by Joanne Pence
She hit the first man in the middle of the forehead. He dropped, instantly dead.
The other man ran as she turned the pistol in his direction. Her shot went wide.
He fired as he ducked, but his foot caught a rock and the split second he wobbled caused his spray of shots to go wild.
As he fell, she aimed a little to the left, calculating that he'd catch himself and correct in the opposite direction. She squeezed off her third and last shot. He fell.
She'd beaten the odds.
Adrenaline rushing, she waited three full minutes. She heard and saw nothing more, so she crept toward the dead mercs to take their weapons. She assumed Quade and Charlotte woke the students and set them running at the first sound of gunfire. She would have to move fast to catch up to them, but the mercs rifles, and anything else useful they might be carrying, would serve them all well.
She reached for the first merc’s M-107 when a rapid burst of firepower roared. Bullets tore at her back and side, knocked her sideways, and spun her around.
She fell face up, looking at a pastel sky, at the start of a beautiful new day, before her eyes no longer saw anything at all.
Chapter 62
THE SOUND OF GUNSHOTS woke everyone, shattering what little spirit and hope remained in the university group.
“Oh, God!” Rachel cried, and turned toward the sound. Without weapons, they couldn’t help Melisse.
“Move it!” Charlotte said. She slipped the backpack with the book over her shoulders. “Leave everything else. Now! Go!” She hoped Melisse could hold off the shooters long enough for her to get the students safely away.
Before long, Brandi gave out. She cried, and tried to keep moving, but her body simply didn't have the strength. Her legs buckled, her muscles quivered, and she gasped for breath.
Charlotte and Quade tried to help her, but Brandi was too tired and too heavy for them to handle. She slowed the group down, endangering everyone.
“She can’t go on,” Charlotte said. “I'll stay with her. They won't kill us.”
“No, please. I'll try,” Brandi wailed.
“It doesn't matter,” Lionel whimpered. “We're all lost.”
“It does matter!” Quade insisted. “Only Brandi stays. These men won't waste a bullet on her. Out here and alone, they'll consider her already dead. They'll continue past. If you stay, Charlotte, they’ll threaten and eventually kill her just to get you to cooperate with them. When Michael and the sheriff return, we’ll come back for Brandi.”
“You can't leave me,” Brandi shrieked. “I’m scared! You know what they did to Vince.”
“Then keep quiet so they won’t find you!”
They shoved a hysterical Brandi behind some bushes and covered her with brush, then hurried away. They lost so much time with her that they were forced to push on at a punishing pace.
Soon, Lionel felt the effects of the altitude, the cold, and the food and sleep deprivation. His fifty-one year old soft professor's body had been driven harder than he thought possible. Charlotte noticed he was near collapse.
She took Lionel's arm and let him lean on her as he limped along, slipping and sliding on the grade. He was too tired to speak or protest.
When a half hour passed with no more gunfire heard anywhere, Charlotte didn’t know what to think. If Melisse had stopped the mercs, why hadn’t she called out to the group? Or caught up to them?
Charlotte had a good idea of the answer.
But also, where were Jake and Michael? She hated to contemplate the possibilities, her fears too terrible to bear.
She knew better than to hope. Whenever she did, her life took a turn for the worse. She no sooner thought that, than Lionel stumbled and fell. She tried to hold him up, but he needed to sit.
“You and Rachel keep going,” Charlotte said to Quade. “Keep her safe.”
“If Brandi could stay alone, so can I,” Lionel gasped. “Leave me.”
“No, I won’t!” Charlotte said. “They’re getting us through attrition. No more!”
Quade nodded and led Rachel away.
Lionel bent forward, breathing hard, and tried to stop his light-headedness. Before long, they heard Rachel scream. Lionel straightened, his face white with fear.
Chapter 63
THE EVENING BEFORE, Devlin Farrell stared down at the empty village. He wondered what the villagers had done with his classmates and the professor. He hoped the empty village meant they escaped.
He heard gunfire.
As more proof that he'd gone completely insane, rather than running away from it, he ran toward it. Maybe if he found the shooters, he would find his classmates and the professor.
He last saw them the day two strangers pulled them out of the creek when flesh-eating beetles attacked. After the experience of being duped by the river rafters, he decided to watch the strangers before putting himself under their control.
Devlin watched them lead everyone into some sort of compound where the men and women were separated. Something about the place, those men, seemed wrong to him.
He had a knife, but no other weapons. As he watched two men who carried rifles, bows and arrows, he decided to follow them. To his surprise, they tossed the rifles into a cave. It made no sense to him. Why treat good weapons that way?
He went to the cave after the men left, and found six HK-91 rifles, plus a few magazines. He had grown up hunting with his dad, and was a crack shot. He silently thanked his cousin in the army who once showed him how to release complex safety mechanisms. He took two rifles, as many magazines as he could carry, and left.
Armed, he considered going to the compound to rescue the others. But then what? Alone, he could travel fast, find help—real help. As an athlete he trained for strength and high endurance. He decided to head south. Driving himself relentlessly, he found a safe spot to cross the Salmon River. From there, he reached the Middle Fork, and traveled along it. When the banks of the river became too high, steep and dangerous, he moved inland. But he would always find his way back to the river, clutching the hope that he'd turn a corner and come across a gathering of friendly people.
But he didn't.
He found hot springs to soothe aching, weary muscles. He saw shooting stars and, once, the aurora borealis to keep him company through long, desolate nights. He experienced torrential cloudbursts and brief, near hurricane-force winds. Twice, he backed away from a grizzly who was mercifully more interested in its forage than in the tall, two-legged creature that feared it.
Despite everything, he would not stop. Memories of his friends, especially of Brian who he was sure had died, and of Rachel, who he hadn’t given much thought to at all when she was near, but he now realized had more spunk, brains and courage than most men he knew, drove him on.
Past the Middle Fork, he trekked southward, until he recognized the headwaters of the Salmon River near the town of Stanley. He'd been to Stanley many times. Small and rustic with crystal clear air, when there he felt as if he were standing at the top of the world, the beautiful, jagged snow-capped Sawtooth Mountains in the distance.
From Stanley, continuing south, he would reach Sun Valley.
But there was no Stanley. The area looked as if the place had never existed.
With that, he knew his quest was hopeless. No sign of civilization at all was found. For all he knew, he was dead, and this emptiness some kind of purgatory. Or worse.
He turned back toward the village to rejoin the others. They were all he had left in the world, and he would do whatever it took to see them again, to have companionship, to end this aching loneliness.
And then, the strangest thing happened. It only took a day for him to reach the pillars. He shivered as a thought crossed his mind, a thought he didn’t like one bit. The pillars appeared to be the center of this new, unreal universe. He had heard about curvatures of time and space in a physics class. It made no sense to him then, and still didn’t. But he was back.
He went straight to the compound, only t
o find it empty.
His debate over which way to go ended when he heard gunfire.
He hurried to the area from which he heard the shots fired. To his amazement, he had never seen any of the individuals involved in the shootout before, two on one side, and three on the other. He had no idea who they were, or why they were fighting.
The two were losing the battle. He crept near them.
One, trying to encourage the other, had to shout over the sound of automatic fire. Devlin heard him give the names of his friends...Rachel, Brandi, Melisse, Lionel...
He knew which side he belonged on.
He crawled around to the far side of the larger group of shooters. One sniper hid behind a tree. Devlin snuck behind him, aimed, fired, and immediately ran.
The sniper fell to the ground, dead.
Devlin snuck up behind the other two shooters and fired again.
The two apparently thought they were surrounded, and ran.
Devlin followed them far enough to make sure they weren’t going to backtrack, and then made his way to the two strangers. “Don't shoot!” he called as he neared them. “I'm on your side.”
“Who are you?” Michael held his rifle aimed and ready.
“It's okay,” Devlin called. “You know my friends. Trust me!” He stepped into the open, put his rifles on the ground and raised his arms high.
Although his face sported a full beard and his hair was shaggy, Michael recognized him from posters and news reports. “Devlin Farrell,” he said as he moved out from behind the sheltering rocks.
“That’s right,” Devlin said. “But who are you? And who were those guys shooting at you? And why?”
Jake had passed out from the gunshot. Michael used his knife to remove the bullet and his shirt to wrap and bind the wound as he explained as much as he could to Devlin. Devlin told him how he'd purposefully separated himself from the other students to find help. He then told of the stark emptiness he found.
As much as Michael hadn’t wanted to believe what he heard, Devlin’s story made sense.
Michael then briefed him on all that had happened with the students and villagers.
While Devlin stayed with Jake, Michael headed back to the man who had been shot to search for IDs or anything to give a clue as to who he was. He was young and hard-muscled, but carried no identification. His phone and walkie-talkie were completely dead. Michael took his rifle, ammo, and knife.
After Michael returned, Devlin went at night, alone, to the cave where the villagers had hidden their rifles and picked up the remaining four, plus clips.
The three set out at dawn. Jake's wound and blood loss forced them to travel slowly. Michael and Devlin had to support him as he half-walked, half-dragged himself while using a tree limb as a crutch.
When they heard gunfire a little later that morning, they sped up as much as possible while still keeping themselves under some means of cover. An hour passed before they neared the culvert where the others had camped for the night.
There, they found Melisse's body.
Their elation at finding Devlin alive and having gotten away from their attackers, sank into nothing.
Not far from her, two mercenaries lay dead. “Melisse did this,” Michael said. “She gave her life to protect the others.”
They found no sign of Charlotte, Quade, or the others, and Michael’s fear grew that they were dead or captured.
“We'll track them,” Michael said with determination, finding where grass and weeds had been trampled. “We will find them.”
“They’ve got to be alive,” Devlin murmured.
The sight of Melisse lying dead, the need to find the others, spurred the men forward.
Michael abruptly halted. He shot out his arm, stopping the other two, then pointed at a bush. Jake and Devlin aimed their rifles at the shrub. “Come out now, arms up,” Jake bellowed, “or we shoot!”
They heard the sound of crying, and lowered their weapons. They knew who it was. One student, at least, still lived.
o0o
Fish and Nose returned to Hammill’s camp. “We had two of them pinned down when others showed up. We don’t know how many and they were armed. They killed Dogman.”
The Hammer's jaw clenched. Fish, Nose and he were the only survivors of the team. “I want vengeance. Those bastards have a lot to pay for. And they will.”
Chapter 64
QUADE AND RACHEL had barely gone an eighth of a mile when Kohler and the other villagers stepped in front of them. Rachel screamed. They tried to run, but Webber and Tieg caught them and tied their hands behind their back.
The villagers led them back along the trampled deer path Quade and Rachel had already walked, and found Lionel sitting alone on a felled tree.
“Where is everyone else?” Kohler demanded.
Lionel looked around. Charlotte was gone. “Dead. Running. I have no idea,” he replied wearily.
“We’ll go after them,” Kohler said, then turned to Sam Black. “Black, take these three back to the village. When we return, we'll teach them what happens to people who run away.”
About halfway back to the village, Quade slipped his thin hands free of the ropes that bound them. He stuck his foot out and tripped Rachel. As Black reached over to pick her up, Quade wrapped an arm around his neck, forearm pressing the carotid artery. He pushed Black’s head and neck forward with his other arm, and slowly lowered him to the ground as he lost consciousness. Quade followed that with one quick snap of Black’s neck, killing him.
Lionel and Rachel stood frozen with shock at the ease with which Quade acted.
“Let’s get out of here!” Quade ordered.
“Which way?” Rachel cried. “It’s not safe anywhere!”
Quade hesitated only a moment. “Back to the pillars.”
o0o
Michael, Jake, Brandi, and Devlin marched single-file along the ridge of the mountain following the tracks of their friends. They stayed above the timber line, the land bare of foliage.
Each time they came to a bend in the trail, Jake worried that they would find their companions' bodies. He hated his own weakness from the gunshot and pushed himself in defiance of his injuries and exhaustion. He hated that he hadn't been there to protect Melisse and the students. Hated that he'd failed. Again.
And Charlotte—he couldn’t let himself think about Charlotte.
They moved fast, but even Brandi kept up. He suspected she didn't dare mouth a single complaint for fear she'd be left behind again.
Before long, they came to a well-trampled spot. Clearly, a confrontation took place here. But they couldn’t tell what happened next. Footsteps seemed to go in all directions.
“Where are they now?” Jake asked, sitting to rest his painful leg.
“At least they weren’t killed.” Devlin said as he sat down. He wasn’t injured, but the constant travel and food shortages had taken their toll on him.
“Let’s hope not,” Michael added. “Sometimes, I wonder if all of us aren't already dead, stuck here forever.”
“Dead?” Jake whispered. “What are you talking about? That's goofy talk. There's a way out. There's always a way out. Don't go defeatist on me.”
Michael's stern expression offered little room for argument. “Unless this is Hell. The Hell. If I understand my theology correctly, if you're bad enough to have been sent there, there's no exit. Even Sartre, an atheist, in his own way believed that.”
“Theology?” Jake looked skeptical. “I didn't think your taste went that way.”
“It doesn't,” Michael said. But perversely, a passage that he read long ago by St. Augustine came to mind: that the restless heart of man could only find rest in God. He wondered why he recalled that here, now. Everything about Augustine’s faith was contrary to his nature. Yet, he remembered how he felt the first time he visited the Gandan monastery in Ulaanbaatar. He had found peace there, despite knowing that particular place was not one he would ever fit into. But it possessed some quality that he
welcomed and felt welcomed by. Michael shook his head at the memory, and forced his thoughts back to the surreal world that trapped him and the others. “We should get moving again. We’ve got to assume there is a way out of this place, and concentrate on finding it, and finding our friends.”
Devlin helped Jake struggle to his feet. As Jake despondently looked at the emptiness before them, he muttered, “That’s the spirit,” in desperate hope that his words would encourage them.
Something caught Brandi’s attention and she lifted her gaze. She cried out.
A large, winged creature peered down from a rocky ledge, ready to pounce. Devlin fired. His shot disintegrated its small head. The body tumbled from the precipice to their feet.
Brandi squealed and backed away as Michael ran with Devlin to see the creature. It had an eagle’s wings, but a huge badger’s body. Long, treacherous claws were made of gold.
“We’ve got to get away!” Jake shouted. “The mercs and villagers will know we’re here now.”
They turned to run, only to see Arnie Tieg and Gus Webber strutting toward them, crossbows in hand. “We already know you’re here,” Tieg said. “Drop your weapons! You four can join your friends back at the village. We have a special get-together arranged for you there.”
o0o
Charlotte ran. Earlier, as soon as she heard Rachel scream, she assumed it meant Rachel and Quade had been captured. Whether by the mercs or the villagers, she didn't know, but whoever it was would be looking for her and Lionel next. Allowing herself to be captured would do no one any good.
She turned off the path they had been following to plunge into the low-lying briars and leafless, prickly brush that covered the mountainside. She ran downhill to find shelter, to somehow find Michael and Jake and warn them what lay ahead. Together they might be able to rescue the others. She refused to allow herself to imagine that Michael and Jake had been captured or killed.
Suddenly, the ground turned silty, the rocks loose. The backpack with the book kept shifting, throwing Charlotte off-balance. After several slips she found it necessary to keep one hand on the ground, balancing like a three-legged stool, to avoid rolling down the mountain.
