Monsters (Page 101)

Above, the boy gave a great, spastic jolt. His grip broke. With no thought other than getting her face into air, Ellie plowed to the surface. Snatching one precious breath, she saw the boy rearing, his hands shooting for her once more. Thought, He’s got me.

“Ellie!” She was so disoriented, she thought the people-eater had spoken. No, from the left. Her eyes jerked toward the ice shelf.

There, a figure stood, starkly silhouetted against blue sky. And he had a rifle.

“Ellie!” Chris shouted. “Don’t move!”

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The needle punctured the globe of the hunter’s left eye with a small but audible pop. Alex had so much momentum going, she couldn’t put on the brakes. They fell, locked together, the hunter toppling, Alex still clutching that dart and riding him all the way down. When they hit, Alex felt the needle scrape and then punch through the delicate bone at the back of the socket. If her left ear hadn’t been screeching, she might have heard the pffft as the tranquilizer, under pressure, flooded the hunter’s brain.

The hunter went instantly rigid. His remaining eye, filmy with age, bulged. His mouth jammed open. No screams, no screams! Letting go of the syringe, Alex clapped both hands over the old man’s lips. His cheeks puffed in and out. Balls of muted sound pushed against her palms. The hunter’s good eye pinned her with a disbelieving glare. How much he really saw, she didn’t know, and she hoped this was all reflex. His body was starting to quiver and jitter; his hands flapped; the dart, with its merry red tail, danced; his boots drummed snow.

To her left, she felt the wolfdog hovering nearby and craned a look. Its ears were up, the tail nearly horizontal, and its snout wrinkled to show teeth. What she got from the smell was only threat. If it had wanted her, she’d be bleeding by now. You, big boy, are a nut.

Under her hands, the hunter’s frantic puffing had ceased. The lone eye glared a glassy accusation. A moment later, through her good ear, she heard clicks from the dead man’s radio.

Got to get out of here. Staggering back to the spruce, she got into her parka and pawed out her boots. Shadowing her, its alarm a red foam in her nose, the wolf dog took two soundless dancing steps, its meaning clear: Let’s go.

“Don’t I know it.” But go where? In several more yards, she’d be in virgin snow, her trail obvious, and they had weapons. Her eyes fell on the dead hunter—and that Springfield. There was one shot left, but she smelled more bullets in the left front pocket of that camo-jacket. Yeah, but take the rifle, and they know you’re armed. They might call for reinforcements, and then she was cooked. She might be cooked either way unless she killed that Changed boy. For that matter, they might not need the boy. That push-push go-go would wear her down, eventually. If the monster jumped again or, worse, the red storm got behind her eyes . . .

Oh, screw it. She snatched up the rifle. Her left temple throbbed from where the bullet had grazed her scalp, and her hair was already tacky with drying blood. Not going down without a fight.

But it might not come to that. If she could hide . . . But how? How do you hide from the Changed? From the minute the hunter first shot at the tree house to now, she thought five minutes had passed. The chemotherapy tang was closer, not charging but swooping in, making a beeline for that last shot. Keep up that clicking on the radio, and they’d find the body even faster.

What scared her more—now that she was paying attention—was the steadily increasing drumbeat of the push-push go-go. Maybe that was what the red storm wanted. If she lost control, she might be easier to control, or at least find. Every logical scrap of her shouted that she had to run. Yet the lizard part of her brain, everything that was instinct, yammered that hiding was better. Sometimes bunnies had the right idea. Be small, don’t move, don’t attract attention.

Don’t attract attention. She looked at the wolfdog watching her. Darth didn’t see you. Maybe he didn’t notice you. Or maybe couldn’t? No time to figure this out. The metal stink of cisplatin frothed through the trees. The red storm was a throb in the middle of her forehead, like a hidden third eye struggling to open. Decide.

Instead of shoving on her boots, she laced them together before draping them around her neck. Her feet were passing from burn to numb, but footprints weren’t as noticeable as boots. Hooking the Springfield’s carry strap across her shoulders like a samurai sword, she crouched over the body. The only blood was a gooey, meandering trickle from the ruined left eye. Can’t leave the syringe. That makes me both dangerous and a curiosity. Gritting her teeth, she wrapped her hand around the plastic tube and pulled. She felt the scrape of bone again, and when she’d gotten the needle out, the socket puddled red. Shuddering, she recapped the needle with shaking fingers before sliding the syringe back into a cargo pocket. Then, working fast, she stripped the hunter of his fancy, 3-D camo-jacket.

“Come on,” she whispered to the wolfdog, wincing at the throb of the red storm, that continual push-push. Her lip squirmed under a slow, snaky dribble. Cupping a hand to her bleeding nose, she scurried for a screen of dense brambles maybe fifty yards back, cringing at every crackle under her increasingly clumsy feet. She heard the wolfdog’s breaths as it followed. Good. The animal’s prints would erase hers.

The woods here were wild, crowded with nearly impenetrable briars and underbrush. Diving into the snow, she shucked in the rifle, then swam through a narrow gap between two ragged, brambly clumps growing so close together their branches twined. She grimaced as briars forked her hair, tugged her wounded scalp—and, oh hell, the medic pack was still under the spruce. No time, no time. When she judged she was far enough, she wormed around on her stomach, figuring she’d have to coax the animal, but the wolfdog was already squirting in. Smart boy. It knew something wicked was coming this way.

Casting one anxious glance back, she saw no bright red gumdrop trail of blood marking the way. Okay, this has to do, because, honey, we are out of time. Heaping snow into the gap, she put an arm around the animal’s neck, tucked her feet under her bottom, and hunkered down. The wiry growth was so thick, she thought they might be invisible—if they stayed absolutely still. This really could work. Hunters sat in blinds all the time; they perched in trees for hours. And fifty yards was half a football field. A lot of distance in which to get herself lost. Many people overlooked the obvious and what lay in plain sight every day. Smell . . . she couldn’t do anything about that. There was no real wind here, not even a breeze. But she kept thinking of Darth, and then the wolf totems hanging next to that stuff sack. Something important there . . .