Fif15teen Read online

  Chapter 6

  Law 54

  No Peace between Dogs and Angels

  Quinn climbed irritably out of Akeem’s lap; he had to fight hard to keep his arms from pulling her back. She remembered the aspirin in her pocket, tossed four into her mouth, and chewed them angrily before chasing them with the last of the water in her bottle.

  “Help me up,” she said, and he did. She stepped gingerly on her injured leg and groaned. Then she limped heavily around in a circle. “Okay, I’m good to go. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Want a piggyback?” Akeem knew instinctively that she would refuse his offer. She had shown him enough weakness for one day, and even though Akeem would never mention her tears, he knew she would never forget he had seen them.

  “Come on, dreadman, Aly’s home alone with my parents, remember?” Ignoring his offer, she walked into the corn.

  “Wait! Booby traps,” he reminded her, causing her to come instantly to a halt.

  “So how do we get out of here?” she asked, exasperated.

  “Let’s get a look at what’s out there first. Come here, get on my shoulders.” He kneeled down.

  “I said I can walk!” she huffed with her hands on her hips.

  “Just get over here; I need you to look around,” he demanded.

  She harrumphed and hobbled onto his shoulders. Her head shot above the corn when Akeem stood up. They were in the center of an enormous cornfield that stretched for miles in every direction. Far in the distance, she spotted trees that rose onto a mountain. The sky was clear, blue and cloudless, untouched by the slightest wisp of wind. It was hotter above the corn than below, but nothing like the scorching heat of the city. The city—where was the city? “Turn a little,” she said, searching for any signs of civilization. A solitary tree sprung out of the corn a few yards away. It looked ancient, scorched, and out of place. To the left of the tree, in the far distance, was a column of smoke that rose into the sky like a beacon. Behind her something enormous jutted out of the cornfield. She couldn’t make out what it was in the glare of the sun. Behind the tree she noticed a break in the corn, possibly a road or a path, and it seemed to head in the direction of the column of smoke. Where there was smoke, there was bound to be people. “We need to go that way,” she said as he lowered her gently to the ground.

  “Cool. Come on,” he said, pulling her down to her hands and knees.

  “Dude, I can walk!”

  “From down here we can avoid the spikes and see any traps in our way, but go ahead and walk. Just don’t ask me to pull anything else out of you.” She grudgingly got down on her hands and knees, which was a relief to her aching calf. They set off with the hope of finding a road and a way back to the city. They crawled slowly, picking their way through the densely grown corn. After a few yards they came to a clearing inhabited by fine black sand and a single tree. The tree was wide with gnarly roots that wove in and out of the ground, twisting and winding through the cornfield. Its trunk reached high into the sky and ended in blackened and weathered limbs. A long strip of bark had been peeled from the tree, and words were carved into the graying wood beneath.

  “Laws of Fifteen,” Akeem read.

  Quinn continued. “Law Number One: Beware the Spellweaver.” They looked at each other uneasily.

  “Law Number Two: Fifteen Forever,’” Akeem said.

  Quinn chuckled. “Law Number Three: Bark Like a Dog.”

  Akeem grimaced. “That’s not even a law.”

  “Look at law number fifty-one. It’s written in a different language,” Quinn scoffed.

  “Law Number Thirteen says Thou Shall Kill. Isn’t it supposed to be Thou Shall Not Kill?”

  They followed the writing up the tall tree, reading the laws one by one. There were dozens of them, each appeared as though carved by a different hand. Some of the laws they understood, but others made no sense at all. They had no words for what they were seeing.

  “This is freaking me out. Come on, let’s get out of here. There’s a road around here somewhere,” Quinn stated. An array of booby traps infested the cornfield, forcing them to pick their way through carefully, detouring around pit traps and spring traps; once they crawled a wide circle around an abandoned shoe, refusing to take any chances. The pace was blisteringly slow, but eventually they spotted a glimpse of a roadway cutting through the corn. They approached it as carefully as they had the suspicious-looking shoe.

  “It’s about time!” Akeem sighed as he got carefully to his feet. “You stay here; I’ll go check it out.”

  “Go on, tough guy. I’ll just wait here and guard the corn,” she said sarcastically. He stuck his tongue out at her then poked his head slowly through the stalks. Before him was an ancient lineless highway that was weathered and worn. Perhaps long ago it was a road frequently traveled but now long forgotten and left to rot and crumble. It stretched out of sight in both directions. He stepped carefully out of the corn and walked into the middle of the road. Although shabby and unused, the road was the only familiar thing he had seen in hours, and he felt the urge to drop down and kiss the pavement. He looked first one way and then the other, silently praying that a vehicle would appear and rescue them, but there was nothing but corn and concrete. Both directions looked identical, just one broad road cutting through endless dense rows of corn.

  “It looks all right!” he shouted. A few seconds later, Quinn stumbled out of the corn. “Which way do we go?” He turned one way and then the other.

  “I saw smoke coming from that way, so…,” she said uncertainly.

  “All right, it’s that way then, but first we need to change that bandage.” The sock was soaked with blood. He peeled it off as gently as he could and tossed it to the side. “It doesn’t look so bad. It’s not bleeding as much.” He wrapped the wound in another clean strip of sock. “Are you sure you don’t want a ride?” he asked, looking at her pale face.

  “I’ll walk,” she said and hobbled ahead. They continued in silence for an hour or more, but the column of smoke never seemed to get any closer. Quinn’s mind was lost in pain when Akeem broke the silence.

  “What the…,” he said as he picked something up. Quinn gasped when she realized that he was holding the bloody sock they had tossed aside hours ago. “Where are we?” Akeem questioned, but Quinn was no longer looking at him; she was starring behind him, wide-eyed.

  “Look!” Quinn pointed into the corn. He spun around, horrified to find the corn moving in several locations. Whatever was out there was coming toward them, fast. It wasn’t until he heard a terrifying war cry that he kicked into action. He grabbed Quinn’s hand and ran. Before they could take more than a dozen steps, something hard and fast hit him. Pain like nothing he had ever felt exploded in his body and sent him crashing to the ground. He looked to the source of the pain and noticed a crudely made arrow with a red feather tip poking clean through the muscle of his upper right arm.

  “Akeem!” Quinn reached for him but stopped when a spear bounced off the pavement inches from her foot. The war cry faded as several girls emerged from the cornfield. He watched with pleasure as Quinn snatched up the spear and threw it with all her might toward the tallest girl. The girl dove out of the way to avoid it. She got back up to her feet and glared angrily at Quinn but did not approach. Quinn stood over Akeem protectively, ignoring the throbbing pain in her leg. There were ten girls total and nearly every one of them held a bow with a quiver full of handmade arrows strung across their backs. Nine bows fitted with red-tipped arrows were now pointing at Akeem. A blonde girl wearing a pink bikini top and a micro-miniskirt pushed through the crowd. In addition to her bow, she had a wickedly sharp hunting knife tied to her bare thigh with matching pink ribbons. She aimed at Quinn’s face then lowered her bow and pointed it at Akeem.

  “Move and this goes through your eye, Dog!” she warned.

  “Mom, is that you?” he mumbled sarcastically, but the joke was lost on her.

  “Hurt him, and I’ll kill you,” Quinn
hissed, but the girl didn’t show the slightest sign of fear. To Quinn’s surprise, she actually giggled.

  “Nishi, our new arrival is injured. Tend to her. Hurry, they’ll be here soon,” the girl said without taking her eyes from Akeem.

  “Hai,” said an Asian girl with almond shaped eyes and long ink-black hair. She kneeled down and reached for Quinn’s leg. Instinctively, Quinn kicked her and sent her flying backward.

  “Get away from us!” she growled. The other girls instantly shifted their arrows and pointed them at Quinn.

  “Hold,” said the blonde. She looked at Quinn calmly and spoke in a sickly sweet voice. “You live because I lost four girls last week, and we need more strength. But if you attack another one of my girls, I’ll hand you over to the Dogs personally and laugh as they hack your head off and stick it on a pig pole.”

  Although she didn’t have the slightest idea what this girl was talking about, Quinn was no fool. She knew the difference between a threat and a promise, and this time she didn’t move when Nishi looked at her leg. The girl removed the bandage roughly, but Quinn refused to let her know how much it hurt.

  “Looks like she stepped in one of Maru’s traps. I hate that Dog and his stupid pencils. I’m surprised she still has a leg,” Nishi said before pressing her thumb into the wound and twisting. Quinn screamed and fell to the ground beside Akeem, moaning in agony. He grabbed her hand, and she squeezed back tightly. “Now we’re even,” said Nishi before she bent down and spit in Quinn’s face. “Or maybe not.” She smirked. Quinn lunged but Akeem grabbed her and pulled her back to the ground. It took all of his remaining strength to hold her back.