The helicopter hovered fifty meters above the ground, firing short bursts from its mounted guns. The ground exploded in shattered rock. Nasri's men ran for cover behind the wreck of the hover-carrier, but they were easy prey for the guns that picked them off like targets on a screen. Their small arms fire fell harmlessly back from the sky, and they were quickly silenced.
The two surviving carriers sped off into the desert with the copter in pursuit. The carriers were fast, but the helicopter was faster, and it caught the first one about three kilometers downriver. With two rockets it left the carrier a smoldering hulk in the sand. Even from a distance, Will and I could see orange flames lick the ground while black smoke curled into the sky. The other carrier was luckier. It raced in the opposite direction and soon disappeared beyond the range of the copter. The pilot circled overhead with no chance of pursuit. Nose bowed low and blades rotating slowly, the copter made its way back to the site.
The canyon floor was deserted. The massive drilling machines worked unattended like robots on an alien planet, mining for water below the dead lake's surface. The walls of the canyon reverberated with the sound of metal grinding rock. Gray dust floated in the air, coating everything with a ghostly pallor. Even the guards had disappeared, retreating underground like snakes.
The copter landed on the abandoned floor. I peered out from behind the small pile of rocks that had protected us as the door popped open and the pilot emerged. He was followed by another man about fifteen centimeters taller and ten kilos heavier. The pilot was tattooed up his bare arms and open vest, and even his helmet had decals and insignias. The other man, however, was unadorned, except for a single small tattoo of a bird on his neck.
"Ulysses!" I cried. I ran from the hiding place before Will could stop me.
Ulysses turned toward the sound of my voice. When he saw me, he dropped to one knee and raised his arms. I ran right into him, throwing my hands around his thick neck. His chest was warm and full, and I buried my head in the rough fabric of his shirt.
"I thought you were dead," I whispered.
"I thought you were dead!" he roared.
I hugged him harder and was surprised at how good it felt. It had been a long time since I had hugged anyone like that, and I held on tightly. Finally I stepped back and looked at him. There was a new wound on his forehead, and when I touched it gently, he flinched.
"That's the worst of it," he said. The story tumbled out of his mouth in a rush: After the dam had burst, he had been knocked unconscious and awoke in the truck, one leg wedged under the seat and his arms tangled in wire. Somehow he hadn't drowned, and the truck had been pushed by the waters to drier ground. He had managed to extricate his arms and leg, then to crawl through the open door and collapse. The helicopter had found him lying on the ground about half a kilometer from the truck, nearly dead of dehydration even though the waters from the dam still flowed nearby.
Most of the pirates' equipment had been destroyed, and at least half his men were dead or missing. The dogs were gone, and he assumed they were dead too. Only two trucks still functioned, and the pirates had salvaged parts for a third. Ulysses left the survivors to repair what they could while he and the pilot took off to search for Will and me. They ambushed some of Nasri's men on the road, and from them they learned we were in the canyon.
"We couldn't leave you in the hands of PELA," he concluded.
I never felt more grateful to have been captured by pirates. But the loss of my new friends weighed heavily again: Ali, Pooch, and Cheetah. Death was everywhere, but never so sudden or so violent. The images of swollen bodies taken by the river haunted me, faces purpled and blackened tongues extended. I would never forget the sight of blood spurting from Dr. Tinker's head, dark red and viscous. I shut my eyes, but the dead were still there: hands twisted, legs akimbo, mouths frozen in horrible screams. But I didn't see Kai, and that gave me the slimmest hope.
Will had stood quietly nearby, listening to Ulysses's story, and now he ventured closer. "What about the driller?" he asked. "The driller and his son?"
"Kai?" asked Ulysses.
I tried to hide my surprise but could not. Ulysses laughed and said, "I'm not a dunce. You gave it away the first day we met you. Then we heard you talking in the truck. Of course we know Rikkai. I told you we were following him."
"You said you were following a boy and his father."
"The father goes where the boy tells him."
Was Kai alive? I felt my heart quicken.
"He's a diviner," explained Ulysses. "Finds water with his nose. And he's found something big."
"His nose?" repeated Will.
"That's the theory, but there are lots of them. Doesn't matter how he does it. The fact is, he can find water, and his father drills for it."
He can find water. I remembered the way Kai first spilled water on the road, as if he knew there was plenty more where it came from. The gifts he brought to our home. How he found the underground spring at the abandoned mill. He can find water.
"Is Kai here then?" asked Will.
Ulysses shook his head. "No. This is an evil place. It's all dried up. In a couple months, the final aquifer will fail. The men will try to hide it by adding chemicals to the water that remains, but after a while even that will become too expensive, and they'll abandon it."
"What will happen to the kids?" I asked.
Ulysses's mouth drew tight. "They'll die. Or the men will shoot them and bury them in the caves. I've seen it happen."
"We have to help them!"
Ulysses did not respond, but children began emerging from the caves and drill holes, drawn by the helicopter, the lack of gunfire, and a constant driving thirst.
"There are too many," said the pilot, speaking for the first time.
"We can try."
Now there were more children, hundreds of them, perhaps even thousands, standing on the edges of the entrances to the caves, staring back. I could feel their eyes, curious and burning, beseeching me. We had to save them.
Ulysses put his hand on my forearm. "The most we can do is free them from here, give them some water, and hope they make it on their own."
"They'll die. You said so."
"We don't have a choice."
I was about to argue, but Ulysses raised his gun. I looked to where he was aiming, and saw the tall man with his two guards approaching. Two other guards were about twenty meters behind them. Ulysses gently pushed me backward toward Will and the pilot.
"Put down the weapon," instructed the man.
Ulysses adjusted his grip and sighted through the laser.
"You're outnumbered," the man continued. "Drop your weapon."
"Outnumbered on the ground. There's a bird in the air will take out all of you before you can get off a single shot."
The tall man considered this. "And where is this bird?"
"She's silent, but you'll hear her if you don't lay down your guns."
The man smiled, but it was clear he was nervous as he looked from Ulysses to the sky and back to Ulysses again. Perhaps Ulysses was bluffing, but pirates were known to surprise their foes, and there was already one helicopter responsible for a dozen dead bodies.
"Better come with us, then," said the man, and he took one step toward Ulysses.
Before I could take my next breath, the man was on the ground clutching his leg. Ulysses dropped and rolled, then came up firing at the two guards by his side. One went down immediately, while the other spun backward, his hands trying to hold in the blood spilling through the belly of his tunic. The other two guards rushed forward, and one managed to get off a shot, but a round from Ulysses plugged him in the chest and dropped him where he stood. The other never got off a shot.
This all happened quicker than the eye could follow. When it was over, my feet had barely moved. A stray bullet had split a rock not more than one meter away, and a dusting of chips and the smell of cordite still hung in the air.
The pilot quickly tended to the two wounded men, while Ulysses confirmed the other four were dead. The man Ulysses had shot in the gut was moaning softly, and the pilot signaled he wasn't going to make it. Ulysses took the man's pulse, then held his head while he whimpered and gurgled blood. When the man died, Ulysses gently closed his eyelids with his fingers. Then he turned to Will and me.
"Everyone all right?"
I nodded, still trying to sort through what I had just seen.
"Where did you learn to shoot like that?" asked Will.
"I've learned a lot of things I wish I hadn't."
Will just kept staring at Ulysses. I know he was thinking about the shootouts at the gaming center, except this one was brutal and real, and the dead did not get up and play again. Ulysses wiped his bloodstained hands on his pants, and then pushed his sweat-matted hair off his forehead with the back of one palm. His hand, I noticed, was shaking.
"There was no bird, was there?" I asked.
"Oh, yes, there was," said Ulysses, touching the tattoo on his neck. "Her name's Miranda."
I understood everything then. I could see every line in the pirate's craggy face. His skin was sunburned and dry. His ears were cracked and bloodied. But his brown eyes were like dark pools in which fantastic creatures swam.
"What happened to her? To Miranda?"
Ulysses shrugged. "What happens to most children. She got sick, and never got better."
"And your wife?"
"The same."
"But you said you were married," said Will, glancing down at Ulysses's ring, smooth and lustrous in the half-light.
"I'll always be married. But it'll be the next world when I see her again."
Our father believed in Heaven, but I thought it was a place that shakers pretended existed-without it there would be too many other questions. Ulysses, however, seemed confident he would see his wife and daughter again. And maybe, I thought, the belief was all that mattered.
The children had drawn closer now. There were several of them who seemed older and more confident than the others, and they approached Ulysses.
"Please, mister," said one. "Do you have any food?" He was nearly as tall as Ulysses but less than half his weight. Clumps of hair grew from his head in no discernible pattern, and his eyes were bloodshot and rheumy. Ulysses asked his name, and the boy said he was called Thomas and the girl next to him was Danielle. I was shocked to hear Danielle was a girl; she looked almost identical to Thomas: same hair, same height, same sickly bodies. They were, in fact, brother and sister, Thomas said.
"Where are your parents?" I asked.
Thomas shrugged. "Dead, we think." He explained their town had been raided by Mounties, because the residents were siphoning water from a pipeline. The adults were shot; the town burned; and the children taken prisoner to the canyon.
"Most of us are dead now," he concluded.
I looked at Ulysses, and I knew he knew what I was thinking.
"There's nothing we can do," he said again.
"Yes there is," I insisted. "Give them the canyon."
"Give it to them?"
I opened my arms and stretched them tip to tip, north to south. "The drilling site. The machinery. The trucks. The weapons. Everything."
"They wouldn't survive for a minute."
"You said they won't survive anyway."
Ulysses rubbed his chin and frowned. "I suppose a mounted gun might help." He glanced at the helicopter.
"There's a weapons room in the main building," Thomas said.
"And a cold storage with food," said Danielle, the first words she had spoken.
"There's water too," I added.
Ulysses sighed, but he knew he had been outmaneuvered. He signaled the pilot to bring him the prisoner. When the tall man was before him, Ulysses grasped him by the edges of his collar. "The keys," he said.
"No keys," the man managed. "Tumblers."
"The combination, then."
The man hesitated, and Ulysses cocked his weapon and pointed it at the man's head. "You smell bad," he said. "I doubt you'll be missed."
The man stuttered, then quickly gave up the code. Ulysses sat him back on the ground and called for Thomas.
"You know how to fire this?" he asked.
Thomas took Ulysses's gun. It looked absurdly large in his thin hands, but he released the safety like a professional. "My father taught me," he explained.
"Good." Ulysses turned to the man kneeling before him. "This boy's in charge now. You'll do as he says. If you don't-as you can see, his father taught him how to shoot you."
Dozens of other children had drawn closer, curious and hungry-vacant eyes calculating the risks, weighing whatever Ulysses had to offer. He coaxed them nearer and singled out several of the biggest, healthiest boys to accompany him to the helicopter. There they withdrew the mounted gun from its bay, and carried it to the front of the main building. Then they went back and forth several times with boxes of ammunition and crates of grenades. Will and I helped until the building was well-fortified and well-armed.
The throng of children pushed in on us, and I worried they might riot. They didn't smell as bad as the foul man, but they didn't smell good either. My grip on Will was loosening, and I felt a mounting panic as the children swelled around me. They pushed and shoved and seemed to come from everywhere.
Then Ulysses's voice split the crowd. "Dinner!" he announced.
A great roar erupted as Ulysses pushed Thomas toward the caves. The boy ran, not like something sickly, but something spectacular, his hair flaming and triumphant, his sister, Danielle, behind him, followed by scores of children of all sizes, the smallest carried by the tallest, the crippled guided by the able-bodied. They spilled into the caves like an ancient river, a stream of humanity drawn by the promise of food, nourishment, life itself.
In a moment Will and I were alone with Ulysses and the pilot. Dust from hundreds of footsteps still hovered in the air. A weak sunlight pushed through. The atmosphere was rank, but a breeze had begun to blow. We had given the children what we could to protect and feed them. The rest was up to them.
Ulysses stepped toward the helicopter. "Ready?" he asked.
"For what?" asked Will.
"To find Kai, of course."