They were getting closer to the people who had dropped down from the wall. There were five of them now, running across a lumpy, tilled lawn toward the school. Bearded men with beer bellies that shook when they ran. One, with a dark mesh baseball cap, pointed in Will’s direction and threw something at the brothers.
Will heard a plunk in the dirt nearby.
“Move!” David yelled. David bounded away, yanking Will by the shirt. A cracking boom blasted them off their feet. He landed facedown in a pile of cold earth. Dirt and stems and burned leaves rained down on him. David pulled him up.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” Will said, even though he wasn’t.
David swallowed. “They’ve got grenades.”
Will thought, He must be joking.
The bearded men pulled grenades out of the hefty duffel bags they carried and hurled them at the school. The parents handling the fire heard the blasts that followed, and they went into a panic, grabbing weapons and scurrying around. The night lit up with explosions. Dirt sprayed into the air. Cows burst into pieces.
“This way!” David shouted.
Will ran after David to the ladder against the farm wall. His brother was already halfway up it. It jolted and clanged with every rung David climbed. Will followed. The thunderclap of an explosion behind Will made him jerk and freeze up.
“Don’t stop,” David said from above. “You’re okay.”
Will looked up to see his brother standing on the ledge of the wall, reaching down for him. The moon encircled David’s head like it was an emblem. Will continued up. At the top David grabbed him by the arm and helped him the rest of the way. As Will rose up, his view expanded past the wall.
Will stopped breathing. Pale Ridge spread out in front of him. The world he remembered, the town where he’d lived for his entire life, was right there beneath the shimmering white-caps of the Rockies. Home. He’d been born in Sisters of Mercy Hospital right in the middle of town and had lived his whole life at 335 Butterfield Lane, playing in Mint Creek, walking to Frontier Elementary. His whole life whooshed through his brain, and it felt real, instead of a pale, distant memory.
David grabbed his arm. “Will, what are you doing?”
“Sorry.” Will shook it off and faced his brother.
David stood next to a folding lawn chair with a pickax leaning against it. He snatched up the pickax and handed it to Will. Grenades blasted behind them.
“There’s more people coming. I need you to keep them off the wall. Can you do that?”
“I … guess.”
“Not ‘you guess.’ Yes.”
“Yes. I got it. But who are these guys?”
“Hunters,” David said. “Watch the wall.” He turned away but stopped. “And, Will—” He locked onto Will with his one serious eye. “Don’t die, okay? I just got you back.”
Never in his life had David spoken to him with this much trust. The David he remembered never would have let him from his sight. He would have told him to run and hide while he took care of things. Not now.
“I’ll be okay. What are you gonna do?”
“I’m gonna help put out that fire,” David said, and he took off down the length of the wall, toward the blazing building.
Another explosion rocked the night. Then a cluster of them like a fireworks finale. Will looked down at the farm. The tractor-trailer barrier ran like the Great Wall of China around a patchwork of crops, outbuildings, and smaller fenced-in areas, hugging them close to the school, which for the first time didn’t seem titanic to Will.
A flash of light burst out from a third-floor ledge after a grenade didn’t reach the roof. The hunters had reached the school. On the next throw, they might get it right, and the parents defending the school were in high gear to stop it.
Three parents on the school’s roof dared to rise over the ledge with rifles and fired down at the hunters. They missed. The hunters were working their way toward the industrial elevator that provided roof access. A parent in work overalls and an orange bandanna headband sent a hatchet flying at the hunters. It sunk into the hip of the hunter in the dark baseball cap and the man shrieked. Another hunter raised up a grenade to throw at the parents, but an arrow cut through the dark and planted itself in his thigh. He fell to the ground with his gym bag. The live grenade tumbled into the dark dirt nearby. Everyone scattered.
A blast of white fire. The bags of grenades detonated. The resulting blast lit up the whole school and forced Will to close his eyes to keep from being blinded. His ears rang. Nothing remained of the two hunters. Will looked to the roofline where two of the parents cheered while the third, a tubby one with a compound bow, stared at the carnage he’d sparked.
A clang sounded off behind Will, on the outer farm wall. Then, the aluminum rattle of a ladder. Two more hunters were climbing up a ladder twenty feet from Will, onto the wall. They had guns strapped to their backs.
Will tightened up on his pickax and ran at them. The pounding of his feet on the hollow metal trailers was like church bells, alerting the hunters to climb faster. As the highest hunter reached the top of the ladder, Will swung his pickax at him.
“Yagh!” The hunter slid down a few rungs.
“Stay off!” Will said.
The hunter reached to his back with one hand, where his rifle was. Will dropped the pickax and grabbed the ladder with both hands. Will strained, drawing on all the strength in his thighs and arms. The ladder lifted away from the wall. The second hunter cut his losses and scrambled down to the ground. The first hunter leveled his rifle at Will.
David wouldn’t be coming to save him. This was on him. If he died, there was a chance the school would be sacked and the kids inside murdered. In a flash he understood why the parents had been doing things the way they’d been doing them.
Will shoved the ladder away from the wall, and the hunter’s gun fired up into the air.
The ladder dropped, screeching the whole way down. Will turned toward the school, heaving breath. He saw that the parents had finally gained the advantage. All of the hunters were fleeing toward the gate out of the farm. All but one.
“You’re gonna die, rat lover,” a voice said from below Will.
“I’ll take you with me, prick,” another voice said.
Will crept to the farm-side ladder with his pickax. A stocky hunter with a bowie knife shuffled toward a silver-haired parent with an athletic build. The parent was on the ground, clutching his ankle. His only weapon was a motorcycle helmet. Black.