Frenzy
Page 9
Heath’s brain was on overload, firing off commands to his limbs, driving him on through the death and chaos around him. More runners passed by, and he realized he and Dunbar were quickly falling to the back of the line. The ribbon is the prize—he repeated the mantra over in his mind. It helped that the ribbon was growing wider with every passing second. Heath’s heart was pounding so fast he could feel it reverberating inside of his rib cage. Beside him, Dunbar was barreling along; swinging his arms in an awkward windmill style that Heath feared would unbalance the boy and send him toppling forward.
The last pair of runners behind them rocketed by. That’s it, then, Heath thought. We’re the stragglers.
Suddenly there was movement to his right. Something running silently at his heels. He braced himself, waiting to feel the sharp sting of canine teeth sinking into his flesh.
But it wasn’t a wolf. It was Will. Heath had forgotten that Will was bringing up the rear alone.
Will nodded toward Dunbar and said something, but even though Heath was less than three feet away he couldn’t hear him. He remembered that hearing loss can occur when an animal is chased by a predator. It’s a physical response that actually helps it to focus better. Everything gets tuned out, except for the escape route. None of that mattered though; Heath didn’t need to hear Will’s words. They were easy enough to read in his eyes.
Leave him behind.
Will’s expression said even more. The wolves are coming. They’re going to kill you. Dunbar is out of shape. That’s his fault, not yours. Save yourself.
It was all true. Dunbar had no one to blame but himself for being fifty pounds heavy. Who puts butter on Pop-Tarts? But Heath had promised.
“I’m his friend,” Heath mouthed slowly so Will could read his lips.
Will shot Heath a pitying look that said, It’s your funeral, then he picked up speed and an instant later, Heath was staring at the back of Will’s head. Heath’s instinct told him to catch up. To leave Dunbar behind. But he couldn’t. His promise tethered him to the slowest runner in the group, which meant he was tethered to the wolves.
Heath looked down at the ground. Down at the blurring lawn. Down at his chugging feet chewing away at the lime green grass. They almost seemed separate from him, like they belonged to someone else. He recognized his aqua-shoes—the black ones with the mesh across the top and the blue metallic stripe on the sides. He couldn’t run in them as fast as he could in his tennis shoes, but he was still fast enough to outrun Dunbar, not that he would. If he made it to the water, his shoes would give him traction on the slippery rocks paving the riverbed.
If.
He allowed himself a glance over his shoulders. The wolves were closer, but there was still a sizable gap between them. By their choice, Heath knew. Wolves didn’t run at full speed until they got as close to their prey as they could. Then, in the last few seconds, they’d hit the gas. It’s how they tested their prey. Or how they played with their food, depending on how you looked at it.
A squirrel bit one of the last kids to pass them. The boy’s body speared the ground, then kept tobogganing on down the hill. The lawn began to slope sharply the closer they got to the river. They’d have to be careful or risk slipping in the grass and wiping out.
Another person fell. Kids were dying all around them. Animals were cutting them off, racing in from the sides. Three big deer barreled into a pair of runners and carried them out of Heath’s line of sight. He tried to shout a warning, but at that moment pain like electricity shot up his spine, then drilled into the base of his neck. It was horrible—the worst since he’d arrived at camp. The worst ever, which was saying something, because Heath was no stranger to pain.
He stumbled. His fingertips grazed blades of grass, but he didn’t fall. He straightened a bit but stumbled again. This time his momentum shifted beyond his feet, and he lost his balance completely. But he still didn’t fall. Dunbar caught him and leveraged Heath back into control of his body. He’d somehow kept them running. Kept them moving forward to the river. His friend, Dunbar, whom Will had tempted him to abandon.
But Heath was still in agony. The pain felt like a blade slicing up through his back, chewing nerve endings and twisting flesh. His vision blurred. The muscles in his neck tightened like wire. Why now? he asked the universe.
His mother’s voice echoed in response, a faded memory from years ago. Don’t give up, Heath. You’re almost there. Be strong.
He heard his father, too. You can beat this, son. But you have to give everything you have. Don’t quit on yourself.
It was working. Recalling his parents’ encouraging words was like squirting drops of oil over his pain-rusted joints.
But then he heard another voice, as fresh as wet paint, overheard and unintended for his ears. I won’t mislead you. Heath’s chances this time are slim.
SHUT UP! he thundered in his head. Shut up and let me try!
He pushed himself harder, running as if the devil was chasing him instead of just rabid wolves.
As quickly as the pain had arrived, it passed. Heath gasped in relief. He could focus again. His first thought was of his noisemaker. He’d been so shaken by the sight of the wolves that he totally forgot he had it. He flicked the metal tab that should have started it up, but no sound came out. He tried again, but nothing. It was busted! He flung it away. Maybe that was for the best—he didn’t think the noisemakers were keeping the animals at bay. In fact, it almost seemed as if they were targeting the loudest runners, but that wasn’t right. Could Will have been wrong about that?
Heath spied Will somewhere toward the head of the group. His lean, wiry frame had carried him past most of the others. He was running silently, his hands empty. He wasn’t making a sound.
Not a sound.
“Dunbar!” he hollered. “Drop the noisemaker! Toss it right now!”
“What? But Will said—!”
“He tricked us! Get rid of it!”
Dunbar flung his noisemaker away. It smashed to bits against the side of a rock, emitting a final brassy note in dying protest.
In the next breath Heath heard low, throaty growls behind them. The wolves had reached them.
He saw a shaggy gray body pull up beside him. A flash of orange—a lupine eye. Yellow, jagged teeth jutting from hot-pink gums. Foamy saliva spilling from snapping jaws. Fur the color of thunderclouds. The wolf was right there. Heath could have reached out and touched it.
He made a decision. He would make a grab for the leader. The mother. Quilt Face. He’d try to get his arms around her neck and take her to the ground. Maybe the fallen wolf, entwined with his dead body, would draw the rest of the pack, if only for a few seconds. He could give Dunbar a chance to get away. He reasoned it out. Even if he survived…made it home to Port Townsend…how long did he have, anyway? Five or six months at the most? What were his six months compared to the sixty years he could give Dunbar if he made this sacrifice? This is it then, he thought. At least it would be quick. A better death than—
Quilt Face passed them.
Then another wolf—the big one that won the tug-of-war over Rich’s body—ran by on Dunbar’s side. Then another. The two boys were running in the center of the pack, but were safe, like being in the eye of a hurricane. When the last wolf raced by, Heath and Dunbar glanced over at each other, a shared moment of relief and disbelief.
The next pair of runners up the line wasn’t so lucky. Quilt Face tore into one of the girls’ arms. The one swinging her noisemaker. Two more wolves dragged her partner to the grass, quickly silencing his shrill screams.
Dunbar and Heath ran a wide arc around them. The wolves didn’t follow. Even sick, the pack was hunting in their established method. They’d taken their kill for now.
Heath glanced back over his shoulder, which is why he didn’t see—
“Onyx!” Dunbar screamed. “Look out, Heath!”
Heath kept rolling. Everything was happening so fast; the world was a kaleidoscope of images. He thought he saw Dunbar reaching out for him, but his friend was quickly replaced by a bubble—Onyx’s glassy black eye. The eye became a horseshoe. Then Heath was looking at his own feet. Then a swatch of offensively blue sky.
Heath rolled to a stop and his view resolved into layers of gray rocks. Rocks that had been smoothed and scrubbed over thousands of years by flowing water. He was lying facedown on the pebbled shore of the ribbon.
No, not the ribbon. The river. He’d made it to the shore of the river.
He could hear the water lapping at the rocks just a few yards away.
He began to crawl toward the sound. Off to his right, a squirrel came at him, but an arrow tore through its side and cleared it away. Sylvester.
Keep going. Just a few more yards to the safety of the water.
The rocks had been baking in the summer heat all morning. They burned his bare chest and belly.
Just a few more feet.
A shadow fell over him. Something was looming directly above him, eclipsing the sun. Something big.
Just a few more inches.
He reached out to the water.
Just a few more…
There is a sly spider, who knows how to weave,
The stickiest strings that he has up his sleeve.
His web is stretched taut, and coated with lies,
But who will get caught? The spider or the flies?
“GET UP!” A voice boomed, then muscular arms hooked under Heath from above and lifted him off the rocks. It wasn’t an animal that had him. It was Floaties.
“Easy, dude!” Cricket’s scrappy tone was unmistakable. “You’re gonna tear his arms off!”
Heath was relieved to hear he still had both arms, because at the moment he couldn’t feel them. He was totally numb from head to toe, in complete shock. Onyx hadn’t killed him, but the camp’s horse had knocked him loopy. His vision was messed up. He could hear the others and knew they were trying to help him, but everything was a blur.
“Get back! Leave him alone! Shoo! Get out of here!” Several voices overlapped. He heard splashing and caught a glimpse of Sylvester and Cricket. Theo too. They were shin-deep in the river, shoveling water onto the shore with cupped hands. It registered with Heath that they were trying to keep the animals at bay while Floaties dragged his limp body into the Dray.
“Hurry! Get him in the water.” Emily sounded distraught over him. That’s nice, he thought dizzily.
Emma said, “I’ve got his legs,” and now Heath was being carried facedown across the shore. He felt like he was floating through air. There was a ringing noise in his ears, and he couldn’t lift his head.
“Easy, easy…” Good old Dunbar. Heath’s hero. Still by his side.
The sun-bleached rocks got darker, wetter. Then they disappeared beneath the water. He was in the river.
“Keep coming.” Emily’s voice directed them away from the danger.
“Okay, this is deep enough. Set his legs down,” ordered Floaties.
Water flooded Heath’s bathing suit. It felt cool against his hot, sweaty skin. The river was up to his waist. He saw a smatter of silver bullets darting away. Trout fry, his mind processed. At least fish are still afraid of us.
“We’ve got him,” Cricket said, and Heath felt more hands land on his body.
“…can’t believe he survived that.”
“…luckier than Quinn.”
“…right under the horse.”
Heath tried to lift his head again, and this time he was somewhat successful. His vision was still poor but improving by the second. He could make out the survivors in the water, fanned out around him, all of them except for Will, who was observing the rescue from the center of the river. They’d left the livery as twenty-one. Less than half made it to the Dray: Will, Dunbar, Cricket, Floaties, Em and Em, Sylvester, Theo—and, there she was, his little egg, Molly.
Ten kids alive out of twenty-one. It had been a massacre.
But Will was right; the water was a safety zone. The animals hadn’t followed them into the river, although several were tepidly stepping out onto the rocks, spreading out to make room for more. They kept their distance from the river, judging the reach of danger by the location of the dead animals that had been splashed during Heath’s rescue. Quilt Face paced back and forth, never taking her eyes off of Heath. It was as if she regretted letting him go back on the lawn. A German shepherd, probably a hiker’s companion, was barking ceaselessly, mingling with the wolves like it was born to the pack. Its muzzle was stained red. The blood of its former master? Deer stepped fearlessly into the midst of killers. Smaller mammals—voles, squirrels, pikas, and forest rats—scurried across the rocks. The bigger animals sometimes stepped on them, ignorant of their presence. Every creature on the shore was fixated on the humans in the river. Watching and waiting for their chance to pounce.
“Have you got Heath?” Dunbar asked, the concern of a true friend in his voice. “Yes? Good.”
Through double vision Heath watched two Dunbars wade quickly away through the water, elbows high, in Will’s direction. When he reached him, Dunbar tossed a wild punch at Will. Will was startled, but as the quicker of the two boys, he managed to duck just as Dunbar’s fist whiffed over his head. Dunbar lost his balance and fell forward into the water, resurfacing as Will dove on top of him and started to pummel his back and head. Every time Dunbar lifted his face and gasped for air, Will would plunge him down again.
“What’s your problem, idiot?” Will snarled, dunking and punching. “If you want to die so badly, then you should have stayed in the livery!”
“Stop it!” Emily shouted. Molly was crying her eyes out. Theo was just standing there in shock, watching it all unfold.
Cricket, however, sprung into action. He half waded, half swam toward the fight. “Get off of him! He’s gonna drown!”
“Help him…hurry,” Heath croaked, still disoriented. Sylvester and Floaties passed Heath off to the Ems and jogged through the water after Cricket.
“Wait for us, stupid,” Floaties called after him. He was so tall that his knees alternately broke the surface of the water as he ran.
When the three boys reached Will, he shoved Dunbar at them and escaped with a backstroke in the direction of the opposite shore. “He attacked me!” he claimed, pointing at Dunbar. “You all saw him. He’s crazy!”
Sylvester yanked Dunbar above the waterline. Dunbar coughed a fit while Cricket asked repeatedly if he was okay.
Leaning on Em and Em for support, Heath managed to stand up. There was a shooting pain in his shoulder where he’d slammed against a rock during his tumble down the hill and his hand ached fiercely. When he looked at his upturned palm he saw a partial imprint of Onyx’s horseshoe. He ran his other hand over the contour of his head, inspecting for divots like the one Mr. Soucandi had. His skull seemed solid. He’d survived the run in one piece, no thanks to Will.
“Dunbar’s not crazy,” Heath said. He slipped free of the twins, allowing the buoyancy of the water to act as a crutch. “Will set us
up.”
“What do you mean, Heath?” Emma asked, her eyes darting between the accuser and the accused.
“You’re a liar!” Will snarled at Heath.
“Am I? You left your noisemaker in the livery! Admit it!”
“Why would he do that?” Floaties asked, furrowing his heavy brow as he strained to understand. “The noisemakers worked, right? They kept the animals off us.”
“You think?” Heath said. “Look around, man! Or did you not notice that the group was cut in half? How about a head count now, Will? We left the livery with twenty-one. Ten of us made it to the river. The rest are dead. Dead! The only thing the noisemakers did was drive the animals even crazier. They went straight for the loudest of us.”
Floaties still hadn’t connected the dots. “Why would—?”
“Think, you guys!” Dunbar sputtered. “He did it so the animals would attack us and not himself.” He went into another coughing fit. He’d swallowed a lot of water.
“That’s stupid.” Will slapped the surface of the river sending spray into Dunbar’s face. Dunbar, momentarily blinded, attempted to splash him back but missed by a mile.
“Where’s your noisemaker, Will?” Emma demanded to know.
“I dropped it,” he answered quickly.
“In the livery?” Emma asked.
“No, halfway to the river. Accidentally. I don’t have to defend myself to any of you.”
“You never had it,” Dunbar insisted. “You were the last one out the door, so nobody noticed. You left yours behind; admit it.”
“I don’t get it.” Floaties was still struggling to grasp the idea that Will may have betrayed them. “Are you saying he tried to kill us?”
“Not exactly,” Heath said. “I’m saying he tried to save himself, and the best way to do that was by making the rest of us juicier targets. The animals weren’t afraid of loud noises. After what just happened, it’s pretty obvious they were drawn to them. When I saw that Will didn’t have a noisemaker, I made Dunbar dump his. A pack of wolves ran right by us and bit the two kids ahead of us that still had theirs.”