Rett found the field where he could touch-type the numbers she recited for him. A moment later, the screen showed a topographical map with a location pinpointed among sharp rises. “It’s not far,” he announced. “Less than a thousand feet.”
Bryn gripped his hand, and Rett turned without thinking. His arms went around her thin frame, and he thought about how odd it felt to hold her—not at all like he’d imagined. And then he wondered when he’d imagined it and realized it was every time he’d stood close to her, and every time she’d moved toward him, and whenever her eyes held that wary challenge she liked to aim at him. All the time, he realized.
Bryn put her head against his shoulder for a moment, like she might only be resting. And then she pulled away. She didn’t look at him. He remembered about her boyfriend and wondered if she did, too.
“Which direction?” Bryn asked.
Rett poised himself over the crest of the ridge. “Down.”
“I guess we’re really doing this, then. Let’s hope the tree holds.” She sidestepped down to the tree and looped the rope around its swaybacked trunk. Then she gave the tree a few solid kicks to test its commitment to staying rooted in the loose dirt. It seemed to shrug at her as it swayed under her weight.
“You sure you want to go first?” Rett said.
They both looked down, searching for the shine of metal against the pale slope.
“I’m lighter,” Bryn said, already inching downward. “More chance of the rope holding if I go first.”
It’s fine, Rett told himself. She’ll get the gun, and then she’ll be able to watch out for bugs while I climb down.
She won’t leave.
She won’t leave me all alone out here with no way to defend myself.
With no way for me to help her.
Halfway down the slope, Bryn suddenly stopped. She stared at a distant rise, her body tense and alert. Rett pivoted to find nothing but barren slopes. And then—a darkly gleaming shape scurried over the top of the ridge and out of sight again, not three hundred feet from where they stood. I wasn’t imagining things, Rett thought darkly.
Bryn stumbled in surprise. Rett thought she would lose her footing, but she caught herself.
“Bryn, go fast!” Rett yelled. “Get the gun!”
But Bryn was caught in a spell, rooted to the spot. She tipped her head toward him, swaying. She seemed lost in a haze of fear or confusion.
Rett swore. Get moving, he told himself. He clambered down to the tree and took hold of the taut length of rope. Don’t look, just go. The dirt slid under his shoes as he backed down the incline, his gaze darting over the ridgeline for some sign of what he knew was coming.
A black form rose over the ridge like a sun in negative.
The creature picked expertly over the rocks on its six clawed legs. Its mandibles opened to reveal a hooked fang. An image flashed through Rett’s mind of a man’s severed body, pale and bloodless.
“Go!” Rett shouted at Bryn. “Down, now! Try to get to the gun!”
He scrambled down the rocky incline, hands sliding dangerously over the rope. The creature followed with careful steps, its fang still bared.
And then the rope gave way.
Rett fell back, tumbling crazily over jagged ground. His vision went dark and he felt the familiar pull of his mind retreating into blackness. But then he skidded to a stop on level ground, and the brightness of the gray-white canyon returned, along with a feeling like his ankle had snapped. The creature danced madly on the slope, trying to gain purchase on the falling dirt. They would be at its mercy once it made its way down. Rett couldn’t run with his ankle like it was. And Bryn—where was Bryn? Rett caught sight of her in the corner of his vision just as the sun flashed on the flare gun now falling down the trickling slope toward him. He lunged for the gun. Pain ripped through his injured ankle. The gun went skidding over the dirt, out of reach. Rett got on his hands and knees and scrabbled over to it, got his fingers around it, and then—
He lifted his head. The creature was a stone’s throw away, looming over Bryn on the shifting slope.
But Bryn had yanked the rope down after her, the broken sapling with it. She swung the sapling like a bat.
Crack. Tree met creature. The black form twitched in the dirt. It rose on unsteady legs and retreated over the slope with jerking movements, trailing putrid liquid.
Rett released the gun out of sheer relief, and it tumbled to the ground, the flare unspent.
“Are you okay?” Rett called after Bryn.
Her breath heaved. The broken sapling lay in the dirt, sticky with black bug innards. “I don’t know. Ask me after I get the feel of bursting bug out of my mind.”
Rett closed his eyes again, relieved but wishing he could escape into darkness, could escape from the pain fizzing over his scraped skin and throbbing in his ankle.
“Are you okay?” Bryn stood over him, blood staining a dozen rips in her jumpsuit. She had a hand cupped over one eye but it didn’t stop the blood pouring from a gash over her brow.
“Where’s the backpack?” Rett asked. He immediately regretted speaking—it only made his ribs, his everything, feel worse. He thought vaguely about examining his injuries, but any movement invited blades of pain.
“Up there.”
Rett followed Bryn’s gaze halfway up the slope, where the pack showed black against the lighter dirt. Rett cursed softly.
“Check my pocket,” he told Bryn. “See if the GPS unit is still in there.”
Bryn moved carefully toward him so that Rett wondered exactly how terrible he looked. She reached for him as if afraid he’d fall to pieces at her touch.
“Seems okay,” she said, examining the device’s display. “We’re not far from the coordinates. Can you— Are you—?”
Her unspoken question hung in the air while Rett contemplated the horror of moving. He shifted and let out a grunt of pain.
“What hurts?”
“Moving,” Rett replied dryly. He tried lifting himself and gave up when pain shot through his ankle, his ribs. “I need a minute.”
“We can’t stay here long.” Bryn turned to gaze at the top of the ridge. Rett prayed she didn’t spot anything more sinister than a broken tree and sun-bleached rocks.
At least they were in the shade now, close to the wall of the ravine they had fallen into.
“You’re right,” Rett said. “We should get out of here, find the nearest walk-in freezer, and refuse to come out until we’ve eaten all the ice.”
Bryn gave him a faint smile. “Can I get some sliders and fries with that ice? And a fish sandwich with cheese—I hear those are really horrible and I need to find out for myself.”
Rett’s smile faltered.
“Sorry,” Bryn said, “I was just doing that weird fake-ordering-from-White-Castle thing…”
“That you used to do with your boyfriend.” Rett cleared his throat. “No, I get it.”
He didn’t really want to keep talking about it. “Your eye,” he said, as if she didn’t know the cut was still bleeding.
Bryn clamped her hand down harder over her wound. She sat in the dirt and tugged at the shredded fabric at the leg of her jumpsuit until a piece ripped away. Then she pressed it to the gash over her eye and leaned back in attempt to staunch the flow of blood. For a moment, there was only the sound of rocks trickling down the slope, the aftermath of Rett’s and Bryn’s terrible slide. Then Bryn said, “I almost blacked out. I mean, when I saw … that thing. Everything got dark. And it felt like—like something was trying to pull me away.”
Rett nodded slowly, grateful that the movement brought little pain. “Me too. After we slid down. I thought for a minute I was going to escape.” He looked to her to see if she understood. “Like it was all a dream and I was going to wake up.”
Bryn probed the dirt with the toe of her boot. She knows exactly what I mean, Rett thought. He could see it in her eyes—that faraway look that meant she had remembered something.
�
��It’s happened before,” she said quietly. “That feeling.”
“What?” Rett took a few breaths through gritted teeth while he willed the pain in his ankle to subside. “When?”
“A few times. I keep trying to follow it, to let myself—I don’t know. Get away. It feels like I’m going into a tunnel but I can’t get to the end of it.”
Rett thought it over. That wasn’t exactly what it was like for him. More like he’d gotten into a tunnel and backed out again on his own.
“But there was one time,” Bryn said. “Outside the depot, near the river. I saw that creature coming up behind you. I felt like I was going into that tunnel again. But I fought against it because I knew you were in trouble.”
Something stirred in Rett’s chest. She cares. At least a little, he thought. He remembered the feel of her in his arms when he’d embraced her on the ridge, the weight of her head on his shoulder. He wished she would come closer now, pained as he was.
“I got the flare gun out and the feeling went away,” Bryn said.
“Good thing.”
They sat in silence for a moment. The knowledge that another creature could come over the rise at any moment made Rett hot with panic. They still had one flare.
He stretched his fingers out, grimacing against the pain that stabbed at his ribs, and slid the gun closer.
“Rett,” Bryn said.
Rett looked over at her. The rag she held to her forehead had gone red, but at least the blood had stopped dripping.
“I remember something strange,” she said. “Something I can’t explain.”
Rett’s stomach tightened. That’s become the theme of my life.
“I remember that creature coming into the depot,” Bryn went on. “Through the skylight. Falling onto the floor.”
Pain glazed Rett’s thoughts. He couldn’t focus. Had the creature come through the skylight? The image came to mind so easily: a black form blocking the light, struggling through the opening, falling onto the floor.
But had that happened? “Wasn’t it near the river? You shot it with the flare.”
“I know,” Bryn said. “I remember that. But I also remember it coming down through the skylight.”
Rett struggled to understand. He had opened the skylight and hit the creature with the backpack. And then it had come back when Bryn had found him near the river. So why did he also remember it coming down through the skylight?
“Do you think we’ve been in that depot more than once?” Bryn asked.
Rett remembered something else now, something that surfaced in a wash of anxiety. “That man—the one we found dead outside the depot. He was pounding on the door, trying to get in.”
Bryn frowned. “Are you sure?” And then, “I think I do remember that. But did it really happen?”
More memories surfaced in the murky confusion flooding Rett’s mind: waking up in the depot, finding blood on his jumpsuit. How did I know it would have blood on it? I knew before I even looked down.
He thought of the feeling he’d had that there was something waiting on the roof of the depot, even before he’d opened the skylight to it. “Some of the things that have happened to us—I think I knew they would happen before they did.”
“Me too,” Bryn said.
Rett shook his head, lost. It was too much to think about at once, too much to try to make sense of.
Bryn trailed her fingers over her hair. “Is this why we get that feeling?” Rett realized she meant the scar over her ear. “Because they put something in our heads?”
The idea jolted Rett. Could it be that whenever he started to black out, whenever he felt that tunnel opening to him, it was thanks to some mechanism implanted in his brain?
And if so, did that mean he could control the feeling? Could use the mechanism?
He closed his eyes and tried to move away from the pain pressing at every inch of him, the rocks biting into his skin, the heat and dust filling his lungs …
And he felt an invisible channel open before him.
It waited to welcome him to a better place. Someplace lit by stars and bathed with cool air …
But Rett couldn’t reach it. He couldn’t get through the channel.
“I can’t do it,” he said aloud.
Bryn was watching him, her gaze narrowed.
“I can’t get away,” Rett explained, although he thought she might already understand.
“When was the last time you got that feeling, like you could get away?”
“When we were falling down the slope. And I think when … one of those creatures attacked us before, in the depot.” Did that happen? “When I get scared, I guess. When I think—” He lowered his head and spoke into the dirt. “When I think I’m going to die.”
Bryn touched his wrist, and he felt a rush of gratitude that it didn’t hurt like every other inch of him did. He turned his palm so that his hand rested in hers. That was as much as he could do. Even breathing sent waves of pain through him.
“Are we ever going to get out of here?” Bryn asked.
Rett fought against the wave of hopelessness threatening to overwhelm him. “Well, see, this has been my plan for a while now: wait until you’re desperate, then offer to finally put some effort into escaping if you’ll promise to reveal the location of your secret swimming lake when we get out of here.”
“If you get us out of here, I’ll take you to every secret lake in the country.”
The light in the corner of the device she held in her other hand showed red. The battery was running out. In another minute, the location of the coordinates would be lost to them forever. “Bryn. Last chance. You’ve got to go.”
“Could you stand if I helped you?”
Rett pushed his foot against the ground and felt a surge of pain. “Leave me here. It’s not far, right? Go check it out and come back.
The gun lay in his other hand, a slight weight that nevertheless reassured him. He didn’t want to give it up. But who knew what awaited Bryn at those coordinates? “You should take the gun with you. Just in case.”
Bryn looked over Rett’s near-shredded jumpsuit. “Maybe you should keep it.” She didn’t say what they were both thinking: In case another bug comes along while you’re sitting here like a ready-made meal.
“After all that, you can’t just let me keep the gun without a fight,” Rett said. He gave her half a smile.
“Rett…”
“Honestly, I don’t even need it. I prefer hand-to-hand combat. Hand-to-fang.” He pressed the gun into her hand. “Seriously, you better hurry before that battery goes out.”
Bryn eased herself onto her feet. “I won’t be gone long.” She fiddled with the GPS unit for a moment. “Wish me luck.”
“Stick to the side of the ravine,” Rett said. “Stay out of sight of anything that might be hungry.” He tried to say it lightly, but it came out sounding strained.
“Hope they find flares tasty.” Bryn’s voice was small in the wide space of the canyon. She limped off, GPS unit held out before her.
Rett tried to settle into a comfortable position but couldn’t find one. At least if a bug kills me, I’ll be out of my misery. He counted the seconds that passed so he could keep track of how long Bryn was gone. And if she’s gone too long? What then? He couldn’t very well go after her.
The rocks had finally stopped trickling down the slope of the ravine, though dust still hung in the air. Rett’s gaze snagged on a rock that stood out against the pale dirt, a rock as black as ink and veined with sun-flamed silver.
He scrambled for it, pulling himself on his knees and trying not to jar his injured ankle. Is this what we came for? he wondered as his fingers closed around the smooth rock.
He turned it over in his palm. The streaks of silver caught the sunlight and sent a thrill through Rett’s heart. I found it. I found what we’re looking for.
Maybe there are more. Maybe they’re all over this ravine.
His whipped his head around, searching for another gl
int of silver, another spot of black against the pale dirt. I’m missing something. There’s more to this.
His hand kept going to his pocket and he couldn’t figure out why. My pocket’s empty.
Something else nagged at the back of his mind, something important …
Bryn came hobbling back into view. Rett wanted to get up and meet her, but he still could barely move. “Everything okay?” he called to her, his voice betraying his alarm. “Did you find it?” He knew she hadn’t. He could tell from the slump of her shoulders, the defeat written all over her face as she came nearer.
Bryn collapsed into the dirt next to him. “The GPS unit took me to the coordinates,” she croaked.
Rett waited for her to say it.
She shook her head. “There’s nothing there. Nothing.”
The rock dropped out of Rett’s hand. No. “How are we supposed to get out of here?”
Bryn turned to Rett, an apology in her eyes. “I don’t know.”
“Are you sure there was nothing there? Could you have missed something?”
“It’s just dirt. Nothing else.” Bryn’s face was lined with pain and panic.
Rett fought against his own pain. It threatened to take up all the space in his thoughts, and he needed desperately to come up with a plan. “We still have the flare. We can try shooting it up into the sky.” A nagging thought was still trying to get his attention, but panic smothered it.
“You know why we haven’t tried that yet,” Bryn said darkly. “No one will come for us. We both know it.”
“What else can we do?”
“We’re missing something,” Bryn murmured. “There’s another piece to this puzzle.”
Rett tried to clear his mind, to focus on the thought that pulled at him. Got to fit the pieces together. “I have this feeling … There’s something back in Scatter 3. Something we overlooked.”
“There were things in there we never made sense of. We should have figured that place out before we headed out into the wasteland.”
Guilt pressed at Rett. If he hadn’t tried to hide that jumpsuit from Bryn, if he hadn’t left Scatter 3 in such a hurry …
He wondered if Bryn was thinking the same thing. Did she feel guilty for hiding the gun from him back in the depot?
The Echo Room Page 12
