“Can’t what?” Sampson was breathing hard. “Can’t see more than five inches in front of my nose? Can’t get any kind of backup from the people who sent us here? Can’t hunt down two fucking amateurs? The woman’s a cook, for fuck’s sake. Can’t I catch a break on this godforsaken mission?” With a low wordless sound that raised the small hairs on Clive’s neck, Sampson turned and put his fist through the wall. At this rate, the place would be pockmarked.
For a few stretched-out seconds, Clive’s eyes weren’t sure where to land—on the man melting down in front of him or the mercenaries hanging back, casting glances at each other.
Finally, Sampson stepped into Clive’s personal space on a waft of cinnamon and sunscreen and something else—bitter and crude as the fuel they used to heat this place. “Now, I’m gonna need to ask the prisoners some questions.”
Trial subjects, Clive wanted to say, but he knew better than to interject. This wasn’t a normal conversation. Besides, there was nothing to ask. They knew exactly who had the virus and, if they weren’t mistaken, they knew exactly where it was going. “As I’ve said before, Mr. Sampson, my subjects are not yours to play with. What could you possibly—”
Sampson’s eyes were Clive’s only warning before he moved, flat blue irises alive in a way they’d never been before. Clive stumbled back, shock and fear warring with his knowledge that he was better than this man. Too good to succumb to bullying.
Pride did him absolutely no good when Sampson put his forearm to Clive’s throat and leaned in, as calm and nonchalant as if he were on a Sunday stroll. Pride didn’t help him breathe or keep his eyes open, didn’t prevent his larynx from bruising like a ripe peach.
In the few seconds spent chasing the stars that popped at the edge of his vision, head pressed into the newly formed wall dent as if it were made for him, Clive understood: They would die here. Not just the trial subjects, but all of them. Him possibly right this moment, his body just one more tossed onto the growing heap outside on the ice.
When Sampson released him, it was sheer willpower that kept Clive’s knees from buckling. A compulsion to survive that compelled him to speak through his already swelling throat, eyes not leaving the other man’s as something hard and wild of his own reared its head. “Think you’re…strong…” He coughed, the sensation rough as nails. “With your fists and guns… There’s a virus on its way.” He swallowed and stood up higher, keeping himself still as he forced a smile, as false and pointless as those wax lips he used to chew through on Halloween. “Your payload, remember? The reason we’re all here? It would serve you well not to forget that I’m the guy with the vaccine.”
With his hand pressed to his throat, Clive stepped unsteadily around Sampson and his mini-army, heading deliberately away from the lab and the vaccine in question. Though his vision closed in with every step, he kept himself erect until he turned the corner and collapsed against the wall.
The bastard had gone too far.
Slowly, he made his way toward the lounge, where he gathered water and an ice pack for his throat, along with a fresh bottle of that vodka. Make that two. From there, he went to the kitchen and filled a basket with supplies. Enough for a siege.
Things were not going according to plan. Did they ever? He coughed out a dry, bitter laugh, which he instantly regretted. Shit, his throat hurt.
After a good half hour had passed, he crept down the hall leading to the lab. There, he typed in the pass code, pressed his hand to the print pad, and went in, dragging his supplies behind him. The door locked with a satisfying snick, leaving him blessedly alone.
Well, relatively alone.
He glanced at the shatterproof glass separating him from the four cells containing his trial subjects. At least the two-way mirrors afforded him privacy.
Time to get to work on a permanent solution to a difficult problem. Thankfully, he knew just what to do.
Chapter 32
Day 12—156 Miles to Volkov Station—1 Day of Food Remaining
Coop watched Angel lick the wrapper of a protein bar and hated himself.
They’d pushed through. Made an effort, a really strong effort to add miles, but the human body wasn’t made for this shit. They’d spent twelve days on the ice, and if they hadn’t lost their food, they could have done twelve more.
But after this final dinner, there wasn’t a chance in hell they’d make it.
Ford couldn’t wrap his mind around that, here in the tent’s warm orange interior on what was possibly the last night of their lives. Or maybe that could be tomorrow. Or the day after.
He’d never make love to her. Never hear her laugh again.
His brother, Eric, would never know what had happened to him. He wished he’d reached out more often. Especially since Eric had been there for him—always.
He and Angel had saved their final dried meal for tonight, as sort of a celebration, he guessed. One last taste of something. A last shared pleasure.
He was hungry for something else, though. The only thing keeping him moving through the coldest, roughest days of his life—her. Every day, every mile, every step was made with the promise that he’d hold her in his arms that night.
In silence, they dipped into the lukewarm bag of rehydrated food—a chicken curry, which he supposed was okay as far as last meals went. They were huddled together, for warmth, yeah, but also because this was how they lived now: as a unit.
Which didn’t mean they were alone in this tent. Oh no, exhaustion hung above and between them, sat on their chests and shoulders, oozed into their pores, its presence as solid as theirs. The wind, too, made a good show of it, robbing them of their peace and privacy. And then there was the ice itself, hell-bent on stealing what was left of their humanity.
“Hate the wind,” Angel said, echoing his thoughts without any animosity.
“The wind doesn’t care,” he said, immediately regretting how morose he sounded.
“Wind don’t care,” Angel imitated in a high, bratty voice. It was the most excited sound she’d made in days.
He blinked slowly. “What?”
“Remember those honey badger videos?” At his blank look, she went on. “The crazy, nasty-ass honey badger? You know, ‘This is honey badger. Honey badger don’t care.’ No? Nothing?”
He shook his head, eyes bright on her.
She sighed. “Some guy redid the audio narration for a nature documentary about honey badgers. Years ago.” Her words were more spaced out than they used to be, as if she couldn’t get breath or kept losing her way in the middle of what she was saying. “It was hilarious.” She screwed up her face, pursed her lips. Even chapped and burned, they could never be anything but beautiful. “Anyway.” She motioned toward the howling wind, the joke over now, fatigue back after a brief respite. “Reminded me of that, you know? Wind don’t care. Doesn’t matter that we’re here. Nothing matters.”
Her features flattened out again, narrower than when they’d left the station, her cheeks too hollow, her eyes swallowing up her face. Those bones were beautiful, fine and sharp, with a tilt to the nose that he’d never noticed before, as if taking away the flesh put it all into clearer perspective. On a strange level, though he preferred her healthy and flushed to sharp and sallow, there was something intimate about seeing her like this.
Jesus. He pushed his palms into his eyes, hard.
“It’ll blow if it wants to, won’t it? Feels like it’s started to wear away at me, like erosion’s already begun and it’s skimmed off parts I’ll never get back.”
He swallowed back a pointless wave of rage. There wasn’t room for that shit in here. Not between them. Not now, when shoring up the good was more important than reflecting all the bad.
Later, bodies entwined in their shared bag, with the noisily crackling ice beneath them and the midnight sun washing everything in its glow, Ford felt the rare urge to talk.
/> “Eric’ll be upset.”
She shifted against him. “Eric?”
Right. That was a bit of a non sequitur, wasn’t it?
“My brother. He’ll miss me, though I never call him, rarely see him. Don’t ever check in.”
“That’s so sad.”
Huh. He’d never thought of his life as sad before.
“Used to fish with him. And Dad. Only time Dad paid much attention to us, really. There’s this island off the coast of California. San Elias. It’s right next to this deep-sea platform. Dad’s spot. Hot summers, he’d drop us on the island and fish off the boat.”
“Sounds nice.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Dad didn’t like dealing with us. Couple times he brought camping gear and put us on the island to fend for ourselves while he fished. Probably got wasted, too, but I wasn’t aware of that in those days.” He sucked in a dry breath, filled with nothing but Angel. “Drank himself to death. But that’s not the point. The point is that Eric was a kid, too, but he was more of a man than Dad. Dad taught us to fish, to clean what we caught, but he’d pass out before we cooked them. So Eric, at probably ten or eleven, would light a fire and make sure I ate. After the second or third trip like that, he started bringing other food, too. So we wouldn’t have to eat fish for the three days it took for our dad to finish whatever booze he’d brought.”
“Oh, Ford. I’m sorry, that’s—”
“Don’t feel sorry for me. Shit happens to everyone. It was nice. Peaceful. I had Eric. I was lucky.” He sighed, letting the backs of his gloved knuckles rub her rib cage and wishing there was room—time—for more. “I remember these…sensations. My feet in the warm mud. Sitting with my brother by the fire, leaning against him shoulder to shoulder. We didn’t have to talk, which was nice.” Behind his closed lids, winking lights appeared. “The stars. I remember watching them with him and wondering if—”
Shit. He couldn’t finish, couldn’t voice the childish hopes or wishes or whatever those had been. Wanting his mom back, begging the night sky for another chance. Shooting stars and their false, empty hope.
She nodded and that movement, the tight rub of her cheek to his chest, made something twist hard inside of him.
“Eric’s my hero,” he said into the top of her head with a weak smile. “Wanted to kill me when I joined up.”
“The army?”
He hummed his assent against her.
“Yeah. Why’d you do that?”
“Piss my dad off, maybe. Though it was more than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dad was a scientist—petroleum geologist.”
“Hm. What’s that?” Angel sounded tired, but present. Exactly the way he felt. Like if they went to sleep, they might never wake up again. Like this might be it for them.
“Worked for the oil companies—it was how he knew about that island, from the time he’d spent out there, planning on where to place rigs. They have geologists on staff who locate oil and gas deposits.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah. So, I was kinda following in his footsteps. Majored in geology when I first went to college, but about halfway through my third semester, something happened. An oil spill, right off the coast. It was a mess for months. Animals dying, people sick. Filthy water. I got so pissed that my dad had a part in that. See, while he fished, pulling animals from the water, Eric and I spent our summers on that island, getting to know the wildlife, becoming a part of it. Like, we created our own little oasis. Guess that island made me care. About nature. The world. The oil spill made me realize we were destroying it.”
He smiled, remembering how enraged Dad and Eric had been when he’d gone to basic training. Dad because Coop had quit school and wouldn’t become his mini-me, Eric because he knew how bad life was on the front lines. Eric had joined the navy right out of school and eventually gone on to BUD/S training and become a SEAL, also to piss Dad off.
What a way to live a life, between the three of them—as a series of aggressive maneuvers. Would they have been that way if Mom had been around?
He blinked in the dark sleeping bag, shook himself free of his memories, and focused on Angel’s breathing. “My brother had all this easy confidence and swagger. I was the quiet one. Just wanted to be alone.”
Although not now, strangely. Now he was happy to have her here. Well, not happy, because he didn’t want this for her. Didn’t want to see her suffer, witness all that magnificent life draining away.
He swallowed back a fresh wash of pain, skating on the perma-layer of hunger.
Why was he even talking about this stuff? Man, his brain was scrambled. But the images wouldn’t stop, and the words kept coming.
“Eric knew I was different from him. Couldn’t take crowds or noise. People, heat…all the shit I had to deal with in the army.”
“I just thought you were a jerk.”
He shook with an unexpected burst of laughter. “I know.” He squeezed her tight, trying to figure out how to keep her alive. “I know.”
Chapter 33
Day 13—151 Miles to Volkov Station—No Food Remaining
They’d eaten vitamins for breakfast, which wasn’t all that unpleasant. It made her feel full. In a way. If she pretended really, really hard. It didn’t, however, get rid of the cramps in her belly and thighs. And the cramps made walking difficult. She snickered. Well, more difficult.
At least it’s not storming, she thought for maybe the twelfth or eighteenth or millionth time today. Or yesterday. Whatever. No storm was good.
But wait. Angel stopped, swaying like a sheet of paper in the wind. If it wasn’t storming, why was she bent forward like this? The extra effort she’d had to put in for the last hour or so was really chafing her.
Her eyelashes crunched as she blinked up.
Were those mountains ahead, biting the sky like a big set of teeth? Had Ford mentioned mountains?
She staggered back, managing not to land on her poor bruised ass, though maybe she should just let go and do it. Just sit.
It would be so nice. On a soft, springy sofa. Or maybe one of those memory foam beds, molding to every aching bone. Oooohhh, a hammock.
She set off again, picturing a cloud-light bed, right beyond this rise.
Even as she daydreamed, experience had taught her to keep her eyes glued to the ground. Damn thing may look as smooth as a skating rink, but every little ripple was an obstacle, just waiting for her to happen.
Or something. That wasn’t the expression, was it?
The ground rose and rose, the angle like torture, but also entertaining in a way. Variety. Variation. One of those words. Spice of life.
Spices. Her mouth watered painfully. Crap. She’d cut food words out of her thoughts a couple days ago. Damn this one for sliding in sideways. Now she’d have to cut out sayings, too, which limited her options of things to think about. Ford thought it was hilarious when she—
She raised her head, wiped her goggles, and stared at the empty space ahead.
Oh great. Now where the hell was Ford?
* * *
“I have a real good friend…lives in the hospital…I’ll buy him anything…to keep him alive.” Coop whispered the marching cadence under his breath as he skied. It was grim and grisly and perfectly appropriate. “Don’t…have no…legs…”
He stopped, shook his head, pulled his ski mask up, ran his glove over his face to clear away the clinging crystals, and turned to find that he was alone.
“Angel!”
Nothing. Silence.
Frustrated, he pulled his hat and ski mask off and called again, listening hard for her response.
“Yeah!”
Relief washed through him so intensely he had to work hard to stay standing. He scanned the horizon until he saw her, way down below.
Which was odd.
There hadn’t been mountains on their route, had there? His brain was on the fritz, foggy from lack of food. Maybe oxygen, too, judging from the climb he’d just done. He peered down at Angel’s slowly approaching figure. Christ, how had he not noticed the change in elevation?
He turned and stared at where a series of heavily striated hills chewed darkly at the sky, each peak a sharp tooth sawing into the gray above it.
I know this place.
That didn’t make sense, since he’d never trekked out here, but…
Wait. He turned, doing his best to find the sun, invisible behind a fresh blanket of clouds.
He had been here.
“Intense.” Angel came up beside him, breathing hard from the climb.
“I’ve been here.”
“In your wildest dreams?”
She’d had him laughing for days, but this was different. There wasn’t just humor in her words, but a thread of hope, thin as a spiderweb.
“We didn’t come from this direction, though.” He spun in a full circle. “From that way. Volkov.”
“Wait.” She straightened. “Are we closer than we realized?”
“No. No, but we stayed in a place out here. A hut.”
He turned to find her watching him closely. Maybe she wasn’t quite ready to pull on that fiber-thin thread yet, but he was.
“One of the Russians called this place Baba Yaga’s Lock.” He leaned back and admired the sharp peaks. What appeared high and aggressive from this direction smoothed out on the other side. “I see it now. See how they look like the edge of a key?”
“Yeah,” she breathed. “So, how far is this hut?”
“Just over that rise.” It was hard not to let excitement buoy his flagging muscles. “Don’t get excited, though. If they’ve cleaned it out for the winter, we’ll…” Die anyway. He couldn’t finish the sentence. And it apparently didn’t matter to Angel, who’d already set off for the summit.
They didn’t crest until late in the afternoon. And even then, it took a while to find the hut.
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