In charge, my ass. For about the billionth time, he wondered what the hell Yeager was smoking. Greg wasn’t Peter or Chris. He’d only just turned fifteen. He was having a hard enough time being him— whoever that was.
“No, no, I’m telling the truth! It was me, it was just me— Aaahhhh!” Dale shrieked as Aidan’s antenna razored meat right down to bone. “Jesus Jesus Je—”
And that was when Greg felt the earth move.
7
As one wall of the tunnel cracked apart and the rock gave way, Alex screamed. Her right shoulder was a fireball of red, liquid pain, the tendons and muscles stretching until she thought her skin would rip, the arm simply pop from its socket. Clutching Wolf ’s forearm in a death grip, she could feel his muscles quivering from the effort. She had visions of the rope to which Wolf clung, fraying, unraveling, breaking, and the two of them being swept away. She had no idea if the Changed above were trying to pull them up. They probably couldn’t, because of the current. She was barely holding on, and the pain was building, her shoulder trying to come apart. If only the drag would let up!
Unless it doesn’t. The water had dropped to just below her knees but no further. Must be filling almost as fast from somewhere else. The rope had swayed left, and there it stayed, drawn to the doomed course that the water charted, their weight fixed to the end of a gigantic pendulum. If the rope snapped, or Wolf couldn’t hang on—
I should let go. An insane thought, but one that, under the circumstances, had all the bald certainty of an irrefutable logic. I’m too much for him. I’ll get us both killed.
A jolt. She felt the quiver down her arm and into her teeth. Above, she saw Wolf ’s head jerk and then his left foot slide up the rock wall. Another jolt, and now she could see, quite distinctly, that crude harness tighten as he managed another half step, jamming his right boot against a lip of protruding rock that she could’ve sworn had been a good four inches above him only a second before. She looked down at her legs. Was it her imagination, or had the water fallen, just a little? They’re trying to pull him up. But if this was the best they could do, it wouldn’t be nearly enough. Could she move her legs, drag one out? Anything would help. Come on, come on. Her thighs tensed, battling the clutch of all that water. As if sensing what she meant to do, Wolf tightened his grip around her wrist and pulled, working to lift her just a little higher—
The earth suddenly heaved. She could feel the pressure of it. In the next moment, there was a crack and then a BOOM, like thunder. Debris skittered over the rocks; to her right, jagged seams suddenly splayed. Someone screamed, and then a boy, arms and legs spread in a star, hurtled past in a sudden hail of stone. He hit the water not twenty feet away, although she couldn’t hear the splash over the roar. The boy bobbed to the surface, and then one hand appeared to claw at air. His jaw unhinged, maybe to scream, but whatever sound might have emerged was lost as a gush of water flooded down the boy’s throat. The claw-hand tightened to an agonized fist. His bulging eyes rolled back to the whites. A moment later, the boy was jerked under and away.
There was a sudden lurch. The tension in her screaming shoulder eased a smidge, and she thought, Oh hell. She looked back up, then gasped. Wolf ’s face was a mask of blood. Must’ve been hit by a rock. She saw him give his head a groggy shake. His arms were shuddering now, uncontrollably, his muscles nearing their breaking point.
He’s going to lose it. Instead of the panic she expected, the realization brought a certain calm. Monster or not, he was risking his neck to save her. So the math was simple, the equation neat. If she wanted to live, there really was only one way.
Help him. Do something.
Grimly, she put everything she had into getting her boots out of
il sa j . bick the water. Her knees bunched; she felt the cramp and quiver of her thighs . . . and her feet inched up. Not much. A little, but enough. Yes. “Come on, come on,” she chanted. Her teeth clamped together; she felt her belly tighten, her neck muscles cord with the effort. You really didn’t appreciate how thick, how powerful water was until you had to fight it. To Alex, it felt like gigantic hands were cupping each heavy heel, but either she was winning or the water level was dropping. Same diff. “Come on, come—”
Both boots popped free so quickly her burning thighs tried to relax, send her legs pistoning down. Gasping, aware that she was truly swaying now and free of the water, she caught herself just in time. For a moment, she simply dangled, her shoulder coming apart in Wolf ’s grasp, the water surging only inches away and ready to grab her again, take her down for good.
Then Wolf tensed, his fingers so tight it felt as if her wristbones were being ground to dust. She began to move by minute degrees, see-sawing back and forth: first a few inches and then a few more as he tried swinging her closer to the rock wall so she could make a grab. The arc of her travel lengthened, her body nothing more than a sodden little yo-yo depending from a very short string. Toward the juddering wall, then back, then closer—those crags first ten and then only five feet away, but still too far for even a very determined, very desperate person to have a hope in hell—then back, and now one more time . . .
Now! her brain screamed. Do it now, do it now, do it now now now! Her left hand made a grab. Rock chewed her fingers. She clawed, wildly, but then physics—that bitch—took over. Her swing’s momentum reversed, carrying her away.
“Shit! Shit, god—” A lurch and the words dried up on her tongue as Wolf ’s fingers slipped, his muscles shivered, and that greedy water drew closer—so close. No, no, don’t lose it, Wolf ! Don’t lose it now, just a few more seconds . . . And then she was sailing back, and she could tell from the frantic twist of Wolf ’s fingers—slick with blood and water and sweat—that he wouldn’t be able to hold on for another go. This was it. She felt the air whisking through her hair, whiffling past her ears. The rock wall suddenly loomed, but she’d picked her spot: at her ten o’clock, a slight curve of shadow, an inverted grin of stone. At the last second, just before she butted the wall, her hand shot out, fingers hooked. She grabbed that stone lip, felt a ridge of rock slot beneath her knuckles—
Wolf must’ve felt the moment she connected, because his elbow suddenly kinked and then he was leaning in, shifting his weight, trying not to let go or pull her off. Anyone looking would’ve sworn she and Wolf were engaged in a weird variation of arm wrestling. Yet, at that moment, on the rock, they were a single unit, a team bent to one purpose. Jamming her knees against sharp stone, Alex clung to the rock with both legs and her left hand like a three-legged fly.
“Get them to pull us up, Wolf,” she croaked, not knowing if he would understand speech, and beyond caring. The earth was groaning, fatiguing fast in a swoon that might still take them all down, and she knew: they weren’t close to being safe yet. “Hurry.”
What? Startled, Greg aimed a look at the rough brick floor. He could’ve sworn the bricks moved. Unless I’m going crazy. The stable was so cold their breaths plumed, but Greg still felt sudden anxious sweat on his upper lip. Another flashing stab of light skewered his eyes as his sledgehammer of a headache pounded. Please, God, please. I can’t be losing it. Not now.
What convinced him that he was still semi-sane was when he saw Daisy, his golden retriever, scramble to her feet and give a sharp yap of alarm. So, he knew she’d felt it. There was also something else— a sound, something that was not Mick Jagger or a bluesy guitar or Dale’s dribbling sobs: a faint, faraway, hollow whump.
That was real. I heard that. What the— Greg tossed a glance up to Pru, who stood at his right elbow, a wrinkle of worry between his eyebrows. At seventeen, Pru was two years older and one of the biggest kids Greg had ever seen: six foot six, square-jawed, and broad, the kind of bullnecked hulk a high school football coach would sell his grandmother’s soul for. Pru was also the only boy Greg considered close to a friend these days, now that Peter and Chris were gone. Pru heard that, too. Could it be thunder? Greg shot a quick glance out the stable windows. No lightning; only the diffuse, muddy green glow of the setting moon. Unless it was snowing near Lake Superior; that might explain it. Thundersnow happened around the Great Lakes all the time. But the lake’s more than a hundred miles away. Even if it’s thundering up there, we shouldn’t be able to hear it.
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.