by Ilsa J. Bick
“But only after we heard a larger cluster from the north,” Jayden said. “Two sets of shots.”
“Me, too. That’s what I—” Chris broke off at a series of short, sharp claps of sound. Not shots, though.
“Dogs?” Hannah asked.
“Yeah. Coming from the east. The lake.” Chris looked at Jayden. “Ellie.”
77
The ground rushed for her face. Twisting, Alex thudded in an awkward heap on her right side, a blow that drove the air from her lungs in a sickening grunt. She lay there a second, stunned, right shoulder a bellow of pain, the heavy medic pack like an anvil on her back. The air was alive with the crackle of flames and that chugging roar, a sound like the thunder of a runaway train. Rolling onto her left, she thrashed to hands and knees. The snow here was already melting to pools of icy slush. A short distance away, Wolf was on his stomach, pushing himself out of the water, coughing and spitting. Still gasping for breath, she swept her eyes right. A dazed Penny was there, her hair falling down around her face.
But it was what Alex saw down the hill that set a hook of new fear in her chest.
They’d landed next to the house, on the hill, but far enough out that she had a view of the lake and, especially, that dead-end road. Wolf and the others had come in from the west and so had their pursuers. She’d spotted horses before, ones that must belong to the men they’d just crisped. Those animals were still there, churning in a restless knot, struggling to snap their tethers and escape the fire.
Yet what stilled her heart was what was even now emerging from the trees: more men on horses. There were two kids as well. One was younger than the other, but both wore the same camo-whites and were wreathed in that weird chemotherapy stink. Of the two, the smell coming from the younger kid—a boy—was stronger.
Last of all, another old man slipped out of the woods. In contrast to the others, he wore black instead of hunter’s winter camo, and rode a glossy jet-black gelding. As soon as he appeared, that red storm—push-push go-go—intensified.
She flattened, tried to think. They had to get moving. Make a run for the trees. If we can get far enough back before they see us & Where was Wolf’s rifle? Her gaze strafed the snow, saw nothing, and she knew there was no time to search. Running probably wouldn’t help. All their pursuers had to do was follow their tracks, but she was damned if she’d wait to be taken.
She could see the men making their way down the road. A few had dismounted, including the younger kid. The older kid was moving very awkwardly, though, and as she watched one of the men reach to steady the kid’s horse, she saw why: the Changed’s hands were tied. Also, unlike the smaller boy, this Changed’s head was bare. His hair, golden as the sun, fell past his shoulders. Something familiar about him, too.
But what really rocked her back was the moment that golden Changed looked their way and let out a shout: “Penny! Simon! Don’t run, don’t run!”
Oh God. She felt the ice leak into her veins.
Peter.
78
“Stop it, stop it!” Ellie screamed a split second before her horse shrieked. The far shore was bright with late afternoon sun. So she had no trouble seeing the jet of blood jump from Bella’s flank. The mare reared, pedaling air with her front hooves. “Leave Bella alone!”
“Ellie, no!” Still clutching the auger with one hand, Eli yanked her back. Both dogs were barking, and as Roc gathered himself to bolt for shore, Eli let go of her to make a snatching grab for his dog’s collar. “They’re trying to get us to come to them … Roc, no, sit!”
“But they’re hurting Bella!” Her mare’s screams were drilling into her brain. The horses were easy pickings: tethered to the trees and unable to do much but kick whenever the people-eaters got too close. As bad as it was that the people-eaters had showed up altogether, Ellie thought they’d leave the animals alone. Waste of energy when you could be going after nice juicy little girls and boys. But then, after she and Eli retreated even farther from shore, the people-eaters started in on the horses, hitting them with clubs and now this.… She watched in horror as her mare suddenly crashed to the snow. One people-eater cocked his arm again. Whatever they were using—a machete, she thought—flashed down in a gleaming blur. This time, Bella’s screech turned suddenly watery. “We have to do something!”
“We can’t.” Eli swabbed sweat from his forehead. The boy’s face was the color of a boiled beet. “We have to keep going.”
“But they’re going to kill her.” Ellie couldn’t stop the tears streaming over her cheeks: grief for her stupid, stubborn Bella. And terror, for them.
“There’s nothing we can do. They’ll probably go for my horse next.” Eli’s voice choked with rage. “Come on, Ellie. This was your idea. Hurry!”
“Okay, okay.” Ellie brought her hand ax down in another fast, hard, two-fisted chop. The edge bit slush ice in a dull chuck. The snow beneath her feet turned gray as water welled up through the seam. “I’m almost done here. What about you?”
“Going fast as I can.” The auger was a red blur, the blades spinning, Eli cranking furiously. He was sweating so much, steam curled from his hair. “Soon as I finish this one …”
Then we break the ice and hope like heck Hannah gets here soon. She chopped again, heard the splintery crack of ice shearing apart. Across the snow, from the too-distant shore, she heard Bella give another bawling shriek that sent her heart cramming up behind her teeth. She tossed another grim look. Bella was kicking but more feebly. The people-eaters milled around, maybe trying to decide what to do now that she and Eli hadn’t come dashing to the rescue.
Hate you. She whacked the ice again. There were nine people-eaters—ten, if you counted the girl she’d seen at the death house. The people-eaters didn’t have guns, a plus. On the other hand, Eli only had two shots left in his rifle, and her Savage was in its saddle scabbard. At first she thought a people-eater might grab it, but the rifle wasn’t scoped. Or they might not know how to work it. Or maybe shooting at her and Eli didn’t seem to be nearly as much people-eater doo-dah fun as killing a poor defenseless horse. She was furious and scared right down to her bones and thought, really, if she didn’t end up getting eaten today, it would be a miracle.
Behind her, the whir of the auger changed to a gurgle of steel churning water. The steeply curved line of fresh holes were spaced so close they looked like a string of black pearls. She’d told Eli to bunch the holes on purpose so the water would bleed between the gaps. All it would take for her to break through completely was one or two good hard chops.
“Got it.” Eli straightened, breathing hard, then cast a nervous glance at the jigsaw of float ice and the larger, wider crescent of black water beyond the end of the ice shelf. “That’s five. Think that’s—” His voice faded as he looked back toward shore. “Ellie.”
She knew before she turned. Evidently tired of waiting, the people-eaters were spilling onto the ice. “Come on.” Dipping into her pail, she fished out a stringer, looped the steel chain around her waist, and snapped the keeper to a clip. “Okay, hang onto me. I’ll chop us away.”
“Is this going to hold if you fall in?”
“Sure,” she lied, giving Eli a strained, teary smile that she knew was all teeth. “I was going to try for walleye, and they’re real big. But maybe we don’t want to find out?”
“Yeah.” Putting aside the auger, Eli spread his legs, bent his knees, looped the chain twice around his gloved fists, then nodded. “Go.”
Leaning over the break, Ellie swung. This time, instead of a sploosh, there was a crack. She felt the difference immediately as the ice bobbed. “I got it, here we go, hang on!” Ellie sang.
Then she planted her foot against the far edge and shoved.
Bad move.
79
They had to move, fast.
“Wolf.” Alex whirled away from Penny; from the man in black and his red storm; from Peter, who was neither wholly human nor Changed. “Come on, we have to—”
She stopped when she saw the tears. Face white as chalk, Wolf was sitting up, but she saw the way he grabbed that left ankle, and knew. “No. No no no.” She floundered through slush to grab his arm. He was shivering with rage and pain. “Listen to me,” she said. “It may not be as bad as you think. Come on, Wolf, you can do this. I’ll help you. Once we get clear, I’ll wrap or splint it. I’ve got plenty of supplies. But you have to get up, you have to—”
Wolf shook his head. They were close enough that when his scent became Chris’s—not only cool mist but bittersweet—the shift and the meaning were unmistakable.
“Don’t do this.” Her eyes suddenly burned with furious tears. “Wolf, they’ll kill you. They’ll take Penny. But if we can fight …”
This time, when he shook his head, he also reached a tentative hand. For a split second, Alex almost pulled away, but then Wolf had cupped her wet cheek and there was no going back. The touch was seismic, not desire or want or even need now but something inexpressibly sad. His touch was the morning a week after her parents died, when her aunt stroked her hair: I would give anything to bring them back for you. In that instant, Alex had understood what it was to have a piece of you gutter, an inner fire go cold.
This, she had not expected. Wolf had touched her before, almost as a master comforts a pet. Yet every thinking being dreams. The one thing she’d never considered was that despite their transformation, some Changed—or maybe only the very few like Wolf—might truly understand what it was they’d lost. Some might even be just as desperate to get it back.
“What are you doing, Wolf, what are you doing?” she whispered, as his hand roamed, his fingers tracing an eyebrow, feathering over her forehead, pausing over her mouth. Over the roar of the fire, she heard the men coming; felt the fist of the red storm trying to batter its way into her brain; knew Peter had led those men here—did they see me? did Peter recognize me?—and that they would be up the hill in no time flat.
But she let all that ride. That could wait. Instead, she gave Wolf the luxury of a few seconds to remember who Simon was and what that boy had been.
Then, she ran.
80
What Ellie hadn’t considered was the weight, or that there were now two people and two dogs crowded into a jagged, icy ellipse thinner in some spots than others, and slick, too.
All of a sudden, the ice floe tilted, dipping far enough for a watery tongue to tease her left knee. She swayed, visions of sliding right off their ice island and into the lake—of the ice closing above her head and her drowning—swarming to the front of her horrified mind. Behind, she heard Eli gasp, and then the scrabbling scritch of dogs’ nails over ice. A gasping aaahhhh ballooned from her mouth as her center of gravity shifted, and their jagged ice island—a twelve-foot shard of unstable slush ice, thick in the middle, razor-thin at the margins—canted and rocked.
“Don’t move, don’t move,” Eli chanted. He was crouched low, his legs visibly quivering with the strain of holding himself stable. “Give it a chance to settle down.”
“Oh boy,” Ellie said, not moving a muscle. “I don’t know if this was a really good idea.”
“Now you tell me.” But the banter was gone from his voice, and she could hear the slight quake. The stringer chain around her middle tightened as Eli fetched up another coil. “Okay, Ellie, we’re still tipping. You have to slide toward the center on your butt, okay? Don’t even try to turn, and do it really slow. Think like a daddy longlegs.”
“I hate spiders,” she breathed. Crabbing as slowly as she could, she moved first one arm and then the opposite leg—a delicate, mincing one-two—then switched, always keeping three points of contact. Their raft bobbed and tilted, the ice listing first left and then right.
“You’re doing great.” Eli’s voice was breathless. “Almost here … okay, stop. Stop moving. I’m right behind you. See?” He eased a hand on her shoulder.
“Yeah. Thanks.” As she tried tucking her feet under so she could stand, the raft suddenly pitched right.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Eli’s fingers hooked her collar. The chain clattered as he cinched up. “Ellie, listen, you can’t move—”
“So fast,” she wheezed. “I know. Sorry.” This might be the very last dumb idea she’d have in her whole stupid life. Rolling away from the people-eaters as slowly as she could, she got herself on hands and knees. Still crouching, Eli wrapped his hands around her forearms, and together, they pulled themselves upright as the raft pitched and yawed an inch to the left then to the right.
“If we stay in the center, we ought to be okay.” Eli hadn’t released his grip. They were so close together she could see his lips shiver as he tried on a lopsided grin. “Now what?”
“We wait for help. You got off those shots. Hannah had to hear.” She injected a confidence she didn’t feel. Those shots drifting from the direction of the farm had been their first indication that anything was wrong, and that had been a while ago. Someone should’ve remembered them by now. Unless they couldn’t. No, Ellie, stop it. They’re okay; Hannah and Jayden and Chris are fine. The alternative was too awful to think about. “They’ll chase them away, or kill them. Then all we have to do is either wait for the water to refreeze or … you know, Jayden will get a rope and toss it and pull us back. We’ll be fine.” As long as we don’t drift very far. Water could take a very long time to refreeze, if ever, or might not refreeze into a bridge thick enough to hold them. Oh, stop worrying, Ellie; Jayden will think of something. He’s smart. A rope, that’s what he’d do: weight down a rope, toss it to them, then get a horse to pull them close until they could step onto better ice. Just like a floating raft in this lake her dad once took her to … Palm Brooks, that was it. Same principle.
“I hope so.” Eli hadn’t stopped hugging her. Sure, it was safer this way, but she didn’t mind his arms around her one bit. “God,” he said, “they’re creeping me out.”
She could see why. The people-eaters were still advancing in a wedge, the girl with the lime-green scarf drifting along at the rear. With the sun behind them, their spidery black shadows stretched like grasping fingers. At the sight, even the dogs had gone virtually silent, just the barest rumbles rolling from their mouths.
What do the people-eaters think they’re going to do? Jump it?
“What if they jump?” Eli said. “It’s like … only a couple, two, three feet.”
It completely freaked her out that she’d been thinking the same thing. The gap of water between their raft and the more solid ice was growing just a little wider, but not fast enough; not by the leaps and bounds and feet they needed, but in a slow, lazy drift of inches.
“We got to make sure they don’t,” Ellie said.
“How? I can shoot two, but that’s it,” Eli said. “That’s all the bullets I have left.”
Leaving eight, and that was only if Eli actually hit anyone. “We should save the bullets,” she said, not knowing why or for whom … unless she planned on asking Eli to shoot her. She didn’t think she was that brave. Besides, what would happen to Mina if she was dead?
“Then how?”
“The auger. Extend the handle, and it’ll be plenty long. If you hold my legs, I can stretch and use it to push us away.”
“Oh boy, I hate this,” Eli said, but he was starting to ease down to a crouch. Ellie followed him move for move, her heart kicking at her teeth every time the raft bobbled. When she was flat on her tummy and turned around, he worked out the handle and passed her the auger. “You know what this reminds me of?” he said. “National Treasure. You know, where Nicolas Cage and everybody else is trapped on this big square thing?”
“I never saw it.” She worked her way toward the edge. One of the dogs must’ve moved, because she heard a frantic scrambling sound at the same time the raft dipped and water leaked onto the ice in front of her face. Oh boy, I hate this, too. She felt the water under their block of ice heave as the raft bobbed. A nasty vision floated through her mind: of the block tilting so far that she
slid, face-first, into the water. She’d pull Eli along with her. Then, one of two things would happen: either the raft flipped like a pancake, trapping all of them, or only she’d be hooked, unable to turn around and grab an edge. Most lakes, no matter how still, had a current. The one here was stronger than most because of the spring to their right. So she’d drift left, under the raft, and drown with her back jammed up against the ice.
She wanted to wait for that water to retreat, but those people-eaters were still coming. So she wormed forward, then passed the auger through her hands and stretched, trying to hold the heavy blades steady. Squirming a few more inches, she sucked in between her teeth as the raft tipped another inch. Water was beginning to creep toward her arms. Maybe she should’ve let Eli do this; he was taller, only she wasn’t strong enough to hold him if he slipped …
Shadows leaked over her hands. Her eyes clicked up, and her pulse stuttered. Nine of the people-eaters were nearly there. In the lead, that boy with the machete leered and hacked the air with a blade coppery with Bella’s blood. Not far behind the main pack, that girl followed, the snake of her lime-green scarf trailing. This time around Ellie didn’t think the girl looked so scared. In fact, that kid looked like she was really, really dying to get closer.
They’ll cut us up. Paralyzed, she stared at her death storming over the ice. It’ll hurt …
“Don’t stop,” Eli said, and gave the chain a yank. “Come on, Ellie. Hurry.”
“Okay.” She snapped back. “I’m going.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.” Her biceps were shuddering from the effort. As strong as she had grown, hanging on to almost nine pounds of steel at the very end of a slim aluminum pole was nearly too much. Tucking her elbows, she braced the auger against her chest. “Do they get off?”
