When she didn’t continue, he tried to move, only a little, and regretted that, instantly, as the pain noosed down, stealing his breath. His throat locked, and then he could make no sound, not even a scream. He waited, trying to ride the pain the way a surfer followed the swell of a wave—and then the pain eased to something just the near side of agony.
“Wh-where?” The word came out in a guttural croak. “Did you tether it?”
She paused for so long he knew the answer before the words left her lips. The roan had been bucking before, and Lena wasn’t that strong.
“It threw me. I guess it was all the noise.” A pause and then she said in a small voice, “When I got close, it ran back the way we came.”
Oh no. His gear, his gun. He had a knife, but it was sheathed at his waist, and he didn’t know if he could reach it. Not that it would help much, unless he wanted to cut his throat before a Changed ripped off his head. He couldn’t roll over. Even if he hadn’t been tacked in place, he didn’t think Lena could lift the deadfall high enough for him to squirm free.
Might be the wrong thing to do anyway. He’d seen a movie about aliens landing in cornfields or something, and he remembered that when the preacher’s wife got pinned to a tree by this honking huge truck, the police hadn’t dared to move it because it was the only thing keeping her alive. So that might be the same thing here.
“Listen.” He was starting to shiver. Blood loss, shock . . . the cold . . . “We’re not far from Oren. You . . . you c-can m-make it. But you’re going to need g-gear . . .”
“The only gear left is with Nathan,” she said.
He tried to nod. He knew that.
“I can’t, Chris. He’s dead and so is his horse and I can’t touch him. I . . .” She was crying. “I’m not like Alex. I’m . . . I’m scared.”
Me, too. He made the mistake of trying to move and had to wait until the tidal wave of pain passed. It seemed to take longer this time, and he was panting when it let go. Sweat trickled down his cheeks to seep into the snow. “Y-you have to keep . . .” He lost track of what he wanted to say. The words unraveled in his mouth. He laid his cheek on the snow. Just a second. Just . . . need to rest.
She said something else, but her words were just so much sound. Cottony gibberish, like the lyrics of an unknown song dribbling from someone else’s earbuds, or his father swearing in electric, red noise that fizzed and burned into his brain. He couldn’t place the song. Those shouts had been only rage.
Passing out. A blanket of sticky cobwebs drifted over his mind, the same type of gooey stuff he tore apart with bare hands to scuttle behind the furnace down cellar as his father rampaged and bulled through the house. Got . . . got to help her . . .
“I’m afraid,” she said again. “I’ll be alone.”
“Hurt.” He sucked in a breath. “Bad.” Forcing the words, ordering them in his mind, stole his strength. He was so tired all of a sudden, and cold. Rest soon. Help her. “You . . . close to . . . Oren. Find . . . get help. I can’t . . .”
“Chris.”
“I . . . can’t.” I can’t help you anymore. That’s what he wanted to say, but the words wadded up behind his teeth and just wouldn’t come. She said his name again, and he tried to answer, tell her what to do; there was so much.
Stick. Snow. Search for . . . He was slipping; his mind couldn’t hold on. Watch out . . . for more traps. Careful, Lena, be . . .
Lena’s voice was very far away. “Chris, please, don’t leave me.”
Take . . . gun . . .
“Chris—”
. . . go, Lena . . .
“Chris—”
. . . run . . .
84
Run.
Shouldering the Uzi, she darted for the steps. She could feel the metal jumping and quivering, and then she was clattering up, taking the steps two at a time. There was a long metallic scream, a huge POP as a bolt spurted free of the stone. The ladder hitched; she slipped, barking her right elbow against rock. The electric shock of it streamed into her hand. Another explosion and she was knocked off her feet.
Get out, get out, get out! She swarmed up the stairs on hands and knees. Leopard had left the gate wide open, and then she was through, jinking a hard left and running for the second set of stairs, one hand up to protect her face, crashing headlong into the bats as they streamed the other way. Dust thickened the air and rock showered down in a constant stream. The earth shivered and jerked. Chunks of the wall came bouncing down. Now it was a choice between the bats and the rock. One good blow to the head and she was done. Ducking, she threw up an arm to protect her head, let out a yell as stone banged off her back. Where is it, where is it? Her panicked gaze strafed the wall, and then she saw spraypaint, glanced ahead, spotted the junction. A left would take her to stairs. Wait, was that right?
Another rumble, but this time she heard the distant bang and then the jump and tink and slide of rocks slithering down the walls. The tunnel shook, then groaned and popped as the overstressed stone began to buckle. The ground lurched, and she actually staggered as a shower of debris spilled from overhead.
Then there came a huge, long bellow that she couldn’t begin to describe, followed by a slithering hiss of rock streaming against rock and then another, louder rumble: a series of hard, insistent thumps. She had time to think that this was a sound the movies got dead-on. What she was hearing were bombs going off.
At the junction, to her right, the tunnel crashed down. The sound was tremendous. A gray cloud pillowed in a choking smog. Her eyes stung with dust and needle-fine grit. She clapped a hand to her face; her tongue was instantly coated with dirt, and she was retching and coughing. She staggered down the left junction, fighting the swell of dust and debris. Through streaming eyes, she saw a flash of something yellow and straight.
Stairs. She stumbled up to the first landing, but she was slowing down, her lungs struggling to pull in air that would actually do her some good. The next flight of stairs was dead ahead, but the air was still thick with bats, though there were fewer now as they darted past her and back the way she’d just come.
Then, over the growl of rock behind and the screech of the bats, she heard that roar again—from above. And ahead.
“Oh my God.” She stood there, paralyzed with shock and the sudden realization that the bats were going the other way because they knew what she was only now beginning to understand.
Water: below, above. And coming right for her.
Wheeling around, she clattered down the steps, hooked left, pushed through a fog of dust. The smell of rotten eggs had faded, and now the air was strangely sweet. She didn’t think that was good. She raced after the bats, the Uzi banging against her hip. Behind, she heard water churning and splashing, and knew it was sheeting down, building to a torrent, and then she would either drown or be crushed by the rocks. She made it to the second set of steps. Another jolt as some other level or wall gave way, and she was spilling down in a tumble of stone and larger rocks.
To her mounting horror, she saw that there were more and bigger boulders in the tunnel than before. She threw herself at a tumble piled high, almost to the ceiling, and scurried up, digging in with hooked fingers, scrambling over the rock. The opening seemed wafer-thin. Shucking the Uzi, she dropped to her belly and then socked through the weapon, the flashlight, and, finally, the Glock. Then she eeled, feeling the rock scour and bite her skin through the parka. She made the mistake of imagining herself caught here as the water rose and filled the tunnel all the way to the ceiling—and she panicked. Pulling in a huge breath, she screamed and kicked out with both hands and pushed and punched and batted, and then she was tumbling, bouncing, flipping down the other side. She landed on her back with a smack hard enough to drive knuckles of rock into her spine.
Get up, get up, get up! Staggering, clawing her way to her feet, she bent over her thighs and dragged in a breath, choked, then dragged in another as she swept up the weapons and her flashlight. Go, go! All this rock would buy her some time, but there was a lot of water coming, and eventually that dam just wouldn’t hold.
The floor was strewn with loose stone. She slowed down, afraid to turn an ankle—or break it. If that happened, the next bullet out of that Glock would have her name on it. Ahead, she saw a bat flash in and out of the light, heading to the left. Less than a second later, so did two more, and then so did she, wheeling into the drift she’d left only minutes before. Her light flicked over Leopard’s body, then Daniel’s, and then they were in her past as she scrambled further back into the drift.
Air. I felt air before; I know I did.
The smell of bat guano was much stronger here, and the tunnel seemed to slope up. She fanned the light right and left. The rock was streaky with bat shit. As she pushed on, the ceiling seemed lower, and soon she was crouching, duckwalking, dragging the Uzi with one hand because the tunnel was no more than four feet high. Then she felt the shift in the air, smelled the difference, sensed space opening up—and she slid into a large chamber. Her light strafed the walls. The room was large, maybe the size of a decent living room with a cathedral ceiling. The walls were solid. No other openings. No tunnels.
Oh hell. She aimed the flashlight toward the ceiling. Bats fly, you idiot.
The way out must be there: far above and out of sight. She could never hope to climb this.
Then her light snagged on a craggy horizontal bracketed by two verticals.
A ladder.
You watch. She darted over. It’ll be a tease; it’ll be broken. But the ladder wasn’t—not completely—although it was wood and very old. Corroded chunks and splinters speckled the rock to mingle with a thick mat of bat droppings.
Her odds were crap. She was hundreds of feet from the surface. There was no guarantee the ladder reached that far. If this tunnel slanted, she might be able to scuttle up the rocks, but she hated rock climbing. She always, always slipped.
So her choices were two. Stay here and die. Or try and maybe she’d make it. Or not. Maybe she’d only die trying. Well, maybe. There was still the Glock. Hell, if she was really worried, she could flip that Uzi to full auto and dump that mag in two seconds flat.
