Ancestor (36 page)

“What the hell are you doing?” Sara shouted over the screeching gale and the braying cattle.

But Rhumkorrf didn’t answer. Wind blew his comb-over back and forth. Some of the cows ran to the ramp. Others stood in place, confused, frightened.

She heard the whine of the lift machinery from above. The platform started to lower. On the metal grate she saw Alonzo and Miller standing, each grasping an end of the gurney that held Cappy. The lift would bring them down on the other side of the aisle opposite the lab table.

“Sara!” Alonzo screamed. She could barely hear him over the wind and the cows. “What the
fuck?”

“We gotta move, come on!”

The lift slowly lowered, exposing their feet, their shins, their knees.

A panicked cow ran the wrong way, away from the open rear hatch. It slammed against the black lab table, tilting it, dumping Sara on top of Tim. The cow hit the table again and it fell. Sara got her hands up just in time, catching the heavy table’s edge before it smashed into her. Her muscles strained as she tried to push the table clear.

She heard a metallic rattle, the alarmed shouts of men, a bellow of animal pain, heard the lift’s whine stop, then restart.

No, Alonzo was taking it back up!

Sara screamed and forced her shaking arms to push harder. The table slid back a little and she was able to swing her legs free before she let go. The heavy black top hit the floor like a guillotine. The now vertical table-top sheltered her from the bleeding, insane, fifteen-hundred-pound cow.

“Alonzo, come back!”

Up above, Sara saw just one foot move off the grate, then nothing. She was too late. The lift was back on the upper deck, a corner dripping blood where the cow had slammed into it. Alonzo was taking Cappy to the aft
ladder, looking for a safer way down. Sara threw a glance at her watch: 9:11.

One minute
.

How much of that last minute had already gone by? Five seconds? Ten? Time was up. Sara felt tears—hot and sudden and uncontrollable—run down her cheeks.

Her crew wouldn’t make it.

No time no time no time …

Tim was back on her shoulders before she even gave it a thought. She stepped past the table and ran into a stampede. Bellowing black-and-white bodies heaved around her, hitting her, knocking her from side to side, but she
refused
to fall,
refused
to die.

No time no time no time …

She felt the footing change as she moved from the rubberized floor to the rear ramp’s echoing steel, then her feet splashing into icy, inch-deep water. The C-5’s interior lights lit up a cone of swirling snow and a wide, long, wet gouge torn into the snow-covered ice. Water bubbled up from thousands of cracks, a shimmering, spreading surface that ate the falling flakes. Sheets of white soared up and around her, finding ways into her eyes and mouth.

How much longer how many seconds not gonna make it notgonnamakeit …

She turned left, past the gouge, found herself fighting through waist-deep snow. She didn’t feel the cold, didn’t hear the bellowing cows, she just
moved
, moved away from the plane, away from death, toward life.

We’re going to die anyway any second now any—

A bang and a roar and she flew through blast-furnace heat. She hit hard and skidded face-first over the snow-covered ice.

Sara struggled to her feet and looked back. The blast had shredded the C-5 just behind the cockpit, and also behind the wings—Magnus had planted a second bomb. Blinding flames shot up thirty feet, lighting up the stormy, frozen bay with flickering brilliance.

Tim lay to her left, prone and motionless. Her crew was either dead or burning to death. There wasn’t a fucking thing she could do about it. There was only one person left to save—Tim Feely. Again he went up on her shoulders in the now-practiced move. When had she thought him light? She carried his deadweight, forcing half steps through the waist-deep snow.

Another explosion erupted behind her as the fuel tanks blew. She was farther away this time, and therefore spared the shock wave’s crushing
effects. She turned for one last, haunted look. The flaming C-5 seemed to twitch like a dying antelope under a lion’s killing bite. It took Sara a moment to realize why—the plane was falling through the cracked surface. The tail went first, its weight finally too much for the thinning ice. There was a deep, reverberating
snap
as the sheet gave way, then the groan of metal grinding against the frozen surface, then the hiss of that same red-hot metal sliding into the water. Within seconds the tail was gone.

Sara stared, her eyes hunting through the blinding snow, hoping to see a miracle, hoping to see one of her friends. They might have gotten out, might be on the other side of the plane.

More vibrating cracks. The middle of the broken plane dropped a bit. It stayed on top for a moment, held up by burning wings pressed flat against the ice, then the wings groaned, bent, and finally snapped free at their bases as the fuselage slid into the water. The massive Boeing engines went next, cracking through, dragging most of the remaining bits of wing with them. Parts remained, scattered about the bay’s surface, but the snow was already accumulating, covering them in white.

The C-5 had all but vanished. In four or five hours the crash site would be nothing but misshapen white drifts. Sara heard a final hiss as the last piece of glowing metal slid into the water, then nothing but the sound of the blizzard.

No, there was one more sound—the faint call of a mooing cow.

Sara shivered. They were back on an island where someone really,
really
wanted them dead. No blankets, no food, no protection against the blizzard save for their black parkas. And she couldn’t even see the shore.

Animals have instincts that I don’t … the cows will find the shore
.

She was already exhausted. She didn’t know how much longer she could carry Tim. They had to get off the bay, find some shelter from the wind or die as assuredly as if she’d never gotten off the plane at all. Sara adjusted the human burden on her shoulder, then leaned into the wind, following the cows’ faint calls.

THE COWS HUDDLED in a black-and-gray cluster. Too dark for anything to be white. Thick, heavy-limbed pine trees helped block the wind, but not much. Snow continued to fly in great sheets—even in the woods, it was already so deep it melted against the cows’ burgeoning bellies.

Sara leaned against a tree, shaking violently, trying to rub hands that the cold had turned into curled, brittle talons. The tips of her fingers stung badly. Stinging was okay. When they went numb, that meant frostbite. She felt like her entire skeleton was made from icy steel.

She had to find shelter. Tim lay in a heap on the ground, snow already drifting on and around his body. Sara had her doubts he would live through the hour, let alone the night. She guessed the temperature at twenty below zero, far beyond that with the windchill.

Rapleje Bay was close to Sven Ballantine’s place. If she could find Sven’s house, she could save Tim. But which way? Visibility was less than twenty feet. No moon. No stars. The only chance was to strike out on her own, find Sven’s place, then come back for Tim.

Sara found a huge pine tree with boughs so laden down by snow they created a small cave underneath. Ice-cold hands reached in and broke off dry, dead branches, clearing out a space. It wasn’t much, but it blocked the wind. She dragged Tim inside.

She felt an overwhelming urge to lie down next to him and just sleep. Exhaustion filled her body, as did pulsing pain from running amid the stampede and suffering the explosion’s concussion wave. On top of the physical fatigue, her mind nearly choked at the anguish of losing her friends. Had they died quickly in the blast? Had they burned to death?

She’d avoided any serious burns herself, which was the only good news. She ached, she throbbed, she wanted to collapse.

She looked at Tim Feely lying prone amid the pine needles, broken branches and dead twigs. If she didn’t find him real shelter, he would die. She started to cry … she didn’t want to go back out there. No more. She couldn’t take any more.

But she had to.

Her frigid hands wiped away the tears. Sara breathed deeply through her nose, mustering her resolve. She pulled her parka sleeves over her brittle hands, then gently pushed back through the limbs so as not to disturb the snow walls.

EVERY FIVE MINUTES or so the hurricane winds died down briefly, only to pick right back up again. In those seconds-long breaks, the blowing snow seemed to relax, improving visibility from about twenty feet to around a hundred—and in those gaps, the small light stood out like a beacon of hope.

Sara leaned on a tree at the edge of the woods, eyes peering across an open field at the flickering glow. She didn’t have much strength left. If this light turned out to be nothing, she’d have no choice but to walk back to Tim’s tree, crawl under, and let nature decide their fate.

She walked out into the field. Unencumbered by trees, the wind blew far stronger, driving stinging sheets into her face and eyes. She leaned into the wind and fought through the waist-deep snow. With each clumsy step, the light became a little brighter, a little steadier.

A few steps more, another lull in the wind, and she took in a sight more beautiful than anything she’d ever seen.

The light was mounted on a barn.

Sven’s barn.

She turned and trudged back through her own waist-deep trail.

FIVE FEET FROM the barn door, Sara’s legs finally gave out. After a half mile of carrying a deadweight, 145-pound man through the waist-deep snow, her body couldn’t do it anymore. She fell face-first into a fluffy eight-foot bank that had been sculpted by wind whipping off the red barn. Tim all but disappeared, powder puffing up and around and on him until only his feet stuck out.

She couldn’t get up. She didn’t
want
to get up. Fuck it. So she’d freeze to death, so what? It was only a matter of time before Magnus came for her. Why not get it over with now, just be dead like the friends she’d failed to help?

Alonzo.

Cappy.

Miller.

Why not just give up?

Because she wanted to see Magnus Paglione dead. And that was more than enough reason to fight on.

Sara picked herself up. Not even bothering to brush the snow off her face, she stumbled to the barn’s big sliding door. Her numb hands gripped the black handle. Failing muscles pushed, and with a rattle of metal wheels the door opened a couple of feet.

She stepped inside, leaving the storm behind as she entered an oasis of calm.

How did
THEY
get in here?

Through watering eyes, she saw perhaps two dozen cows lying peacefully in hay-filled stalls. She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts.
Sven’s
cows … not the cows from the plane.

Sara willed herself back into the storm and grabbed Tim’s feet. She pulled the man free of the bank. His face slid across the snow-covered ground, but it was the best Sara could manage. Finally, after all that cold and pain and fatigue, she dragged Tim Feely into shelter.

Sara stumbled to the sliding barn door and put her weight against its black handle. The wind blew snow inside, almost as if it were some supernatural hand making one last grab for the meal that got away. Wheels creaked as the door shut, reducing the wind to nothing more than an exterior howl.

The barn wasn’t warm, but it was well above freezing. Sara heard the hum of a gas-powered generator. She looked around the huge barn and saw the orange glow of several portable heaters.

Safety
.

She’d done it. With her last ounce of strength, Sara dragged Tim in front of one of the big electric heaters, then collapsed.

Sleep came almost instantly.

THE STORM’S FURY had passed, but winds continued to whip powdery snow across the island and drive five-foot waves onto the ice-covered rocks. Colding stood on the sprawling rear porch, staring out across the water. Clayton was hard at work shoveling snow off the porch and salting the half inch of ice that had accumulated during the night.

Colding hadn’t slept much. He’d stayed in his room, still dirty from burying Jian in a shallow grave. He had sat on the floor’s thick carpet, staring at a window that showed the night’s blackness, that rattled with the storm’s wind. Sat and thought of his failures. Of Clarissa. Erika. Jian. And if the C-5 hadn’t made it, Sara. Next thing he knew, he woke up on the floor, still dressed. He hadn’t bothered showering or changing, just put on his coat, boots and hat and walked to the porch.

Each thrust of Clayton’s shovel sounded like a gong dragged across broken glass. The old man worked away, his eyes bright and clear, cones of vapor billowing out of his stubbled mouth. He stopped and leaned on the shovel, his chest heaving a little. “Rough night, eh?”

“Yeah,” Colding said. “Life really took a dump on us.”