Undaunted

by Kat Falls

As I tried to run past Hyrax, his hand shot out and caught my arm and spun me around.

  “You.” He said it as though it were a curse word. He tightened his grip. “Where’s Cruz? What did those infected animals do to him?”

  “Nothing. He’s fine.”

  Hyrax unholstered his sidearm, and my panic spiked. “I’m tempted to put a bullet in you right here,” he said, “for no other reason than you’ve been a thorn in my side since you set foot on my base.”

  Hyrax’s radio beeped. “Captain, sir,” a voice said. “We’ve got the blood sample. What should we do with him?”

  Hyrax paused and then said into his radio, “Leave him. Get your shots in now. Departure in five.”

  I pulled against his grip. “What do you mean, ‘Get your shots in’?”

  Hyrax snorted. “He’ll be lucky if they leave him alive.”

  I craned my neck to get a glimpse of the hovercopter and watched as the guards pulled Rafe out, still bound, and threw him to the ground. One kicked him, hard, with an ugly laughter. Another drew back and sent his fist into Rafe’s face. A crazy feeling was building in me, making me feel seriously feral. But then something rustled the bushes at the top of the ridge, in the direction Rafe had been aiming his rifle. When a foul smell rode in on the breeze, I reared against Hyrax’s grip. “It’s coming. Let me go!”

  “You think I’m stupid?” Hyrax shoved the gun’s muzzle into my gut. “You think —”

  With a low rumble, Gabe rose out of the brush. Hyrax wheeled around, dropping my arm as Gabe smashed through the foliage and ran for us, faster than I’d ever seen anything move. I scrambled backward, without turning, without taking my eyes from the horror unfolding. Jaws wide and dripping, Gabe leapt for Hyrax. The gun blasted, but wildly, as Gabe slashed into Hyrax’s midsection with his six-inch claws. Screaming, Hyrax fell back, the Komodo-man locked on top of him, a blur of claws and serrated teeth.

  Shouting erupted inside the second hovercopter, and guards spilled out. I ran toward them — toward Rafe — while they raced toward the horrible scene. The guards from the first ’copter joined them, leaving Rafe motionless on the ground.

  “Run!” I screamed as I passed through them, but they didn’t listen.

  I skittered to a stop at Rafe’s side. Some ignorant guard had slapped a piece of duct tape over his beautiful mouth, probably to keep him from biting. His eyes were closed, and there were purple-red marks on his cheek, jaw, and eye.

  “Rafe,” I said, pulling the tape from his mouth, “you have to wake up. We have to go.” I patted his waist, looking for one of his knives to cut through the zip ties that bound his wrists and ankles. His eyes opened a crack, showcasing the golden starbursts at their centers. He smiled crookedly up at me.

  “Just can’t get enough, huh?” he rasped.

  “Shh. Gabe’s coming.”

  I heard yelling, a flurry of gunshots, and one guard and then another scream. Boots pounded through the brush and down the bluff as several guards finally took my advice. When my fingertips brushed Rafe’s knife, I snatched it from its sheath. Clumsy with adrenaline, I sawed desperately at the zip tie on his wrists when the stench of rancid meat overwhelmed me. Gagging, I pushed the knife into Rafe’s hand and looked into his eyes for what I hoped was not the last time.

  “Run,” he hissed, his gaze hard. “Now.”

  “Planning on it,” I said and then heaved him under the hovercopter as Gabe crashed through the trees into the clearing.

  “Lane, no!” Rafe shouted.

  “Gabe!” I yelled while shuffling sideways, away from Rafe. When Gabe’s bloodshot eyes started tracking me, I whirled and ran for the fallen tree, unholstering my pistol as I went. The ground trembled under Gabe’s weight as he pounded after me. I wouldn’t glance back. I couldn’t. If I saw his insane face behind me, his drool-coated teeth, my brain would melt. So I ran with total abandon, whipping around trees and scrambling over boulders, pausing only long enough to hear something crashing through the woods behind me — too large to be a guard. I launched forward, boot landing on a loose rock, and barely caught myself. I didn’t fall, but my ankle twisted under me, bringing instant agony.

  A hiss cut the air …

  I glanced back long enough to see a dark shape bearing down on me. I steadied my hand and got off three shots, but there was no change in Gabe’s pace. I took off again, closing in on the ravine, eyes burning from the stabbing pain in my ankle. Faster, my brain urged, but I was nowhere near the fallen tree. I almost jumped blind, but then I saw what was beneath me: rapids, ten feet down.

  “Lane, jump!” a voice shouted. Little One stood ahead of me on the other side of the ravine, waving both arms.

  “Jump!”

  Was she insane?

  Gabe in all his gory glory came loping out of the dark woods. Dead skin peeling in strips off muscle-packed arms, claws extended from fingertips. Ragged bits of flesh and hair hung from his teeth. When my gaze met his, those starved, feral eyes of his gave me the jolt I needed and I jumped.

  I fell, hurtling through the air, eyes shut, crying out as I hit the frigid water. My lungs screamed for air. My frozen legs kicked. I sucked in a gasping breath at the surface. Water surged into my nose, bringing me a shot of clarity. Back to myself.

  Blinking against the spray, I zoomed past trees and rocks. I screamed as my fingers scrabbled across the steep sides of the ravine, barely keeping my head above the surface. Growing dizzy and sick as the currents spun me around and around. My stomach lurched. When I heaved, water flooded my mouth, choking me.

  A boulder loomed. Instead of parting to the sides, the stream rushed straight for it. Would I bash against it? End up pinned there forever by the rushing water? At the last second, the current tossed me to the left. And suddenly the stream seemed to smooth out before me, and I was simply adrift.

  A howl ricocheted off the rock walls, and I glanced back in time to see Gabe the lizard-man fly past the boulder. He had followed me into the ravine and was caught up in the current as well! He tumbled along behind me, mottled skin glistening, gulping in water with every bob. At that moment, he spotted me and thrashed about as if trying to catch up. Even half-drowned, he hunted me, his ravenous gaze intent, jaws snapping.

  The water quickened again, propelling us both along, but I could swear he was moving faster. Gaining on me. Gasping and choking, I threw myself backward in the water, but somehow he lunged at me, claws extended, his horrible, foul mouth open to bite —

  Then a gunshot echoed like a cannon blast in the ravine. Gabe fell back, away from me, and one of his pale eyes exploded with blood. And then another shot, on the heels of the first, and Gabe’s other eye disappeared, and his body writhed for a few seconds and then went limp. Tendrils of his blood swirled away on the current. His body, floating now, continued to ride the current beside me.

  I struggled to look up toward the edge of the ravine in the direction of the shots. There was a figure there, silhouetted against the darkening sky. A figure I would have recognized anywhere. How had Rafe freed himself so quickly? He’d had a driving reason, that’s how. He’d needed to fulfill his sister’s promise to Gabe. And he had. And he’d saved me from getting infected or eaten alive in the process.

  He jogged along the edge of the ravine, keeping pace with me while yelling something. I couldn’t catch a single word between the rush of the stream and water slapping at my ears. Rafe stabbed a finger downstream and then jogged back into the woods.

  I kicked against the current, bobbing above the froth long enough to see the stream widening up ahead and then … Terror shot through me as I fell into the spray once more, but it was too late to unsee it. The water dropping away in the distance — into nothing. Into a waterfall! And I was crashing and splashing right for it. In minutes, I’d be swept over those rocks.

  Kicking frantically, I tried to surge above the surface and stay there. I came up fast on a large branch whipping against the current where it had lodged between some rocks. I grab
bed on, tearing my palms as it dragged through my grip, but the waterlogged branch bent under my weight and splintered.

  Exhausted and battered, I thrashed around, desperately searching for something, anything, to grab hold of. But then another voice rose above the rush of the water. Shouts echoed off the rock, seeming to come from all around me. I flung myself upward over and over, searching the ledge that ran along the right side of the ravine. In flashes, I spotted figures there, and on the left side too! All waving and shouting and arranged like they were playing tug-of-war with a rope strung between them — hanging inches above the water.

  Just then the current whipped me around backward. Thrashing against it, I tried to turn back before I missed the rope. I would only have seconds to find it. I swept out my deadened arms but felt nothing. I swept them out again and felt it but couldn’t catch hold. Couldn’t — I had it! Hooked it with an elbow even though my flesh was so battered and numb I could barely hold on. With a cry, I clung with numb hands to my lifeline, bobbing like a cork. Gabe’s body hit the rope just after I caught it and made it jerk in my hands.

  Instantly, the group on the left side of the ravine released their end of the rope, and Gabe’s body, freed, disappeared over the falls a moment later. The current caught me again, whipping me toward the drop-off as the rope’s slack played out. I held on as best I could as my rescuers hauled me toward the steep side of the ravine. Looking up, I could see now that it was the recon group from Camp Echo — Happy and Little One and Vengeance and a couple of other manimals — and Rafe.

  They hauled me up the side of the ravine, and when I finally flopped onto the ledge above the rapids, everyone cheered, including the group on the opposite bank.

  Rafe and Little One crouched beside me as I huffed in breaths through clenched teeth. Rafe had a broad smile on his beat-up face — I’d never seen him smile that way — and when I sat up and then tried to get to my feet, he put his arms around me and held me tightly to keep me seated.

  “Relax, silky,” he said into my ear. “Enough heroics for one day.”

  I shook uncontrollably. Each breath was agony. My ankle screamed, and my palm throbbed. I tried to smile, but my teeth were chattering too violently.

  Vengeance took something from his pack and gave it to Happy, and he and Rafe wrapped a foil thermal blanket around me. Then Rafe gently squeezed the water from my ponytail and pulled the hood of the foil blanket over my head. He sat down behind me, and I leaned back against his chest as he put his arms around me. The warmth of his body gradually sank into me, and my trembling calmed.

  On the other side of the ravine, I saw Everson and Aaron and others who looked human — they must have come from Heartland. I gave a grateful, if weak, wave, and they cheered again.

  “We’re coming over!” Everson shouted, and Happy gave him two thumbs up.

  “What are you guys doing here?” I asked Little One in amazement.

  “We decided to trail the guards all the way to their ’copters,” Little One said. “We figured if they started back for Echo, we could easily outpace them and warn the others.”

  “We were in the woods with you,” Vengeance said, pushing back his fedora, “watching the ’copters and waiting for Rafe to take the Komodo out. So we saw what went down. Lucky for us, the group from Heartland showed up across the way. Otherwise we were going to send Happy down on the rope to try to fish you out.”

  “How did you get the rope across?” I asked.

  Happy beamed. “That was my idea. I tied a rock to the cut end and threw it across.”

  “Thank you.” I reached out and grasped his long, strong fingers. “Thank you all.”

  I stared toward the waterfall where Gabe had gone over. My stomach curled in on itself when I thought of how close he’d come to biting me. I turned to look at Rafe, fumbling for the words to thank him.

  “Nice shot,” I said finally.

  He wasn’t smiling anymore. In fact, his face was completely still, his eyes carefully blank, as though he’d pulled on a mask.

  “Not sure why you’d do something so stupid,” he said, and I flinched.

  Really? After what we’d both gone through today? Then it occurred to me that I’d scared him badly by drawing Gabe away from the hovercopter.

  I tamped down my own defensive anger. “If I was down and hurt,” I said, “what would you have done? The same thing.” An image flashed in my mind — Rafe, in the cage at the Lincoln Park Zoo, slamming into Chorda to keep him from ripping out my heart.

  “Why’d you save my life back in Chicago?” I asked.

  He stared at me, his face still expressionless.

  “Tell me,” I pressed, not breaking eye contact with him, not caring that others were listening. With effort, I got onto my knees, put a hand on each of his hard thighs, and leaned toward him on my trembling arms. “Please.”

  My insistence shifted something in him. His mouth relaxed, and his eyes lost that flat look I’d come to dread. A warm light came into them, as if he was recognizing me in a crowd. “You know why,” he said.

  I gave him a shaky smile. “Uh-huh. Same reason I did it. Same reason I’m here.” I leaned in until our foreheads touched.

  Just then Everson and Aaron and the group from Heartland arrived on our side of the ravine, having crossed at the tree farther upstream.

  Everson crouched to examine my injuries.

  “No cuts,” he announced after peeling off my flak jacket.

  Rafe hoisted my jacket with one finger. “I guess we can thank the line patrol for something.”

  “Did any of the lizard’s blood get on you or near you in the water?” Everson asked.

  I shook my head.

  “I wouldn’t have let that happen,” Rafe said from behind me.

  “Yeah, well, some things are out of our control.” Everson lifted my foot and turned it from side to side and prodded my swollen purple ankle. “It’s not broken,” he said. “But you can’t put any weight on it for a while.” He squinted up at Rafe. “Find something she can use as a crutch.”

  “Yes, sir,” Rafe said mockingly, but he rose and headed into the woods.

  Everson made a makeshift splint for me out of sticks and cord, and Rafe brought me a couple of tall thick branches I could use for support on the hike back to Camp Echo.

  “Your turn,” Everson said to Rafe. “What happened?”

  “What can I say? A couple of guards got me in a compromising position.”

  Rafe allowed Everson to check the injuries on his face. Then he hitched up his shirt on the left side, and I gasped at the storm-dark bruises where the guard had kicked him. When Everson felt along his ribs, Rafe winced.

  “They’re not broken,” Everson pronounced. “But this bruising is bad, so don’t get any bright ideas about carrying Lane back to Camp Echo. One of them could be cracked, and it could break and puncture a lung, if you’re not careful.”

  Rafe shot Everson a belligerent look as he pulled his shirt down.

  Everson helped me to my feet, and I squeezed his hands. “I’m double-timing it back to Camp Echo,” he said. “It’ll mean trouble for Mahari — and for all them — if the patrol comes back and I’m not there.”

  Rafe’s expression turned sly. “So you and Mahari, huh?” He held up his fist for a bump.

  What?

  Everson literally looked down his nose at Rafe, ignoring the raised fist. “What are you talking about?”

  Rafe smirked. “When I was leaving Echo last night, I saw the lionesses sleeping next to the fire, but there were only two of them. Where, I wondered, was Mahari? I couldn’t believe she’d fall for Glenfiddich’s lame come-ons. Then I caught wind of you two tucked up together in cabin five. Don’t worry, I didn’t get close enough to hear anything.”

  All the manimals and humans gathered with us on the ridge were, of course, listening, and someone chuckled.

  Everson’s cheek twitched as he fought to keep his irritation in check. “You can wipe that look off your
face. She’s the only person who annoys me more than you.”

  Rafe held up his hands in mock surrender. “Whoa, you’re further gone than I thought.”

  “Bite me.”

  “Hah. Look at that. Now you’re trying to change for her. That’s sweet.” Rafe waved him off. “But I gotta turn you down. You’d make a lousy tiger.”

  Everson actually laughed at that.

  My initial surprise about him and Mahari faded quickly. Everson’s change of heart toward her and the others just proved that I’d been on the right track when I uploaded my video, even if that version was too scary. Hopefully this version would heal the rift. I still had to do interviews with the healthy people living in Moline for Director Spurling, but that didn’t have to be the only footage I gave her. The people in the West needed to see the manimals up close — hear about their lives. Who can resist a story filled with struggle and heartbreak and love? Who could remain indifferent?

  I smiled at Everson. “If you don’t leave, he’s just going to keep talking.”

  “Right,” Everson said, pulling on his backpack and zipping his jacket against the chilly evening air. “Take your time getting back to camp,” he ordered. “Go slow on that ankle.”

  Vengeance approached us. “Happy and I are going with you. We wouldn’t want to lose our hostage to a feral.”

  Everson nodded, and the three of them set off along the ravine.

  The rest of us followed more slowly and found a place in the forest to camp for the night. As we were gathering wood for a fire, we spotted the hovercopters rising above the treetops in the dark sky, on their way back to Arsenal. The surviving guards had apparently returned to the scene and gathered their dead. Rafe and I exchanged a look.

  “That means your blood’s on the way to Dr. Solis,” I said.

  “I wonder how long we’ve got before the patrol tries to take back the East.”

  I shivered thinking about what Hyrax had said about feral eradication. Moline, so close to Arsenal, would surely be one of their first targets. “I need to warn my dad and the others.”

  “Yeah,” Rafe agreed. “But you’ve got some time. They won’t hit Moline till they’ve got more than one squad of vaccinated guards.”