She closed her eyes. On the screen of her lids, the
go-go push-push
was like blood pounding through arteries: the red storm working
fingers through her eyes, in her mind, down her throat, and then into
her heart, fisting the muscle, forcing it to a different beat:
push-push
push-push go-go go—
The sound was so sudden she nearly vaulted out of her skin. She
pressed her lips together so tightly they tingled. Under her arm, the
wolfdog was still as death.
Don’t move, don’t freak out.
Wondering
which of them she was coaching, she hugged the animal a little
closer. Her teeth were chattering
clickity-clickity-click
. Ramming her
tongue between her jaw, she bit down to stop the noise and focus.
Don’t bolt, little bunny; that’s when the hunters get you, when they see the
flash of your little white cotton tail.
“I know you’re close. I can just feel your edges.” Even shouting across half a football field’s worth of woods, the voice carried
a certain mellow, authoritative reassurance that made her think of
that actor who played Lucius Fox in the Batman movies
.
“My name’s
Finn. What’s yours?”
That answered a question. This wasn’t read-your-mind telepathy,
which would’ve been just too voodoo for her anyway
. However he’s
doing this, he can’t find me, doesn’t see me.
Wait, that wasn’t quite right.
She remembered those bizarre shifts in perspective, that sense of
distance collapsing—and that had happened to her before, hadn’t it?
When she was on Blackrocks, about to jump: an out-of-body experience the doctors said was a temporal lobe hiccup provoked by fear
and fueled, maybe, by her baby chick of a monster.
So . . . Finn was an epileptic? Or took medicine? She thought so.
That polluted smell was very strong but artificial, like those Changed
with their chemo stink. Maybe taking the same drug—because it had
to be a drug. She just knew. So how did this work for him?
The important thing: the voice was no closer, and the red storm
couldn’t get a fix. Which meant he was only guessing, calculating the
probabilities.
Just as important: that chemotherapy, cisplatin fug wasn’t getting
stronger. So that altered, engineered Changed couldn’t smell her
either. Could be a couple different reasons for that.
Or maybe only you.
She hugged the wolfdog tighter. The animal’s
ears swiveled like a bat’s, but that was the only movement it showed
at all.
Or it’s the two of us, together.
“Why are you still alive?” Finn’s
push-push
amped up. “There’s
something different about you, isn’t there? And about that boy . . .
Simon? Maybe I’ll pick him apart and find out.”
If that polluted red storm thought she was going to go all girly,
Finn had another thing coming. But how to fight him? Cancer, she
knew. One thing the shrinks tried to teach you was how to wall off
the monster, put it in a box, lock the door.
Oh bullshit. Then you’d stop talking and your bloodhound boy would’ve
already found me.
The thought was angry, a kind of mental shove—
And then she caught herself. What had he said?
I feel your edges.
Okay, there was something in that. The only way you could
feel
an edge was when you hit something solid.
It’s like closing your eyes
and trying to find your way around a wall. You only know where it ends
when your fingers hit thin air.
Maybe the red storm found her by the
obstacles she threw up to protect herself.
“What’s your name?” Another strong red
push-push
, like the sweep
of radar, trying to get a fix
.
“Come on, I can help you.”
Push-push.
“We have a lot in common, can’t you see that?”
She didn’t see it, and now she couldn’t let him see her.
Don’t give
him an edge. When he pushes, don’t push back.
The idea of doing nothing scared the living daylights out of her. It would mean letting this
wash through her without leaving a stain. She remembered Peter’s
bookshelf, and
Dune
: that mantra about fear and mind-killers.
Walk away. Let it go through me, over me.
She knew how to walk
away. She’d done that the day she’d left for the Waucamaw and a fight
she knew she couldn’t win.
So walk away from this. Don’t give the red
storm edges to feel.
But would that work? Wouldn’t the monster, deep in the lockbox of
her mind, get out? Even if it didn’t, the lockbox was like a drop of black
ink on white paper. If the red storm saw it, she was done.
Unless I go just as dark.
Closing her eyes again, she stilled her mind
just as the wolfdog had frozen to a statue by her side.
There’s only
night, and no stars.
“Take the shot,” Jayden chanted. “Come on, Chris, take the shot!”
“One more second,” Chris said. “If she surfaces too close . . .”
He and Jayden were standing a good thirty feet from the edge, worried that the jagged shelf was too unstable and might crumble. In the
water, at least fifty feet further out, the Changed boy was still there,
but Ellie was not. His first shot was meant to startle. Ellie had been
too close, and he’d been afraid to try for a kill shot. So he’d fired high;
saw the boy flinch away at the rifle’s whipcrack and his hold on the
little girl break.
Wait until she clears, wait until you see her.
He took up as much slack
on the trigger as he dared.
Ellie, Ellie, come on, you were just there, you
were just . . .
“There!” Jayden cried as the little girl’s head ruptured through the
surface not six feet from the Changed. “Take it, Chris, take it!”
“Ellie!” Chris shouted, hoping she heard and understood. “Don’t
move!”
The crack of the shot. The kick against his shoulder. A sudden red
mist ballooned above the Changed’s shoulders, and then the headless
body listed left and floated, buoyed by a bubble of air trapped under
the dead kid’s parka.
“Ellie!” Jayden was clutching a coil of rope he’d knotted to his
packhorse’s saddle. “Swim this way! Can you swim?”
“I don’t think she can do it,” Chris said. At the sound of her
name, Ellie had turned an almost listless circle. She wore the shocked
expression of the lone survivor of a car crash. Ten feet beyond her
was Mina, who looked just as spent.
She won’t make it.
Stripping out
of Jayden’s parka, he sucked air against a slap of cold on his bare
chest, then dropped to the ice and began working the laces of his
boots. “I’m going after her.”
“Are you
crazy
?” Jayden clutched his shoulder. “You’ll drown, too.”
“No, I won’t,” he said, stripping off his boots. But people his age
did die; he’d read about a fifteen-year-old kid who’d fallen through
ice and had a heart attack from the shock. “Even in freezing water, it
takes a little while, and I won’t be in that long. You’ve got the rope,
you’ve got the horse.” Peeling off his socks, he scooped up the rope
and threw in a quick bowline knot. Ellie would be too frightened and
probably too weak to hold on, but if he could get the rope under her
arms . . . He stood, screwing up his face against the sting on his bare
feet. “All I have to do is get to her. Then you pull her in.” He would
try to grab the dog, too, or at least coax it to follow.
“All right.” Jayden’s jaw set. “Go. Hurry, Chris. Go go go!”
Blowing out two quick breaths, Chris inhaled deep and long, then
plunged off the ice. The cold was much worse than he’d expected,
but he kept focused, kept moving. Surfacing, he blew out, sucked in
another breath, and started pulling for the girl.
“Ellie,” he panted. He was trying not to hyperventilate, reminding
himself that he would use up less energy if he stayed calm, took slow
breaths.
But, oh my God, the
burn
. . .
His bare chest was already numb.
Lightning shocks of pain lanced from his feet to his hips. “Ellie, I’m
right here,” he said. Those fifty feet never seemed so long, and he suddenly wondered just how much rope they had.
God, we never checked.
Too late to think about that now. He watched water slop around her
chin and then her nose; saw how she didn’t flinch.
Losing it.
“Listen to me, Ellie,” he called. “Are you listening? Put your head
all the way back. Look at the sky, Ellie, look at the sky.”
Her staring eyes rolled. They were glazed, and he wasn’t sure she
knew who he was. Then her head lolled back, but in slow motion, as
if she were truly at the end of her strength.
Almost there.
“Good, good.” Turning to face the way he’d come,
he paid out rope, praying that he didn’t run out. Jayden, he saw, had
guided his horse a little closer.
Can’t drop the rope either.
The rope
would sink, and once it was gone, it was gone
.
He could probably
swim with her, but the cold was starting to get to him, too. To his left,
the dog was paddling toward him now.
Get the rope around Ellie, grab
the dog, and then we all—
Then, suddenly, he was out of rope, and still short.
Shit.
“Ellie.” Grabbing the loop with one hand, he swam until the
rope was taut and actually out of the water, then stretched his dripping, freezing free hand. Six lousy inches . . . “Ellie, you have to come
toward me. E-Ellie, honey, take my hand. C-come on, you can do it!”
He watched her arms move but only feebly. One limp hand broke
the surface, flopping like a fish. “E-Ellie, t-try again,” he said, his teeth
stuttering, his breath starting to come up short, the cold like iron
cinching down around his ribs.
So close.
Thinking he really was going
to have to let go of the rope, grab her, then swim for it.
Do something
and do it now.
Her hand came up in that same dreamy slow motion. This time,
he lunged, hoping the sudden lurch wouldn’t send the packhorse into
a panic. He felt the slap of her hand, icy and wooden. His own fingers, numbing fast, cramped around her wrist and reeled her in.
“Okay, good, you’re doing great,” he said. She was shivering so
hard the water danced. He worked the rope over her head and under
her shoulders. The dog was there now, too, nudging at his shoulder
with its snout. “I see you, girl, hang on, hang on,” he said, unsure
which
girl
he was talking to now. “Ellie,” he said, getting his face
in hers, grabbing her hands and trying to bend her fingers to curve
around the rope. “You have to hang on. I’ll help you, but I’ve got to
help Mina, too. . . .”
That
did something. He saw a tremor shiver over Ellie’s face, her
head slowly turn, her shock-trauma eyes crawling past him. “Muhmuh-muh,” she stuttered.
“Right, it’s Mina. You have to help Mina.” Puffing now, treading
more from memory, his feet numb and legs leaden. How long had
he been in the water? Five minutes? He could only imagine how well
her brain probably
wasn’t
working right now.
But she recognizes the dog.
Still holding her hands around the rope, he got his free arm under the
dog’s chest.
Please, Mina, don’t panic, don’t bite me.
Chuffing, the dog
let out a piteous whine and then stretched for Ellie, its tongue flicking
out to try and lick her face.
“Muh-huh-huh,” Ellie gasped. He could see the white crescents
as her eyes began to roll back into her skull. Her fingers were chalk.
“Cuh-Cuh-Chrisss . . .”
“I’m h-here,” he stammered.
Won’t let you go.
He sucked in a breath
and pushed it out in a shout: “Juh-Jayden, pull! Pull!”
“It should be me,” Ellie said, cradling Bella’s head in her lap. Despite
the dance of orange light from a fire Jayden and Connor had started
two hours ago, her face was drawn and ashen. Her eyes crawled from
Jayden, who looked uncertain, to a tight-lipped Hannah, who only
looked more furious by the second. “She’s my horse.”
“But there’s no need. Jayden can do this, or Connor,” Hannah said,
and Chris thought she really was trying to keep a lid on it. Jayden
had refused to go anywhere without warming Ellie first. Chilled to
his marrow, Chris hadn’t argued. Stripping the girl out of her sodden clothes, they wrapped her in a saddle blanket and Jayden’s parka.
Chris had accepted Jayden’s sweater and then waited, next to the fire,
with Ellie cradled in his arms and the dog practically in his lap, too,
while Jayden rode for help. He’d returned with clothing, thermoses
of hot soup and tea—and a fuming Hannah.
“I’m not fighting. I’m just
saying.
” Ellie’s lower lip quivered.
Bundled in a watch cap, two sweaters, snow pants, two pairs of
socks, and a parka, she reminded Chris of the shrunken old women,
swathed beneath reams of blankets, to whom he’d used to read back
at Rule’s hospice. At Ellie’s tone, Bella let out another moan through
a froth of scarlet foam. Gulping back a sob, Ellie stroked the horse’s
poll. “I should be the one to do it. I had to leave Eli and Roc. Don’t
make me leave Bella, too.”
“It’s not the same. Eli and Roc were not
your
fault.” Hannah said it
to Ellie but aimed daggers at
him
.
Chris knew she was right. This whole mess—the barn; Bella; Eli
and Roc, trapped under the ice or at the bottom of the lake—was all
on him. No one wanted to say it, but Chris thought they might not
find the boy and his dog until spring, if then.
“Yes, it is. Cutting the ice was my idea, and now E-Eli . . .” Ellie
looked up at Jayden. “Is my gun big enough? For Bella?”
Jayden shook his head. “You’d need to use one of our rifles.”
“Which would be much too heavy,” Hannah put in. “It’s not your
job, Ellie. You’re not old enough. If you love Bella, you’ll let us end
her suffering.”
“Hannah’s right.” Jayden bent, reached a tentative hand. “We have
to go, Ellie. It’s getting late. Hannah has to check Isaac, and the animals need us. Wouldn’t you like to help?”
“Yes, but . . .” Ellie’s brimming eyes overflowed. Bella groaned
again. “Shh, girl.” Ellie impatiently backhanded tears from her
cheeks. “It’s okay.” To Jayden: “Of
course
, I’ll help. But I want to help
my horse, too.”
“Then you’ll let us—,” Hannah began.
“I’ll help you, Ellie,” Chris said.
Hannah turned him a frosty glare. “Thanks, Chris.” She said it like
he was a bug. “But this has nothing to do with you.”
No, it’s got everything to do with me.
Ignoring Hannah, he squatted
until he and Ellie were eye to eye. “We can use my gun.”
“Chris,” Hannah said.
The distress on Ellie’s face eased for a second before clenching
again. “But it’s too heavy for me.”
“Chris,”
Hannah said again.
“Leave him alone, Hannah,” Jayden said.
“What?” Hannah goggled up at the other boy, who only returned
her look with a resolute expression. “What did you say?”
“You heard me,” he said. “I have a say in this, too, remember?”
“Jayden, this isn’t the time to—”
“Here’s what we’ll do,” Chris said to Ellie. “We’ll hold the rifle
together. I’ll keep it steady and you pull the trigger. You’ll have to use
both trigger fingers, but you can do it.”
“Really?” Ellie’s chin quivered. “You’d do that?”
“Chris,”
Hannah rasped, clearly having abandoned her argument
with Jayden. To his ears, she sounded as if she were clamping back an
impulse either to scream or blow his head off. Possibly both. “Ellie is
too
young
to—”
“It’s her choice, Hannah.” Chris thought there was no irony in his
tone. “Isn’t choice what you’re all about?”
“What?” Hannah blinked as if he’d slapped her, and then all her
frustration—and her grief, Chris thought—poured out in a poisonous
rush. “Don’t twist this around. This is your fault,
your
responsibility.
You brought this on us. You think helping her with something like
this makes up for what you’ve done? For what you
didn’t
do today?”
“Hannah,” Jayden said. “That’s not fair. We killed three. You
weren’t there.”
Her eyes blazed in the firelight. “I didn’t need to be. Chris had
Lena. You said so. But he didn’t take the shot. I don’t know if I
care
to
understand why—”
“For the same reason I’m not sure I could shoot you,” Chris said,
roughly. He kept reliving the moment: Lena in his sights, her face
huge in the scope and so . . .
Changed
; that terrible sweep of mingled
pity and dismay that stole his breath and robbed him of the chance
to end this. Well, end
her
. He’d shot, finally, but pulled it at the last
second. Then, it was all about Ellie. “I’d feel the same about Jayden,
or
anyone
I know or care about.”
Hannah gave a brittle laugh. “
This
is caring? You led them to us.
You should’ve recognized what was happening to Lena, but you were
blind, Chris; you were willfully blind. If you’d been honest from the
beginning, we could’ve taken precautions. We could’ve
left
.”
“We’ll still have to leave,” Jayden said. His face had paled.
“Yes, but on our terms, not after losing animals, a
child
. After Lena
killed her own
brother
.”
“Hannah.” Ellie’s face knotted. “
Don’t
. Don’t yell at Chris.”
“You think you can wash away that kind of blood, Chris? There’s
no way you can make this right!” She actually balled her fist and
shook it in his face. “Isaac’s old. That fire did him no favors. If he
lives,
he
might forgive you. You and Jayden may be best friends all of
a sudden—”
“Hannah,” Jayden said.
“And maybe Jayden understands, but I don’t. I wish you
had
died.”
“Hannah!” Jayden snatched her wrist. “
Stop
this!”
“Let me go, let me—” The
crack
her palm made on Jayden’s cheek
was brisk as a rifle shot. Seething, she wrenched free and screamed at
Chris, “I wished we’d never
met
you! I wished you’d
stayed
dead! Why
couldn’t you have
died
, why didn’t you
die
?”
“Hannah!” Ellie said. “Stop! Jayden, make her—”
“I don’t know, Hannah.” Every word was another twist of the
knife, and Chris thought he deserved it all. What could he say?
I was
afraid?
“I don’t know why I’m alive, and I’m sorry I didn’t die. You
want me to leave and I will, first thing.”
“No,” Ellie began.
“Oh yes, of
course
.” Hannah started for him. “Leave now, leave us
to deal with
your
mess—”
Jayden put himself between Chris and Hannah. “What are you
doing?” When she looked like she was going to swing again, Jayden
put up his hands to ward her off. “What
are
you?”
“What
am
I?” That stole the wind from her sails for a second. She
turned him an incredulous look. “What do you mean? I’m who I
always was. I’m trying to keep us
alive
.”
“Not this way,” Jayden said quietly. “Yours is not the only voice,
Hannah. It can’t be.”
“If you won’t listen to me, listen to Jayden,” Chris said. “You need
to get control of yourself. This is Ellie’s right, and I’m going to help
her. If you really cared, if this was about
her
and not you, you’d see
that.”
Hannah opened her mouth, but Jayden said, “Please, shut the hell
up, Hannah.”
“Jayden.” Her face crumpled with shock. “You’re taking
his
side?”
“Chris was scared, and I would never hit you. Think about that.
And, no, I’m taking Ellie’s side.” Showing her his back before she
could reply, Jayden nodded at Chris.
He didn’t need any more permission and paid Hannah no more
mind. Chris cupped Ellie’s hands. “Let me help you with Bella, okay?
And tell Mina to lie down.”
Together, they eased the horse’s head to the snow. He waited,
ignoring Hannah, who still fumed, but silently now, as Ellie tended
to the dog and then bent to whisper into her mare’s ear and kiss the
horse’s nose.
“Okay, this has a big kick, so be ready.” Standing behind the little
girl, he positioned her hands on the .30-06, then held the rifle’s muzzle an inch from Bella’s ear. “I’ve got it. Pull the trigger when you’re
ready.”
“Okay.” Ellie craned a look. “Thank you, Chris.”
Her face shimmered, and he thought it was a good thing he didn’t
have to aim much, because he’d have to wipe his eyes. He had never
felt more ashamed. This little girl was thanking him for getting her
friend killed, and her horse, too. In a few more hours, he would also
have to tell her about Alex and break her heart all over again. Jayden
would hate him then, too.