For the final battle, we move from the field to the fort. The sun is low in the sky as I take my position with the other American soldiers inside the fort. From the wall above the south-west bastion, I watch the red-coated British troops and Canadian militia form lines to attack us. The First Nations warriors gather beside them.
“After nightfall on August 15, 1814,” the announcer’s voice tells us, “the British, under the command of Lieutenant General Drummond, launched a three-pronged attack on the Americans at Fort Erie.”
A cannon blast starts the attack. Fireworks shriek, mimicking the sound of rockets fired by the British. Muskets fire at us from the field below. I raise my gun above the stone wall and fire back.
As the British and Canadian troops advance toward us, I try to make out Sean, Arman or Carter through the smoke. But it’s getting darker and it’s hard to see anything except the flash of musket fire. We blast at the attackers with our muskets and cannons. Then, suddenly, eerie whoops rise through the summer air as the First Nations warriors run forward to support the British soldiers.
Now there are soldiers directly below us. They lift ladders into place against the fort wall and begin to climb up. In seconds, they will be on us. Of course, if it was really 1814, we’d be doing our best to shoot them off. I look over the wall and see one guy fall from a lower rung of a ladder. I’m not sure if it’s a fake fall or a real fall. I twist around just in time to see the first British soldier come over the wall. Then another. I hesitate, not sure what I’m supposed to do now. A red coat lunges toward me, thrusting a bayonet.
“Hey!” I protest, jumping out of the way. This fight might be phony, but those bayonets could do real damage.
“Sorry,” the guy apologizes. “Lost my balance a bit there.”
There’s something familiar about his voice. Then he grins, and I recognize the man with the pipe we talked to at the British camp earlier. He moves past me, firing his musket at the soldiers behind me.
“Hey!” says an even more familiar voice near my ear. I turn just as Nicola grabs my sleeve and pulls me down against the wall.
“What are you doing here?” I ask as I crouch next to her.
“I’m nursing the wounded,” she says. “There were women acting as nurses right in the middle of the battle. And you look like you just got stabbed with a bayonet.”
“Yeah. Almost for real,” I say.
“Look that way,” she tells me, pointing past the barracks to the north bastion. “They’re going to blow it up any second.”
I barely have time to look.
Boom!
The explosion is louder than I expected. Yellow-orange flames shoot up into the night sky. The soldiers and the people watching from the field gasp and then cheer. I close my eyes and still see the flash of light burned onto the back of my eyelids. My ears ring.
The flames die away, and smoke billows across the fort. As my eyes return to normal, I see bodies littering the ground below the north bastion. My heart jolts, and for a second I wonder if they’re really dead. Maybe something went wrong with the fireworks.
“Just think,” Nicola says, “two hundred years ago, that was real. Three hundred men died in the explosion, and more in the rest of the fighting.”
We stare into the smoke for moment, not saying anything. I think back to earlier in the week when we laughed about the headless ghost and the handless ghost. It doesn’t seem funny anymore.
A voice from a loudspeaker cuts into our thoughts. But this time, it’s not the reenactment announcer. It seems to be coming from the river. Nicola and I stand up and look over the wall.
“This is the border patrol,” a deep, amplified voice calls. “Please stop your engine and prepare to be boarded.”
Everyone—including the guys playing dead a second ago—rushes to the wall to see what’s going on. The river is black but dotted with the lights of boats viewing the reenactment fireworks. The border-patrol boat is obvious by the big beam of light coming from it. It closes in on a small boat caught in the light. It’s hard to tell whether the other boat is on the Canadian side of the river or the American.
I expect the border patrol boat to pull up alongside the other boat. But suddenly, the other boat picks up speed. It’s making a run for it. The roar of the motors drifts up to the fort as we watch the chase. For a moment, it looks as if the fleeing boat might get away. But the border patrol boat closes in.
“Did they get them?” I jump at the sound of Major Helston’s voice, as he steps up beside Nicola. On his other side is a man I almost don’t recognize without his dark sunglasses. He’s still dressed in jeans and gray hoodie. What is he doing in the middle of the reenactment?