“That’s what I’m telling you.” Kincaid finished taping gauze to
his cheek. His blood was already drying to a rusty bib on his parka.
He favored them all with his one-eyed stare. “I felt it, and this isn’t
earthquake country. It’s the beginning of something else, something
. . .
bad.
”
Bible shit like Jess.”
“Leave him alone, A.” Although Greg had to admit, what was
going on with Jess
was
strange. Kincaid kept her apart from everyone
else, fed her strange potions, even slept in her room at the hospice.
The rumors were she was bat-shit crazy, spouting gibberish half the
time or completely in la-la land and totally zoned. Greg was so curious that when he’d delivered a prisoner to the hospice, he’d waited
until Kincaid was busy, then sidled to her room for a peek. Except for
a rumpled cot and night table filled with books, the room was nothing special. But then, of course, there was Jess.
She doesn’t even look real. Like plastic.
Jess was like a body laid out for
a viewing, only propped on her left side with a pillow wedged against
her back to keep her from rolling and another tucked under her right
arm. Her mane of steel-gray hair was scraped back into a long, neat
braid from skin as white as the bandage over half her forehead. Her
face was off-kilter, the dome of her forehead sunken over her left
eyebrow from where the shotgun’s butt had cratered bone.
But then he noticed Jess’s eyes roaming their sockets beneath her
closed lids.
Dreaming?
He hadn’t expected that. The effect was bizarre
and more than a little creepy because the rest of her was so disturbingly slack. Then, all of a sudden, her lips twitched as she pulled in a
gasping inhale and breathed, “Leavethemboytheyareblind . . .”
The hair rose on the back of his neck. Boy? Was she talking about
him,
to
him?
That’s nuts, that’s crazy.
The words were only air. They
held no meaning. They were so incredibly spooky, he did a one-eighty
and beat feet and you could not
pay
him to go back.
Now, ignoring Aidan’s aggrieved sputter, Greg turned to Sam and
Lucian. “After Kincaid patches him up, I want you guys to put Dale in
a cell, all right? No more working him over right now. Just give him a
chance to think about things.”
“Sure, anything you say,
boss,
” Sam said, his tone dripping with
sarcasm.
“Yeah,
boss.
You want we should use the chains, hang him up by
his arms?” Lucian asked. “It’d make things go faster.”
Kincaid shook his head. “That poor man’s so worn out, there’s
no way he can support his weight. You let those boys string him up,
Greg, and I guarantee he’ll suffocate by morning.”
“Yeah?” Greg said. “Ask me if I care.”
Nothing and no one could have prepared Alex for this.
She lost it. “Help,
help
!” Spitting and blowing, she tried turning
her head but couldn’t move more than a few inches right or left. The
snow’s weight was terrible, wouldn’t let up, and then she was wailing
incoherently, a shriek that wanted to go on and on . . .
Stop stop stop!
She muscled back her fear.
Don’t move, stop screaming.
You’ll run out of air and only kill yourself faster.
But so what? She was alone. She couldn’t reach her whistle.
No one
to hear it anyway
. Her heart boomed; tears streamed over her cheeks.
I’m going to die in here.
Pulling in air was getting very hard, like sucking up the last dregs of lemonade through a slowly collapsing straw.
Her lungs were starting to ache, and she was already gasping. Three
seconds later, she realized that her eyelids had shut without her realizing it.
No, no!
She fluttered them open in another spasm of panic.
Not
ready to die yet. Not
. . . But her lids slipped again, and so did her mind.
Below, so far away, it was so dark . . .
. . . not . . . ready . . .
Boy. A voice. Not his. Whose? Chris didn’t know. His mind felt
as if it were teetering on the brink, like the smallest tap or tiniest
misstep would tip him hurtling over the edge and into oblivion and
maybe, this time, for good.
A second later, a blowtorch went off in his back and scorched its
way from his pelvis through his chest. The pain was enormous, like
an atom bomb. Before that moment, he hadn’t realized he’d even
been gone, but now he slammed back, hard and fast and all at once
on a heaving red tide of agony.
“Aaahhh,”
he moaned.
“Yeah, wait!” A girl’s voice, young, and very close, almost at his
ear. “Wait, stop! I think he’s awake! Hello? Are you there?”
There . . . yes . . .
He lost the thread. Had he even spoken? Blacked
out, maybe. He just couldn’t tell.
“Probably just reflex.” The boy, again. “Eli, let’s try—”
“Wait.” A second girl, older, her voice deeper, gently insistent.
“Are his eyes open? Did they move?”
The boy: “What does that matter?”
“If he’s conscious . . . ,” the older girl began.
“No, his eyes are still closed.” The younger girl, again, and now he
realized that she was
very
close. He could feel the warm whisper of
her breath. “But when you guys moved the door, his face twitched.
Maybe we’re hurting him more?”
Door . . . what . . . where . . .
He couldn’t hold the thought. He
faded in and out, his consciousness like the bob of a lost balloon high
above the distant lights of a faraway carnival. He thought he might
be on his stomach. What was the last thing he remembered?
“I don’t know if we got a choice. Unless you guys have a better
idea of how to get him out from under there?” When there was no
response, the older boy said, “Okay, then let’s do this. You ready in
there?”
“Just a sec,” the little girl called. Her voice dropped. “You need to
go, girl. Go on.”
He sensed movement; heard the shuffle of something over snow,
a crinkle, and then a strange chuffing.
Dog?
A moment later, the
weight on his back rocked. His middle cramped against another grab
of pain, and he heard the
uhhh
drop from his mouth.
“Sorry,” the little girl whispered. “Sorry, sorry, but I have to do
this, I’m so sorry . . .”
“You ready?” the boy called.
“Yeah. He moaned again.” The little girl sounded shaky.
“Don’t get freaked, honey,” the older girl said. “He’s probably
out.”
No . . . here . . . I’m . . .
“I’m okay.” Pause. “Got my feet up.”
“All right, on three,” the boy said. “You push, I’ll pull.”
That snagged his attention in a way nothing else could.
No, wait .
. . hurt, don’t hurt me again.
Marshaling his strength, Chris put everything he had into the simple act of opening his eyes. But there was
a strange pressure around his forehead and over his eyes, and he just
couldn’t.
A second later, there came another fiery jolt.
No, no.
A grinding
shudder rocked his hips, and he moaned.
Door
. That must be it.
They’re trying to lift . . .
His mind skipped, tried tripping off that cliff
of what passed for consciousness again.
“Nuhhh . . .”
“Stop, stop!” The little girl, her voice hitching up a notch. “We’re
hurting him!”
“Can’t help that.” The boy again, not angry but impatient and
unhappy, almost annoyed: the voice of someone who’d rather be
anywhere else. “It’s going to hurt no matter what—”
“Wait, let’s think this through,” the older girl said. “If we can give
him a few seconds and let him wake up, he might be able to help
us
help
him
.”
“How’s he going to do that if his back’s broken?” the boy said.
Broken.
The word was a razor that sliced through Chris’s pain.
Broken?
“I can’t assess him until he’s fully conscious. Even if he can’t move
his legs, he could brace himself with his arms,” the older girl said.
“I don’t know,” the boy said. “You saw his hand.”
Hand.
What were they talking about? Chris didn’t feel anything.
God, maybe that meant his hand was—
“Maybe we can bandage it. I don’t know. But if he
can
help, enough
for us to slide something solid underneath, get him off the snow . . .”
Snow.
As soon as she said it, he could feel the wet against his right
cheek and beneath his chest where his body warmth had melted the
snow.
I’m on the snow.
No, that wasn’t quite right. He was
in
it. That
had to be it. He was
down
in the snow. Yet he wasn’t freezing. The air
felt warm and carried a scent that was strange and wet, not snowmelt
or regular water but like a rusted fender.
“Hannah’s right.” Not the older boy but one closer to the little
girl’s age: the kid called
Eli
. “I bet I could get in there with the bolt
cutters. Then all I got to do is cut the spikes and we lift the door right
off. Bet it wouldn’t hurt him as much. It might even be faster.”
Bolt cutters? Spikes?
“It would be better than taking a chance of ripping them out,
Jayden,” Hannah said. “He’s already bleeding pretty badly.”
Blood.
What he smelled—that wet rust stink—and lay in was his
own blood.
Hurt. Bleeding
. . .
what . . .
But his back couldn’t be broken,
it couldn’t, it—
“I thought you said he’s bleeding out,” Jayden said.
“I said maybe, and there’s no point in making this worse. The
more I think about it, the more I worry that if a spike’s compressing
an artery and we pull it out—”
Oh Jesus.
The girl, Hannah, was still talking, but her voice receded
to a buzz as the memory suddenly crashed into his mind as if the
dam holding it back had burst: Nathan, the brittle snap of his neck
as that gigantic log swept back to knock him from his horse. Then
he’d
started forward—stupid, a mistake—and there had been a monstrous sound of something
crashing
through trees, but not from the
side. From above. Something dark,
huge
, rushing for his face. For a
moment, he hadn’t been able to move, not only from surprise but
because his feet . . .
No, snowshoes, they were stuck, jammed into the snow.
. .
He’d spied a bottle-green glint of glass, the bristle of iron spikes,
and then he’d understood: the thing was a tiger-trap made out of a
huge barn door, barreling straight down from the trees, heading right
for him.
Pushed off, tried getting out of the way.
But he hadn’t been fast
enough. He remembered the weight driving him down, that ripping
in his legs, his flesh tearing. The unbelievable pain of those spikes.
The sudden pulse of blood.
Can’t let them move the door.
He had visions
of the spikes that might be both threatening and saving him being
suddenly withdrawn, popping free like corks, and then his life surging
in hot red rivers onto the snow.
Come on.
Chris put everything he had into it; felt the twitch of
small muscles. The pressure against his eyelids was huge.
Or I’m really
this weak, and if I am, I
will
die.
“Hey!” the younger girl called. “Hey, guys, he’s opening his eyes,
he’s—”
“Uhhh.” His lids cranked back by degrees, a superhuman effort
that brought out the sweat along his upper lip and on his neck. But he
just couldn’t manage to open his eyes all the way. “Huhh . . .”
“Oh gosh,” the girl said, and then he felt her fingers tugging, the
pressure suddenly easing as she pushed his watch cap onto his forehead. “No wonder. Is that better?”
Yes.
His lids creaked open, and there she was, less than six inches
from his face. He couldn’t tell much. Not only had the effort drained
him, the light was dim, and his eyes didn’t want to focus. “Uhhh,” he
said again.
“Hey, he’s awake! His eyes are open!” The little girl beamed. “Hi.”
“Huh,” he grunted, then raked his swollen tongue over numb, dry
lips.
“Are you thirsty? Do you want a drink of water?”
“Mmm.” He thought her eyes were light blue, and she looked
about eight, maybe nine years old. How had she found him? Nathan
was dead. Then who?
Someone else . . .
Then he had the name, saw her
face floating like a gauzy cloud across his vision:
Lena.
They were on
their way to Oren, had taken the long way because . . .
Rule, chasing
us, Weller . . .
“Hey, he’s thirsty!” she called. Beyond the girl, he now saw a wide
funnel trenched out of snow where she must’ve dug her way in. “He
wants a drink!”
“Scoot on out, honey,” Hannah said. “Let me take a look at him.”
“Okay.” To him: “Don’t worry. There’s plenty of time before dark.
We’ll get you out. We found you, me and Eli. I shook out my emergency blanket to make you a tent, and then me and my dog crawled
in to keep you warm until Eli could get back with help. But it’s going
to be okay now. We got you. What’s your name?”
“Cuh . . .” His parched throat made a clicking sound. “CuhChrisss.” The word sounded like a balloon with all the air rushing
out.
“Chrisss . . .”
“Chris?” she said, brightening as he managed a nod. Sudden tears
pricked the backs of his eyes because, oh God, hearing his name
never had seemed quite so wonderful.
“Well, hi,” the little girl said. “My name’s Ellie.”
Ellie?
That warm bloom of relief suddenly shriveled in his gut. He
remembered the argument, Alex pleading with him to search for the
little girl. There just couldn’t be that many Ellies in this general area.
She’s the right age. This has to be her.
“Chris, are you okay?” A wrinkle of worry creased the space above
Ellie’s nose. “Are you feeling sick? Does it hurt more?”
“I . . .” His tongue balked. With fresh terror, he thought,
Can’t
tell. Mustn’t.
They might leave him here to die. They might kill him.
“Y-yes, it . . . it h-hurts,” he managed, and this was no lie.
“Ellie?” It was Hannah. “Is he—”
“I think you better get in here. He doesn’t look so good.” Scooting
sideways, Ellie batted away one crinkly corner of that emergency
blanket. A spoke of light speared the gloom. Chris could clearly see
how the barn door had driven him a good foot into the snowpack
before lodging itself tight. He also had a much better view of the
blood.
No.
A fresh spasm of horror twisted in his chest. When he exhaled,
his breath showed in small red ripples.
That’s too much, I’ve lost too
much—
Beyond the limits of his prison of snow and spikes and blood, he
heard a dog’s welcoming
huff
and then Ellie say, “What?” Pause; a
murmur from the older girl. “Yeah,” Ellie said, “there’s a lot, and I
can feel it still coming. It’s not spreading, but—” Evidently, someone
up there understood this might not be great for him to hear, because
that emergency blanket dropped back into place, shuttering out the
light.
Talking about the blood.
He swallowed back a scream.
Not spreading,
because it’s melting into the snow under me.
A moment later, he heard a rustle, saw the gloom peel back and
then a gloved hand appear, followed by an arm, a shoulder, and finally
a girl, on her back, slipping down the chute.
“Hi.” Stopping short of the blood lake in which he lay, she brushed
a thick, buckwheat-brown braid from her shoulder and hitched onto
her side to face him. “I’m Han—” She stopped dead, a look of disbelief spreading over her face.
“Oh my God.” Her voice was small and shocked. She raised a
gloved hand to her mouth as if to somehow stopper what came next.
“Simon?”
“What?” His own voice was faraway, foggy with pain. “Who?”
“I—” she began, and then he saw her eyes, which were the color
of soft ash, flit to his throat. Her eyebrows tented in a frown. “What
did you say your name was?”
“Cuh-Chris.” His dry throat gnarled. “Prentiss.”
“Oh. I see.” She gave him another close look, then seemed to
recover herself. Stripping off her gloves, she laid two fingers on his
neck at the angle of his jaw. “Sorry. I’m Hannah. I’m here to help you.
Let me check your pulse.”
“H-how . . .” His throat clicked when he swallowed. “How
b-bad . . .”
“Shh.” Her lips moved as she silently counted the seconds on her
wristwatch. “How’s your breathing?”
“H-hurts. Hard to . . .”
“To breathe? Like you can’t pull in enough air?” Her gray gaze
studied his face. “What about pain?”
“Like nuh-nuh-knives.” He grimaced against another inhalation.
“Get . . . getting . . .”
“Harder to breathe?” When he moved his head in an incremental
nod, she continued, “Is the pain worse on one side?”
“R-right.” He closed his eyes a moment to gather himself. “How
b-bad?”
“Very.” Her fingers traced the hump of his Adam’s apple, and
then her gray eyes clouded. “Where else does it hurt?”
“St-stomach.” His tongue was so huge he was afraid he might
choke. “B-b-back.”
“The back, I’d expected. That door’s very heavy. Can you move
your toes?”
It hadn’t occurred to him to try. Had he before he passed out?
He focused, sent the command down to his feet. After a few anxious
seconds, he felt the bunching of wool, but the sensation was very
distant, as if the signal were being relayed on a very long and sluggish
cable. “Yes.”
“Okay,” she said, although Chris thought her expression didn’t
match the word at all. “Listen, I’m going to slide my hand under and
press on your stomach a little. I’ll try to be as gentle as I can, but I
have to check, okay?”
He steeled himself as her fingers wormed beneath his sopping
parka and began working their way along his right side. When she
pressed, he winced. “That hurts?” she asked, those eyes never leaving
his face. “How about . . . ?” She abruptly pushed in, then let go.
“Ugh!” A bolt of nausea streaked up his throat, and he could feel
sudden tears oiling down his cheeks. “D-don . . . don’t . . .”
“Okay, okay.” She touched a hand to his cheek. “Try to relax.”
“Jus . . .” He was shuddering, and that only made the pain much
worse. Not moving was best. “Puh-please, get m-me out, g-get
me . . .”
“We will,” she said. He wasn’t sure if it was his panic, but it seemed
to him that her smile didn’t make it to her eyes. “I’m going to get you
some water, all right? Are you thirsty?”
“Y-yes, but d-don’t leave . . . don’t leave m-me here.” He heard how
freaked he sounded, and didn’t care. The fear and a sudden sensation
of doom draped him in a dense, airless mantle. “Puh
please
.”
“Of course not. Try not to panic, Chris. Just let me . . .” Turning
away, she rolled, pushed back a corner of the emergency blanket, and
called, “I need my water bottle, please.”
“Which one?” It was the older boy, Jayden.
“Left saddlebag.”
A pause. “Okay,” Jayden said, at the same moment that Ellie said,
“What? Wait—”
Hannah cut her off. “Eli, I think you and Ellie should make sure
we’re in the clear.”
“In the
clear
. . . ,” Ellie began.
“Okay,” the younger boy, Eli, said. “Come on, Ellie.”
“No,
don’t
,” Ellie said. Her tone was sharp and—through the filter of Chris’s fear—angry, verging on horrified. “You know it’s—”
Whatever else she was going to say was lost in the crunch of snow as
someone, probably Eli, took her aside.
Upset. Why?
He watched as Hannah took a Nalgene bottle that
was passed through, tugged out a long drinking tube, and slid the
mouthpiece to his lips. “Here,” she said.
Both the water’s scent, warm yet somehow sweet and earthy, and
the scream of his need were so overpowering his fear and apprehension vanished. Yet he was so horribly weak that when he pulled at
the mouthpiece, only a thin trickle spilled over his parched tongue
before dribbling from the corner of his mouth.
“Oh.” She made a small sympathetic sound. “Wait a second.”
Moving closer, she unwound her scarf before slipping a gentle hand
beneath his cheek. “Let’s raise you up a bit,” she said, supporting his
head and balling the scarf into a makeshift pillow. She was so close, he
could smell her skin, an aroma of milk and warm oatmeal. Cradling
his head in the crook of her arm, she offered him the mouthpiece
again. “Try now,” she said.
He sucked, the first precious drops slithering over his tongue to
course down his tortured throat. The sweetness of the water was
balanced against a yeasty aroma that reminded him of fresh-baked
bread. He let slip a low moan.
“Take it easy,” he heard her say, and realized that his eyes had slid
shut. The water was so good,
so good
. “There’s no rush,” she said. “I
won’t leave you. They won’t do anything else until I say it’s okay.”
He felt his body relax against her, and for a few blissful seconds, he
did nothing but drink. As the water trailed a warm finger down the
middle of his chest and into his stomach, his fear vanished. He forgot
to be embarrassed about the fact that a strange girl was holding him
as close as a baby. With every swallow, he felt his heart, racing before
with fear and pain, begin to slow.
After another minute, she touched his cheek. “That’s enough for
now,” she said. He opened his eyes to find her gray ones intent on
his face. She had very high cheekbones, but her face was square, her
mouth wide, her nose a little too big. “Wouldn’t want you to bring
that back up. Let’s wait a little, see how it goes.”
“Thank you.” The rustiness in his voice was gone. He skimmed a
lazy tongue over his lips. “Sweet.”
“That’s the honey.” Her tone was very calm yet somehow familiar,
like the tune of a favorite song he only half-remembered. “We keep
our own hives. Let me . . .” She slid back, carefully withdrawing her
arm. “Chris, what were you doing out here? Where are you from?”
“Trying . . .” He was feeling better, almost peaceful. “Trying to . .
. to get to O-Oren. F-find . . .” He licked his lips again. “Settlement.”
“A settlement in Oren.” Her tone betrayed nothing. “Why?”
“Mmm.” A strange but not unwelcome sensation of drowsiness
swept through him. He could feel his muscles beginning to relax.
“C-came from R-Rule . . .”
“Rule.” The word sounded flat and hard. “Why? And why come
this way? It’s not the fastest, or even a straight shot.”
“R-running.”
“You were running away?” When he nodded, she continued,
“Were you followed?”
“D-don’t think so. Been on the trail . . . long time.”
“I see.” She offered him the mouthpiece again. “Drink.”
The water, still so wonderfully wet, was nevertheless a touch
off
this time. Just beneath the honey and that yeasty tang, he detected
something weird, a brackish aftertaste.
“Have you been to Oren before?” she asked.
“Mmm.” He had to work at breathing, timing his words so he had
enough air. His chest was heavy again. “T-took kids.”
“Yes, everyone knows Rule does that.”
“N-not what you think,” he said. “Sick kids.”
A pause. “That was you? You’re that boy?” He registered the note
of surprise in her voice. Another pause. “Tell me how you found
them.”
Was this a test? “The . . . the designs, on the barns.” His lips tingled
as if he’d eaten too many jalapeño poppers. “That’s how . . . that’s
how . . .” He fumbled for the thought, lost it.
“Yes, that’s right,” she said, as if confirming something to herself. “What are you doing here, Chris? You’ve never come this way
before.”
“Running. Came to f-find . . .” Who? Maybe it was the light, but
her face was going out of focus.
Tired.
How strange that time felt as
if it was unwinding like a spring at the end of its useful life. The tick
of his heart was slowing. His lids kept wanting to slip shut.
I want to
sleep.
“Hunter.”
The corners of her mouth tightened. “Why do you want to see
Isaac?”
Isaac.
“You . . . you know him?”
“Why do you want to see him?” she repeated.
“N-need . . .” His thoughts were beginning to fuzz. He couldn’t
remember what he was there to do. He was growing cold again, the
sunny feeling in his chest beginning to dissipate even as the trembling
that had seized him earlier was nearly gone. “Need him to . . .”
“Need Isaac for what?” She tapped his cheek. “Chris?”
He barely registered her fingers. He had the feeling her gray eyes
were watching, very closely, but his own gaze was wavering, his grip
on consciousness beginning to slip. His mind was drifting again, the
string tying the tiny, bobbing balloon of his mind to the here and now
loosening. He couldn’t think, didn’t remember. In his chest, there was
a blackness, a blight, that was first a fist and now a slow and insidious
palm with sinuous fingers unfurling, worming their way through his
lungs, following the course of his blood: a cold, dark hand reaching
into his brain, cupping his mind and smothering his thoughts, who
he was and where.
Ellie.
A tiny spark flickered in his mind. Ellie had been upset, and
then she’d been hustled away.
When Hannah asked for the bottle of—
And then he understood.
They weren’t saving him.
They were killing him.
“Wuh?” Chris didn’t know if he meant
what
or
why
, and it really
didn’t matter. His eyes skidded, as slippery as oiled ball bearings in
his sockets. If he could just hold on . . .
Dark, so dark, like my chest
. . .
not right.
“Ha . . . uhh,” he grunted. Had she left him? Was she gone?
Why was it so dark?