I did as she asked.
“Protect yourselves,” she said. Then she put her face between two of the bars. “Kiss me.”
Valeria’s words exactly. This time they came from Slim and the sound of them hurt my heart.
I dropped to my knees and kissed her on the mouth, forgetting about her puffy, split lips. She winced. I started to pull away, but her hand caught the back of my head. We continued to kiss. I felt the warmth of her lips, the heat of her breath. I tasted her blood.
The brakes of the bus groaned.
Though I didn’t look, the sound told me that the bus was stopping somewhere near the front of the cage.
Slim pulled back. “I love you, Dwight. Don’t let yourself get hurt, or I’ll have to kill you.”
“Oh God, Slim.” I had a catch in my throat.
“See you.”
“What’re you gonna do?”
She tugged open the blade of the knife. “Tell you after I’ve done it.”
I heard the familiar hiss of a bus door opening.
“Run!” Lee yelled.
In a low crouch, Slim rushed for the bleachers.
A big man sprinted in from the side at an angle to intercept her. He was my guard, the guy I’d elbowed in the nose.
As he chased Slim, I heard the bus engine roar. I glanced toward the sound and glimpsed the bus racing backward as if to put a safe distance between itself and the pursuit.
Just in front of the bleachers, Slim flopped to her belly and squirmed forward.
“Leave her alone!” I yelled.
The man didn’t even so much as glance at me.
He was about to leave his feet for a dive at Slim when I let an arrow fly. I was no expert archer like Slim, just a normal American kid of my times... a kid who’d done plenty fooling around with all things lethal: knives, firearms, blowguns, home-made spears, explosives, swords, bows and arrows.
My arrow went in just under the man’s armpit and sank into his ribcage. He hit the mud skidding.
Slim scurried under the bleachers and vanished.
Bleachers I’d thought were empty.
From somewhere near the top, however, came applause. It sounded like one or two people clapping their hands.
Chapter Sixty
My skin went all crawly with goosebumps. I couldn’t see who was up there, but I knew anyway.
As I peered toward the top of the bleachers, the beam of a flashlight reached up through the darkness, swept this way and that, and found two men at the very top of the stands—found them for an instant, then lost them as they lowered themselves behind the structure.
“Look out, Slim!” I yelled, getting to my feet “The Cadillac twins! They’re coming after you!”
She didn’t answer.
The beam of the flashlight lowered and whipped back and forth through the lower rows of the bleachers. Shadows jerked and leaped. I looked for Slim, didn’t see her, then turned my head to find out who was holding the flashlight.
Its beam came from a cluster of three or four people standing just outside the door of the bus. The bus had stopped about twenty feet back from the cage. Not very far, but the people were in darkness and I had headlights shining in my eyes so I couldn’t tell who they were. Stryker was probably one of them, though. And Vivian.
I turned in their direction, readied an arrow and drew the bowstring back to my chin.
“Shut off the flashlight or I’ll shoot!” I yelled.
The light went dead.
“Thanks,” I said. A dumb thing to say, but it came out before I had a chance to think. “Now come over here and let us out.”
“Why would I do that?”
Before I had a chance to think about it—much. anyway— I released the arrow. It vanished into the darkness. Then came a quiet thump.
“Ah!” a woman cried out. A dark figure broke away from the group, hunching over and twisting away, then dropping to its knees. “You fucking bastard!” yelled the same voice. It didn’t sound like Vivian, but I’d noticed earlier that Stryker had several women in his crew.
I reached down to the quiver clamped between my knees and pulled out another arrow. Before I could shoot it, though, my targets had disappeared inside the bus. They’d left the wounded one on the ground, writhing and whimpering.
“That’s two down,” Lee said. “Three, counting Valeria. Not bad.”
“Except they’ve got us trapped and surrounded.”
She shrugged one shoulder. “Big deal.”
I laughed and so did she. As she came toward me, I slipped the arrow back into the quiver.