But it was the fourth thing that was, she later thought, the most telling and perhaps damning, because it explained so much.
There were two other kids—two boys—whose faces leapt into a kind of crystalline clarity. They’d shucked their shirts; this was summer, from the looks of all those bare legs and shoulders and midriffs, and probably very hot. The boys’ arms were draped over one another’s necks in that kind of clowning-around headlock guys got off on.
Because his chest was bare, she could see that his skin was smooth. No scars at all. She couldn’t tell a thing about his neck because of that headlock, but she would lay odds that he hadn’t tried filleting his flesh with that knife or, maybe, a dagger of razorsharp glass. Just a hunch.
Back then, Wolf ’s name had been Simon.
Standing a little ways to the right were two very beautiful girls, both doubled over in laughter. Penny, the honey-blonde, was willowy and tall. The other girl was sloe-eyed and small, and her name was Amy? Anna? Amanda? The ink was smeary and she couldn’t tell.
But it was the buddy—Wolf ’s friend, seemingly older by several years—that captured her attention. His hair had been shorter back then, but she would know that boy anywhere, and there was something . . . Her eyes clicked back and forth between the buddy and the pretty honey-blonde, Penny. Yes, the jaw, maybe, or the cut of her cheekbones or the eyes, but something made Alex think: Sister?
Whatever the case, Peter Ernst had known Simon Yeager, very well. From the looks of it, they might have loved one another like brothers.
The evidence was right there in neat black ink: Stiemke, Prigge, Born, Ernst, Yeager. The proof was built out of pyramids of skulls and the bones of the Banned. The story was written in blood. There was no mistake.
These Changed were the children and the grandchildren of Rule.
48
The night they left Rule—eight days after Alex ran and Peter disappeared—was a nightmare and nearly killed them. Even if Lena hadn’t been ill and queasy, she still would have been in trouble almost from the beginning, and knew it. They all were. The snow kept coming, riding a vertical razor of wind. The maps were a waste of time. In the snow, landmarks blurred, and the trail was nothing more than a hope.
Then, four hours out of Rule and too few miles east, Lena’s horse plunged through deep snow and into the well of a fallen spruce. Her skittish mount had been giving her trouble the whole time, rearing and dancing, bucking a few times, and, in general, being a nuisance. Lucky for her, she was hunkered down low and forward, her hands knotted in the animal’s mane and her knees so high she was practically crouching on the saddle when the horse let out a shriek. She couldn’t hear the snap over the churn of the wind but felt the sudden jolt. So she knew. She’d watched the same thing happen on Crusher Karl’s farm. As the horse swooned to the snow, she launched herself from the saddle. If the horse rolled and pinned her, she might not get up again. There was a moment’s dizzying flight, and then she plowed a good two feet into a deep drift. Chris had to brace his feet on either side of the hole to drag her out. By then, the horse was dead and Nathan was holstering his handgun.
No one rode after that. It was pitch-black, and they might be crazy, but they weren’t suicidal. The wind was too strong to even attempt a tent unless one of them had a sudden urge to go parasailing. Instead, they bunched the horses, hobbling them close together, and then used the horses’ bodies to block some of the wind as they zipped the bivies together and burrowed inside. She spent what remained of that first night sandwiched between Chris and Nathan, shivering hard enough to make her teeth chatter.
When the sky began to lighten, they slogged on through the storm, leading the horses, moving east. Weller had packed snowshoes only for Chris and Nathan, so she and Chris had to share. Eventually, Chris found a good spot on the lee side of a small hill. She used the snowshoes to tamp down powder as Chris and Nathan took turns with the shovel, one digging while the other scooped snow with his hands. Lena wasn’t used to the work, and she was drenched with sweat and huffing in less than thirty minutes. After that, she couldn’t stay warm. The wind was a stiletto. Her body heat leaked from her pores, and she was already weak from lack of food and sleep. She went from shivering to shuddering. A monstrous exhaustion grabbed her by the throat and just wouldn’t let go. All she wanted was to curl up and sleep. So she sat down—only to rest. At least, that’s what she told herself. She didn’t remember lying down.
The next thing she knew, someone was shaking her, hard. She thought someone was shouting, but her thoughts were like wet watermelon seeds that kept slipping between her fingers no matter how hard she tried to hang on. She wasn’t cold anymore, even though snow pecked her face. That was a relief.
“She can’t sleep,” Nathan said, but the older man’s voice was gauzy and seemed very far away.
“I know that. She’s all sweaty.” Chris. “Maybe we should go back. I could try to find help.”
“Might as well lie down and die then. You know the Council won’t let this pass. Besides, you wouldn’t get two miles without getting lost.”
“You mean, more lost than we are already?” Chris snapped. Even through the strange fog settling over her mind, she heard his anger. “Come on,” he said, giving her a rough shake. “You got to stay awake until this is finished.”
“Screw off,” she said, but her voice was colorless and wan. She was more tired than she’d ever been in her life.
“Damn it,” Chris said, and then he slapped her face. Twice. Not hard, but enough that she gasped.
“Go away,” she said, pushing at him with arms as limp as overdone noodles. “Just let me sleep.”
“No.” Chris dragged her to her feet. Her knees kept unhinging, and then she was sagging back to the snow. “Come on, wake up!” Chris shouted into her ear. “Get up! Do you want to die?”
No, she just wanted to sleep. She heard the sound of a zipper— nothing more than a soft hiss—and then Chris was drawing the sleeping bag up around her legs and over her body.
“That’s not going to do much,” Nathan said. “She’s all wet. She’ll soak the bag and then we’re—”
The voices faded again. That was all right. She wasn’t that interested. Instead, her mind drifted off like a bit of dandelion fluff. Or maybe she just passed out.
She came to as someone manhandled her to sit. The stink of something sweet slapped her nose. Her stomach turned over.
“Drink it.” She recognized Chris’s voice. “Come on, it’ll warm you up.”
“Noooo,” she moaned, and then she felt something hot and sickly sweet against her lips and then in her mouth. She flailed, but Chris jerked the cup back in time to avoid scalding them both. “Ow,” she said. Her tongue felt parboiled. “What is that?”
“Hot chocolate.” Chris had one arm around her, and was bracing her up with a knee. “We got enough of a windbreak from the hill and the snow that I fired up the camp stove. Come on,” he said, bringing the cup back to her lips. “Drink.”
The chocolate smell made her queasy, but Chris insisted. She choked down a mouthful and then another and kept it up until the cup was empty. Her stomach did a slow somersault, then decided to stay put. Little by little, either because of the sugar or the warmth, she started to wake up. She saw that the day was brighter now, although the snow was still falling in a thick, billowing curtain. Off to her right, the two remaining horses were dark blurs in a clutch of hemlock and pine.
“Wow.” She burped, then grimaced at sour bile and gluey cocoa. She turned aside and spat. “That’s a lot of snow.” “Yeah. Nathan says he’s never seen it this bad.”
“Where is he?”
Chris inclined his head to the left. “Smoothing out the snow cave and cutting in some steps so we don’t fall. We’re almost done. Come on,” he said, stripping the sleeping bag from her legs and then hooking his arms under hers. “Let’s get you inside.”
The entrance was a hole maybe three feet in diameter. The tunnel, troughed out of snow, was dark and seemed very long and just wide enough for her to squirm in on her back. For a second, she froze in place. The snow was only inches from her nose and she couldn’t breathe. The tunnel seemed to collapse around her, growing smaller and smaller.
“Come on.” Nathan’s voice drifted down. “It widens up once you get all the way through.”
She pushed herself in the rest of the way. She wasn’t sure what she expected, but the cave was small, maybe eight feet long and not very high, leaving only enough room for them to shamble around.
“Up here.” Nathan knelt on a wide shelf about two feet from the floor. He’d covered the shelf with the tent and then positioned a sleeping bag on top of that. Most of the gear was stacked on the platform as well. It was very dim inside, but she could she that the cave arched overhead with just enough clearance for them to sit comfortably.
She clambered up the steps Nathan had cut in the snow. Now that she was out of the wind, she realized that she wasn’t as cold anymore. She wasn’t toasty, but she was no longer freezing. “How come there are two levels?”
“Heat rises.” Nathan was working a stout branch in and out of one of two holes punched in the roof. “We’ll stay warm enough up here. There’ll be some melt, but as long as we keep the gear dry, we should be okay.”
She turned as Chris shouldered his way through the tunnel and into the cave. Turtling onto his back, he positioned a saddlebag and one of the empty packs across the entrance, leaving a gap of half a foot. “Here.” He handed her the sleeping bag he’d dragged in after him. “Spread that out. I don’t think it got too wet, and you need to get out of those clothes.”
“And into what?” she said.
Chris had worked his hunting knife from its scabbard, and now he aimed the tip at a small stack of clothes on the platform next to the rest of their gear. “You can wear some of my stuff. It won’t be the best fit, but it’s dry.”
