Armageddon's Children - Terry Brooks [47]
Yet how could he? How could he abandon these people and still call himself a Knight of the Word?
He tried focusing on the reward Two Bears had promised him. If he did as he’d been asked, the demon responsible for the murder of his family would be delivered up to him—that old man in his gray slouch hat and long cloak, that monster with his knowing smile and his eyes as cold as death. It was a bold promise, but he believed the Word would not have made it if it could not be kept. He wanted that demon more than he wanted anything. He had searched for it for years, thinking that sooner or later in the course of his struggle he would find it. It seemed impossible to him. Even Michael, who had a knack for predicting how things would work out, had believed that eventually they would find that old man again; that they could not avoid doing so.
But he had never seen the demon again, not once, not even the barest glimpse.
Still, he knew it was out there. He knew it the way he knew that the promise would be honored. He knew it the way he knew that the finding of that demon was the end purpose of his life.
He sat staring into the distance, wrestling with his conscience, then started up the engine on the AV once more, turned it around, and drove away from the camp and its smells and its sounds. He drove until he could no longer see its fiery brightness, until the horizon behind him was just a hazy glow. By then he was back near the main highway, alone on the flats in the darkness. He parked in the shelter of a copse of withered trees, set the perimeter alarm system on the AV, ate because he knew he should, and settled down to sleep.
* * *
HE STANDS WITH the others in the shadows that fill the gullies that crisscross the terrain at the rear of the camp. It is nearing midnight, and the world is a black hole beneath a heavily overcast sky. A light rain is falling, something of a minor miracle in this farmland become desert. No wind blows to stir the silt; no breeze cools the stifling heat. Save for the moans and cries of the imprisoned, no sounds disturb the deep night silence.
He looks down at his weapon, a blunt, short-barreled flechette called a Scattershot. Michael has given it to him to carry, trusting him to use it wisely and safely. He is familiar with weapons, having been trained to use them since Michael took him from the compound on the night his parents and siblings died.
The Scattershot fires a single charge that sweeps clean an area of up to twenty feet; it is a weapon meant to create a broad killing ground. He has been told that it will help against the things that will come at him, but that his best protection lies in keeping close to his companions.
“Do not stray, boy,” Michael has warned. “This is a dangerous business. If I did not think you needed to learn from it, I would not have brought you at all. Don’t make me regret my decision.”
He does not wish to disappoint Michael, whom he loves and respects and to whom he owes his life. He has dedicated himself to making certain that Michael never regrets having rescued him that first night. He grips his weapon tightly, waiting for the signal to advance. They have come to attack and destroy this camp, to free the humans imprisoned within, to disrupt the work and breeding programs set in place by the once-men who wield the power of life and death over those brought here from the compounds.
It is his first time on such an expedition. He is twelve years old.
“Stand ready,” Michael whispers to those he leads, and the word is passed up and down the line.
When they attack, they come out of the gullies and shadows like wolves, howling and crouched low against the open ground, racing to gain the fences before the guards have a chance to stop them. Logan stays close beside Michael, shadowing him as he charges through the smoky haze of the fires, weapon leveled, safety off. He howls with the others, then cringes as automatic weapons fire sweeps through the darkness in a deadly rain. Most of the bullets miss, but a few find their targets, and men go down in