Why the hell did I choose now to grow a conscience?
Megan shook off her indecision. She had only moments to act. Ignoring Emma’s exposed skeletal remains, she crouched beside her blood-drenched backpack and yanked it open. Dug her hand inside and pulled out the contents. A compressed sleeping bag. Dried food. Clothes. The second keg of black powder. And at the bottom, a blue blanket.
She shook it out to its full length.
Big enough for the job.
Megan wrapped the blanket around her head, shoulders, and body, leaving a narrow opening to see through. Then she headed toward the wall of fire in the middle of the burrow.
The flames now illuminated the full vastness of the cavernous lair. The only way to save Vargas was to head through the fire. She could barely make him out through the flames. He was crouching on one knee, facing the arachnid, which had not yet attacked. But that could change any second as the creature, not understanding the destruction ripping through its home, began to fight anything and everything around it.
As she neared the edge of the flames, visions of Mike and Ethan, trapped in their swing chair, flashed in her mind. Her hesitating out of fear. The horrific consequences of backing away.
History would not repeat itself today. Nothing would bring back her husband and son, but if she could just save Vargas and herself . . .
Better to die trying than live with backing down a second time.
Her boots kicked bones as she strode directly toward Vargas.
The heat was getting unbearable, and the flames showed no sign of weakening. The vast network of webs burned like confetti soaked in kerosene.
Megan took a deep breath and shouted over the cacophony of crackling and burning. “Ricky!”
He remained motionless on the other side of the fire, staring at the creature. It inched backward and forward, as if confused.
Megan broke into a sprint, looking down to make sure nothing tripped her.
At any moment, she expected the blanket to burst into flames. But it was too late to stop.
Heat engulfed her as the arachnid’s hissing filled her ears.
She took three long leaps, powering through the flames before they could take her down. In the blink of an eye, she reached the other side and skidded to a stop next to Vargas. He still faced the creature, as if lost in thought or stunned by the sheer strangeness of events.
Megan grabbed his shoulder. “Ricky!”
He didn’t flinch.
“Vargas!” she shouted close to his ear.
His head snapped in her direction. “How the hell did you . . .”
She stooped by his side and hooked her arm around his chest. “On your feet. We’re leaving.”
“My leg is fucked. You should have gone.”
“If we don’t go now, we’re both fucked. Now move!”
Vargas nodded. “You got it, boss.”
He grimaced as she helped him to his feet. Both turned to look at the arachnid. Still within striking distance, it now seemed oblivious to their presence. It snapped its fangs repeatedly at the flames and falling debris, as if unable to lock onto its prey.
Megan wrapped the singed blanket around both her and Vargas’s head and shoulders and turned back toward the fire. He hopped around until they faced the tunnel entrance.
“Just run like hell!” she commanded.
The arachnid let out a high-pitched scream that resonated through her body.
It knows we’re here . . .
Vargas glanced across to her. His wide-eyed expression required no interpretation. They ducked and ran through the fire, clinging to each other until they reached the other side.
Their blanket shroud was now engulfed in flames. Megan shook it off them and quickly patted out the fire that had caught on Vargas’s pants.
Vargas collapsed to his knees in pain. “You go ahead,” he breathed.
“No chance. We do this together.”
“Jeez, I’d hate to work for you.”
“Luckily, that’ll never happen.”
Megan hoisted Vargas to his feet again. If the creature had, in fact, homed in on them, they had only moments to escape. Snatching up Emma’s backpack, she helped Vargas limp up the tunnel toward the exit as smoke billowed all around them. They brushed against the thick cable of webs that ran out of the cave into the forest, but at this point they had no time to be delicate.
The cave’s mouth was maybe fifty yards ahead. Forty yards . . . Thirty.
For a moment, Megan entertained the hope that they might escape this nightmare alive. That hope shattered as the arachnid’s piercing scream split the air. It sounded right behind them.
Megan spun to face the back of the burrow, praying that the creature hadn’t managed to follow them.
“Oh shit,” Vargas said.
The arachnid burst through the flames, completely ablaze. Its legs flailed wildly as its fangs snapped, trying to rip apart any sentient thing, to destroy the source of its pain. It crushed bones under its weight as it raced up the tunnel.
The creature was manic. Desperate. Angry.
And it was heading directly for them.
Chapter
Thirty-
Five
Megan gripped Vargas’s T-shirt and hauled him forward. Only twenty yards to go. Behind them, the screeching and the gnashing of fangs closed in.
Just how close, she dare not guess. A second wasted turning around to check might well be her last.
Her lungs screamed for fresh air as she wheezed in smoke between repeated coughs. Every step up the incline felt like pulling a coal barge upstream. If, by some miracle, they pulled through this, it was a horror she’d never forget.
Vargas struggled mightily to keep up, panting, hopping uphill beside her, and groaning whenever the injured leg bumped something.
A few more steps, and they would burst out of the cave and into open woods. But she could feel the presence of what was coming after them. Megan finally darted a glance over her shoulder.
The arachnid sounded like a freight train roaring up the tunnel.
The thick cable of webs had erupted from a flickering blue glow into a fireball, racing alongside the monster to the cave’s exit. Either one meant death to the two frail humans.
Vargas was slowing down, exhausted. At this pace, the creature would overtake them before they got outside. They had to do something right now.
Then the realization hit Megan.
If this monster escapes, it’s going to keep killing.
Again . . . and again . . . and again.
She stopped running and let go of Vargas. He turned back to face her, looking surprised. “What the hell are you doing!”
“This ends here, Ricky,” Megan replied. “Keep going. I’m right behind you.”
“Are you crazy?” he shouted back.
“Ricky, go!” she said, pushing him forward.
Before he had a chance to reply, Megan dropped Emma’s backpack by her feet, reached down, and lifted out the powder keg.
The arachnid was nearly on her, screaming in agonized fury. Fire, fed by the webs, raced behind it, toward the exit.
She slipped the pocketknife out of her pants and stabbed through the keg’s lid.
“Megan!” Vargas yelled from the mouth of the tunnel. “For fuck’s sake, run!”
Flames engulfed the shrieking creature. Enraged, it came at Megan, fangs ripping at the air.
She lifted the keg above her right shoulder and took a deep, shaking breath.
Wait for it . . .
The burning creature locked in on Megan and crouched to spring.
Now!
“Burn in hell, you son of a bitch!”
She heaved the powder keg with both arms. It arced through the air, turning end over end, and crashed into the snapping f
angs of the monster. The fangs easily splintered the wood, covering the creature’s mouth with black powder.
Megan spun and sprinted for the cave entrance.
“get down!” she shouted at Vargas.
Vargas dived to the left of the entrance and she lunged to the right, wrapping her arms around her head and curling into a fetal position.
A moment later, a booming explosion ripped through the air.
The ground shuddered, and small pebbles pattered down around Megan.
A fireball billowed out of the cave and into the tinder-dry forest. Shards of the arachnid’s shell and bloody chunks of sinew shot out of the cave and splat down on the riverbank.
Megan turned onto her back and screamed with primal joy.
Vargas screamed right alongside her.
“That’s what I’m fucking talking about!” he crowed.
But the sense of relief vanished in the next instant. The flames raced along the thousands of webs into the thick forest, igniting the dry groundcover and crawling up tree bark.
“Oh shit,” Megan gasped. She scrambled across to Vargas, who stared in shock at the building conflagration.
A thousand lines of fire exploded from one tree to the next, racing into the distance. Within a minute, the woods all around them had caught fire. The all-but-invisible webs revealed themselves in their own destruction.
The pace of the spreading blaze was breathtaking. Strands of fire rocketed down the incline in the direction of the bus. They shot up the trail toward the cabin. In the distance, the fire disappeared over the brow of a hill, then reappeared moments later, racing up the side of a distant mountain, illuminating the vastness of the creature’s territory.
Everywhere she looked, the bone-dry forest burned. Branches burst into flames, and treetops went up like struck matches.
In the time it took them to recognize their situation, a forest fire was closing in on them from all sides. If they stayed a minute longer, they would surely burn to death.
They had just escaped hell, only to find themselves right back in it.
Even the foaming Class V rapids seemed to be ablaze with reflected fire. Across the river, flames hopped from treetop to treetop up the side of the mountain.
She pulled Vargas to his feet and turned toward the river.
“No, no, no,” he said. “You’re not seriously thinking we . . .”
Her silence was his answer.
Chapter
Thirty-
Six
“There’s no other way,” Megan said, though she harbored no illusions. Jumping into this maelstrom was likely just death by other means. And the only thing she remembered about white-water rafting was the five-minute tutorial she got years ago before rafting with her husband in New Zealand.
That was on a big, self-bailing inflatable boat, with paddles and life vests for everyone.
But even drowning beat the torture waiting if they stayed on the riverbank any longer. Just about everything beat getting burned alive.
Burned alive . . .
The roar and the blistering heat all around them overwhelmed Megan’s senses. They had to jump. Now.
Vargas stared at her. Beyond him, on the opposite side of the rapids, the fires blazed higher and higher. A wall of flames, brightening the night sky with an orange hue. Hundreds, maybe thousands of acres were being destroyed.
“So,” Vargas said. “We just dive in and hope for the best?”
“At least that way we’ll have a chance.”
After escaping the monster’s clutches, to die in the river seemed a cruel irony.
He gazed down at the water. The river had already taken Ryan’s life. Maybe it was about to take theirs.
“Try and stay near the middle of the rapids to avoid falling trees and debris,” she said. “When we reach the bus downriver, swim for shore. And keep your feet out in front of you—they’re your bumpers.”
“Got it,” Vargas replied. “And when I break both my legs in the first minute, what do I do then?”
“Try and keep both broken legs in front of you.”
Her wiseass comment got a smirk from him.
“Say, don’t suppose you have a pool noodle handy in that backpack.”
She smiled and moved to Vargas’s side. The heat was almost unbearable as flames consumed the entire forest.
A loud crack echoed from above.
They both whipped their heads upward.
An enormous sycamore, entirely on fire, was about to topple into the river, onto the very rock they were standing on.
“ricky!” Megan shouted. “jump now!”
She grabbed his hand, and the two leaped into the roaring rapids, just as the flaming sycamore came crashing down onto the rock.
Instantly, they were whisked fifty yards downstream.
Megan kicked her legs and pulled with both arms, trying to get her head above the foam. Her boot hit a rock. Her arm scraped something, instantly drawing blood. Eventually, the dark sky appeared above her, and she sucked in a deep breath.
Vargas rose by her side and coughed.
“Get your legs up!” she yelled.
“Trying,” he gasped.
Seconds later, his boots jutted above the surface. He let out an anguished cry—must have bumped the injured leg. As they steered with their arms and tried to look downstream, the rapids tossed them about like rag dolls. Megan’s thigh slammed hard against a rock. She opened her mouth to cry out, only to be dragged back down beneath the surface.
Chilly water rushed down her throat.
Vargas grabbed her, pulling her closer, and she got her head up.
Megan spat, then drew in a breath.
They were traveling fast down the roaring river, past burning forest on both sides.
A log slammed into Vargas’s back, knocking the wind out of him. He gasped for breath, trying to hang on to Megan.
He dipped under the swell, clutching her arm, and emerged a moment later, taking rapid, shallow breaths and staring at the smoke-filled sky.
Megan’s body shook from the cold. The rapids seemed even faster here.
“We’re speeding up!” Vargas cried out.
Then Megan remembered. The waterfall . . .
Just above where they parked the bus two days ago, they had seen that lovely, scenic waterfall.
Just ahead, both banks were free of flames. And the river disappeared from view. This led to the ominous conclusion.
“Waterfall!” Megan cried out. “Try and make it to shore!”
The current pulled Vargas under for a moment, and he slammed into a rock, bruising—perhaps breaking—some ribs. He popped back to the surface and looked ahead. Now maybe he understood what Megan was shouting about.
They both swam furiously for the river’s edge, using the last of their strength to fight the rushing current. But the force of the water twisted and turned their bodies, making it nearly impossible to fight.
The falls were less than thirty yards away.
Twenty . . .
The river pulled them away from each other. Vargas’s head disappeared again.
“Ricky!”
She couldn’t reach him, so she pulled for shore with everything she had.
Ten yards away.
Any kind of rescue attempt was impossible. Vargas was on his own.
The last few strokes took everything out of her, and her limbs finally refused to obey.
A moment later, she felt the riverbed fall out from beneath her, and she hurtled over the edge, arms and legs flailing.
Her body plummeted a dozen feet before crashing into the foaming river below. The current twisted and tumbled her underwater, holding her down with the mass of water coming from above.
She was trapped, unable to break out of the vortex and knowing that if s
he didn’t, she was moments from drowning.
Something whacked her—a tree limb that had followed her over the falls and got caught in the same deadly spin cycle. The momentum pushed her out of the whirlpool and spat her into calmer waters ahead.
She sucked in the life-giving air.
She was alive.
But Ricky . . .
Megan swam diagonally to a gentle eddy at the water’s edge, and her knees eventually crunched onto gravel. She scrambled to dry land and collapsed onto all fours, gasping for breath. Even soaked and dripping, she could still feel the heat from the fast-spreading forest fire. She had cuts and scrapes all over her arms and legs.
The backpack had protected her somewhat from rocks and debris. Megan shucked it off and flopped down on the shore. She searched the water. Still nothing.
Come on, Ricky, you can do it. Please . . .
As if in answer, Vargas’s body jettisoned from the tumult below the waterfall, close to the bank. He drew in a deep, braying breath. He was alive.
He floundered over to Megan and up onto shore, clutching his ribs.
“You bastard,” she gasped. “You had me worried.”
He slumped down by her side. “Nothing to worry about. My ribs broke the fall.”
She burst out laughing and wrapped her arms around him in joy.
“Don’t squeeze and don’t make me laugh!” he said with a tired smile.
Megan couldn’t believe it. For the first time in two days, they weren’t in immediate, mortal danger. A huge burden had been lifted off her. The release was immense. She felt like a shaken-up bottle of soda that had just been opened.
The two of them lay in silence for the next few moments, catching their breath. They needed to get to a hospital, but they were alive.
Megan turned and took in the view. The entire forest was burning, but they were safe here, on the bank of the river, in a large clearing. A few hundred yards behind them was the road where they had parked the bus. The flames had consumed the entire vehicle, gutting it with everything inside.
“Ricky,” Megan said. “The bus . . .”
Vargas turned and looked at the terrible sight.
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