by Kyle West
We paused in midair at a hover. Ashton angled the ship downward, to get a full view of the mountainside.
He pointed ahead. “Somewhere in there. That’s our target.”
I saw nothing but bare mountainside. It looked cold as hell out there.
“Let’s scan the area,” I said. “Might find something if we’re a bit closer.”
Ashton nodded, edging the ship closer to the mountain. There was nothing but sheer cliffs, long-dead trees, and massive boulders.
“They didn’t want anyone getting in, did they?” Anna asked.
Michael grunted. “Guess not.”
Julian watched ahead intently, saying nothing.
We began our sweep of the mountain. We searched for ten minutes in vain, finding nothing but rock.
“We have to find somewhere flatter,” I said. “They couldn’t have built the Bunker door into sheer cliff.”
Or at least, I didn’t think they could have.
“I think you’re right,” Ashton said.
The ship rose above the ridge. Expecting to see only the other side of the mountain, sloping downward, we were actually surprised by another sight – a small valley, in the center of which was a frozen lake.
“That looks promising,” Anna said.
“Indeed it does,” Ashton said. “Going in.”
Ashton eased Odin forward. We had been advancing for a few seconds when something pummeled the ship from the side.
Chapter 9
The ship was sent into a haphazard spiral as a baleful roar, louder than any I had ever heard, shook the entire vessel. My seatbelt pressed deep into my skin as the ship spun downward. Blood rushed to my head. It felt like my stomach was rising to my throat.
We were going to crash.
Ashton cursed as he jerked the control stick upward. Slowly, the ship righted itself, and I could see the gray sky above, empty.
The thrusters kicked on, pushing the entire ship from its downward slide. But it was not fast enough. Something crashed into the ship in the back. As the ship remained immobile, I realized then that something hadn’t crashed into us. We had crashed into something. Odin was standing on end, the aft of the ship propped on the Earth.
The ship began to fall forward.
Ashton pressed a button on the dash. The forward strut squealed as it deployed, just in time to somewhat break the fall of the ship. The strut took on the pressure of the ship as it pressed its enormous weight down from above. The ship bounced a few times due to the strut’s suspension before settling.
Through the windshield I could see gray air and ground covered in similarly gray and dusty snow. We had landed in the valley, thankfully. If it had been the slope, we’d be sliding down to our doom.
But we had more pressing matters. There was still the question of what had hit us in the first place to send us crashing to the ground, and I knew it wasn’t the mountain that first time. There was only one thing big enough to attack us like that, and as long as we were grounded, we had no way of fighting it.
A xenodragon.
Ashton clicked on the radio. Not even static answered.
“The radio’s lost power,” Ashton said. He sighed. “Christ. Just hope it’s not the rest of the ship, too.”
I was about to use my own radio to contact Makara when another roar shook the ship’s frame. Now there was no doubt: we had been attacked by a dragon, and apparently it was coming in for round two.
“We can’t lift off?” I asked.
“No, I can’t do anything,” Ashton said. “Nothing on the dash is responding.”
“Is the fusion drive working?” Michael asked.
All of us paused to listen. No sound came from the aft of the ship, and no vibrations through the floor. That meant the engine was off.
“Not even backup battery power is working,” Ashton said. “Unless we can get power back on, we’re royally screwed.”
“I think we’re royally screwed even before that happens,” Michael said. “We have to get off this ship and find the Bunker on foot.”
Michael was right. We weren’t safe on this ship. The dragon knew we were here and would be coming back for us. Then again, we weren’t exactly safe in the open, either. If we left this ship, we would be sitting ducks.
“Let me call Makara first,” I said.
“There might not be time for that,” Anna said. “Let’s save our own butts first.”
I nodded and unstrapped my seatbelt and stood, racking my brain for something to do. I listened for any sound, but there was none. Maybe the dragon was gone.
That was when the ship was slammed from the side. I dropped to the floor and slid across the deck, feeling myself lift as the floor turned underneath me. I fell backward into the wall, the impact momentarily knocking the wind out of me. Around me came curses. The ship was on its side. Restoring power was now the least of our concerns.
“Is everyone alright?” I asked.
No one answered, but we all began to get up, one by one. Everyone could manage at least that much.
“We need to get to the exit,” I said. “Now.”
We were standing on the wall, and the ship had been plunged into darkness. The only light came from the gray late morning outside the windshield. Michael clicked on a flashlight and took the lead.
As the dragon screamed once more overhead, I knew we didn’t have much time left. Michael scrambled into the corridor leading from the bridge, climbing the bulkhead in order to reach it. We followed him. What had once been the floor now lay to our right. I wondered how we were going to get out of here. We couldn’t get out through the blast door if it was facing the ground.
“Head to the cargo bay,” Ashton said, wheezing.
“I can’t see where to go,” Michael said.
“Here,” Ashton said, snatching the light. “Follow me.”
He led us into the wardroom. The stairs into the cargo bay appeared very strange – from our perspective, they were built sideways into the floor, which rose to our right. We had to climb up to reach the stairs going into the cargo bay.
Anna went first, using a weapons rack built into the wall to push herself up. From there she was able to reach the stairs, pulling herself inside the pit where the stairs went toward the cargo bay.
“I can’t do that, girlie,” Ashton said.
“You go next to last,” she said. “Michael can boost you, and the rest of us will pull you up.”
Outside, the dragon screamed, distant. Maybe it was going away. Or, maybe, it would come in for one more attack – one we had no capacity to deal with.
Julian pulled himself up to the stairs. I followed his example. Once on the stairs, Julian reached down a hand for Ashton. Michel cupped his hands, allowing Ashton to place his foot there so he could boost him.
“Find something to hold onto,” Michael said.
Ashton was about to protest when he gave a startled yelp. He shot into the waiting hands of Julian, who grabbed him by the armpits. I reached down to assist.
Ashton moaned in pain as we hoisted him up. He was surprisingly heavy – we made no progress in pulling him up until he started to push himself on the wall. At last, he lay sprawled next to us, panting.
At last, Michael made the climb, using the weapons rack as Anna had. He pulled himself into the staircase. As he stood next to us, we walked toward the door to the cargo bay.
Michael pulled the sliding door open, revealing a mangled mess of supplies and parts within the dark bay. We crawled forward through the metallic jumble toward the very back of the ship.
“There’s a portal on the port side we can use,” Ashton said, pointing upward. “That’ll put us outside.”
The portal was already open halfway – wide enough for a person to squeeze through. I thought that was an odd bit of luck; I was afraid it might be stuck shut. We weaved our way there, avoiding the junk that blocked our path. Frigid air entered the bay from outside.
“Come on,” I said. “We don’t have much ti
me.”
Michael nodded, and climbed out of the portal into the gray afternoon. We all followed.
***
The cold didn’t hit me at first when I entered the gray air. I first felt absolutely nothing.
Then it came. The air stung my skin, my eyes watered, and tears coursed down my face. I hastily wiped them away before they could freeze. As the wind buffeted me, my six layers of clothing felt too little.
“Raise Makara,” Michael said.
I raised the radio to my mouth. “Makara? We need immediate evac, over. Odin is down. I repeat: Odin is down.”
The radio was silent for a moment. Makara’s voice came in.
“What do you mean, Odin is down?”
From somewhere above, the xenodragon screamed.
“We need to find cover!” Michael shouted above the wind.
Julian crossed his arms in a vain attempt to keep warm. The poor guy had lived in a warm climate all of his life. If the temperature was this much of a shock to me, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like for him.
“Odin crashed,” I said. “We were ambushed by a dragon. I...I think it’s coming for us again.”
Michael began picking his way down the side of the ship, into the dusty snow that covered the mountain valley. Everyone moved to follow him.
“Listen,” Makara said. “I can be there in an hour. But if that dragon is still around there’s not much I can do. When it comes down to it, the beast has to clear out before I can pick you up. Just find a safe spot. Somewhere warm.”
I shivered. “We’re going to find the Bunker entrance and stay until we’re clear to get out. Might have a chance to do some recon after all.”
Michael shouted at me from the ground, but his voice was lost to the wind. I needed to get moving.
“Listen,” Makara said. “It might be too late to say this, but...be careful, Alex. I can’t lose any of you.”
I sensed concern in her voice – a promise of protection that could do no good, hundreds of miles away. I thought of all the times she’d saved my hide – running from Raiders, giving me food – and how she was powerless to do that right now.
“We’ll see you soon, Makara.”
Ashton worked his way down the ship’s side and entered the waiting arms of Julian and Michael. Anna hopped cleanly down from the ship into snow that came up to her knees. This was going to be a hard slog. I worked my way down the side of the ship. The dragon roared once more from above. It was not visible beyond the thick gray dust.
“The Bunker will probably be somewhere in this valley,” Ashton shouted.
Ahead, I could see nothing but a wall of gray air. Somewhere beyond that was the mountainside and the frozen lake we had spied from above. The wind had kicked up so much snow and dust that we could only see about fifteen feet ahead. Ashton was right; we had to find the Bunker entrance or we might not even survive long enough to be rescued. Makara could follow the coordinates to find our position, but we couldn’t stay in the ship. The dragon was sure to come back. We had to get underground and wait it out.
We forged ahead, Michael and me plowing a trail through the thick snow. I ignored the cold, ignored the pain, and pressed on. After a few minutes of empty space and snow, we stopped before the edge of the frozen lake. The snow was not as thick here – I could see the ice through a thin film of grayish white.
And also bright, fresh red spots.
“Blood,” Anna said.
I knelt down, picking up a small red crystal. Yes: it was blood. But whose? Someone had been here before us – or something.
“Look,” Julian said, his teeth chattering. He pointed toward the right. “There’s more going that way.”
I soon saw that Julian was right. More speckles of red led to the right, across the lake itself.
“Maybe it leads somewhere,” Anna said.
“We have nothing else to go on,” I said. “Might as well follow it.”
We followed the trail of blood. The wind blustered, the snow stung, and the trail led in more or less a straight line. Eventually, we would find where it ended, and whom the blood belonged to.
Soon, the ice petered out, to be replaced by thick snow once more. Several boulders rose from the ground; we trudged between them. We were nearing the mountainside and the trail now skirted the edge of the frozen lake. Maybe it was because of the mountainside, but the wind abated a bit and the snow settled.
As everything stilled into silence, that was when we saw him.
Grudge, lying in the snow, with blood pouring out of his right leg.
***
“Grudge!”
Anna ran through the snow and I chased after her. Michael, Julian, and Ashton trudged after me. Grudge wasn’t moving. He couldn’t have been out here long – obviously, he had hitched a ride on Odin, had even been the one to open that portal in the cargo bay. Already, a small embankment of gray, ashy snow had gathered on his side. If we had come up on him ten minutes later, that snow might have become his icy coffin. For all we knew, he actually was dead. His eyes were closed.
Anna knelt beside Grudge and looked up at me with wide eyes, as if I could do something about it.
I ran forward, and knelt in the snow, placing two fingers at the base of his neck.
Thump. A long pause. Thump.
“He’s alive,” I said.
Michael ventured ahead, snow swirling around his form, his breath forming clouds. In the distance behind came another cry from the dragon. I spun to see nothing but falling snow. Odin was lost to sight and the dragon would be even farther away.
“I’ll take care of Grudge,” Ashton said. “The rest of you find the Bunker entrance. We need to get inside and out of this cold before it kills us all. Makara will never get here in time.”
“I’ll stay with Ashton,” Anna said.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Michael and Julian fell into step beside me. We forged ahead through the snow, leaving Ashton and Anna to tend the fallen Grudge. Why had he come? For some reason, I imagined him sneaking aboard the Odin and finding a warm place in the cargo bay to take a nap, having no idea where the ship was heading. The gang lords, as a rule, were not allowed aboard either Gilgamesh or Odin except under the watchful eye of Makara, Ashton, Char, or Marcus.
Now, though, the wreck was likely going to cost Grudge his life. He lay bleeding in the snow after somehow escaping the wreckage of Odin. Was his being here an accident, or had it been on purpose? We would never know unless he lived to tell us. Maybe it was some conspiracy on the part of the gang lords. If so, it had horribly backfired.
But for now, I had to concentrate on other things. Finding the entrance to Bunker 84 was the number one priority. The shifting snow gave away to a wall of solid gray rock. We had run right into a cliff face. I saw nothing on the cliff face that indicated an entrance of any sort. I glanced back at our disappearing footsteps being filled with falling snow. Getting lost was a very real possibility.
“Let’s follow this cliff back toward the lake,” Michael said.
Julian and I followed Michael. For a couple of minutes we walked on until the icy blue of the lake surface came into view. It was perhaps twenty feet across here. I realized that it was not actually a lake at this point – it was a wide stream. And the stream angled upward, until it was going straight up.
A frozen waterfall.
I looked back, and forward, realizing we had entered a canyon. We would have to turn back, as this was a dead end.
Instead, Julian walked forward, placing a hand on the thick, frozen waves that composed the icefall. The ice stretched up the mountain, far out of view. It was wide at the bottom – perhaps forty or so feet across, and was frozen completely against the mountain.
“Julian, we have to go,” I said.
Julian, however, did not respond. I began to wonder if he had even heard me.
“Julian!”
He turned, a smile on his face. His brown eyes glinted, and he pointed, right at the wa
terfall.
“I’ll be damned,” Michael said from beside me.
I had no idea what either of them was talking about. I squinted, and through the spiraling snowflakes and sleet falling from the sky, through that thick, clear icefall, I saw it.
84.
“It’s behind the waterfall,” I said.
Julian turned around, rubbing his hands together. “There’s always something behind the waterfall.”
If the Bunker creators were going for hidden, well, they did a pretty good job. This mountain valley could only be accessed by air, and on top of that, they had built the Bunker behind a giant sheet of falling water. Had it been warmer, we might have never found it.
How we were going to get through the icefall was another proposition entirely. But for now, Ashton and Anna had to know.
“Julian, Michael...stay here and get to work on breaking that ice. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
“Alex...” Michael said.
“There’s no time for all of us to go back,” I said. “It’s too cold, and getting inside twenty minutes earlier could mean the difference between life and death. Start on the ice.”
Michael nodded, finally agreeing. “Fine. Go back the exact way we came in.”
I nodded. “Of course.”
As Michael and Julian grabbed some nearby rocks and began hammering away at the ice, I turned and ran. The cold air stung my lungs. The shock of the cold still hadn’t gone away. All I had to do now was not get lost.
I slipped on a patch of ice, tumbling to the ground. I stretched out my hands, breaking my fall as I pressed into a snowbank. Panting, I got back up. The freezing snow snuck into my gloves. I ran along the cliff, the exact way Michael, Julian, and I had come. I jogged for another minute, expecting at least a vestige of the trail of footprints we had left.
But instead, I found nothing – nothing but a field of ice, nothing but snow and the gray air, swirling. I suddenly felt very tired.
I ran forward into the snow, leaving the cliff behind. Ashton and Anna would be out there somewhere. They would not have moved...would they?
It was silent and cold. I felt completely alone, as if I were in my own world, as if I were on a separate planet. The ice and snow continued to fall, burying the land in its layers. There was nothing but snow in all directions. I thought there had been at least a few more rocks than this – a few more boulders when I had passed this way earlier.
