Ransom Riggs - Hollow City

Mr. White stumbled back from the window, horrified and baffled.

Out in the field, Brown collapsed in a cloud of stinging insects. As his body fell, another was revealed behind him.

It was a boy.

Hugh.

He stood defiantly, staring through the window. The insects swung around him in a great, whirling sphere. The fields were packed with them—honeybees and hornets, wasps and yellow jackets, stinging things I couldn’t know or name—and every last one of them seemed to be at his command.

Mr. White raised his gun and fired. Emptied his clip.

Hugh went down, disappearing in the grass. I didn’t know whether he had fallen to the ground or dived to it. Then three other soldiers ran to the window, and while Bronwyn cried “Please, don’t kill him!” they raked the field with bullets, filling our ears with the thunder of their guns.

Then there were bees in the room. A dozen, maybe, furious and flinging themselves at the soldiers.

“Shut the window!” Mr. White screamed, swatting the air around him.

A soldier slammed the window closed. They all went to work smacking the bees that had gotten in. While they were busy with that, more and more collected outside—a giant, seething blanket of them pulsing against the other side of the glass—so many that by the time Mr. White and his men had finished killing the bees inside the room, the ones outside had nearly shut out the sun.

The soldiers clustered in the middle of the floor, backs together, rifles bristling out like porcupine quills. It was dark and hot, and the alien whine of a million manic bees reverberated through the room like something out of a nightmare.

“Make them leave us alone!” Mr. White shouted, his voice cracking, desperate.

As if anyone but Hugh could do that—if he was still alive.

“I’ll make you another offer,” said Bekhir, pulling himself to his feet using the window bars, his hobbled silhouette outlined against the dark glass. “Put down your guns or I open this window.”

Mr. White spun to face him. “Even a Gypsy wouldn’t be stupid enough to do that.”

“You think too highly of us,” Bekhir said, sliding his fingers toward the handle.

The soldiers raised their rifles.

“Go ahead,” said Bekhir. “Shoot.”

“Don’t, you’ll break the glass!” Mr. White shouted. “Grab him!”

Two soldiers threw down their rifles and lunged at Bekhir, but not before he punched his fist through the glass.

The entire window shattered. Bees flushed into the room. Chaos erupted—screams, gunfire, shoving—though I could hardly hear it over the roar of the insects, which seemed to fill not just my ears but every pore of my body.

People were climbing over one another to get out. To my right I saw Bronwyn push Olive to the floor and cover her with her body. Emma shouted “Get down!” and we ducked for cover as bees tumbled over our skin, our hair. I waited to die, for the bees to cover every exposed inch of me in stings that would shut down my nervous system.

Someone kicked open the door. Light blasted in. A dozen boots thundered across the floorboards.

It got quiet. I slowly uncovered my head.

The bees were gone. So were the soldiers.

Then, from outside, a chorus of panicked screams. I jumped up and rushed to the shattered window, where a knot of Gypsies and peculiars were already gathered, peering out.

At first I didn’t see the soldiers at all—just a giant, swirling mass of insects, so dense it was opaque, about fifty feet down the footpath.

The screams were coming from inside it.

Then, one by one, the screamers fell silent. When it was all over, the cloud of bees began to spread and scatter, unveiling the bodies of Mr. White and his men. They lay clustered in the low grass, dead or nearly so.

Twenty seconds later, their killers were gone, their monstrous hum fading as they settled back into the fields. In their wake fell a strange and bucolic calm, as if it were just another summer day, and nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Emma counted the soldiers’ bodies on her fingers. “Six. That’s all of them,” she said. “It’s over.”

I put my arms around her, shaking with gratitude and disbelief.

“Which of you are hurt?” said Bronwyn, looking around frantically. Those last moments had been crazy—countless bees, gunfire in the dark. We checked ourselves for holes. Horace was dazed but conscious, a trickle of blood running from his temple. Bekhir’s stab wound was deep but would heal. The rest of us were shaken but unhurt—and miraculously, not a single one of us was bee-stung.

“When you broke the window,” I said to Bekhir, “how did you know the bees wouldn’t attack us?”

“I didn’t,” he said. “Luckily, your friend’s power is strong.”

Our friend …

Emma pulled away from me suddenly. “Oh my God!” she gasped. “Hugh!”

In all the chaos, we’d forgotten about him. He was probably bleeding to death right now, somewhere in the tall grass. But just as we were about to tear outside and look for him, he appeared in the doorway—bedraggled and grass-stained, but smiling.

“Hugh!” Olive cried, rushing to him. “You’re alive!”

“I am!” he said heartily. “Are all of you?”

“Thanks to you we are!” Bronwyn said. “Three cheers for

Hugh!”

“You’re our man in a pinch, Hugh!” cried Horace.

“Nowhere am I deadlier than in a field of wildflowers,” Hugh said, enjoying the attention.

“Sorry about all the times I made fun of your peculiarity,” said Enoch. “I suppose it’s not so useless.”

“Additionally,” said Millard, “I’d like to compliment Hugh on his impeccable timing. Really, if you’d arrived just a few seconds later …”

Hugh explained how he’d evaded capture at the depot by slipping down between the train and the platform—just like I’d thought.

He’d sent one of his bees trailing after us, which allowed him to follow from a careful distance. “Then it was just a matter of finding the perfect time to strike,” he said proudly, as if victory had been assured from the moment he decided to save us.

“And if you hadn’t accidentally stumbled across a field packed with bees?” Enoch said.

Hugh dug something from his pocket and held it up: a peculiar chicken egg. “Plan B,” he said.

Bekhir hobbled to Hugh and shook his hand. “Young man,” he said, “we owe you our lives.”

“What about your peculiar boy?” Millard asked Bekhir.

“He managed to escape with two of my men, thank God. We lost three fine animals today, but no people.” Bekhir bowed to Hugh, and I thought for a moment he might even take Hugh’s hand and kiss it. “You must allow us to repay you!”

Hugh blushed. “There’s no need, I assure you—”

“And no time, either,” said Emma, pushing Hugh out the door.

“We have a train to catch!”

Those of us who hadn’t yet realized Miss Peregrine was gone went pale.

“We’ll take their jeep,” said Millard. “If we’re lucky—and if that wight was correct—we might just be able to catch the train during its stopover in Porthmadog.”

“I know a shortcut,” Bekhir said, and he drew a simple map in the dirt with his shoe.

We thanked the Gyspies. I told Bekhir we were sorry we’d caused them so much trouble, and he unleashed a big, booming laugh and waved us on down the path. “We’ll meet again, syndrigasti ,” he said. “I’m certain of it!”

We squeezed into the wights’ jeep, eight kids packed like sardines into a vehicle built for three. Because I was the only one who’d driven a car before, I took the wheel. I spent way too long figuring out how to start the damn thing—not with a key, it turned out, but by pushing a button on the floor—and then there was the matter of shifting gears; I’d only driven a manual transmission a few times, and always with my dad coaching me from the passenger seat. Despite all that, after a minute or two we were—bumpily, jerkily, somewhat hesitatingly—on our way.