Empire by Michael R. Hicks Page A

brought some friends with him this time.”
    Nicole quickened her pace.
    Muldoon watched as the two older boys, whom the other kids called Scurvy and Dodger, chased Reza and Nicole through the field. Climbing atop a specially fortified portion of the van’s roof, Muldoon was high enough that he could see the bending and weaving of the stalks as his remote hunters closed on their quarry. The older boys were able to make better time through the wheat, especially with the trail the Gard kid left behind him. A smile of certainty crept across Muldoon’s face. Gard wasn’t going to get away this time, and neither was the girl. It had been easy to track their progress to the road. Now he would track them as his human hounds chased them down.
    He glanced down at the other boy waiting below, whom he had dubbed Big John in honor of a certain very important part of the boy’s anatomy. Muldoon had given him his own special touch over ten years ago, and the boy had been unflinchingly loyal ever since.
    Big John mutely smiled back.
    Reza wove through the wheat in an intricate pattern that he had learned from other kids when playing in the fields. That was in the days before Wiley had convinced him to spend that time in the library, earning himself a ticket off of Hallmark that few of the other kids would ever receive.
    While it appeared to Muldoon that Scurvy and Dodger were gaining, Reza was keeping them at about the same distance, but at a cost. He and Nicole, already flushed from fleeing the fire – which still boomed and crackled around them – were getting tired. The weaving that confused their pursuers also meant that Reza and Nicole had to take at two or three steps to Scurvy and Dodger’s one or two, the time being made up by the older boys hunting around for their path after missing one of Reza’s sharp turns. Worse, Reza now had no idea where they were.
    “Reza,” Nicole gasped behind him, “we cannot run forever!”
    “Don’t stop!” he ordered grimly. His legs and lungs were burning as hot as the flames that consumed the wheat around them. Some of the smoke was now settling toward the ground, causing him to gag. “Keep going!”
    Without warning they burst into an open quad. Reza, his legs accustomed to trampling through the wheat stalks, lost his footing and fell to the ground, skinning his palms and knees.
    “Damn!” he cursed, grabbing Nicole’s hands as she helped him up.
    They were only thirty meters or so across the quad – less than a quarter of the way – when their pursuers appeared behind them.
    “Give it up, maggot!” Scurvy cried. His acne scarred face was flushed with the exertion of running. “Game’s over.”
    “Save it, Gard,” Dodger chimed in. His lopsided eyes, one placed nearly two centimeters higher than the other, were bright with anticipation, and his brutishly large hands flexed at his sides. “You’re good in the wheat, man, but you’re dead meat in the open.” He smiled, showing perfect vid-star teeth that were completely out of place in his lumpy face.
    Reza slowed at the boy’s words, then stopped.
    “Reza!” Nicole cried, “What are you doing?”
    “He’s right,” Reza told her as he caught his breath. “Those two bastards are quick. They’ll catch us before we get to the wheat on the other side.”
    “Then what do we do?” Nicole whispered. Her eyes were fixed on the two approaching boys who now merely sauntered, apparently sure that she and Reza could not get away.
    Reza smiled thinly, the fear in his eyes overshadowed by determination. “I’ll have to use my secret weapon,” he replied cryptically.
    She watched as he reached into the little cloth bag that he always kept at his belt. Knowing what was in it – a few polished stones that she thought were pretty, some scraps of paper with names of books written on them, and a strip of leather that Reza sometimes did a parody of jumping rope with – did not make her feel any better. But her trust in him,