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Back The Enemy Save as PDF
Chapters (69)
  1. Table of Contents
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. 7
  9. 8
  10. 9
  11. 10
  12. 11
  13. 12
  14. 13
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  52. 51
  53. 52
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  69. 68

“Take the kids back,” she said to Freak, and something in her voice told him not to question her.

“Come along,” he said to the little ones, and walked off.

Joel was lying in the grass, bleeding from a wound in his head where he had been hit with a rock. His eyes were open and he had stopped breathing.

Maxie picked Godzilla up. He struggled and protested, whining quietly. He wanted to stay with Joel.

“I’m sorry, darling,” Maxie said, and closed Joel’s eyes.

She sniffed. Her throat was tight, but no tears came.

26

Small Sam woke with a start. At first he had no idea where he was. Suspended in a world of total, sightless night, he couldn’t feel his body at all. For one crazy moment he thought he might be dead. He felt a small sense of relief. Nothing to worry about anymore. And then he was filled with the burning unfairness of it all. He was only a little kid, he didn’t deserve to die, what had he ever done wrong? Okay, so there was the time he’d broken his mom’s favorite mug and hidden it in the back of the cupboard without saying anything. And that other time when Ella had been to a party and gotten a fantastic face-painting of a jaguar. It had been beautiful. She’d come in with it and he’d been so jealous. He hadn’t said anything, but when he was alone with her he’d thrown a cup of water in her face and ruined it.

All right. If he thought about it, there were lots of things he’d done wrong. But they were only little things. He’d been sorry enough about them at the time and still felt guilty when he pictured Ella with the paint running down her face mixed with tears.

Surely it didn’t mean that he deserved to die, did it?

Then he felt awful pins and needles in his legs, and it came back to him. He wasn’t dead. He was stuck up the shaft in the underground tunnel. The last thing he remembered doing was tying himself to the iron rungs of the ladder with his belt. He was still jammed there, half dangling, half wedged, half dead.

He held his breath and listened.

Nothing. The grown-ups had gone at last.