“You have to go into the school,” I say to Sarah. “You have to go now and you have to hide. Mark!” I yell. I look up and don’t see him. I snap around. I catch sight of him sprinting towards Henri, who is still loading his gun. At first I don’t understand why, and then I see what is happening: a Mogadorian scout has snuck up on Henri without his knowing it.
“Henri,” I scream to get his attention. I lift my hand to stop the scout with its knife raised high in the air, but Mark tackles the thing first. A wrestling match ensues. Henri snaps the shotgun closed, and Mark kicks the scout’s knife away. Henri fires and the scout explodes. Henri says something to Mark. I yell for Mark again and he sprints over, breathing heavily.
“You have to take Sarah into the school.”
“I can help here,” he says.
“It’s not your fight. You have to hide! Get in the school and hide with Sarah!”
“Okay,” he says.
“You have to stay hidden, no matter what!” I yell over the storm. “They won’t come for you. It’s me they want. Promise me, Mark! Promise me you’ll stay hidden with Sarah!”
Mark nods rapidly. “I promise!”
Sarah is crying and there’s no time to comfort her. Another clap of thunder, another shotgun blast. She kisses me one time on the lips, her hands holding tightly to my face and I know she would stay like this forever. Mark pulls her off, begins leading her away.
“I love you,” she says, and in her eyes she is staring at me in the same way that I had stared at her earlier, before I left home ec, as though she may be seeing me for the final time, wanting to remember it so that this last image might last a lifetime.
“I love you too,” I mouth back just as the two of them reach the steps of the tunnel, and as soon as the words leave my lips, Henri cries out in pain. I turn. One of the scouts has thrust a knife into his gut. Terror sweeps through me. The scout pulls the knife from Henri’s side, the blade glistening with his blood. It thrusts down to stab Henri a second time. My hand reaches out for it and I rip the knife away at the last second so that it is only a fist that hits Henri. He grunts, gathers himself, and presses the barrel of the shotgun to the chin of the scout and fires. The scout drops, headless.
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 beginning to howl. She seems to be having trouble controlling it. A winter storm, thunder in January. As quickly as everything started, it all seems to stop—the thunder, the lightning, the rain. The wind dies away and a low groan begins to grow from off in the distance. Six lowers her arms, all of us straining to listen. Even the Mogadorians turn. The groan grows, unmistakably coming our way, some sort of deep mechanical groan. The scouts step from the shadows and begin to laugh. Despite our killing at least ten of them, there are many more than before. From far off a cloud of smoke rises over the tops of the trees as if a steam engine is coming around the bend. The scouts nod to one another, smiling their wicked smiles, and re-form their circle around us in what is an apparent attempt to get us back into the school. And it’s obvious that that is our only choice. Six walks over.
“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.
“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 tunnel, up onto the stage, across the gymnasium. We don’t see a single scout, nor do we see Mark and Sarah, and I’m relieved by that. I hope they are well hidden, and I hope Mark keeps his promise and that they stay that way. When we make it back to the home-ec room I slide the fridge out of the way and grab the Chest. 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, but
