It didn’t seem like a lot to ask. We’d been tempting fate since we’d started this crazy ride. What was one more bout of temptation before we were through with it?
“Right, we’re going to have to start leaning left!” I shouted. “We need to get to the other side of the river, and I’m thinking if we do it gradually enough, we’ll be able to run right up onto the bank on that side. With luck, we’ll end up right below our house, Angie!”
“We’re crossing the river?” she asked instead of answering.
“Do you see another way of getting to town?” I asked, only semi-rhetorically.
If she saw another way of doing this, I was all ears. But I knew—as she did—that the bridge across the river was another mile down. And we’d been lucky up to this point in avoiding any further interaction with Randall and his boys. I didn’t want to push our luck any further than we had to. I also didn’t want to have to walk a mile through the snow to come back to the town we were about to pass, just so we could avoid crossing the river here.
Sure, it was flimsy reasoning. But climbing into the sled and shooting down this ice funnel hadn’t exactly been solid.
I just wanted to get home. I wanted out of the cold and out of these clothes I’d been wearing for too long. I wanted Angie in the hands of a doctor. I wanted to see Sarah and make sure she was safe. And I wanted to start talking to people who might have more information than I did about what was going on with this whole EMP thing—and the rest of the freaking world.
And I wanted out of Randall’s territory. I wanted to stop worrying about when that group was going to pop up again and start shooting at us.
“You’re right,” Marlon said, interrupting my thoughts. “We can’t afford to stay out in the open for any longer than we already have. I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust Randall and the others. There’s something wrong with them having caught up with us like that. Something I can’t quite put a finger on. I want to feel four walls around me again so I can figure it out.”
“You and me, both,” I shouted back. “Let’s get this beast across the river and into the mudbank, so we can get to those four walls! Lean!”
We all leaned to the left, and the sled’s nose edged further and further toward the middle of the river, our speed increasing again as we got away from the random reeds and bushes that had frozen into the river near the shore and got onto an area that was pure ice and nothing else.
I looked down, and realized that the ice was actually changing color beneath us. Instead of the bright white, scattered with debris, that it had been on the shore, it was now… turning more and more blue.
Getting more and more thin, I told myself, biting my lip. It wasn’t that the ice was changing color. It was that I was better able to see the water flowing underneath it.
Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God, this was a bad idea. A really terribly horribly rotten idea. I shouldn’t be able to see the water so clearly under the ice. I shouldn’t even be thinking about the water under the ice. But suddenly I was, and my thoughts flew back to that earlier idea of us going right through the ice and into the water—and when we were so close, too. I could actually see our home now, the bright orange of the shutters screaming out from the white of the snow. I could see the town where I’d come to know the mayor and the chief of police and the owner of the grocery store. I could practically smell the scent of apple pies baking in the local coffee shop/bakery where we liked to get coffee on Sunday mornings.
But it wouldn’t matter. If we went into the ice here, we’d die. We’d die with our town right there, almost close enough to touch. Even if someone saw us go into the water, there was no way they’d get to us in time to save us. Particularly if we got swept up by the current running under the ice.
Below us, I heard a deafening splitting sound, followed by an echoing crack, and I knew the worst was about to happen.
“John!” Angie said, her arms coming suddenly around my waist.
I reached down with one arm and grasped her hand, squeezing it tightly. If we were going to go down, then I was going to spend my life saving her. There was no two ways about it. I’d throw her up onto the ice and use my last breath to make sure she made it to solid ground, and I would count it a win if she came out of it. I wouldn’t even think twice about it.
But I didn’t hear any further cracks, and within seconds we were flying up onto the mud and debris of the shore in front of the town, the sled bouncing and jumping as it hit the flotsam and jetsam of the shore, throwing us to the right and left as we bounced along.
“Hold the sides!” I screamed. “Hold it steady to keep it from tipping!”
We might be on the mud now. That didn’t mean I wanted any of us to go flying out.
The sled flew up onto the snow, then, where the nose stuck suddenly into a snowbank, and at that, we all did go flying out of our carriage, landing in a jumble on the snow a few feet further. I lay there for several moments, trying to figure out whether I was alive or dead—and which I would rather be. Then the aches and pains started coming through, as well as the fact that the side of my face that was on the snow was registering the pins and needles of impending frostbite, and I realized abruptly that I was alive.
Alive and on the right side of the river. Laying right in front of our town—and protection.
At that my brain started moving again, followed by my body, and I was on my feet within moments, my eyes scanning the ground around me for Angie and Marlon. They were both a bit further along, Angie sprawled out on the ground as if she’d done a belly flop, but laughing, and Marlon curled into a ball—which, I realized now, was exactly the right position to have taken when we were flying through the air.
I rushed to Angie, relieved beyond words to see her alive, and took her into my arms, sobbing with the giddiness of sudden relief from all the tension we’d been feeling. I couldn’t believe we’d made it. Couldn’t believe we’d actually carried off that final run, across the center of the river and over the ominously cracking ice. I couldn’t believe Angie had actually been in that water, and we’d actually managed to get her back out again.
I couldn’t believe we’d been attacked by a bear and survived.
I looked up from Angie’s face, tears of relief in my eyes, and that was when I saw it.
A small group of men across the river. And by small I meant small. There were only ten of them, if my counting was correct, and they looked as if they’d all lived incredibly rough lives. Outdoorsman’s lives—lives that had prepared them for living outside the boundaries of civilized society. They weren’t sensible preppers or survivalists. No, deep in my bones, I knew they were something else entirely…
I narrowed my eyes at them, trying to figure out what they were doing. Where the hell had they come from? I didn’t have any doubt that they were with Randall—I could actually see him at one end of the line—but how had he managed to gather them in the time he had?
What had he been doing, hiding them in the woods just in case they found someone to chase back toward Ellis Woods, where he evidently had old business to take care of?
Regardless, the men all had guns, I could see that much. And they all had their faces covered by a various array of scarves, hoods, and even masks. They were… were they actually forming ranks? Yes, I realized. The ones in the front were getting down on their knees, the ones behind them standing directly over them.
And they were all pointing their guns right at us.
“Run!” I screamed.
Marlon, Angie, and I jumped to our feet and sprinted for the building right in front of us, Marlon and I supporting Angie between us as we made for the narrow opening between two houses, our minds moving in sync as if we’d been working together for years.