Shadows (17 page)

The lingering odor of the dead children’s fear and terror lodged in her throat, but she also smelled a whisper of gun oil, powder. Solvent—and a drift of ashes scraped from a blackened hearth. Then, she knew: these weren’t
only
children.

They had been soldiers.

Two more ninja-kids huffed into view. They, too, were dragging something along, working up a real sweat like cattlemen wrestling a bucking bull that just wouldn’t quit.

Which wasn’t far from the truth.

He was tall like Chris and Wolf but had Tom’s muscle. His hair, very blond, was tied back with a twist of leather in a short ponytail. She pegged him as pretty close to Chris’s age, give or take a year. His parka was torn wide open, and a huge blood-spider was splayed over his shirt, low and on the left. More blood smeared his face and the hollow of his throat. His hands, naked to the cold, were crimson.

“B-bastards.” The boy was fighting, gasping, his breath coming in hitching, pained sobs. “Should’ve killed you when I had the chan
—
” He let out a high shriek as Acne slammed a fist into the kid’s gut. The boy’s knees jackknifed as the two ninjas let go. Retching, the kid dropped to the snow, trying to brace his injured side with one bloody hand.

“P-please, let him go.” The boy’s face was etched deep with despair and pain. “
Please
. You can
have
me, but let—”

“Daniel?”
The word was shrill, a spear of sound hurtling from the dark woods.
“Dannnniellllll?”

“Oh shit,” Sharon said.

No.
A sudden film of tears burned her eyes and splintered the firelight and all those bodies into a smeary rainbow.
Please, not another one; not this, too.

The cry came again but was inarticulate this time and not a word but a line of pure sound as thin and bright as a laser. A moment later, one last ninja pushed into the light. He was hauling something, staggering a little with the effort but grinning fiercely the way a fisherman did when he’d just landed the catch of a lifetime.

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Ray said.

When the shot came, Tom was pawing through the tool chest, a small penlight clamped between his teeth to free his hands. At the sound, Tom jumped, his teeth clicking metal. The dog yipped then growled.

What the hell? What is Jed shooting at?
Then he caught the slight separation, the overlapping echoes, and his brain, so conditioned to gunfire, instantly understood:
two
shots, with only a half-second’s separation, if that. And close.

Jed!
The Phillips clattered to the concrete. He killed the penlight, slung off his pack, and unhooked his rifle. Shucking a round into the chamber on the run, he was nearly out the door when he caught himself.
Easy. Whatever’s happened has already gone down. Run into an ambush and you won’t be able to help anyone.

Two shots, three possibilities: two shooters, both firing at Jed at virtually the same moment. Or Jed got a shot off first and the other guy spotted him at the last second. Or Jed squeezed off a round as a warning and then the other guy—

No. Can’t think that, not yet.

“Raleigh,
down
,” he hissed. The dog obeyed, instantly. Dropping to a crouch, he listened. Nothing. No shots. No shouting. No Jed. A hard knuckle of dread dug at his chest. He had to get out of the boathouse. The big slider opened west and onto the lake; the one door was hinged on the right, but that was only good if there was no one already on the trail. The slider, then. Take the ice all the way back to—

Another sound: high, thin. The dog let go of a whimper. Tom’s ears tingled. What was that? A shout? No, a scream and—

A distant
crack.

A third shot. Further away, to the north. The cabin.

Grace?
What air he’d held in his lungs came in a sudden, hard exhalation close to a sob. He rested his forehead on his rifle. The metal was cold enough to burn.
My fault, I shouldn’t have waited.

“Kid!” The shout was so close, Tom nearly vaulted out of his skin. By his side, the dog sprang to its feet and let out a low, menacing
ruff
. “Kid, we don’t want to hurt you! Just come on out!”

We
. So, two men? Three? Or the guy could be bluffing. But he knew now, beyond a shadow of a doubt: Jed was dead, too.

You bastards, I’ll kill you.
His lungs were lead.
I’ll kill you, I’ll—

“Kid, we can do this hard, or we can do this easy. We don’t want to hurt you, but if you take a shot, we
will
shoot back. So open the door, then come out slow, hands up.”

Maybe fifty yards away, Tom thought, and from his perspective, a little to the right, which made sense because the woods were there. That decided it.

“What do you want?” He didn’t really care, but he needed to buy just a little more time.

“Just need you to come with us.” In the next instant, the darkness erupted in yellow light that fired the sliding window above Tom’s head. The light played over the boathouse right and then left and then right again. They did him a favor because now he saw the machines very well: the wind sled on the right and a little ahead of the snowmobile. Jed’s Road King was tucked further back, across from the cot and propane heater.

The dog whimpered again. An instant later, he caught the smell, too: a faint char of wood smoke. He knew a fair amount about smoke and fire, and his nose had no trouble teasing apart the odors. Saturate wood with gas or another accelerant and the smell was very different. Burning cloth and synthetics had a chemical reek. The cabin was going up.

The bastards were smart, trying to get on top of him. They knew he’d have nowhere to go. The boathouse would be next, too. Burn him out.

“Smell that, kid?” The voice was much closer now. “Come on, you’re just making this harder on yourself.”

Scooping up his pack, he moved fast, dumping his gear in the wind sled’s rear seat, sliding the rifle into the footwell, thinking through what he had to do—the exact sequence.

It really came down to how fast they figured it out. And if they could find a way to follow him. He glanced at the snowmobile. In the grainy light, the hole left when he’d pulled the ignition assembly was an eyeless socket. But the loop of cord still dangled. So they just might.

The snowmobile’s faster. It’s got a light. One can shoot while the other drives.

No choice.

“Come on, kid!” The lights bobbed as the hunters closed in. The interior of the boathouse was graying now.

“Raleigh, come,” he hissed, patting the rear seat. As the dog scampered into the wind sled, Tom darted to the slider. “Good boy. Stay.” He hooked his right hand through the cast-iron latch, set his feet, braced himself on his stronger left leg. Pulled in a deep breath. Once done, he was committed.

Do it.

He yanked, almost too hard. The slider rolled easily, thanks to all Jed’s WD-40, the metal wheels whispering over the rails like a bowling ball over polished wood. A gust of very cold air ballooned into the boathouse, pulling with it the stink of burning wood and melting plastics. Then he was pivoting, leaping back toward the sled. Outside, the light suddenly shifted as the hunters caught on. Five seconds, maybe ten. Vaulting into the Spitfire’s front seat, he jabbed at the ignition, pumping the accelerator to drive fuel into the engine. There was a millisecond’s delay, and then the engine ground, coughed, spluttered—

And did not catch.

Come on, come on, come on!
From outside, there came a shout. The lights bobbed; he heard the thrash of brambles and icy wood. They were coming, fast. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to give the engine two precious seconds he did not have and then tried again.

If it floods, I’m dead.
Sweat trickled down his neck.
They’ll be around the corner, and if I’m still sitting here—

The engine came to life in a spluttering crescendo roar.

And he began to move.

The little boy was dark-haired and bright-eyed with terror, but Alex saw the resemblance immediately. There was a splash of crimson on the boy’s face and more blood on his hands, too, but nowhere else that she could see. So maybe the blood was his brother’s.

“Daniel!” the little boy cried. “Daniel, are you okay?”

“It’s all right, Jack.” Daniel struggled to his knees. “Stay calm, okay?”

“But what are they going to do to us?” Jack’s voice was tight, and his lips were drawn back in a bright, hard rictus. He was very young, no older than Ellie. Huge tears were rolling down his cheeks, where they mixed with gore, so that it seemed like he was weeping blood. “Are they going to eat us?”

“No.” Daniel heaved to his feet, pushing up on his thighs. It was costing him, too; his arms trembled and Alex saw how his breath grabbed and hitched. “You’re going to be fine. It’s all right.”

It was not all right. Acne was helping Beretta to his feet. Spider and Leopard and the others were gathering around Daniel and Jack the same way Wolf and his crew had watched as she and Spider fought. Of course, Spider had that corn knife, too. Already thick and feverish and frenzied, the air suddenly bunched and roiled.

“Oh God,” she said.

To her left, Sharon darted a look. “What?”

Alex didn’t reply. She couldn’t. But she had enough experience with the Changed and knew when she smelled it.

Daniel and Jack didn’t have much time.

And neither did they.

A wind sled is not like a snowmobile. The principle’s closer to that of an airboat: a strong engine producing enough air to propel a boat over shallow water or ice. There are two controls: a throttle for power and a wheel or a stick that controls the rudder and directs the air.

The problem with a wind sled? No brake. The only ways to stop are to dump air or power down. And a wind sled is clumsy. This thing doesn’t turn on a dime. Jerk the rudder too quickly, spill enough air, and you guarantee a stall.

As soon as he felt the Spitfire move, Tom jammed the throttle, slotting it all the way forward. The sled responded with a thumping lurch and then shot from the boathouse so quickly he was thrown back against the dog. His foot slid on the accelerator, and he heard the engine instantly dip and grumble as the Spitfire slowed to nothing more than a slow walk. Gasping, he righted, then mashed the accelerator hard.

Bulleting away from the boathouse in a cloud of diesel, the sled sped over the spit and onto snow-mantled ice with a solid thump. The ride was rough; every imperfection and dip in the snow and ice came through as a hard bounce and jitter, but he was moving. Odd’s layout spread before his mind’s eye. Jed’s ice-fishing house was off to his right at about one o’clock. Best to give it a wide berth, bank left, head for the jink.

Something flickered, liquid and orange, and his eyes flicked right. The cabin was a torch. Huge flames boiled from the shattered picture window and splashed over the eaves. Inside that front room, the fire, bright as lava, streamed up the walls and over the ceiling. Even at this distance, he saw the moment a propane tank went, because the fire hitched, pulled back in an ice-blue gasp. The fireball exploded into the night with so much force he heard the boom over the sled’s roar.

He was so stunned that he didn’t realize he was slowing until the engine guttered. Too late, he dropped his boot again, but the Spitfire was already sliding to a halt. In the sudden silence, he caught a shrill sputter, like the scream of a buzz saw.

Jed’s snowmobile.

Come on!
He jabbed the ignition, but the engine had flooded and all he got was a click and a whir and a whole lot of nothing. Heart pounding, he forced himself to wait for it . . . wait for it . . . then cranked the engine again. This time, he was rewarded with a bellow. The wind sled lurched and began to pick up speed.

He shot a look over his shoulder. The single eye of the snowmobile’s headlight was steady. They weren’t moving. Why not? Then he saw the lake spread beneath him in a shimmery silver carpet.
Reflection.
They were lighting him up so they could—

He felt something—big, huge—rush for him. Startled, he faced front just in time to see Jed’s icehouse and his own shadow suddenly leap out of the gloom. Gasping, he wrenched the wheel, banked left. The camper swept by in a dizzying swirl as the sled fishtailed, dumped air, slowed down. There was a hard
bang
as the Spitfire’s berglass hull slapped and bounced off the camper’s wood runners. Then, a bright spark danced at the corner of his right eye. A split second later, there was a sharp
ting
as the bullet smashed sheet metal.

Now he knew why they’d stayed on shore. The icehouse’s metal shell reflected light just like the snow. Four hundred yards and change, with a scoped rifle, was nothing.

Go, go!
Hammering the accelerator, he spun the wind sled into a wide, drunken port turn. The Spitfire yawed. Behind, he felt the dog scrambling to keep its balance, but they were moving now, gaining speed, heading for the jink, fine rooster tails of ice and snow dusting to a billowing cloud.

He knew what they would do now. The snowmobile was old but much more powerful and faster. All he had was a head start. He could hear nothing above the engine roar now, not the scream of the Spitfire or even the wind. Speed turned the cold air into a scythe that sliced at his exposed flesh. He was blasting across the lake, flying blind, going on memory, relying on luck. As the Spitfire took the jink, he threw a glance over his shoulder and saw the night blue and then brighten as the snowmobile’s light lanced through the dark in a tight, neat arc.

Running out of time.
Where
was
it? How long had he been on the ice? Two minutes? Four? He should
be
there soo—

He felt the moment the ice and snowpack changed. There was a lurch and then a dip as the ice roughened, and then he was bouncing as the hull smacked rutted and refrozen ripples. Another bounce and the ride got rougher, his teeth chattering as the wind sled hit thinner ice over the rift.