The Thirteenth Skull

by Rick Yancey

We took the passage on our right. Ashley had said she was okay, but she was wincing with every step and breathing hard. My head hurt. Was my head pounding now from all the running and fighting—or was it broadcasting our position on the Kropp Channel?

  “I’ve got a bomb in my head,” I told her.

  “I’ve got a bullet in my foot,” the guard said.

  I ignored him. “An SD 1031. It’s also a tracking device.”

  “I didn’t know,” she said.

  “Didn’t know about the device or didn’t know it was in my head?”

  “Didn’t know they implanted you.”

  “Well, probably best you knew, in case I go down with blood pouring from my orifices.”

  We came to some stairs.

  “Up the stairs, first hall on the right, door at the end of the hall,” the guard said.

  “Where’s that put us?” I gasped. He was gaining about a pound with every step I took.

  “Back door.”

  When we reached the door, I dropped him, grabbed a fistful of his collar, and pulled him to his feet. I shoved him toward the keypad.

  “If this is a trick, you die,” I promised him.

  He punched in the code, the little light flashed green, and the door swung open, revealing a white landscape shimmering like a Courier and Ives print.

  Then Nueve stepped through the doorway, his gun pointed at Ashley’s head.

  “No, Alfred,” Nueve said softly. “She dies.”

  03:02:55:21

  “A most ingenious and impressive attempt,” Nueve said. “But ultimately fruitless. Drop your weapon. You know I will not hesitate to kill her.”

  I did know that. And I also knew this was my last chance to escape. If I gave up now, I would spend the rest of my life at Camp Lobotomy, a locked-up lab rat at the mercy of this slick Spanish madman. That didn’t really appeal to me, but neither did Nueve putting a bullet into Ashley’s head. I didn’t think Abby Smith knew what Nueve was up to, but that didn’t matter. By the time she found out, it would be too late. I’d be a vegetable and Ashley would be dead.

  When you get to that place where desperation meets despair, the best thing to do is zig when the baddies expect you to zag.

  It went very fast but felt very slow.

  I raised my gun.

  And then I pulled the trigger.

  And then the bullet smashed into Ashley.

  That bought two seconds, because it was the last thing Nueve expected. I used those two seconds to leap over Mr. Bullet-Foot and hit Nueve full force, wrapping him in a bear hug and driving him to the ground.

  I straddled his chest, put one foot on his gun hand, and pinned his left arm with my knee. I pushed the barrel of my gun against his finely developed cheekbone.

  “The box,” I said. “Where is it?”

  “Left pocket,” he said.

  I pulled the gun from his hand, stuck it in my pocket, then switched my gun to the other hand so I could get into his left pocket. Once I had the box, I stood up and backed away, putting Mr. Bullet-Foot between me and Nueve.

  Nueve sat up, holding his right wrist, red from the pressure of my boot. “Now what?” he asked. “You are surrounded by hundreds of miles of wilderness. How far do you think you can go? If we don’t get you, the elements will.”

  I pulled Ashley to her feet. I whispered her name, but she didn’t answer. Her eyes rolled in her head. I didn’t think I had much time.

  “Call me crazy,” I said. “But I’m gonna risk the elements.” I brushed past him, holding Ashley against my side.

  “Alfred,” he called softly.

  I turned.

  “You should shoot me.”

  I turned away.

  “You know what will happen if you don’t kill me,” he said. “I will not stop. You know I will not stop. You know there are no boundaries that can stop me. Dispatch me, and the director might be able to persuade the board to let you go.”

  He smiled. “It is the thing-that-must-be-done.”

  “I should shoot you,” I said. “For all those reasons plus a couple more.”

  I kicked the door closed in his face.

  03:02:52:28

  We were standing at the back of the château, looking down a steep, densely wooded slope, the bottom of which was lost in the shadow of the mountain range directly in front of us. Ashley’s breath exploded from her mouth, crystalline white puffs of air that barely escaped her pale lips before the wind whipped them away.

  “Can you walk?” I asked.

  She mumbled something against my chest. Her knees buckled. I held her up and glanced back at the château. Pushed against the wall were six large plastic garbage cans, their lids held down with bungee cords, I guessed to keep the bears from rifling through the trash.

  I eased her to the ground. “Be right back,” I said. I trotted over to the cans, freeing one lid and leaving the thick rubber cord threaded through the lid’s handle. I placed the lid upside down at the top of the slope and then returned to her.

  “What are you doing?” she asked as I scooped her up.

  “Ever go sledding?” I asked.

  “I’m from Southern California!” she gasped.

  I plopped her into the center of the overturned lid and positioned myself behind her. She drew her legs up to her chest as I wrapped mine around her shivering body. We fit, but barely. At that moment, the door behind us flew open and a mass of black-clad agents swarmed out. No time to think about it now. No time to work up my courage or even consider the wisdom of what I was about to do. There was no clear path below and the odds were we’d hit a tree before we went twenty feet, but if it’s necessary then it’s possible, and our getting away from the Company’s clutches was pretty darn necessary.

  I grabbed the metal hooks on either end of the bungee cord and pushed off.

  The fresh snowfall from the night before was a blessing— and a curse. It covered fallen branches and small bushes and the twisted upraised roots of the trees, but it also made us go faster. The lid was slightly concave, so by pulling on the cord and shifting my weight from one side to the other, I could kind of direct our descent as we flew down the mountain. We almost tipped straight over a couple of times, until I yelled at Ashley to lean back against me. I didn’t dare look to see if they were coming after us; I didn’t think they could without jumping on some lids themselves or fetching some skis.

  They were shooting at us, though. The bullets tore into tree trunks and snapped off small branches as we rocketed past, flinging chunks of wood and toothpick-sized pieces of shrapnel on impact.

  Maybe three hundred yards down, we went airborne, clearing a small ledge, smacking down so hard my jaws slammed together with enough force to bite my tongue in two if it had been between them. The trees thinned out and, looking over Ashley’s shoulder, I could see the slope abruptly ended: we were heading straight for a deep gorge. If I didn’t find a way to stop us, we were going straight over the edge of a cliff.

  I flung my legs out and pulled back hard on the cord, like a rider trying to rein in a runaway horse. We went into a spin and the world whirled around us, trees, snow, rock, sky.

  Instinctively, I shoved Ashley as hard as I could. She tumbled away and then I dove after her. The lid tumbled over the cliff, swallowed by the deep shadow of the crevasse.

  I was sliding toward it on my back, frantically kicking my heels into the snow, trying to slow my descent. My flailing right hand touched Ashley’s forearm and I grabbed her. Dumb idea: if I went over the edge, I’d take her down with me. I let go.

  We came to a snow-crunching stop with five feet to spare, flat on our backs, staring up with open mouths at the cloudless, brilliant blue sky. After what seemed like a very long time, I looked at her, and saw the snow beneath her was red.

  I didn’t dare stand up. The ground was steep and slick with snow. So I scooted to her side like a marine in the barbed-wire portion of an obstacle course.

  “Nothing personal—gotta do this, Ashley,” I
breathed in her ear as I unbuttoned her jumpsuit. I pulled back the material to reveal the wound: the bullet had torn into her left side, between a couple of ribs; I probably got one of her lungs. I tried not to look, but I did notice—I swear not on purpose— that her bra was pink.

  Then I dug into the snow until I reached the hard, frozen ground beneath and slammed my wounded palm against it until the cut burst open and began to bleed.

  I pressed my palm against the bullet hole and I also pressed my lips against her ear, which was bright red and very cold, whispering, “In the name of Michael, Prince of Light, I command you to be healed, Ashley. Be healed . . .”

  My heart pumped blood down my arm, into my hand, through the jagged lips of my wound and entered her body.

  A gift . . . not a treasure.

  Ashley’s eyes came open and she said in a clear, strong voice, “I can’t believe you shot me, you jerk.”

  02:17:16:44

  The sky was darkening, the first stars were poking through the atmosphere, and the temperature had dropped at least ten degrees when Ashley lowered herself to the ground and leaned against a tree, gasping.

  “Can’t go on . . . Got to rest,” she said.

  That was fine with me. We’d been hiking along the ridge for hours, staying near the cover of the trees, stopping only to eat snow to keep us hydrated and to listen for any sound of pursuit. There was lots of snow but no pursuit, though once I thought I heard the sound of a helicopter to the south, where the compound was.

  “Why did you shoot me?” she asked.

  “If I tried to shoot Nueve, he’d shoot you. If I didn’t shoot, we were both shot. He thought those were the only two options: shoot him—not shoot him. So instead I shot you. He thought I’d zig, so I zagged.”

  “You zagged?”

  “Well, it worked, didn’t it?”

  She didn’t answer. She blew into her hands. Her fingers were bright red. No gloves, no parkas, and a night that promised temperatures well below freezing. My zagging might just kill us yet.

  I started to unlace one of my boots.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I saw this on a show,” I said. “You take a stick, make a bow from your shoelace, and use it to spin the wood until the friction makes a fire. We’ve got to make a fire, Ashley.”

  “Or we could just make a huge sign in the snow that says, ‘Here we are!’ ” she said.

  “Maybe you’d rather die of hypothermia,” I said.

  She stood up and walked deeper into the trees. I started after her and tripped on my loose shoelace, falling facefirst into the snow. When I looked up, I saw her kneeling, digging like a dog after a bone, snow flying everywhere.

  I laced up my boot and went over to her.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Digging a snow cave. It would go faster if you helped.”

  I knelt beside her and together we hollowed out a space wide and deep enough for both of us to crawl inside. She ordered a halt every few minutes—not to rest, but to keep ourselves from sweating. You sweat in these temperatures and your sweat freezes and then you’re an ice sculpture. Her every gesture and every word, even the word “faster” or “deeper,” had an undercurrent of anger to it. I wondered why she was angry at me—or if she was just angry at the situation. Of course, I did put a bullet into her, but she was a former field operative and had to understand the zigzag theory. The important thing to understand about girls is you can’t understand them. Girls are complicated. You can understand the complication, but not the girl.

  After half an hour, teeth chattering, muscles singing with fatigue, we crawled inside our makeshift cave—more a trench or shaft than a cave, barely wide enough for both of us. We lay on our sides facing each other, and Ashley of the blond hair and perfect skin and eyes the color of a winter sky wrapped her arms around me and pulled me close.

  “We have to conserve our . . . our b-b-b-body heat . . .” she stammered.

  So I folded her into my arms. Her face pressed against my neck; I could feel her warm breath on my cold skin.

  “I didn’t know,” she said after a few minutes. “What Nueve was planning.”

  “I figured that,” I said. “Hard to believe anyone would willingly let herself be sliced open like that. The big question is, did Abby Smith know?”

  “No. In the conference room, after you left with Mingus, she gave Nueve a direct order you were to be given nonintrusive tests only until she got back from headquarters.”

  “So she’s not in on the lobotomy.”

  “Lobotomy?”

  “That’s what I figured. Nueve’s gone solo-loco and it’s better to apologize later than ask for permission first. He had the fix in from the beginning.”

  Her arms tightened around me. “I’m cold. I’m s-s-s-o cold.”

  I rubbed my hands up and down her back. “It’s gonna be okay,” I said. “I’ve been through worse than this and I’m not dead yet. I’ve got Nueve’s box . . .”

  “Not the only one,” she said. “If he doesn’t have a backup for it in camp, they’ll chopper one in tomorrow.”

  “What’s its range? Do you know?”

  “N-n-not sure . . . maybe a mile, two . . . Doesn’t matter . . . can’t hike out—they’ll find us eventually, if we don’t die of exposure first.”

  “Well,” I said, trying to think of a bright side. “I’d rather die that way than their way.”

  “I’d rather not die at all.”

  I felt something wet on my neck.

  “Hey,” I said. “Don’t, Ashley. I’m working on it.”

  “What are you working on?”

  “A plan to get us out of here.”

  “Oh. Okay. Thanks. I feel much better now.”

  We didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Night had fallen and I couldn’t see a thing, not even the top of her head two inches beneath my nose. I could smell her hair, though, and feel her body quivering against mine.

  “What did you do with Nueve’s gun?” she asked.

  “Put it in my pocket.”

  “That’s what I thought,” she said. She sighed with relief. “Good.”

  I closed my eyes. I didn’t feel so cold; in fact, I actually felt warm. The cold snow beneath me and against my back felt like a warm blanket, and I began to float off to sleep.

  “Talk to me, Alfred,” she said suddenly. “We c-c-can’t fall asleep . . .”

  “Okay,” I said, and immediately my mind went blank.

  “What’s the plan?”

  “Plan?”

  “The plan you’re working on.”

  “We can’t hike out,” I said. “So we’re flying out.”

  “You saw a show about making a glider out of tree branches, deer droppings, and spit?”

  “They’ve got one chopper here already and probably more on the way,” I said. “And only one place to land and take off. Can you fly one?”

  “What makes you think I can fly one?”

  “It’s a key part of my plan.”

  “I can’t fly one.”

  “It’s also a key flaw in my plan.”

  She laughed. It felt good to feel her laugh.

  “I keep trying to decide if meeting you was the best thing that happened to me or the worst,” she said.

  “Maybe both. Why did you come back to help extract me, Ashley?”

  “Because I knew what it felt like,” she said after a pause. “To lose everything. I went into Field Operations right after college, Alfred, and a field operative can’t have a past . . . family . . . friends . . . Medcon took care of it . . . OIPEP ‘kills’ all its field operatives, fakes their deaths . . . Ashley isn’t even my real name. And when I left, I couldn’t go back to my old life. Everybody from it thought I was dead . . . They gave me a new identity after I resigned, a new place to live, but it was like I was nobody. I couldn’t be who I was before and I couldn’t be ‘Ashley’ either. I was totally alone. I was . . . no one.”

  “Ash
ley’s not your name?”

  “No.”

  “What is your real name?”

  “Gertrude.”

  I thought about that.

  “Can I still call you Ashley?”

  I felt her smile against my neck.

  “Sometimes I think of her as a different person,” she said. “Gertrude. Someone I used to know a long time ago, like another person who really had died.”

  I nodded. “Me too—the old me before the Sword came along. I miss him sometimes. The old me. Like I was wondering if OIPEP has a time machine. Does it?”

  “I don’t think it does.”

  “Be great if it did.”

  “If it did, I would go back and be sixteen again.”

  “Really? Why?”

  She sighed against my neck and we didn’t say anything for a while.

  “You’re not talking,” she said.

  “Vampires,” I said.

  “Vampires? That’s random.”

  “Well, this morning I was thinking about vampires,” I said. “I never understood why people were so fascinated by them, girls especially—I guess because they’re usually good-looking guys with all these superhuman powers, plus the fact that I guess they’re sort of tragic and girls feel sorry for them. Maybe it’s because they’re blessed with immortality but cursed with death.”

  “Maybe it’s the way they dress,” she said. “You never see a vampire in dorky clothes.”

  “And they’re always handsome and fit. You never see a fat, ugly vampire.”

  “Maybe it’s just the fact that love is blind.” Her voice got soft and lazy, as if she were drifting off to sleep. “You can’t help it, you know? Who you fall in love with. Sometimes you want to help it. You would do anything not to be.”

  “Not to be what?”

  “In love!”

  She gave my shin a light tap with the toe of her boot, one of those girl kicks that isn’t meant to be taken as a kick.

  “What about you?” I asked. “Have you ever been?”

  “I thought I was—once. We broke it off.”

  “How come?”

  “I decided to leave the Company and he became the new Operative Nine.”

  “Nueve?” I was floored. “Nueve was your boyfriend?”