Shadows (41 page)

She cut that off. No point. Daniel and his odor had been so close to Leopard’s and Spider’s and Wolf ’s: almost a match as he Changed and kept Changing. She’d known that very first night. Well, it was done now. Over. Too late for Daniel, but not for her, not yet.

Run.

The bats massed in a black scream. They slapped her face, scrabbled through her hair, their nails biting into her scalp, scoring her face. She couldn’t fend them off; she needed to hold the light, and there were too many of them. So she just plowed through, swimming against a panicked tide of screeching bodies. Some shot down the tunnel before her and others just as quickly streamed the other way. She thought there were more than before, and their fear was liquid and just as sour as hers. Bats gushed out of open seams and rocketed up from jagged fissures.

She ran. Her stride was awkward because of the flashlight in her left hand and the Uzi, down low at hip-level, in her right. She didn’t kid herself. Only film gangstas and Arnold Schwarzenegger could do a full mag, an Uzi in each fist, and that was because actors pumped blanks. No kick, no climb. If she had to fire, she’d need both hands, and that meant losing the light.

The Glock was a fist in her back. Its muzzle was still hot and sticky with Daniel’s blood, and Leopard’s. She almost hadn’t taken it, almost let it lie after Daniel’s fingers relaxed—but then she thought of how stupid that would be. Daniel had made his choice, and now she made hers.

The ground twitched and then she heard another, longer rumble that was almost a growl: louder and closer. Another explosion. She thought it must be from ahead and above.

A sudden cloud of bats belched up from an open seam to her right, like the cork blowing out of a champagne bottle under too much pressure. Her nose was full of dead Daniel and dead Leopard, but that burned-match stench was much stronger, and she could feel the air rasp over her throat. Her mouth tasted muddy, and she heard the pop and grind of grit between her teeth.

First a shotgun blast and now two explosions
.

An attack? Someone storming the mine?
She slowed for just a second.

She could picture it: battling her way to the entrance only to be cut down in a hail of gunfire. She looked every inch the Changed, and she had weapons. To anyone out there, she was the enemy.

No one knows I’m here.
She smelled the bats’ desperation, and hers.
If I stay and the mine
does
come down, if that’s the plan . . .

She had to get out. Take her chances. Go up, find that big ramp again, see if maybe she could shoot her way out. No one coming yet either. Sure, of course not. There was a lot going on, and no need to worry about her.

To her right, she caught a glimpse of spray-painted numbers, and thought,
Just ahead, there’s a turn, and then I ought to be at the first set of stairs and then—

As she whipped past a chute, her ears snagged on something stranger still. She skidded to a halt. Backed up to the chute. Put her hand to the metal and felt the jump and skip as the metal lurched and the stone shook.

Sound is physical. Vibrations cause sound that the ear’s sensitive machinery translates. Even a deaf person knows sound by feel.

And every kid knew Chutes and Ladders. Ladders you climbed; chutes shot you down. So what she was hearing now—what she felt—was happening somewhere over her head.

What churned from the chute was a roar: thunderous and remorseless and unstoppable. For once, smell was unnecessary. She recognized this.

Water. A lot of it.

The mine wasn’t just collapsing.

It was flooding.

The deadfall hurtled down, an engine of death. Chris screamed. Then he bucked, his bent legs pistoning against his mired snowshoes. He catapulted away, but it was as if he were a frog whose back legs had been pinned to a specimen board. He was locked tight.

The deadfall plummeted into the snow. He felt the heavy
slam
against his back, and then he was sinking, the weight of the ironspiked boards palming and forcing him down through softer snow into hard pack, like a plunger squeezing grounds in a coffee press. Snow jammed into his mouth and up his nose and into his eyes, and then he was coughing, pushing the snow out and away with both hands so he could breathe.

And then, he stopped. The deadfall either had hung up somewhere—maybe the ropes holding it in place had snagged—or the pack had been dense enough to save him. Without the snow, the only thing that would’ve stopped the deadfall’s downward progress would be solid ground.

His pulse was thunder. He let out a breath, thought:
I’m still here.
He hurt and it was bad. He was pinned, and that might be worse. Was his back broken? He sent a command down to his feet, had a second’s fright when nothing happened, but then felt his toes curl. Okay, that was good. He was alive. The spikes missed. Too far apart? Didn’t matter. He was mired in deep snow under a very heavy weight, but he was still alive. Lena was here. She could help. He’d get out of this.

If I can just wiggle out . . .
He tried to squirm forward, just an inch. To see.

An enormous tidal wave of pain roared up his throat and crashed from his mouth. The shriek went on and on, spinning itself out on his breath. His legs were fire. His whole body was nothing but a red blaze.

Oh my God, oh my God.
Something wet and warm leaked around his thighs, and then his brain was gabbling:
Blood, I’m dead, I’ll be dead in minutes, I’ll bleed out, I’ll—

“Chris!” It was Lena, but he couldn’t tell if she was close, because he was too deep, the snow muffling sound like cotton.

Balling his fists, he gathered his breath and shouted, “Lena, stay back!” That slight movement cost him. Fresh fléchettes of pain cut him to the bone. And, oh God, he didn’t want her to stay back. He wanted help; he needed someone to
help
! But if there were two booby traps, there might be a third—and if Lena was hurt or killed, he would be beyond help. His legs were pinned and he would die for sure: either freeze to death in the snow or bleed out. “Stay back!”

“But . . . but . . . what should I do? How can I help?”

Behind him, he thought, but then he realized that she was closer. “Are you on the horse?”

“No. I . . .”

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 . . .

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.