Page 69 of Mayflower

My eyes dart from one screen to another. Most of the explosions come from the jungle area near the main road. There’s something extremely amateurish about this, the way the cocktails don’t fly far. They are scattered, not synched. There are no tactics here.

“I don’t get it,” Ortiz murmurs.

“Me neither,” Bishop says. “A diversion?”

“Prepare for an attack,” says the Commander, who has a computer with the same cameras in front of him, a radio in his hand, an earpiece that has someone on the line. “We’ll shoot them all down.”

“Wait. Something is not right,” I say.

“It’s not,” say Bishop and Ortiz at the same time.

“Get more drones to fly over,” Archer barks. “Night vision on. Send them now!”

Pink hair flickers among the men gathered around—Margot. “Archer! Some of the residents have arrived.”

“Grab Kat and Maddy,” he blurts over his shoulder without taking his eyes off the screens. “Get everyone to the conference rooms for now. If things get worse, I will let you know, and you will take everyone underground.”

I feel a hand on my shoulder. It’s Maddy, her gaze worried. “You’ll be fine?”

She’s worried about me?

I nod and cover her hand with mine. “Go. Be safe, okay? Take Sonny.”

“I’m staying,” the little guy butts in, standing next to his guard, his face determined.

“Maddy, take?—”

“I’m staying,” Sonny says, and I motion to her. “He’s with me. Leave him.”

I don’t have time for arguments.

My eyes are back on the screens. What’s happening is a bizarre intervention that doesn’t fit with any military tactics.

“They are children,” someone says, and my head instantly snaps to the main screen that zooms in on a little figure that’s coming out of the jungle onto a clear path. Its shirt is on fire, and another figure approaches fast and pats it down until the flames are gone.

“Oh, fuck,” Ortiz whispers. “Hold the attack. Hold it! Someone just literally set themselves on fire by accident.”

The Commander freezes with the radio in his hand, his eyes on the big screen.

We all stare in shock. And now we see it, several little bodies scrambling like ants out of the jungle toward the security posts.

“They are children,” I repeat, the realization making me sick. “Hold the fire.”

“Hold the fire!” someone else repeats, the same order being passed around. “No fucking way. They are throwing Molotov cocktails? They can’t be children. They don’t know what those are.”

But the camera zooms in on one of the faces, barely visible, and there is no mistake. It’s a kid, barely ten.

“Hold it! Hold the fucking fire!”

“We can’t.” The Commander presses his finger to his earpiece. “We just received an order to start firing.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I snap.

“Hold it!” Archer barks.

Marlow interferes. “Order from who?”

The Commander taps his earpiece. “From one of the sponsors.” He means the board members, one of the few providing security funding.

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