Nineteen
Here is the scene. The volcano’s cone now rose seven hundred feet above the agitated waves. A pillar of smoke rose all the way to the stratosphere.
Lava belched from several different holes in the volcano and rolled red-hot and sluggish down to the water, where it sent up clouds of searing steam. The lava cooled, darkened, and formed new additions to the volcano.
On the eastern face of the volcano a jagged hole made it seem as if the volcano had a mouth. It was a dark hole from which marched the Pale Queen’s terrible army.
The stone causeway continued to rise from the sea and now came near to reaching to the Golden Gate Bridge itself. It grew almost as if it was something living, summoned from the bottom of the ocean. The causeway was perhaps four miles long in all, making it quite visible from land. And, indeed, TV cameras and phone cameras and every kind of
camera in between showed pictures that left the whole country, the whole world, staring in helpless horror.
Marines and soldiers were being rushed to San Francisco by truck and plane and helicopter, but the nearest hardcore combat soldiers were about 450 miles away. And really all that San Francisco had at the moment were the San Francisco Police Department, the California Highway Patrol, and a handful of National Guardsmen.
Coming down that causeway there were two miles’ worth of bad creatures. The Pale Queen had concentrated her shock troops for this attack. Although there were reports coming in of smaller attacks in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America.
Roughly at the midpoint of the causeway stood the Magnificent Eight. The Pale Queen’s army would have to get past them to reach the city and the world beyond. But if you were to look at it from the air, as the various TV cameras in helicopters were doing, it wouldn’t look like much of a contest. A massive, marching monster army versus nine kids.
Xiao, Sylvie, Rodrigo, and Charlie were summoning the killing weapon that Charlie had imagined. It was assembling itself out of thin air, piece by piece. Clearly it would be an incredible thing when fully built. It stood on a tripod that looked as if it was made of elephant tusks twisted together. It resembled some massive machine gun, but a very old-school version with long, glittering barrels arranged in a cylinder. There was no knowing just what the building materials were—perhaps they weren’t real metals or minerals at all. They were pure imagination, the result of a bored English schoolkid scribbling away when he should have been studying English history.38
Something about Charlie’s machine almost seemed to suggest it might be alive, and some elements of it looked more like knuckles or ligaments than steel.
Mack, Jarrah, Dietmar, Valin, and Stefan were marching the totally wrong way, which is to say toward the onrushing fist of terrifying creatures. No more than three hundred feet separated Mack from certain destruction. Maybe less, because one of the Gudridan in the lead launched a three-pointed spear through the air.
It flew straight and true toward Mack. But Mack was quick. He jumped to his left, expecting the spear to stick in the rock where he’d just been.
Instead, a muscular hand, quick as a snake, shot out and grabbed the shaft of the spear. The forward momentum of the heavy weapon twisted Stefan around but did not knock him down.
He switched the spear to his right hand, took three running steps, and hurled it right back at the surprised Gudridan.
But the spear clattered off the invisible force field, and the Gudridan smiled. (Which is not something you want to see.)
“No fair,” Stefan said, honestly outraged. “They can throw at us and we can’t throw back?”
“That’s what we’re here to fix,” Mack said, trying to sound all tough and indifferent to fear.
“Krik-ma is ‘break,’” Jarrah said.
“Poindrafol is ‘shield,’” Dietmar said.
“Is that a shield?” Mack asked. “We’ve seen what happens when you’re not specific enough.” He was referring to the fact that he’d needed to specify that Valin was using a scimitar, not just any old sword.
Valin smiled tightly. “You really don’t know much, do you, my ancient enemy—I mean, well, Mack. Use the prefix simu. It means ‘like.’ Simu-poindrafol should mean ‘thing like a shield.’”
“Grab hands, now or never!” Jarrah cried, because at that moment the advancing army decided they were tired of walking and broke into a run.
Mack held Jarrah’s hand and she Dietmar’s and he Valin’s, while Stefan scowled fearlessly at doom.
“Krik-ma simu-poindrafol!”
The next three things happened very fast and almost all together.
1) A sheen of bright blue light seemed to outline and define the barrier, which was revealed as a sort of long tube that ran the length of the Pale Queen’s army.
The light did not disappear. But at the front, at the part between Mack and the mad beasts, an emptiness appeared, a hole.
2) The first row of monsters surged like a crashing wave. They came on with a weird melding of awful war cries, ranging from the Skirrit’s metallic locust sound to the Tong Elves’ deep-throated bellowing of their tong names. The Bowands, those thin bow-handed creatures, screeched like boiled cats and fired their deadly darts. The Gudridan made a tigerish huffing sound.
3) Charlie yelled, “Fire!” A shaft as long as a basketball player and as thick as a beach umbrella’s pole shot over Mack’s head. It went straight through a leaping Gudridan, then a Tong Elf, then two more Tong Elves and a Skirrit.