Devil’s Wake (24 page)

A sound like a ball-peen hammer thumped Blue Beauty’s side.

An answering shot came from inside the bus, but the distant rifle didn’t move. Waiting again. Sonia couldn’t see anything but the rifleman’s gun, but she tried to visualize where he’d hidden his body, estimating his size and length in the snow.
Center of mass.

Why was it taking her so long to pull the trigger? She’d wanted to shoot Ursalina over nothing, and now she was having trouble shooting a pirate? A slaver?

But she was drenched from crawling in snow, and she was shaking, her breath ragged. Sonia’s finger curled around the trigger and squeezed. She was so numb, she barely felt it when the trigger broke and the stock of her rifle bucked against her shoulder.

The snow across from her shuddered, rose up a few inches like someone breaking the top of an undercooked biscuit, and then sank down again. The rifle barrel wobbled, and then aimed up at the sky, almost as if someone was lying across the stock.

She’d gotten him.

Sonia waited for horror or excitement. Her mind was empty, but
her fingers were shaking, electrified. Eager to keep shooting.

“Good shot!” Dean called from the window above her.

Sonia took a deep breath, exhaled, and looked for another target. No time to celebrate. A vivid sound caught her ear in the wind.

Unless it was her imagination…

“Snowcats!” Terry said.

Death sounded like the burr of snowmobiles, and Ursalina Cortez hated the cold.

Her family tree had roots in Miami, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic, so cold wasn’t in her DNA. That was the first thing she’d told Mickey when she moved to Washington:
Next time, we’re living somewhere sunny and hot.
When Ursalina Cortez had left the tropics, the order of the universe had been destroyed. Instead of dying on her beloved planet Earth, the sunny one she knew, she was stranded here in this frozen hell.

With snowmobiles.

Suddenly, Ursalina wanted to talk to God, although believing in God enraged her. If God gets the glory, who gets the blame? God was on an Old Testament rampage, and Ursalina was on the wrong side of history. God must be a man after all; no woman, no mother, could behave like this. And God was clearly pissed off, that was clear—there were too many reasons to choose from, so she’d stopped trying to guess months ago.

But it was time to make peace and try to bargain.

You gotta admit, I did pretty right by you. I almost never took your name in vain like
Abuela
said, even when you deserved it BIG-TIME. I lit candles. I thanked you for Mickey. I thanked you for bringing that baby girl into my world when I didn’t know I wanted a kid, how much I needed one. You saw all this was coming, you were setting me up just to lose everything, and you let me thank you anyway.

Her prayer was turning angry. Ursalina had avoided praying because she always ended up cussing out God, and she didn’t want to dig any deeper into hell.

Ursalina crawled away from the stalled car, the snow high enough that she was wading chest-deep. But her adrenaline burned away the cold. She was caught closer to the driver’s side of the Blue Beauty, away from the door. Her best bet was to get under the Beauty with Sonia.

Soon, their bus would be dead to them. If the shooters got bored, they would start aiming for the gas tank.

The kid had to get the bus moving.

Ursalina’s prayer went on:
We’ve had our ups and downs, so I hope you appreciate the significance of me crawling to you on bended knee. I would cross myself if I could take my finger off this trigger. I’m asking you for just one thing and you will never hear from me again.

Do.

Not.

Let.

Me.

Die.

In.

This.

Goddamn.

Snow.

Snowmobiles were bearing closer, coming from north. And south. Two, maybe three. And there were two or three shooters hidden in the snow. Terrible odds.

On the ridge, Ursalina saw a flicker: shadow, light, shadow. Running.

A shot, from somewhere to her left, spanged against the Beauty, fifteen yards from her. This was a heavier caliber, military grade, and something inside their transport hissed. Another shot, and the snow
a foot from Ursalina’s shoulder exploded.

But Ursalina had decided not to die running like Mickey. She knelt like a statue, training her eye where she’d seen the shadow, ignoring the approaching engines bringing death of a different variety. The Twins and Sonia would have their hands full with the snowmobiles, and one hidden sniper could kill them all.

Another shot kicked the snow, eight inches right. Ursalina felt a brief flash of fear, rolling a foot to the right… and lost her aperture.
Dammit!
Another shot, and this one sparking off a rock under the snow. She took a chance, rolled back to the left.

There.

Ursalina squeezed the trigger, twice. A scream, a thud of a falling body, and—

A shot answered from behind her, close enough to flick snow into her hair. Ursalina cursed, curled into a ball, and rolled to the right until she was on her feet. She stumbled for a few inelegant steps, nearly pitching forward into the snow, before she made it to the cavern beneath the tour bus. She was running the wrong way.

And she’d missed the door.

“You okay?” the kid, Piranha, called down.

Ursalina banged twice against the undercarriage with her rifle stock. “Make sure this is in neutral. Steer right.”

“I’m ready when he’s ready,” Piranha said.

“When are you gonna jump out?”

“First chance I get after he’s clear,” Piranha said.

She didn’t mention that Terry might knock the second bus over too far or block Piranha in. It might work, it might not. Ursalina wanted to see the kids make it, but she wouldn’t live long enough to ride with them. She wouldn’t know them long enough to memorize their names. Names were a waste of time.

The night baby Sharlene died, Ursalina had forgotten how to pray. After what happened to Mickey—
what HAPPENED to Mickey, you
mean how freaks bit off pieces of her until there was nothing left, at least you HOPE that’s what happened
—Ursalina’s head was a blizzard of curses. She shouldn’t have tried to pray. No wonder she’d blasphemed when she tried even a small request.

Now God was going to shoot her down.

In the snow.

“Where are those snowmobiles?” Terry shouted.

Dean was pressed hard against the bus’s rear wall of boxes, nursing a cut on his cheek. Glass fragments dusted his clothes.

But Dean went back to his window post, squinting to see outside. A snowmobile was hazing them, moving too fast for him to target, pausing when it was out of range or behind another corner, and then coming at them again.

A two-man ride. Bright red. Dean had no idea of the maker, but whoever it was, they’d made ’em fast. The riders wore bulky coats and goggles, a passing blur. The passenger held a sawed-off shotgun with one hand, aiming directly at the driver’s side window.

“Duck!” Dean called out.

Boom!

The Beauty shuddered as a fistful of iron pellets slammed into the side. Dean peeked back out and saw the snowmobile disappear uphill, around the bulk of the tour bus. Thank God the shooters had to move in close with a shotgun. Dean wasn’t riding a snowmobile, so his aim would be steadier—if he could shoot fast enough.

“We gotta move,” Terry said. He sounded scared. He shifted gears,
a tug-of-war. The Blue Beauty bellowed a complaint while the tire’s chains dragged across the asphalt, clanking to life.

Everything was too loud, too fast. No thoughts, only instinct.

Kendra was holding a 9mm from Ursalina’s backpack but hadn’t fired it yet. She might do more harm than good with her gun; the shapes she saw through the windows were moving quickly. Her impotence clouded her eyes with tears. She was letting her new friends down.

The bus moved, hitching forward. Trying to drag itself.

“Sonia’s
under
the bus!” Kendra shouted.

Terry shook his head. “She’s gotta move!” he said. “I’m starting slow.”

Kendra crawled down to the door well to yell outside. She expected to see Sonia’s lifeless legs crushed red beneath her, but found only white snow. From the corner of her eye, something bright sped toward her like a ray of light. A snowmobile.

“Sonia!”
Kendra screamed.

Sonia rolled from behind the front tire, red-faced. She’d picked her moment and rolled free of the bus.

The snowmobile was louder, drawn by their movement.

Sonia thrust her gun toward Kendra, trying to gain her footing. “Take this!”

Kendra took the gun, flinging it behind her. Sonia leaped, reaching for her, and Kendra caught her hand. Sonia’s bare hand was as damp and cool as ice, but Kendra held on, bracing her foot against the door when she slid.

Kendra’s anchor helped bring Sonia to her feet. Two running steps, and she was on the bus, clinging to Kendra when her numb hands slipped from the metal bars.

The snowmobile was so close that Kendra saw the driver’s face speeding toward her: a windblown man, jaw set hard, teeth bared with determination, or a lopsided leering grin. In that instant, it seemed he could drive straight up to them and pull them both out of the bus.
Was
it a grin, full of anticipation?

Kendra’s blood crawled.

Deafening staccato gunfire from inside the bus changed the driver’s mind. Both of the Twins were firing at them, standing upright at their windows. The driver veered sharply away before his shooter could answer.

Sonia didn’t seem to have noticed the grin or how close the snowmobile had come. “I got one,” Sonia told Terry. Her teeth were chattering, but she didn’t seem to notice that either. “Piranha’s in the bus. He’s ready to help you get clear. Just honk.”

Kendra was heartened by the hope she saw flicker across Terry’s face. This was how they had survived, she realized. They fit together. They filled each other’s gaps. They had moved cars dozens of times.

The bus’s chains clanked louder as the Beauty picked up speed, climbing toward the tour bus. Kendra thanked God for sparing their bus long enough for the Beauty to drive away. If only their bus could move fast enough to push the larger one.

Abruptly, the gunfire went silent; like the end of a nightmare, or the new one waiting. The snowmobile was out of range, and the Twins had to conserve their bullets.

“I’ll give Piranha time to jump on,” Terry said. The plan sounded neat and ordered, as if it didn’t factor in the people shooting at him.

“You’ll try,” Sonia corrected him. Terry gave her a look but didn’t dispute her.

“Where’s Ursalina?”

Gunfire crackled from somewhere near the tour bus.

“Follow the noise,” Sonia said.

The giddiness snuck up on Ursalina. It was the last thing she
was expecting.

Her right nostril and ear were plugged with snow; she’d buried herself in it a few yards from the bus. She’d timed her scurrying dig just as she’d heard the snowmobile winding around the far side of the bus, ready for another approach.

Now she was hunting, not running, and she liked it.

Sure enough, while one snowmobile had flanked the Beauty and the other circled the tour bus, she’d had enough time to make herself as close to invisible as she needed to be for the driver speeding up from the left, his eyes studying the Beauty’s windshield. The triggerman had picked his spot, and he was going for the driver—Terry. It was exactly what Ursalina would have done.

So she was ready for him. She was so sure of the shot, she barely had to look to squeeze the trigger. She visualized the shotgunner falling like a rag doll, and he did exactly that. The snowmobile plowed spumes of snow into the air as it wheeled around. The driver wasn’t the sentimental type. He barely slowed. He took another bead, raising his own gun—only a pistol, but he had first shot.

A bullet whizzed past Ursalina’s head, but she didn’t bother ducking. He was moving. She braced herself on one knee, drawing a bead even as the driver took another shot back over his shoulder, kicking up snow to her left. She squeezed the trigger.

The report was sharp. His head snapped back as if someone had slammed a two-by-four against his teeth. The snowmobile abruptly banked left, out of Ursalina’s view. Then a mechanical groan, and the engine died down.

One snowmobile left, one or two snipers. The odds were getting better.

Ursalina jumped to her feet and waved to Terry, unmistakable:
Move.

Another snowmobile was coming around, heading back north to
get behind them and swing around for another go. Kendra jerked her head back into the bus as the crimson flash careened along the western bank. A rifle shot. She swore that she could hear the supersonic whine as the bullet zipped past her head. The crash of gunfire in the confined space was deafening, ringing her to her bones.

She needed her gun.

As Kendra crawled back for her gun, images flashed to her sight: Hipshot’s nails scrabbling for purchase against the Beauty’s metal floor. Shell casings falling as the Twins fired, precious spent shell casings rolling at their feet. The gleaming of the glass as another window exploded.

“Ursalina needs cover!” Terry said. “She’s running for the bus!”

Kendra glanced through the windshield, and Ursalina was in a full run… from what seemed a football field away. She wasn’t waiting to catch her ride. She didn’t want the bus to slow down for her.

“Stay at the door,” Sonia told Kendra, tossing her gun to her. Sonia took a window post, sticking her head up to survey their predicament.

“Eyes open,” Dean said.

“I see her! Damn!” Darius said, and ducked back as a box next to his head evaporated into a shower of corn flakes.

Explosions filled the bus as they returned the gunfire. Kendra waited in the door well, holding the door open with one hand while she gripped her gun with the other.