill dat
scisseaux
?” demanded Barnaby, using the Cajun word for an insect with pincers. “You have a grenade, you? What you use? I didn't hear nothin' go off, but . . .”

Milo looked at the dead mutant.

All of the details came back to him in a rush. He almost told them what he
thought
happened. What he'd seen.

Almost.

But didn't.

First a wolf.

Then a . . .

A what?

A man made of stone?

How was that ever going to make sense?

So he told them a version of the truth.

“I don't know,” he said when they asked him to explain it all. “I really don't.”

Barnaby gave him a narrow, suspicious look, and Milo wondered if the pod-leader had seen some of it. Barnaby said nothing, though. Not about that.

“I have to check on da rest of the pod, me,” he said vaguely, and wandered off.

Ginnifer called for stretcher bearers and oversaw the transport of Shark back to camp. That left Lizabeth and Milo alone for a moment.

She helped him get to his feet, and though he was dizzy, the world seemed to be less wobbly.

“You okay?” she asked.

“I guess.”

They stood there, looking at the decapitated Stinger. Milo wanted to scream. Not only had he seen his first Stinger, but he'd fought one and seen it killed.

Already the details of the last few minutes seemed to be fading into a confused version of a dream rather than actual memory.

“I saw it,” said Lizabeth, jarring him from his thoughts. He turned to her.

“What?”

“I saw it,” she repeated.

“Saw . . . what?”

Her pale eyes were huge and haunted. “The stone man.”

Milo could feel that familiar cold hand reach into his chest and take hold of his heart. “W-what?”

“I saw him,” she said, nodding. “He came out of the mist and hit the Stinger and killed him. I saw it.”

“Oh.”

“He left footprints,” she said, and pointed to a bunch of round indentations. They were identical to the marks they'd found at the debris field yesterday. “See? It must have been the rock man who stomped all over the crash site. Maybe he was mad because someone broke open that pyramid. I think the Bugs did that, and the rock man wanted to get them back for it.”

When Milo didn't respond, she nodded as if he had.

“I saw the wolf, too,” she said.

Milo ran his trembling fingers through his hair.

“They went off together,” said the little girl. She pointed to the south, down toward the bayou. “That way. The wolf and the stone man. They went down there together.”