Then she knew the truth. She wasn’t paralyzed. Oh, she could move, but only a little because of all that snow, compressed around her body, molded to her like concrete. The snow had her and wasn’t about to let go.

She was buried alive.

12

“Shut up!” Quick as a snake, before the thought streaked from a glimmer to a certainty, Greg whipped Dale a fast one across the jaw. The blow was hard, a crack like the shout of a walnut bursting under pressure. The punch jerked a gasp from Dale at the same moment that it exploded in Greg’s hand, a bright ball that mushroomed to a burn he felt all the way to his elbow. “Shut the fuck up!” he screamed.

“Attaboy!” Aidan crowed as Lucian and Sam whooped their approval. But Pru only groaned, “Greg, man, what are you doing?”

Kincaid—his friend, a nice man, someone Greg really liked—held out his hands. They were saturated with blood. “Greg,” he said, that one eye shining and so bright it hurt to look. “Stop, son. You’re better than this. Don’t you see what’s happening? Peter and Chris would never—”

“BUT THEY’RE! NOT! HERE!” Greg bellowed. He could feel the cords knotting in his neck. One more second, and the top of his head would blow like a grenade. “They’re gone, and it’s all on me, and you’re a fucking ghost, you’re nothing!”

But he thought of his mom and dad at the same moment: how ashamed they would be. His mom never cursed, and the one time his dad really let go, he’d smashed his thumb with a hammer, so that was understandable. Neither ever raised a hand to him or his jerky older brother, never.

Yeah, yeah, but you guys aren’t here either. Things aren’t so easy anymore, so give me a break.

“And you,” he said to Dale Privet, “you’re one to talk about us. You’re a thief. You came to steal. You’re no better than the rest of us.”

“But you don’t understand. I was just so hungry,” Dale whispered, tears leaking from his eyes to trickle down his temples. The purple imprint of Greg’s fist was stenciled on the old man’s cheek, and there was smear of fresh blood on Dale’s chin. The rest of his face was the color of salt. “You don’t know what it’s like, now that there’s nothing coming in. Peter and your boys used to bring food, but now we got nothing. No deer either, no raccoons—all the game’s run off or dead. There’s nothing out there anymore, and I got no ammo to speak of even if there was. What am I supposed to do, eat bark? Eat dirt? And my granddaughter, she’s just a baby, she—” Dale’s mouth suddenly clamped shut.

“Granddaughter?” Greg was breathing hard, and God, his head hurt from the thump of that migraine, a molten throbbing that pushed behind his eyes and might just dribble out of his ears. But his heart—he felt that clench and go hard as stone. “You said you were alone.”

“I—” Dale’s eyes were so huge with terror and dread, the irises were nothing but pinpricks. “Please. They haven’t done anything. It was me. You have the power to save them. Do whatever you want with me, but—”

At that moment, Greg’s radio, which was clipped to his hip, let out a rapid series of clicks: break-break-break.

“Well, look at that, Dale,” Greg said, with absolutely no humor. “Saved by the goddamned bell.”

Backing away, Greg acknowledged by keying the unit with a quick double-click. One of a half dozen World War II relics Rule had scrounged and then doled out to key personnel, the radio was always kept to a single dedicated channel. To save on batteries and

il sa j . bick boost transmission distance, no one used anything but coded clicks and Morse. Greg listened to the comeback, responded, then seated the radio on his hip again. “Come on,” he said to Pru. “Lookout says something’s up.”

“That’s what I’m telling you.” Kincaid finished taping gauze to his cheek. His blood was already drying to a rusty bib on his parka. He favored them all with his one-eyed stare. “I felt it, and this isn’t earthquake country. It’s the beginning of something else, something . . . bad.”

“Uh-huh.” Aidan snorted. “Next thing you know, he’ll be spouting Bible shit like Jess.”

“Leave him alone, A.” Although Greg had to admit, what was

going on with Jess was strange. Kincaid kept her apart from everyone

else, fed her strange potions, even slept in her room at the hospice.

The rumors were she was bat-shit crazy, spouting gibberish half the

time or completely in la-la land and totally zoned. Greg was so curious that when he’d delivered a prisoner to the hospice, he’d waited

until Kincaid was busy, then sidled to her room for a peek. Except for

a rumpled cot and night table filled with books, the room was nothing special. But then, of course, there was Jess.

She doesn’t even look real. Like plastic. Jess was like a body laid out for

a viewing, only propped on her left side with a pillow wedged against

her back to keep her from rolling and another tucked under her right

arm. Her mane of steel-gray hair was scraped back into a long, neat

braid from skin as white as the bandage over half her forehead. Her

face was off-kilter, the dome of her forehead sunken over her left

eyebrow from where the shotgun’s butt had cratered bone. But then he noticed Jess’s eyes roaming their sockets beneath her

closed lids. Dreaming? He hadn’t expected that. The effect was bizarre

and more than a little creepy because the rest of her was so disturbingly slack. Then, all of a sudden, her lips twitched as she pulled in a

gasping inhale and breathed, “Leavethemboytheyareblind . . .” The hair rose on the back of his neck. Boy? Was she talking about

him, to him? That’s nuts, that’s crazy. The words were only air. They

held no meaning. They were so incredibly spooky, he did a one-eighty

and beat feet and you could not pay him to go back.

Now, ignoring Aidan’s aggrieved sputter, Greg turned to Sam and

Lucian. “After Kincaid patches him up, I want you guys to put Dale in

a cell, all right? No more working him over right now. Just give him a

chance to think about things.”

“Sure, anything you say, boss,” Sam said, his tone dripping with

sarcasm.

“Yeah, boss. You want we should use the chains, hang him up by

his arms?” Lucian asked. “It’d make things go faster.”

Kincaid shook his head. “That poor man’s so worn out, there’s

no way he can support his weight. You let those boys string him up,

Greg, and I guarantee he’ll suffocate by morning.”

“Yeah?” Greg said. “Ask me if I care.”

Nothing and no one could have prepared Alex for this.

She lost it. “Help, help!” Spitting and blowing, she tried turning

her head but couldn’t move more than a few inches right or left. The

snow’s weight was terrible, wouldn’t let up, and then she was wailing

incoherently, a shriek that wanted to go on and on . . .

Stop stop stop! She muscled back her fear. Don’t move, stop screaming.

You’ll run out of air and only kill yourself faster.

But so what? She was alone. She couldn’t reach her whistle. No one

to hear it anyway. Her heart boomed; tears streamed over her cheeks.

I’m going to die in here. Pulling in air was getting very hard, like sucking up the last dregs of lemonade through a slowly collapsing straw.

Her lungs were starting to ache, and she was already gasping. Three

seconds later, she realized that her eyelids had shut without her realizing it.

No, no! She fluttered them open in another spasm of panic. Not

ready to die yet. Not . . . But her lids slipped again, and so did her mind.

Below, so far away, it was so dark . . .

. . . not . . . ready . . .

“You ready?” Boy. A voice. Not his. Whose? Chris didn’t know. His mind felt as if it were teetering on the brink, like the smallest tap or tiniest misstep would tip him hurtling over the edge and into oblivion and maybe, this time, for good.

“Pull,” the boy said. A second later, a blowtorch went off in his back and scorched its way from his pelvis through his chest. The pain was enormous, like an atom bomb. Before that moment, he hadn’t realized he’d even been gone, but now he slammed back, hard and fast and all at once on a heaving red tide of agony. “Aaahhh,” he moaned.

“Is that him?” The boy sounded astonished. “Yeah, wait!” A girl’s voice, young, and very close, almost at his ear. “Wait, stop! I think he’s awake! Hello? Are you there?”

There . . . yes . . . He lost the thread. Had he even spoken? Blacked out, maybe. He just couldn’t tell.

“Probably just reflex.” The boy, again. “Eli, let’s try—”

“Wait.” A second girl, older, her voice deeper, gently insistent. “Are his eyes open? Did they move?”

The boy: “What does that matter?”

“If he’s conscious . . . ,” the older girl began.

“No, his eyes are still closed.” The younger girl, again, and now he realized that she was very close. He could feel the warm whisper of her breath. “But when you guys moved the door, his face twitched. Maybe we’re hurting him more?”

Door . . . what . . . where . . . He couldn’t hold the thought. He faded in and out, his consciousness like the bob of a lost balloon high above the distant lights of a faraway carnival. He thought he might be on his stomach. What was the last thing he remembered?

“I don’t know if we got a choice. Unless you guys have a better idea of how to get him out from under there?” When there was no response, the older boy said, “Okay, then let’s do this. You ready in there?”

“Just a sec,” the little girl called. Her voice dropped. “You need to go, girl. Go on.”