“Excuse me, but I was asking Jacob,” said Horace. “He got us this far, after all …”
Instinctively I looked to Miss Peregrine, whom I considered the final authority on matters of authority. She returned my gaze and nodded. “Yes,” she said, “I think Mr. Portman should decide. Quickly, though, or the wights will make the decision for you.”
I nearly protested. My hollows were all dead but one—but I suppose this was Miss Peregrine’s way of saying she believed in me, hollows or no. Anyway, what we should do seemed obvious. In a hundred years, the peculiars had never been so close to destroying the wight menace, and if we ran away now, I knew that chance may never come again. My friends’ faces were scared but determined—ready, I thought, to risk their lives for a chance to finally eradicate the wight scourge.
“We fight,” I said. “We’ve come too far to give up now.”
If there was someone among us who would rather have fled, they stayed quiet. Even the ymbrynes, who had sworn oaths to keep us safe, didn’t argue. They knew what sort of fate awaited any of us who were recaptured.
“You give the word,” said Emma.
I craned my neck around the wall. The wights were closing fast, no more than a hundred feet away now. But I wanted them closer still—close enough that we might easily knock the guns from their hands.
Shots rang out. A piercing scream came from above.
“Olive!” Emma shouted. “They’re shooting at Olive!”
We’d left the poor girl hanging up there. The wights were taking potshots at her while she squealed and waved her limbs like a starfish. There was no time to reel her in, but we couldn’t just leave her for target practice.
“Let’s give them something better to shoot at,” I said. “Ready?”
Their answer was resounding and affirmative. I shimmied onto the back of my crouched hollow. “LET’S GO!” I shouted.
The hollow leapt to its feet, nearly bucking me off, then launched forward like a racehorse at the starting gun. We burst from behind the wall, the hollow and I leading the charge, my friends and our ymbrynes close behind. I let out a screaming war cry, not so much to scare the wights as to tear down the fear that was clawing at me, and my friends did the same. The wights balked, and for a moment they couldn’t seem to decide whether to keep charging or stop and shoot at us. That bought the hollow and me enough time to clear much of the open ground that separated us.
It didn’t take long for the wights to make up their minds. They stopped, leveled their guns at us like a firing squad, and let loose a volley of bullets. They whizzed around me, pocking the ground, lighting up my pain receptors as they slammed into the hollow. Praying it hadn’t been hit anywhere vital, I sank low to shield myself behind its body and urged it forward, faster, using its tongues like extra legs to speed us on.
The hollow and I closed the remaining gap in just a few seconds, my friends close behind. Then we were among them, fighting hand-to-hand, and the advantage was ours. While I concentrated on knocking the guns out of the wights’ hands, my friends put their peculiar talents to good use. Emma swung her hands like flaming clubs, cutting through a line of wights. Bronwyn hurled the bricks she’d gathered, then punched and pummeled the wights with her bare hands. Hugh’s lone bee had recently made some friends, and as he cheered them on (“Go for the eyes, fellows!”) they swirled around and dive-bombed our enemy wherever they could. So did the ymbrynes, who’d turned themselves into birds after the first gunshots. Miss Peregrine was most fearsome, her huge beak and talons sending wights running, but even small, colorful Miss Bunting made herself useful, ripping one wight’s hair and pecking his head hard enough to make him miss the shot he was taking—which allowed Claire to leap up and bite him on the shoulder with her wide, sharp-toothed backmouth. Enoch did his part, too, revealing from under his shirt three clay men with forks for legs and knives for arms, which he sent hacking after the wights’ ankles. All the while, Olive shouted advice to us from her bird’s-eye view. “Behind you, Emma! He’s going for his gun, Hugh!”
Despite all our peculiar ingenuity, however, we were outnumbered, and the wights were fighting as if their lives depended on it—which likely they did.
Something hard crashed into my head—the butt of a gun—and I hung limp from the hollow’s back for a moment, the world spinning around me. Miss Bunting was caught and thrown to the ground. It was chaos, awful bloody chaos, and the wights were beginning to take the momentum, forcing us back.
And then, from behind me, I heard a familiar roar. My senses returning, I looked and saw Bentham, galloping toward the fight astride the back of his grimbear. Both were soaking wet, having come through the Panloopticon the same way Emma and I had.
“Hullo, young man!” he called, riding up next to me. “In need of some assistance?”
Before I could reply, my hollow was shot again, the bullet passing through the side of its neck and grazing my thigh, painting a bloody line through my torn pants.
“Yes, please!” I shouted.
“PT, you heard the boy!” Bentham said. “KILL!”
The bear dove into the fight, swinging his giant paws and knocking wights aside like they were bowling pins. One ran up and shot PT point-blank in the chest with a small handgun. The bear seemed merely annoyed, then picked up the wight and sent him flying. Soon, with my hollow and Bentham’s grim working together, we had the wights on the defensive. When we’d picked off enough of them that it became clear they were outnumbered, their ranks whittled to no more than ten, they took off and ran.