fury pointed toward the fencing on the far side. “Go!” Lilith hissed at Jerusha. “It’s your turn.”
Jerusha started to shuffle toward the fence, moving as quickly as she could. It wasn’t fast enough for Lilith. She hissed audibly and grabbed her.
After a moment of coldness, they were there. “Can you do this?” Lilith asked. Jerusha nodded, not certain whether she was relieved or angry. She plunged her hand into her seed pouch, feeling for the kudzu seeds: she found them, and tossed them to the ground, opening them as they fell so that leafy vines rippled under the moonlight.
It was harder than she’d expected. Her exhaustion and weariness, the hunger that gnawed at her constantly, all made wielding her power more difficult. She rooted the vines hard, then wrapped the tendrils around and through the chain link. She leaned back as she guided the vines, pulling with them in sympathy as they tore at the fence. The smaller vines snapped from the strain, and she thickened them as the fence leaned, groaning, the metal protesting.
A pole snapped from the ground, trailing fencing, then another, and the vines pulled a section of the fence entirely down. Gardener nearly fell herself as the fence went down. Cameo started forward. Lilith waved her back. “Let her finish!”
Bugsy’s wasps were hovering over the mines he’d found; Jerusha threw more seeds, this time letting the vines curl out along the ground, thrashing the ground where the wasps indicated. The mines exploded in gouts of black earth and yellow-orange bursts that nearly blinded them.
She staggered. She nearly fell. The edges of her vision had gone black, and she hoped none of them noticed.
“Now!” Lilith said. “Go! Gardener, let’s get you to that house.”
Cameo and a clotted swarm of wasps slid past her. Jerusha shuddered. Lilith came up behind her, dark hair and silver eyes, and folded her arms around her.
Ka-phoom!
“What the hell?” Michelle muttered. The jeep bounced and jumped over the dirt road. Every time Michelle flew up and smacked down hard on the seat, she got a tiny zing of power. Night had fallen and all the shadows had fled. There were muted pop-pop-pop s of gunfire. The jeep slowed and she noticed that the driver was gripping the wheel like no tomorrow. “It’s okay,” she said. “Just get me close and I’ll walk the rest of the way.”
The driver didn’t look very relieved. He stopped the jeep and pointed into the jungle. “Take the path and you’ll find the main road to the Red House,” he said. “But you shouldn’t go there. You will die.”
Michelle jumped out of the jeep. “That’s so sweet of you,” she said. “But if there’s any dying to be done, it won’t be me who does it.” He shrugged and jammed the jeep’s transmission into reverse and spun around. In moments, he’d vanished down the road.
The path would have been difficult to see in daylight, but now it was almost invisible. But Michelle found it and plunged into the jungle.
It was a shock when she burst from the jungle onto a paved road. She’d expected to be struggling through the bush forever. There were more gunshots. And she started running up the road.
When she reached the top of the hill, she saw the Red House compound. It was chaos. The front gate was busted in. Smoke hung in the air from RPGs. There was a maze of holes blasted into the ground. A gunshot pinged into her. It was impossible to tell where it came from.
Perched above the jungle, the huge brick mansion and its ornate edifice looked out of place here. Fingers of vines were shooting up one side of the house, moving crazy fast. Jesus Christ, Michelle thought. What the hell is Gardener doing here?
Then she saw Rusty running around the other side of the building, grabbing weapons and hitting anyone he could get his hands on. The rage in his expression shocked Michelle. He was a sweet kid from Minnesota. He had no business having a look like that on his face.
But at least she had some help. She wasn’t alone. And even in the midst of the smoke, gunshots, and screaming, that cheered her up some.
People’s Palace
Kongoville, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
Sun Hei-lian sat on the edge of the bed in her room in the vast People’s Palace in Kongoville.
The only thing that moved about her was her eyes. They tracked Tom’s every move as he paced back and forth in front of her. His tennis shoes made overlapping red tracks on the hardwood floor and throw rug. “I knew it all along,” he said. He was talking so fast he was tripping over the words. “Okay. Okay. Not all along. Not when we were, like, squatting out in the bush together. But I knew he was going bad for a long time.”
Hei-lian still said nothing. That was righteous. He had more than enough to say. She was just a woman, after all. And hadn’t Brother Stokeley said, back when he was righteous, that the only place for a woman in the movement was prone?
A knock at the door made him jump and yell, “Shit!” Hei-lian jumped, too, going very pale. He wondered why she was so tightly wrapped.
“What the fuck do you want?” he hollered.
The door opened tentatively. A youthful aide wearing a colorful dashiki leaned in. “I beg your problem, Comrade Field Marshal,” he said. “There… there is a problem at the Red House.”
The Red House
Bunia, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
Lilith had teleported them up the steep slope to the house, then vanished again, saying she was going to check on Rusty. Jerusha was so tired. So hungry. So empty of energy. But she had no choice, not if she wanted Wally to be safe.
She took a long, shuddering breath, trying to dredge up the will to remain standing. She could still hear the firing to the west, where he was. Around the corner of the massive structure of the estate house, she could see bright lights flaring where the main entrance must be. “Lots of soldiers there,” Bugsy said. There was only his head and torso on the ground near her. “They’re not liking the wasps much, though.” He grinned.
“It’s all yours, Gardener,” Cameo said. She was still panting a bit from the climb. “Get us in there.”
Jerusha could only see what was directly in front of her; all the rest was gone. Her hand slid again into the seed pouch, her fingers finding the two large baobab seeds she had left. She took one in her hands. “Back up,” she told Cameo. Bugsy had already dissolved into a stream of wasps curling around the side of the house. “This is going to be messy.”
She glanced up at the red brick walls-it was a shame, to tear down a grand, rambling Victorian edifice like this, and for a moment she felt regret at what she had to do.
So tired. She closed her eyes. But you have to do it. For Rusty. Jerusha took another slow breath. Tossed the seed to the ground at the base of the house. She could feel the life inside, feel it wanting release. She gave it permission.
The baobab tore roots into the ground and erupted upward, the trunk growing more massive by the second. She could feel the roots, plunging down and under the house, tearing into concrete, splintering supports.
The Red House moaned under the assault, and Jerusha moaned with it, the roots of the baobab seeming to tear at her own soul. Jerusha pushed the tree, forcing decades of growth in the space of a few seconds. A fissure opened in the foundation, running in a wild zigzag through the mortar of the bricks and climbing. Jerusha changed the direction of the baobab’s growth: a crack appeared around the mass of the baobab’s trunk. The house visibly lifted, and a mass of bricks fell from the second story to the ground, walls opening as the branches of the baobab tore at the wreckage. She could see inside: offices, desks, workers running wilding away from the destruction; people in lab coats, one in full biological hazard gear.
Jerusha stepped forward, still directing the tree’s growth, making the hole in the side of the mansion large and easier to traverse. She was standing alongside the tree, her eyes slitted, her hand on the trunk so she could feel its life. Leaning against it because if she didn’t, she would fall.
So tired.
Wally set off a couple of mines as he barreled through the perimeter; they blew shrapnel up into his feet,
