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Pepper splashed into the water, his coattails floating on the surface. "Azteca
attacked Brungstun.
They're moving along the coast now towards Capitol City, is my best guess."
Troy had a shotgun behind his back. He pulled it out and aimed it at Pepper.
"I know Jerome, here. I
don't know you."
Pepper held his hands in the air. "Easy. I'm not staying. I'm dropping the kid
off." Jerome bristled at being called a kid. Pepper walked backward. "Jerome,
jump off."
Jerome leapt onto the sand, and Troy put an arm around his shoulder. "You
okay?"
Jerome nodded.
"I'm going to leave," Pepper explained. "I have things to do. But I would
appreciate some food.
Preferably salted."
One of the men behind Troy asked, "You going back to fight Azteca?"
Pepper nodded. Then he frowned. "You look familiar," he told Troy.
Troy ignored him. "Give he all the saltfish and jerky he need. And some
johnnycake." He put down his gun. "That man hard," he told Jerome. "A killer.
Better we help he leave." He walked back up to his store.
Jerome stood shakily on the beach, his feet sinking into the sand as the
occasional wave washed up and wet them.
Troy and one of his cousins helped pack several canvas bags for Pepper,
placing them in
Lucita's forward stow-hatch. Pepper told the Frenchi that they needed to have
somewhere to run to, or some defense against the Azteca, as they would
eventually come.
"There is reef we can hide behind, sand and coconut trees, we boat them to run
in."
"You can last a month or two like that, maybe, if you were well prepared,"
Pepper said. "What then?"
They smiled. "That go be long enough to see what happen. Any longer, and all
Nanagada done for anyway."
"True." Pepper nodded.
Jerome watched them all nod as despair rolled over him. What he wanted to tell
Troy and everyone else was that it wasn't worth it. The Azteca would come for
them all anyway, and they could do nothing to stop that. They could only make
a stand and fight, he thought. Bash them back something wicked. But running
was futile.
He looked out over water and clenched his fists. He felt utterly unprepared in
any sense for the new shape of the world that had dropped on him.
Pepper waited until the sun started slipping beneath the far-off reefs and
breaking waves before he seemed ready to leave. He walked down the beach to
where Jerome sat alone by a coconut tree.
"You leaving?" Jerome said.
"Yes."
"I want to go with you."
"And do what? What skills do you have that I need? I know what I need to know,
I have the boat. It is up to me to track down your father, if he's still
alive."
Jerome banged his head against the tree's rough bark. "What I can do?" he
cried. "What?"
"You can tell me this." Pepper loomed over Jerome, dreads dangling down like
snakes. "Did John ever talk to you about the
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Ma Wi Jung?"
Jerome shook his head. "I dunno."
Pepper grabbed him by his shirt and picked him up. He pushed Jerome against
the coconut tree, hard enough that Jerome's spine hurt when it scraped against
the bumps in the trunk.
"Look right here at me," Pepper hissed, "and tell me if your father ever told
you anything about the
Ma
Wi Jung
."
Jerome squirmed, scared at the sudden ferocity. He had no doubt that Pepper
could snap his back against the tree and leave him for dead.
"I swear," Jerome wailed, a tear rolling down his cheek.
"No coordinates? No secret rhymes that give its location that you've sworn
never to tell anyone?"
"No! Never." Jerome sobbed, scared for his life again, scared of Pepper. In a
night his world had been flipped. What was once safe had become dangerous. And
people he had thought safe were dangerous.
Pepper dropped Jerome to the sand. "I'm sorry. If I see your father, I will
tell him you are alive. Tell
Troy I'll sink any boats in Nanagada; make it harder for the Azteca to come
out here."
That was it.
Pepper had that calm face Jerome remembered. When he'd shot the Azteca. Jerome
watched Pepper walk down the beach to the
Lucita
, coat swishing. He pushed off, pulled the sail up, and never looked back.
Jerome sat by the coconut tree, watching the sail grow smaller back toward the
Nanagadan coastline, where a long, black pillar of smoke, lit orange at the
base, snaked up over Brungstun. Somewhere at the foot of that fire Schmitti,
Swagga, and Daseki were alone with Azteca. Along with his mom, they would
die, or be savaged by the Azteca, or . . . he didn't know what.
Jerome could not take his eyes away. He didn't move until Troy came over with
a wool blanket, picked him up, and carried him back to one of the shacks by
the beach.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
John stood up and rested his wrists on the mango tree to hold himself up. His
leg muscles cramped. The
Azteca holding the rope to his neck tugged a warning. John glared at him. The
Azteca hollered and walked up to him, the rope drooping to the ground between
them.
"What?" John spat.
He got a solid punch straight to the face. Spitting blood, his upper lip
throbbing, John stared right back at his captor. The Azteca smiled and pointed
his head at a point just past the tree. Seven Azteca warriors stood waiting. A
handful more stood around the clearing's edges watching the scene. Campfire
smoke trailed over the trees nearby. Another couple hundred Azteca nearby?
"Ompa."
John looked in the direction of the black rock. The two bodies from earlier in
the morning lay next to it.
"We dead," Alex said, next to him. "We dead."
The stone was soaked black with dried blood.
"Will they kill everyone?"
John coughed as he was pulled forward.
"Not everyone." They shuffled around the fallen tree's branches and leaves to
approach the sacrificial stone. "Healthy people first. They save women and
children for later. Some end up slave."
The Azteca standing by the stone took off his mask. Extra feathers swung from
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