The floor shivered again in a bizarre undulation, the grimy, bloodspattered brick heaving as if a gigantic underground monster had rolled over in its sleep. The vibration, much stronger than before, went straight up Greg’s calves and into his thighs.
“Holy shit,” he said. “Did you guys feel that?”
They were ten feet from the edge, then five. At the lip, still clutching Wolf ’s left wrist, she managed a last stumbling lurch, felt the rock beneath her boots skate and shift. A red rocket of pain raced into her right ankle. Pushing through it, she planted her boots and heaved herself away from the ledge—
And into a nightmare.
The world was coming apart at the seams. The roar of the earth was huge, a grating bellow counterpointed with the sharp pops and squeals of overstressed rock. Jagged fissures scored the snow; a clutch of trees to her left weren’t swaying but jolting back and forth. The crowns of several trees had snapped, leaving trunks that were little more than ruined splinters. There’d been fresh snow the night before, but the brutal cold had solidified the layers beneath. With every shudder of the earth, this more rigid, hard-packed ice layer was cracking and shifting into unstable slabs.
God, isn’t this how avalanches start? She watched a jagged chunk, this one as large as a kiddie sled, jitter down the rise. Got to get off the hill before it collapses.
A brief, sweeping glance. The moon was going down, the light no longer neon green but murky and so bad that the others—six Changed in all, including Wolf—were only slate-gray, boy-shaped silhouettes: parka hoods cinched down tight, their faces ghostly ovals. The five who’d pulled them up were jittering like cold butter hissing on a hot skillet. Their fear was a red fizz in her nose. Wolf was having as hard a time keeping to his feet as she, and he’d dropped her wrist to fumble with the rope harness. The other boys were staggering, working at the hopeless task of gathering up rope, trying to corral their gear. One Changed, though, snagged her attention because he smelled . . . familiar. Who was that? She lifted her nose, pulled in air. There, floundering toward them from the end of the conga line that had hauled her and Wolf to safety: a tall, slope-shouldered kid, his features now pulling together out of the gloom.
And she thought, No, no, it can’t be.
She’d waffled over this all the way up the tunnel: whether to make a break for it if she managed to reach the top, or stay. Her ankle was messed up, but she was managing. From Kincaid and all her hiking experience, she knew how to splint it, if needed. But the fact that she was soaking wet was a much bigger problem. Her sodden pants were already stiffening, and she was trembling, getting hypothermic. What she needed was to get warm, which meant a fire, a change of clothes, something hot to drink. Wet, with no supplies and nothing to keep her alive except Leopard’s knife and the Glock 19, she might as well have let go of that rope and saved Wolf the trouble of rescuing her from the tunnel. She would probably die if she ran now.
On the other hand, Wolf had come back. He wanted her. Or maybe . . . needed her? So, go with him? Bide her time? God, it would be Rule all over again, and probably just as stupid, but she’d nearly talked herself into it.
Until now, this moment, because heading toward them was a boy she recognized by sight and scent: Ben Stiemke.
Acne. He’d been part of Wolf ’s original gang, before Spider and Leopard took over. The fact that Acne was here, on the surface, actually frightened her just as much as this nightmare. But there was no mistake. Acne had made it out of the mine. Had he left before the attack, the explosions? Maybe slipped out when everyone else was in the chow line because he’d smelled Wolf earlier in the day, just as she and Spider and Leopard had? She would never know. The important thing was that Acne was with Wolf now. That meant some of the others—Spider, Slash—might have gotten out, too.
That decided her. She was not going through this again.
Her eyes clicked to the quivering snow. To her left, maybe fifty feet away, she spotted a scatter of cross-country skis and poles—and rifles. One, lying near a pair of skis staked in the snow, caught her eye: scoped, a bolt-action with a carry strap. She darted left, digging in with her aching right ankle and launching herself toward the weapon. She saw Wolf start; saw the others trying to get at her; spotted a kid with very long dreads, the tallest of the six, suddenly reaching for her; felt his fingers whisk her hair. . . .
“No!” she gasped, twisting, dancing out of the way. The sudden twist sent a spike of red pain from her ankle to her kneecap, bad enough that tears started. She clamped back on the shriek that tried bubbling past her teeth. Keep going, come on, it’s not that far. Snowy slabs slipped and rocked beneath her boots like dinner plates on ice; a sudden skid to the right and she nearly lost her footing, her right boot kicking free. Her left jammed down hard, driving into snow that grabbed at her calf, but then she was hopping free, nearly there, thirty feet, twenty-five . . . shuck a round into the chamber . . . no more than fifteen feet now . . . throw the bolt, swing up on an arc, because they’re moving, they’re behind you. This was something she’d practiced with her dad, hitting a moving target with the Glock: Lead, honey, and mount the gun. Don’t duck down.
The earth shivered. She could see the skis waggling back and forth. The rifle began to scoot and skip. But she was close now; it was almost over; she could do this. The rifle was to her left, two feet away. And if Wolf got to a weapon or pulled a pistol? Could she shoot him? After all this? It would be like sticking a gun into Chris’s face. She didn’t want to have to make that decision.
She slid the last foot—and then felt the snow tremble. There was a monstrous jolt, a stunning whack as something very big—another cave, maybe—collapsed underground. The sensation was nearly indescribable, but it was as if she were a glass on a white tablecloth that a magician had tried to snatch away, only he’d muffed the trick. The impact cut her legs out from under; she felt her knees buckle and her feet leave the snow. With a yelp, she came down hard on her butt. A white sunburst of pain lit up her spine. For a second, her consciousness dropped out in a stunned blank. She couldn’t move. Her chest wouldn’t work. Electric shocks danced over her skin, tingled down to her toes and fingers. Gagging, she finally managed a gulp of air and then another. Rolling to her stomach, she dragged in air, shook the spots from her vision.
All the boys were down. Most were crabbed on their stomachs, digging in, hanging on, riding the earth like rodeo cowboys on bucking broncos. That kid with the dreads was lower than the rest, his fall taking him closer to the edge of the rise and far away from her. A lucky break. She watched him trying to clamber his way straight up. For her? That was stupid, a mistake. He should move out of the fall line and then up before the snow collapsed.