Darkness (12 page)

Julian crossed his arms in a vain attempt to keep warm. The poor guy had lived in a warm climate all of his life. If the temperature was this much of a shock to me, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like for him.

“Odin
crashed,” I said. “We were ambushed by a dragon. I...I think it’s coming for us again.”

Michael began picking his way down the side of the ship, into the dusty snow that covered the mountain valley. Everyone moved to follow him.

“Listen,” Makara said. “I can be there in an hour. But if that dragon is still around there’s not much I can do. When it comes down to it, the beast has to clear out before I can pick you up. Just find a safe spot. Somewhere warm.”

I shivered. “We’re going to find the Bunker entrance and stay until we’re clear to get out. Might have a chance to do some recon after all.”

Michael shouted at me from the ground, but his voice was lost to the wind. I needed to get moving.

“Listen,” Makara said. “It might be too late to say this, but...be careful, Alex. I can’t lose any of you.”

I sensed concern in her voice – a promise of protection that could do no good, hundreds of miles away. I thought of all the times she’d saved my hide – running from Raiders, giving me food – and how she was powerless to do that right now.

“We’ll see you soon, Makara.”

Ashton worked his way down the ship’s side and entered the waiting arms of Julian and Michael. Anna hopped cleanly down from the ship into snow that came up to her knees. This was going to be a hard slog. I worked my way down the side of the ship. The dragon roared once more from above. It was not visible beyond the thick gray dust.

“The Bunker will probably be somewhere in this valley,” Ashton shouted.

Ahead, I could see nothing but a wall of gray air. Somewhere beyond that was the mountainside and the frozen lake we had spied from above. The wind had kicked up so much snow and dust that we could only see about fifteen feet ahead. Ashton was right; we had to find the Bunker entrance or we might not even survive long enough to be rescued. Makara could follow the coordinates to find our position, but we couldn’t stay in the ship. The dragon was sure to come back. We had to get underground and wait it out.

We forged ahead, Michael and me plowing a trail through the thick snow. I ignored the cold, ignored the pain, and pressed on. After a few minutes of empty space and snow, we stopped before the edge of the frozen lake. The snow was not as thick here – I could see the ice through a thin film of grayish white.

And also bright, fresh red spots.

“Blood,” Anna said.

I knelt down, picking up a small red crystal. Yes: it
was
blood. But whose? Someone had been here before us – or something.

“Look,” Julian said, his teeth chattering. He pointed toward the right. “There’s more going that way.”

I soon saw that Julian was right. More speckles of red led to the right, across the lake itself.

“Maybe it leads somewhere,” Anna said.

“We have nothing else to go on,” I said. “Might as well follow it.”

We followed the trail of blood. The wind blustered, the snow stung, and the trail led in more or less a straight line. Eventually, we would find where it ended, and whom the blood belonged to.

Soon, the ice petered out, to be replaced by thick snow once more. Several boulders rose from the ground; we trudged between them. We were nearing the mountainside and the trail now skirted the edge of the frozen lake. Maybe it was because of the mountainside, but the wind abated a bit and the snow settled.

As everything stilled into silence, that was when we saw him.

Grudge, lying in the snow, with blood pouring out of his right leg.

***

“Grudge!”

Anna ran through the snow and I chased after her. Michael, Julian, and Ashton trudged after me. Grudge wasn’t moving. He couldn’t have been out here long – obviously, he had hitched a ride on
Odin,
had even been the one to open that portal in the cargo bay. Already, a small embankment of gray, ashy snow had gathered on his side. If we had come up on him ten minutes later, that snow might have become his icy coffin. For all we knew, he actually
was
dead. His eyes were closed.

Anna knelt beside Grudge and looked up at me with wide eyes, as if
I
could do something about it.

I ran forward, and knelt in the snow, placing two fingers at the base of his neck.

Thump.
A long pause.
Thump.

“He’s alive,” I said.

Michael ventured ahead, snow swirling around his form, his breath forming clouds. In the distance behind came another cry from the dragon. I spun to see nothing but falling snow.
Odin
was lost to sight and the dragon would be even farther away.

“I’ll take care of Grudge,” Ashton said. “The rest of you find the Bunker entrance. We need to get inside and out of this cold before it kills us all. Makara will never get here in time.”

“I’ll stay with Ashton,” Anna said.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Michael and Julian fell into step beside me. We forged ahead through the snow, leaving Ashton and Anna to tend the fallen Grudge. Why had he come? For some reason, I imagined him sneaking aboard the
Odin
and finding a warm place in the cargo bay to take a nap, having no idea where the ship was heading. The gang lords, as a rule, were not allowed aboard either
Gilgamesh
or
Odin
except under the watchful eye of Makara, Ashton, Char, or Marcus.

Now, though, the wreck was likely going to cost Grudge his life. He lay bleeding in the snow after somehow escaping the wreckage of
Odin.
Was his being here an accident, or had it been on purpose? We would never know unless he lived to tell us. Maybe it was some conspiracy on the part of the gang lords. If so, it had horribly backfired.

But for now, I had to concentrate on other things. Finding the entrance to Bunker 84 was the number one priority. The shifting snow gave away to a wall of solid gray rock. We had run right into a cliff face. I saw nothing on the cliff face that indicated an entrance of any sort. I glanced back at our disappearing footsteps being filled with falling snow. Getting lost was a very real possibility.

“Let’s follow this cliff back toward the lake,” Michael said.

Julian and I followed Michael. For a couple of minutes we walked on until the icy blue of the lake surface came into view. It was perhaps twenty feet across here. I realized that it was not actually a lake at this point – it was a wide stream. And the stream angled upward, until it was going straight up.

A frozen waterfall.

I looked back, and forward, realizing we had entered a canyon. We would have to turn back, as this was a dead end.

Instead, Julian walked forward, placing a hand on the thick, frozen waves that composed the icefall. The ice stretched up the mountain, far out of view. It was wide at the bottom – perhaps forty or so feet across, and was frozen completely against the mountain.

“Julian, we have to go,” I said.

Julian, however, did not respond. I began to wonder if he had even heard me.

“Julian!”

He turned, a smile on his face. His brown eyes glinted, and he pointed, right at the waterfall.

“I’ll be damned,” Michael said from beside me.

I had no idea what either of them was talking about. I squinted, and through the spiraling snowflakes and sleet falling from the sky, through that thick, clear icefall, I saw it.

84.

“It’s behind the waterfall,” I said.

Julian turned around, rubbing his hands together. “There’s
always
something behind the waterfall.”

If the Bunker creators were going for hidden, well, they did a pretty good job. This mountain valley could only be accessed by air, and on top of that, they had built the Bunker behind a giant sheet of falling water. Had it been warmer, we might have never found it.

How we were going to get
through
the icefall was another proposition entirely. But for now, Ashton and Anna had to know.

“Julian, Michael...stay here and get to work on breaking that ice. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

“Alex...” Michael said.

“There’s no time for all of us to go back,” I said. “It’s too cold, and getting inside twenty minutes earlier could mean the difference between life and death. Start on the ice.”

Michael nodded, finally agreeing. “Fine. Go back the
exact
way we came in.”

I nodded. “Of course.”

As Michael and Julian grabbed some nearby rocks and began hammering away at the ice, I turned and ran. The cold air stung my lungs. The shock of the cold
still
hadn’t gone away. All I had to do now was not get lost.

I slipped on a patch of ice, tumbling to the ground. I stretched out my hands, breaking my fall as I pressed into a snowbank. Panting, I got back up. The freezing snow snuck into my gloves. I ran along the cliff, the exact way Michael, Julian, and I had come. I jogged for another minute, expecting at least a vestige of the trail of footprints we had left.

But instead, I found nothing – nothing but a field of ice, nothing but snow and the gray air, swirling. I suddenly felt very tired.

I ran forward into the snow, leaving the cliff behind. Ashton and Anna would be out there
somewhere.
They would not have moved...would they?

It was silent and cold. I felt completely alone, as if I were in my own world, as if I were on a separate planet. The ice and snow continued to fall, burying the land in its layers. There was nothing but snow in all directions. I thought there had been at least a few more rocks than this – a few more boulders when I had passed this way earlier.

Unless I
hadn’t
passed this way before. Unless I had somehow gotten completely off course.

I paused, breathing heavily out of both exhaustion and cold.

It was a cold I was beginning to feel in an entirely new way.

Chapter 10

I dropped to both knees, my breaths escaping in clouds. My entire face felt frozen solid – my vision dimmed, and the snow danced in the sky ahead, falling.

My gloved hands fell to the snow, holding up the rest of my body. I willed my legs to stand – to not die.

And my legs weren’t listening.

As if in a dream, I suddenly stood, walking forward. I kept walking, one foot after the other, feeling like I was floating...

I opened my eyes. I had fallen asleep.

I couldn’t tell how much time had passed – but I knew I didn’t have long. Despite how weak I felt – despite my desire to lie there and close my eyes – a thought came to me. Anna. I saw her smiling face, thought about holding her again – and how I would never have that again if I gave up now.

I stood, forcing myself forward. I ran ahead. Within seconds, I came within view of the frozen lake. And far to my right, I saw the boulder where Grudge had fallen, and two forms standing beside it. I ran forward, stopping before them. I had trouble deciding whether this were a dream or reality. It became real when both Ashton and Anna stared at me with wide eyes. Anna ran forward, pulling me into her arms.

“Alex...oh my God...”

“We found it,” I said.

Ashton looked me over. “He’s getting hypothermia. He needs to get inside right now.”

I pointed toward the shoreline. “Follow the lake...you will find it.”

Anna and Ashton helped me up. The cold was bad, yes – but the three of us had to move Grudge to the Bunker entrance.

They pushed me against the boulder, out of the wind.

“Is he still alive?” I asked.

Anna looked at me, pulling me close. “I’m more worried about you.”

“I know. But Grudge?”

Anna nodded. “He’s still kicking. Obviously, he doesn’t have long...”

“We need to go, then,” I said. “Michael and Julian are already working on the entrance. Let’s just pray that door opens.”

***

After I had warmed a bit out of the harsh wind, the three of us dragged Grudge along the edge of the lake. I was still woozy, but I helped as much as I could. I had to do anything to burn energy and warm up. As long as we followed the shoreline, we would find the frozen stream, which we could follow into the canyon that led to the icefall. We did come upon that stream, but nearly missed it. It was so covered in snow that the only thing that gave it away was the slight depression the snow made covering it.

We pulled Grudge upstream. Soon, both sides of the canyon rose taller and taller, blocking the wind. It was much-needed relief. A few minutes later we came upon Michael and Julian, desperately hacking through the icefall with a combination of large rocks and knives. They were working around the edges rather than the middle.

Upon seeing us, Michael walked up.

“We figured we might be able to get in the back way.”

“The back way?”

Michael pointed toward the right side of the falls. “It’s weaker, for whatever reason, on this side. The ice is thin right where it touches the mountainside. Julian and I have already taken a good chunk out of it.”

I picked up my own rock – a gray, jagged thing that wasn’t very heavy, but at least it was sharp. I went to the falls and started pummeling the ice where Michael and Julian had already made a dent. Chips of ice flew through the air, and I could clearly see the rounded door of Bunker 84, blue and blurry through the falls. Getting the ice out of the way was the chief concern. The second would be opening the door – something I had no idea how to do.

I wondered why the Bunker designers had decided to put the door here. I guessed it was very secluded and no one would have thought to look here. As far as Bunkers went, it was even more remote than the others – in the middle of the mountains, with no easy access. It made me think that there was something inside that they were trying to hide. The mountain was way too steep here for anyone to have reached this high-altitude valley without aircraft. It made me wonder if, perhaps, there was another entrance farther down. Maybe this one was just a back entrance.