“Yes,” I said, deciding immediately that it was the only way. “Yes, let’s do it.”
I moved toward the sled setup and started helping him to move it onto the ice.
“But Angie sits between us. I’ll go in front, to give her the most shelter we can manage. Marlon, you’ll be in charge of steering. Keep your feet out of the sled and use them to guide us one way or the other. We stay as close to the shore as we can manage, for the same reason we were there before. Thicker ice.”
“Agreed,” Marlon said from behind me. “And you’re in charge of shouting out what you see ahead of us. If my estimations are correct, we’re going to end up going at a pretty good clip. I’m going to need plenty of warning about anything that might be in our way if I’m going to be able to steer us around it.”
I nodded. “And I should be able to use my weight as well, to point us in one direction or another.” I put the sled on the ice and stood up straight to look at him. “Are we really going to do this?”
“It’s the only way to get her to a doctor quickly, John,” he said quietly. “And you and I both know how vital that is.”
A sudden gunshot in the distance had us both jumping, and without another word, we were getting Angie settled in the roughly middle seat of the toboggan, Marlon’s pack at the back of the open space and mine at the front. Neither Marlon or I sat down, though. Not yet.
We were going to be in charge of the running start.
Once we had the sled in position, Marlon and I got up alongside it, one of us on each side. I bent down and grabbed onto the rim on the side closest to the shore, while Marlon took up the same position on the other side, behind Angie.
This was ridiculous. And I hoped to God that it worked. Because by my count, we now had wolves, a woman on the verge of hypothermia, and insane hunters on our tail.
Another gunshot in the distance set Marlon and I both to sprinting forward, the sled between us, our feet churning through the thin dusting of snow on the ice as we belted ahead in our bid to get the sled as much speed as we possibly could before we jumped in. I wasn’t sure how much the hill was actually going to help us—or if we were going to end up doing this same thing again and again throughout the day—but we’d never know unless we tried.
And I was growing more and more afraid that if we didn’t at least try, we might well find ourselves dead before we came up with another idea.
Once we were going at a decent clip, Marlon shouted for us to get in, and I jumped into the air next to the sled, pulling my legs up in front of me and crossing them into position before I landed on my butt in the hard plastic.
“Oof!” I grunted, unable to stop myself. I’d felt the jolt go through my hips and all the way up to my spine, and I felt like we were lucky that I hadn’t cracked the ice with that move alone—let alone the fact that Marlon and I must have both done it at the same time.
Hell, if we’d thought about it, maybe we would have figured out that we should do it separately. But it was too late now. I held my breath, partially because I was having trouble breathing after that landing and partially because I was waiting to see whether the ice cracked around us.
“John, pay attention!” Angie suddenly screamed in my ear.
I looked up to see that we were heading right for a tree that was hanging over the river, going at a fairly decent clip, and remembered that I had responsibilities here. I leaned far out over the left side of the sled, guiding us with my weight around the tree, and once we flew past it, I leaned back toward the shore. I didn’t want to lean too far, for fear of turning the sled on its side, and with steering this rudimentary I knew that the chances of me oversteering were going to be high.
If we started going in the wrong direction there’d be no way to fix it until it was too late.
But I thought that I was starting to get it down. I was able to navigate past the next set of bushes, in part because Marlon was helping with his feet, and at the next obstacle I shouted for Marlon to keep his feet in the sled.
“They might slow us down!” I shouted back toward him, leaning slightly to the left to take us around a large stone.
In truth, though, I didn’t think anything was going to slow us down. The downhill slant of the river hadn’t seemed like much before, but now that we were flying down the ice chute, I could feel that we were going more and more quickly with every foot. The combination of the ice underneath us and the weight of the sled and our bodies—plus my pack in the nose—was giving us enough momentum that it would have been extremely painful to fall out of the sled at this point. The scenery was actually flying by, and if we hadn’t had my pack in the front of the sled, I would have worried about it going airborne.
Another set of bushes, and I leaned far out into the river, then guided the thing back toward the shore.
“How are you doing?” I shouted over my shoulder at Angie. “Is that quilt keeping you warm?”
“This is amazing!” she shouted back. “Why didn’t we try this the first time? It’s so much faster!”
“Because it’s also verging on suicidal,” I said grimly to myself. I made sure she didn’t hear me, though. I didn’t want to worry her. She had enough to deal with already.
We flew through the increasingly gloomy afternoon, skirting rocks, trees, and bushes, and it soon became obvious that we wouldn’t have to worry about getting the sled started again. Instead, I was starting to worry that we might be going too quickly. It was growing more and more possible that we were actually going to lose control of the sled entirely, and I didn’t want to find out what that was going to look like at the end of the day.
All thoughts of speed flew out of my head, though, when someone behind us suddenly started shooting at us.
23
We all ducked away from the first bullet that flew past from somewhere behind us on the river, sending the sled skidding directly toward the middle of the river, and then, at my shouted “Right!” we all ducked in the other direction.
Only we were now going full-force right toward the mud, trees, and bushes of the bank of the river.
“Left!” I screamed, knowing already that I wasn’t going to be able to steer the sled away from that collision course by myself.
This time, we all managed to lean more slowly rather than actually throwing ourselves in one direction, and the turn was more gradual. Almost easy. Within seconds, the sled was moving rapidly down the river again on a somewhat straight course.
Right toward Ellis Woods. Right toward safety. Except that we were still on the wide-open ice of the river. And there was someone behind us with some sort of gun.
“Down!” I shouted to the duo behind me, and we all ducked down and forward, until I was sure that we probably actually looked like some sort of insane, out-of-place bobsled team. Angie was undoubtedly the most protected of all of us, courtesy of being so small. Marlon was undoubtedly the most exposed.
“Marlon, I don’t suppose you’ve got a bulletproof vest on, do you?” I called back over my shoulder, my eyes glued to the river ahead of us. We were in a miraculously clear section, which meant I didn’t have to steer around anything, and I hoped that meant that we would pick up enough speed to get away from whoever was shooting at us.
Whoever. I snorted. I had exactly one guess as to who it was. Unfortunately, I hadn’t known him long enough to know whether he was a good shot or not.
“I left it at home!” Marlon shouted back. “Figured it was too heavy for this sort of outing!”
“Glad to see your sense of humor is intact,” I muttered to myself.
Another shot rang out, and the bullet hit the ice somewhere to the left of us. Like…way to the left of us.
And at that, I started hoping that he wasn’t a good shot after all. We were moving on a relatively straight course on wide-open ice. Randall—or one of his cousins, I supposed—should have been able to sight on us very easily, hold the gun still for a moment to get an idea of our momentum, and then pull the trigger, hitting one
or several of us.
Instead, he’d shot so far left that I hadn’t even felt the bullet pass us.
Another shot, and it flew into the trees to our right.
Another, and it hit somewhere behind us.
We weren’t moving fast enough for that to happen, unless he was a complete rookie. And with him living in the forest as he did, I didn’t think rookie status was a remote possibility.
“I’m not complaining, but is this guy always such a bad shot?” I tossed over my shoulder at Marlon.
“Not in my experience!” he shouted back. “Though I doubt he’s ever had to shoot a rifle without the help of an electronic sight, either. He doesn’t really seem like the sort to do it the old-fashioned way.”
It took me a second to catch up with what he was saying, but once I had it, I was running with it. He wasn’t using electronic sights on his rifle. Of course, the EMP probably had nothing to do with them not working, but perhaps his preferred rifle that had electronic sights had had something happen to it. The avalanche and booby trap both came to mind as possible reasons, though on his journey to find us, I was sure any number of things could have gone wrong.
When another bullet went far to the right of us and cracked through a tree, I nodded in confirmation of what Marlon was saying.
“Either that, or he’s just trying to warn us!” I shouted. “And he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who believes in friendly warnings.”
“Right you are!” Marlon shouted back. “Though I still vote we get off this river and out of sight! No pun intended.”
He was right on that one too, and I saw another curve coming up in the river ahead that I thought might just give us the opportunity we needed to do so. After all, the best way to hide was for the person who was chasing you to completely miss where you’d gone—and when.
Then again…
“Let’s see what comes up after this curve ahead!” I said. “If there’s another curve, there’s a chance we could lose him by staying on the river—while maintaining our current speed. And saving our energy. I’d rather not run through the woods with a madman after us if we don’t have to!”
“Hear, hear,” Angie said from behind me, and my mind flew back to Angie.
Of course. We couldn’t get off the river. Getting into the forest would mean we had to progress on foot—which meant that either Angie had to run with us, or we had to pull her. Both options would slow us down. Both options might get us caught.
I didn’t like that being on the river made us such easy targets, though, and my mind quickly jumped on to fixing that particular problem. How could we defend ourselves against Randall and his men? What could we use to build some sort of shield to go behind us? What could we use to throw them off the trail? How could we—
Oh, I realized. Of course.
“Marlon, you still got that crossbow we were sitting with last night?” I called back to him.
We were almost at the turn, now, and with any luck whatsoever, we’d be out of sight of the men behind us soon. I further hoped that if we kept going forward at our current rate of speed, we might be around another curve—or too far ahead for them to reach—by the time they reached this first curve.
After all, unless they’d found a way to use the river themselves, they were on foot—and far slower than we were. I didn’t know how they’d managed to catch us in the first place, but I didn’t think it would happen again. I hoped. Still, if it did, I wanted us to have a way to defend ourselves.
“Sure do!” came the answer. “I had it in my pack, rather than in the sled with the guns!”
“How would you feel about turning around and acting as my shotgun?” I called back. “Covering our six, so to speak?”
There was a short pause, and then I could hear him laughing. Laughing.
“You, my friend, have the mind of the very devil himself. Are you going to be able to handle this canoe on your own if we have to steer around anything?”
“I’ll have to!”
“Right you are, my boy. You and Angie sit as still as you can. I’m going to try to turn around without sending us over onto our sides.”
Oh, right. I hadn’t thought about how much this was going to unbalance the sled—as we were going at what I estimated to be around 30 MPH down an extremely frozen river. I grabbed the edges of the sled and braced myself equally between the two sides, ready to lean like my life depended on it if necessary, to balance out what Marlon was about to do.
In the end, I heard more than I felt. Marlon grunted, swore, and even kicked Angie once, and the sled wobbled a little bit, making me grunt and swear myself, but a few minutes later everything grew still again.
“I’m now facing backward!” he screamed up to me, his voice barely carrying over the sound of the wind and the scrape of the sled over the ice. “But I’ve got nothing so far! They’ll have to fire again for me to locate them, unless—”
Another shot, and I heard Angie’s sharp intake of breath. That shot had come a lot closer to the sled than the others had. Was it possible that we’d mistaken their lack of aim as a mistake, when they’d really just been trying to scare us? Could they sight in on us after all?
“Come on, Marlon,” I muttered, leaning forward and urging the sled to even greater speeds. That turn was about two hundred feet ahead, now, and I didn’t think we could hit it soon enough.
I didn’t want to find out whether they’d been faking their lack of aim. I just wanted to get as far away from them as I could.
“I’ve got one of them!” Marlon shouted. “Saw the muzzle flash, and I can see him in the trees. How the hell did they get so close to us?”
“Honestly, Marlon, I don’t care. Just shoot the son of a bitch!” I called back.
We could worry about how they’d gotten so close later on. Right now the only thing that mattered was getting the hell away from them—and taking out the ones that were actively shooting at us.
I heard the metallic twang of the crossbow, then, and a second later, I heard Marlon shouting in glee.
“Got him!” he screamed. “Shot him right out of the tree! I don’t know if he’s dead or not, but he’s not going to be shooting at us again!”
I blinked quickly. I had no idea how far behind us the shooter had been, of course, but I was shocked at the idea that Marlon had shot him. With a crossbow. A crossbow that didn’t have any sort of sighting equipment on it.
I wondered once more who the hell the guy sitting behind me was, and then shoved the thought away in favor of dealing with the coming turn. It was bigger than the last one we’d been through—sharper—and it was going to take all of us controlling the sled if we were going to get around it safely, rather than shooting right through it and into the woods on the other side.
“Marlon, get turned around again!” I screamed. “I need you facing forward for this one! We’re going to have to work together to steer the sled or this is never going to work!”
Some grunting and a bit of tipping back and forth behind me, and a moment later, Marlon was calling out that he’d managed to turn around and was ready. Then I actually heard him draw in a breath.
“God, that’s a sharp turn,” he muttered.
“Yep,” I answered, not bothering to lift my voice up high enough to be heard.
We could all see the exact same thing. And I thought we all knew exactly how difficult this was going to be. Even worse, we didn’t have any option. We couldn’t go into the woods—not if we wanted to stay away from Randall and his men. They’d managed to catch up with us already, and I suspected that meant something that we hadn’t yet figured out about how they were traveling. It certainly meant that I didn’t want to be on foot.
We had to stay on the river. We couldn’t afford to go shooting off into the forest on the other side of this turn. But I didn’t know if we had enough weight to make the turn I was now looking at.
Then I realized that there was a better way to get the right angle on it.
“W
e’re going to have to bulge out into the center of the river!” I shouted.
“What?” Angie and Marlon screamed at the same time.
“John, that’s insane!” Marlon continued. “We don’t know how deep the ice is out there, or if it’ll support us!”
“It’s a chance we have to take!” I responded. “We have to cut the corner right now, get as close to the bank as we can if we’re going to make this turn, then allow the momentum to take us out into the center as we lean! It’s the only way we’ll make the turn gradually enough to stay upright! There’s no way we’ll be able to make the turn as sharp as it would have to be for us to stay on the shoreline!”
The silence behind me told me that Marlon and Angie were both doing the geometry—and coming to the same exact conclusion.
We were going to both have to test the strength of the ice in the center of the river. Or rather…we were going to end up testing the strength of the ice in the center of the river. Because there was no way we were going to make the coming turn any other way.
“Guys, I need some agreement here!” I shouted when neither of them had responded. “We don’t have a lot of time to come up with alternatives!”
We were already almost at the curve. If we were going to cut further toward the bank of the river, we had to do it now.
“Well, if we have to, we have to!” Angie finally said. “Call it out, John!”
“Lean to your right!” I screamed. “Gently! We don’t want to run up on the bank, but we’ve got to get as close as we can! At my command, start leaning harder!” I felt the tension behind me and knew that both of my teammates were holding the sides of the sled and leaning forward, every piece of their beings focused on me as they awaited the command.
I waited until I thought we could start cutting the corner without actually running up into the mud—which would slow us down, at best, and send us end-over-end, at worst.
“Lean!” I shouted when we hit the point I’d marked.
Bitter Cold Apocalypse | Book 1 | Bitter Cold Apocalypse Page 16
