Leaving eight, and that was only if Eli actually hit anyone. “We should save the bullets,” she said, not knowing why or for whom . . . unless she planned on asking Eli to shoot her. She didn’t think she was that brave. Besides, what would happen to Mina if she was dead?
“Then how?”
“The auger. Extend the handle, and it’ll be plenty long. If you hold my legs, I can stretch and use it to push us away.”
“Oh boy, I hate this,” Eli said, but he was starting to ease down to a crouch. Ellie followed him move for move, her heart kicking at her teeth every time the raft bobbled. When she was flat on her tummy and turned around, he worked out the handle and passed her the auger. “You know what this reminds me of ?” he said. “National Treasure. You know, where Nicolas Cage and everybody else is trapped on this big square thing?”
“I never saw it.” She worked her way toward the edge. One of the dogs must’ve moved, because she heard a frantic scrambling sound at the same time the raft dipped and water leaked onto the ice in front of her face. Oh boy, I hate this, too. She felt the water under their block of ice heave as the raft bobbed. A nasty vision floated through her mind: of the block tilting so far that she slid, face-first, into the water. She’d pull Eli along with her. Then, one of two things would happen: either the raft flipped like a pancake, trapping all of them, or only she’d be hooked, unable to turn around and grab an edge. Most lakes, no matter how still, had a current. The one here was stronger than most because of the spring to their right. So she’d drift left, under the raft, and drown with her back jammed up against the ice.
She wanted to wait for that water to retreat, but those peopleeaters were still coming. So she wormed forward, then passed the auger through her hands and stretched, trying to hold the heavy blades steady. Squirming a few more inches, she sucked in between her teeth as the raft tipped another inch. Water was beginning to creep toward her arms. Maybe she should’ve let Eli do this; he was taller, only she wasn’t strong enough to hold him if he slipped . . .
Shadows leaked over her hands. Her eyes clicked up, and her pulse stuttered. Nine of the people-eaters were nearly there. In the lead, that boy with the machete leered and hacked the air with a blade coppery with Bella’s blood. Not far behind the main pack, that girl followed, the snake of her lime-green scarf trailing. This time around Ellie didn’t think the girl looked so scared. In fact, that kid looked like she was really, really dying to get closer.
They’ll cut us up. Paralyzed, she stared at her death storming over the ice. It’ll hurt . . .
“Don’t stop,” Eli said, and gave the chain a yank. “Come on, Ellie. Hurry .”
“Okay.” She snapped back. “I’m going.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.” Her biceps were shuddering from the effort. As strong
as she had grown, hanging on to almost nine pounds of steel at the very end of a slim aluminum pole was nearly too much. Tucking her elbows, she braced the auger against her chest. “Do they get off ?”
“What? Who?” “The guys in the movie.” The people-eaters were very close now, their finger-shadows brushing her hair and arms in crawly spiders.
“Oh yeah.” She felt the chain bite again as Eli redoubled his grip. “The good guys always make it. We’ll do it, too. We’re Jayden’s Killer Es, remember? Good guys? So . . .”
She waited a beat, the steady thump of the people-eaters’ march over the ice keeping pace with the race of her pulse. “Eli?” When he didn’t respond, she risked a look. “E—”
His expression was one she knew. Her Grandpa Jack had worn the same mix of sorrow and shock and rage the day the Army people came to tell them that her daddy was dead.
“Eli,” she said, heart going so fast her chest was about to explode. “What is it?”
“Lena,” Eli whispered, aghast. Then, louder: “Lena?”
What happened next happened fast.
81
Bolting over the snow, Alex barreled into the trees. That burst of strength during the gunfight and then their escape was tailing off, the tang of adrenaline going stale on her tongue. She was huffing, her lungs laboring both from the cold and a smoky haze steaming through the trees in a thickening fog. Snatching a look back, she got a fix on the burning house. The roof was ablaze, a gigantic fiery tongue licking the sky. A little further left, southeast, until I’m even with where the chimney used to be.
Finding what she was looking for again—that was the problem. She’d come from a different angle the first time around. Back here, the snow was all torn up, not only from the frequent passage of game but her own meanderings. Yeah, but all these tracks might be good. Stopping a quick second, she eyed the path she’d taken so far. They’ll have a hard time figuring out which way I went—
“Oh hell,” she breathed. Against the snow, her prints were stark potholes etched in gray-black smears. Must’ve been that last fireball, all that ash. All anyone had to do was follow the yellow brick road right to that old oak—
A distant, shrill shriek. Penny. Those men must be up the hill. Please, Peter, don’t let them hurt Wolf. She tensed, waiting for the shot that didn’t come and didn’t come. Which didn’t mean a thing. She thought about those weird Changed, that red storm. What if they tried the same on Wolf ? And Peter, something was very wrong with Peter; she could smell it . . .
You can’t worry about that. Come on, think of something, a plan B . Except she didn’t have one, and with those sooty tracks, she was leading them right to her. When they caught up, she wouldn’t be able to fight for long. She was tiring fast. Snow sucked and grabbed her calves. Her thighs were lead, and she was battling not only snow and gnarled overgrowth that snatched at her pants and parka but days without proper food.
Keep going, don’t stop. Plowing through a whippy tangle of branches, she heard the crackle and pop, felt them pluck and tear at her hair. To her right, she saw a snare flash past. Crossing a trapline. One look, and that would clinch it, too. They’ll know the Changed didn’t set them. Might even give the man in black ideas. He would be curious: why hadn’t the Changed eaten her yet? That would make him all the more interested in Wolf: a Changed boy who protects a pregnant girl and keeps another, not Changed, for . . . a pet? No, a friend. Maybe, in Wolf ’s mind, she was even more.
A faint aroma of human skin, horse sweat, and toe fungus drifted in with the smoke. Men, on their way. How many? Couldn’t tell. The Changed boy was big trouble, too, but her nose hadn’t found him yet.
In fifty feet, she saw the slight break in the trees, felt her heart give a mighty thump of relief. Almost there. A few seconds later, she spotted four ratty boards nailed to the trunk of a towering oak. To the left and behind the oak was the corkscrew of a red pine. Not an option. But to the right grew a bristle of small, immature hemlock, and just beyond reared a huge, bedraggled white spruce, with low-hanging boughs still heavy with snow. Eyeing the spruce, the glimmer of an idea forming, she thought, Wait a second.
Her original plan had been simple. Thirty feet above, seated in its V, was the old tree house. Other than a slight warp in the boards and slivers of daylight, the platform was solid. So, get up there, try not to get shot, maybe even go higher or shimmy out on a long stout branch, drop to the snow well away from the tree, and keep running while they tried to figure out where she’d got to. Now, though, there was that spruce . . .
At the oak, she wrapped both hands around the lowest board and tugged. Black with mildew, the swollen board might have broken in summer, but the winter had iced it in place. Clambering up, she found the same in the second and third boards. She might be able to sell this without it, but a broken board added that extra touch that made her look like easy pickings, a scared little girl out of options.
And never mind that I am. Jumping to the snow, she backed up, eyed the trunk, then figured screw it. If it didn’t work the first time, she wouldn’t try again. Cranking up her right leg, she turned her hip, and pistoned up and out in a swift, hard kick. She felt the bam of the impact against the sole of her boot. To her amazement, neither her foot nor ankle broke. It didn’t even hurt that much. With a crisp snap, the board sheared in a ragged split at the nailhead.
Excellent. Fishing the splintered fragment from the snow, she positioned it close to the trunk. Then she dropped to the snow and churned her arms and legs. There. Shaking snow from her hair, she picked herself up. If that didn’t look as if she’d tried climbing up into the tree house but then fallen to the snow when the board broke, she didn’t know what would.
Okay, now show them panic. Thrashing through unbroken snow, she attacked that densely packed hemlock, breaking branches, sending a shower of green growth to the snow. Anyone looking would see that this was one scared little bunny rabbit of a girl, so freaked out she tried running straight through the trees before turning back. A moron could figure this out.
Floundering for the drooping, heavy-limbed spruce, she swam beneath the boughs and through mounded snow into a fragrant cave. Most of the light was blocked by the low-slung bell of limbs. The air was a little warmer here, the ground matted with dead brown needles. Dropping to her rump, she shucked the pack and pushed it far back, close to the trunk. Stripping off her soot-stained boots, she thought about it a second and then peeled and stuffed her socks inside. Socks would protect her feet from spruce needles and the cold but slow her down, and she sensed she would have only one chance to make this work. Squaring the boots beneath a dense, snow-matted bough, she wiggled out of the cave. Dancing back, bare feet already yammering that they really didn’t appreciate this, she eyed the gap between the boughs and the snow line. The toes of her boots were just visible.
Okay, this would have to do. If she was lucky, it would look to the guys on her tail as if she’d first tried the tree house, panicked when the board broke, and then tried running through the hemlocks before giving up and ducking to hide like an ostrich under the spruce.