“Car engine blew?” I hazarded a guess.
“Sounds like it,” Burns provided, the rustling coming from the back row making me guess that he was trying to get up.
All of us waited for a moment, bracing for more debris to rain down on us, but when nothing came, Nate started moving off me.
A few upward kicks, and Burns managed to get, if not the door of the back row, the top hatch to open. “It was Jason’s car, but he and Charlie are outside,” he reported as he ducked back into the Jeep. “Tanner’s busy helping them get what’s not yet on fire out of the car. I think we should take the hint and do the same.”
He quickly followed his own advice, leaving Nate and me to fend for ourselves. Nate hesitated but I waved him off; without him taking up space, I had a much easier time heaving myself into the back row where I had to pause, my head pounding too hard for me to go on. Nate was already outside so I allowed myself to sag against the cushions to tough it out, praying that I hadn’t gotten a concussion. Damn, but who’d have expected the bridge to just disintegrate underneath our asses? Part of me wanted to protest that it must have been sabotage, but I doubted it.
“You okay in there?”
The sound of Gita’s voice forced me to open my eyes. “Yeah, just getting my bearings,” I called out, exhaling slowly as I fought the upcoming nausea. “You?”
“A few scrapes and the scare of my life, but otherwise we’re good. Charlie’s hurt his shoulder but they were already climbing out of their car when the engine blew. Our car’s out of commission as well. Looks like we’ll have to hoof it from here on out.” Judging from how hard it was to squeeze myself through the Jeep, it must have been worse for wear than the Rover after our ride down the rock avalanche that had ended my stellar driving record. No surprise there.
It took an embarrassing amount of huffing for me to finally push myself through the hatch, and without Gita making a grab for my arm, I might have fallen right into the river. There were rocks aplenty around what remained of the ice that had covered the river, so Nate had been right with his assessment of us not getting swept away, but they made for stellar face-planting underground. A look around revealed that less of the bridge had come down than I’d expected, but the concrete and steel hanging above our heads didn’t look very trustworthy.
When he saw us, Nate hopped back across the riverbed, managing to remain mostly dry. “Get over there and wait for us,” he instructed me, ignoring any protest I wanted to provide—very feebly, but still. “Rest up as much as you can, because that’s it for the cars.”
I still insisted on getting my pack from the car and grabbing my shotgun before I did as I was told, grumbling under my breath. Of course I managed to slip off the ice and wet stones twice, soaking my already wet boots further, but I figured that cold toes were still better than my leg getting smashed under one of those cement blocks. Gita followed me, almost succumbing to the weight of the gear she was hauling onto the riverbank next to me before she turned around to get more of it. I felt bad for just sitting around, watching the others work, but when I tried to get up to help, Gita was quick to call for Nate, who put an end to my attempts at chivalry.
It turned out, Charlie had dislocated his shoulder, but Burns had a quick fix for that. Half of Jason and Charlie’s gear had gotten trapped in the car but they’d managed to get their packs, weapons, and ammo out before the heat had made it impossible to get close to the car. It burned for a surprisingly short time, but nobody attempted to get near it once Burns had declared that the fire was contained—not hard, in the middle of a river, with everything covered in snow, and likely more to come later in the day. Instead, they stormed the wrecks of the other two cars to grab everything portable and useful.
We set out an hour after not quite making it across the bridge, Jason and Burns still coughing from time to time. Scrambling up the riverbank was hard in snow drifts that came up to my waist, but Nate had no qualms about pretty much dragging me up behind him. From down there, our tumble into the river hadn’t seemed so bad, but once we were back on the road, looking back, I was surprised that we hadn’t gotten buried under an avalanche of concrete and car parts. Only two of the broken-down wrecks had fallen into the gaping hole, both smashing down behind Tanner’s vehicle but missing it.
Jason took the lead once more, but now it was Nate and me who brought up the rear, with Burns hanging back as the rear guard. The clouds were gathering for an encore of the storm of the last few days, and while it was neat that the wind was blowing snow off the road, the biting cold it blasted my face with was less than comfortable. My pack was light compared to what I was used to lugging around under different circumstances, but that had been without me feeling like my body was slowly winding down. With every step that I took, I needed a little more conviction to take the next, exhaustion and pain spreading through my body. I could tell that Nate noticed—likely the reason why he didn’t protest when I hiked my shotgun up on my shoulder rather than keeping it at the ready—but there wasn’t anything either of us could do. We slogged on and on through the whiteness, heading toward the gathering storm clouds.
I tried to keep a brave face, until I couldn’t anymore. The next time my right foot came down on the snow-covered road, it slipped, my thigh too weak to try to compensate. I went down like a sack of potatoes, incapable of even trying to brace my fall, almost welcoming the harsh cold that met my cheek. It didn’t feel so bad anymore, I decided, my breath sending up a cloud of white dust on my next exhale.
Over Nate’s alarmed shout, I heard a wolf howl as clearly as if it had been standing right beside me.
Chapter 18
I must have blacked out for a few moments, because when I came to, Nate and Burns were busy dividing up the contents of my pack between them—no, not my pack, I realized as I tried to roll onto my hands and knees to get up. My pack was still secured to my back. Nate’s pack, and it was Tanner who got the worst of the load of it. Agitation lay in the air, Jason, Charlie and Gita doing their best to both guard our group from all sides at once, and strap on their snowshoes.
“Can you hold on?” Nate practically shouted at me, making me realize that he’d asked me the very same thing at least two times before. I stared up stupidly at him, then nodded more out of reflex than conviction. Hold on to what?
That became rather obvious when he bent down and heaved me onto his now bare back, only the small pack he carried on his front and his weapons remaining. I gave a somewhat undignified squawk as I was lifted into the air, doing my best to cling to his shoulders. “Wrap your arms around my neck, and stop kicking me!” he instructed as he grabbed my thighs just above my knees, pulling them into his sides. I did as I was told, slumping into his back when exhaustion threatened to overwhelm me again.
As soon as Nate had straightened, we took off at something between a slow lope and a brisk march. Gita took point, the combination of her lighter weight, lighter pack, and youth giving her somewhat of an advantage over the others. I didn’t even try to tell Nate to put me down, but being transported like a recalcitrant little child wasn’t working well for my ego. Burns remained plastered to Nate’s side, his eyes constantly roaming over the low hills left and right of the road. It took me a few minutes to realize what he was looking for, and only happened when another wolf—this one’s howl of a higher pitch and coming from straight up ahead rather than behind us—reminded me of the first.
“Think they will attack us?” I asked no one in particular. Nate wasn’t exactly huffing and puffing under the load of me and my pack, but Burns had an easier time answering.
“No clue,” he professed. “We’ve only seen three so far. Doubt that’s all of them, though.”
“Barely scratching it, I’m sure,” Jason called back from up ahead. “They wanted us to see them. They’re herding us. If we’re lucky, they’re just escorting us out of their territory.”
“And if we’re not?” I posed what I figured was a valid question. We had just lost our cars a
nd a good portion of our gear in that bridge collapse.
“Guess what’s for dinner,” came Jason’s cryptic answer.
I didn’t ask for clarification, but might have tightened my grip around Nate a little more.
It soon became obvious that we couldn’t keep up the grueling pace Jason had set, but whenever we slowed down for a quick break, the wolves drew closer immediately. Once or twice we stopped so Burns could try to get any of the broken-down cars on the road to work, but to no avail. I doubted that even with a working car battery they would have started up, but we hadn’t had time—and load capacity—to take one from our cars with us. We were in the middle of nowhere with not even a barn in sight so we couldn’t try a vehicle that had weathered out the past year and a half in a carport.
The storm hit us late in the afternoon, turning what remained of the day into night within ten minutes. We reached another sign at a crossroad and stopped. Nate let me down to catch his breath while Jason cleared away the snow, quickly debating with Burns where to turn next. Straight on, the next town was still seven kilometers out. Down the much smaller lane was supposed to be a lake in just three kilometers. My brain was too much mush to turn that into miles, but three still sounded better than seven.
The others agreed with my silent assessment and turned down the smaller road, completely covered in snow as it was. Nate made as if to bend down to let me hop on again, but Burns pushed his pack at him instead, signaling me to get onto his back. I absolutely hated having become such a nuisance, but remaining standing, unsupported, for maybe five minutes had made my entire body shake hard enough that I would have keeled over any minute now.
The path we were following meandered away from the bigger road, aiming for a patch of trees further to the east. As we got closer, I could see the flat white shape of the lake peeking through the snow-laden branches—and what looked like a lodge or restaurant by the water’s edge. Not perfect, but right now the back of a truck would have looked mighty welcoming to me. Come to think of it, maybe that would have been easier to defend.
“Guys, what’s that up ahead, by the trees over there?” Gita asked, stopping so she could better squint in the direction she was pointing.
I was just about to share my observations about the lodge, when Jason’s cursing cut my train of thought short. “Damnit. They’re closing in on us.”
True enough, now that he pointed that out, I could see them as well—shapes, somewhere between seven and ten, were moving between the trees. Across the distance, I couldn’t see their eyes, but it was obvious that it wasn’t a pack of wild dogs.
Until the shit had hit the fan, I’d never seen a wolf in the wild. At the zoo, sure, where I was safe on the other side of the enclosure, and the animals as placid as they come, stuffed with food they didn’t need to hunt for and their spirits broken because even the nicest cage was still a cage. I’d admired them in that noble, savage way that society sees predators whose teeth it pulled and whose claws it cut. But last winter, when the resident pack had savaged Andrej somewhat good and we’d been in direct competition for what little game there was to hunt, I’d learned that fearing them automatically came with respecting them—and I still had a very healthy dose of respect for wolves.
“Can you tell how many there are?” Nate asked me. When I looked down stupidly at him, he grimaced. “You, from your higher vantage point, with your low-light vision? I get that you’re tired, but that is no excuse for your common sense to go completely overboard.”
I felt tempted to inform him that, yes, cognitive impairment was often a sign of deep exhaustion, but instead did another head count. “Twelve at least. Possibly more. I can’t see what’s on the other side of the lodge. Think those are the ones we heard before?”
“Doubt it,” Jason answered. “There must have been a lot of game for them last year, so they likely bred like bunnies. The pack that followed us earlier would have attacked if there’d been enough of them to overwhelm us. No, I think we just made the mistake and traipsed into the garden of their neighbors.”
“Should we turn back?” I proposed.
“Too late,” Nate said, still staring at the forest and its silent guardians. “Bree, get off Burns’s back. Whether you feel like it or not, you’ll have to walk.”
I knew that he was just goading me on to let my anger mobilize what remained of my reserves, but it still stung. As soon as Burns let go of my legs, I dropped down, doing my best not to stagger as I found my balance. “What’s the plan?”
Nate glanced toward the lodge. “You and Charlie take point. As soon as I tell you to, or they start the attack, you run for the door and get inside. No protest; neither of you is fit for a fight, but you can cover our retreat. Now, go.”
Charlie looked about as happy as I felt as he fell into step beside me, both holding our weapons with less than perfect grips. Neither of us ran—we weren’t that stupid—but trudged through the snow at as fast a pace as we could manage and not look like easy prey. From down here I could see the trees but not what lurked beneath the cover of the branches, making me antsy with apprehension. At least with the shamblers you usually heard and smelled them before they were upon you. But wolves were master stealth fighters, hard to make out even when you knew where to look. And if one of them could be deadly, the entire pack was a nightmare.
We were maybe half a mile away from the lodge when the road started curving toward the lake and forest, and that was when I got another glimpse of the wolves once more. They were definitely gearing up for a fight, with a good five of them advancing from the cover of the trees, dark shapes easily visible against the white snow. The distance from us to them was about the same as to the lake, and they were closing in rapidly, even at a mere walk, barely hindered by the snow as they were.
“Run?” I asked Charlie, eyeing the way his hurt shoulder kept drooping more and more.
He glanced at the wolves, then back toward the lodge. “Can you make it?”
“Only one way to find out, right?” I tried to laugh softly, but it turned into a raspy cough. “If there’s one advantage to being carried around like a useless piece of gear, it’s being moderately rested.” A lie, but at least I managed to deliver it with conviction. “You take point until the building, I bust open the door. Go on three.”
Neither of us counted, but a few seconds later, Charlie increased his speed to a lope, then easy run. As soon as the wolves noticed, they started after us in earnest, forcing us both to sprint outright. My lungs were burning within moments, the muscles in my legs protesting vehemently, but fear and adrenaline provided enough of a kick that I not only kept up with Charlie, but managed to draw ahead once we’d halved the distance to the lodge. Maybe I should have hung back, but selfish will to survive sent me forward, my conscience telling me that I had a much better chance of helping him and the others if I could secure the lodge before the wolves came down on us.
More and more wolves came pouring out of the forest, twenty easily, followed by another group of at least ten; I didn’t take the time to count them all. A shot rang out from behind us, stopping the beginning charge of the lead wolf short, but only for a second. Then the dark grey animal surged forward, aiming straight for Charlie and me, his buddies from the lead group following, while the rest veered toward the others. My vision started to narrow around the edges, my breath coming in irregular pants, but I forced myself to go on. I’d survived so much worse—like almost an entire day and night, alone, out in the heat, hunted by zombies that were way more deadly than fucking overgrown dogs. I would be damned if I let this be the end of me.
The first wolf caught up to me when I was maybe a hundred yards away from the lodge. I saw movement at the edge of my vision, but while I still tried to make up my mind what to do, the wolf lunged. The burst of speed I aimed for turned into an exhausted stumble, but it was exactly what made the animal crash through the snow right in front of me rather than slam into my body. Acting on instinct rather than thought, I brought up my
shotgun and sent a slug that was powerful enough to fell a charging zombie into it—narrowly missing the head, but turning its shoulder and upper back into minced meat. The wolf’s snarl turned into a whimper as it went down, blood rapidly soaking into the surreally white snow.
Rather than finish it off, I trudged on, doing my best to gather speed as I ran after Charlie, ahead of me now. Two wolves streaked right past me and went for his legs, forcing him to come to a halt as he tried to fend them off. I blindly shot in their direction—making sure to miss the friendly human, of course—as I passed him once more, almost at the lodge now. Two steps further and it became obvious why the last two wolves hadn’t come for me yet. Sneaky bastards that they were, they’d loped ahead and just now hopped onto the porch right by the door, as if they’d known what part of the house I was aiming for. With their hackles raised and all their teeth in full view they were more than enough for my heart to skip a beat or two, but while adrenaline usually made me stupid, exhaustion slammed a nice damper on my rising panic.
Sliding to a halt in the snow, I got my Mossberg up and shot, pumping out slugs as fast as the weapons would let me—and if Nate’s incessant drills had done anything, it was ingraining good posture and aim in me. The first shot took down one wolf, the other one following at the third shot. What could I say? At a distance of fifteen feet I was a fucking surgeon with my shotgun.
What little victory gloating I might have wanted to do got stomped out as I heard more shots going off behind us, the yips and whines of dying wolves drowned out by the snarls of their attacking brethren. Without losing any more time, I hopped up on the porch and tried the door—why destroy one vital defensive point if I didn’t have to—and only lined up my shotgun when it didn’t budge, even after throwing my full weight against the wood. A clean shot took out the lock, and I more fell through the door than pushed it open. I didn’t really care—open was open, and inside was inside.
Green Fields (Book 7): Affliction Page 25