Nightfall (26 page)

She was giving up. On herself. On him. Her resignation infected the bond between them. Just as he'd shut her out, struggling for a piece of sanity, she was pushing him away. When the wall came down, it sounded like prison doors slamming shut.

“Jenna, don't.”

“This is my choice.”

The journey alone stretched before him like a nightmare. He'd plod through a quicksand of leaves and snow. He'd hand bundles of spare parts and supplies to Welsh and Ange. Then he'd walk back to the woods. His despair layered with a strong, clear sense of inevitability as he imagined the dog pack tugging his body to the ground, shredding him until nothing but bits of cloth and bone remained.

“Don't you dare,” she growled. “Stand up, soldier. People need you. If not Chris and Ange, then Tru and Penny. You think they can last the winter without you?”

“You'd take that choice from me?” He felt no victory though, in quoting her own words back to her. Just a certainty that they'd both hit a brick wall at the end of a long road.

“Fine. I'm coming with you.”

Mason jerked his eyes up. Without thought, he laid his palm against her forehead, which was fever-hot already. “You are?”

“ 'Course,” she muttered. “You son of a bitch. You're gonna make an injured woman walk five more miles, just so she can make sure you do the right thing.”

“And what's that?”

“Keep going. I have your back, remember?” Jenna touched his cheek. Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears.

He pulled her close, a sob catching in his throat. She hung on tight. Mason buried his face in her hair. Kissed her throat. Heart in pieces, he clutched and stroked and tried to pull her into him, keeping her there. Safe. Like he hadn't been able to do. Her tears fell again, wetting his face. Cold wind burned across salty smudges.

No matter how hard Jenna tried to keep it from him, he heard her fear.
I don't want to die. I don't want to leave you, John.

Lungs burning, he pulled back just enough to find her mouth with his. Her tongue pushed inside, a pale imitation of the fire she'd burned him with at dawn. Time blurred. Had it only been that morning? He'd felt her writhe beneath him, every cry building with breathy intensity until she flew apart. And just the day before, he'd licked chocolate from the hollow between her breasts. A soft wave of desire and safety had tempted him to think it was all right to
feel
.

But this kiss blazed more with grief than passion, a more poignant good-bye than any words.

“C'mon, soldier,” she whispered, her eyes bloodshot. “Let's do this thing. I ... I don't want to get any weaker.”

“How bad does it hurt?”

She laughed shakily. “Pretty damn bad. But it's getting stiff. I need to keep moving.”

Mason stood and looped the packs across his back, then helped Jenna to stand. “What are you going to do?”

“I know what you're thinking, but I won't let you. I'll get you to that clearing, and I'll make sure you get inside and safe. But I'm done, John. Swear it.” She faced him, digging the fingers of both hands into the skin at his nape. “Promise me you'll keep the others safe.”

“And that means leaving you out there in the clearing to die.” The words flowed freely now. Panic-driven. “That means shutting the door behind me with you still outside.”

“Yes.”

“
I can't
.”

“Unlike Mitch, I never asked you to promise anything, but I'm asking now. Please.” Her chin quavered. “Don't let me hurt the people I care about.”

Mason gathered up the strewn packs, slid his arm around her back and found their rhythm again, that loping, dragging rhythm. He was a machine once more. Maybe if he worked hard enough, kept his eyes focused and his feet moving, he could make that true.

But first he'd have to cut out his heart.

“John?”

“Yeah, Jenna. I promise.”

If Jenna had been a pagan, she might think this was retribution inflicted by jealous gods. Mason's misplaced guilt throbbed at her like a sore tooth, compounding the pain of her wounded thigh, but neither of them could have done a thing to prevent it.

This wasn't a punishment for their pleasure. It simply
was
, like rain or thunder. They'd been lucky to move through the woods unmolested before now. That beast hadn't been hunting in a pack. Instead it had lain in the undergrowth, weak and near starving. She'd been prey. Desperation and survival instinct had driven it forward, just as she and Mason kept trudging forward in the face of long odds. Nothing sinister, just bad luck.

But that didn't make it easier to bear.

If she didn't know it would keep Mason from completing their mission, she'd have eaten a slug already. That wasn't an option anymore.

Jenna made herself keep moving, one foot after another. That was what soldiers did.

She'd been press-ganged into Mason's army, and she wasn't sorry. Not about anything. Saving the others had been the right thing to do. Making the supply run had been too. Sometimes you could make all the right choices and still wind up boned.

They'd gotten the seal, at least; the others would be okay. Her death would mean something. That was more than most people got, especially these days.

The tears had frozen on her cheeks but not in her heart. Deep inside lay a small child who wanted to shake a fist at heaven and scream
.
Instead she kept quiet. She knew she had to be strong for Mason.

He had a brittle kind of strength, iron hard, not tensile. Bend him beneath a certain stress and he'd break. Jenna didn't want to take that to her grave. He had to make it. That wasn't altruism; on some level, it was vanity. She wanted a little piece of immortality, that someone would remember her after she was gone.

Children.
Yesterday, lying in his arms, she'd indulged in the fantasy of solemn little boys who gazed at her with his dark eyes. She wasn't selfless enough to wish that he'd find someone else and be happy, if other survivors remained. But damn, she wanted him to live.

Misery balled up in her chest, weighting her steps. His sorrow and rage lapped at her resolve like waves on the shore, taking more each time the emotions receded. She lost track of how long they'd walked, and she lacked the skill to gauge the time by the sun overhead.

“You need to lead,” she said. “Scout the path. I'll be right behind you.”

In the desert of Mason's eyes, she glimpsed a hint of his intentions. Once he'd given Chris the packs, he intended to go with her, away from the others. He'd leave Tru, Ange, and Penny in Chris's care. While the scientist was a good man, he wasn't hard enough. Without Mason, they wouldn't make it.

She couldn't let that happen.

“What you promised, John ... it wasn't enough.”

“What wasn't?” The life had already seeped from his voice, a dead man walking.

I can't go on. Can't lose her.
Little worms of grief wriggled out of him and into her, burrowing until she couldn't tell where his pain stopped and hers started.

“You promised not to let me hurt them, but you didn't say you'd stay and look out for them.”

Mason shook his head. “You can't ask that of me.”

Tears boiled up. The cold froze them in her eyes and matted her lashes with ice. “Yes, I can. Do you trust Chris to hold it together? Who's going to teach Tru what he needs to know? You said once that Mitch saved your life, that he looked at you and saw the man you could be? Where would you be now without him?”

“Dead. And I wish to God I were.”

“It was worth it,” she said to his rigid back.

“What?”

“Yesterday, with you—it was worth dying for.” Pushing deeper, past the fear, she found a core of contentment and offered it to him as proof.

“Jenna,
don't.
”

“Why not?”

He whirled on her then. One of his hands was damn near destroyed, but he didn't seem to notice. “Mitch
died
because of me. Because I wasn't fast enough. I didn't do enough.”

“It was a hunting accident.” Old memories realigned as she sensed the truth of what he said. A closed-casket funeral. Twelve years old, and she hadn't understood.

“Only if you call having your face chewed off an ‘accident.'”

Cold seeped in through her chest, numbing her. It was too much to take in on top of everything else. She wet her frigid lips with her tongue. They dried in the wind, then cracked and bled. But she knew Mason. He was tough and capable, not careless.

Pure bad luck. Just like this.

“It wasn't your fault.”

“You have no idea. One by one I watched my whole team die, even Mitch, and there ... was only me. Just me, Jenna. I went west, like Mitch told me. I tried to build a life, but mostly I was... waiting. For you.” His jaw flexed. “If I can't save you, I can't save anyone, and the rest of them can go to hell.”

There was no reaching him, and that broke her heart. Their friends needed him, but he didn't want to hear it. So she fell quiet as he took the lead, conscious of the blood seeping past her makeshift bandage. Out here, Jenna might as well run around in circles yelling because the scent announced her as dinner. More monsters would come. Soon.

She'd pushed him too far, asked too much of him. He trudged headlong now, no longer scouting the easiest path. She did her best to keep up, but each stride shot agony through her thigh. From up ahead came a thud and a grunt, like the sound of him falling.

“John, where are you?”

She came to the lip of a shallow ravine and heard him swearing at the bottom, out of sight. He'd gone down the hard way. In the distance burbled running water—maybe the river that fed the generators.

“Can you hear me?” she called.

The cussing faded. Jenna heard him reply, his voice distant and to the west. She followed the path, biting back a moan. Her thigh burned. Mason had left churned up snow in his wake, but she couldn't make it down the same way.

Breathe
.
This isn't the end. You can find him.

If nothing else, to say good-bye. For one more kiss, she'd die happy.

Remembered pleasure sparkled through her. Howling arose in the east, and she struggled through the underbrush, looking for another way down. But she might be alone in this endless winter, surrounded by dead trees and unnatural monsters.
Maybe he decided to make the parting quick.

No. John would never leave her.

Calming her mind, Jenna tried to open herself to his thoughts, but he'd begun blocking her access just after the bite. Repudiating their connection must have made this easier for him to bear—and who was she to begrudge him that? But that silence made him harder to locate.

Desperate fear. Flashes of warmth. Need.

After discovering a shallower path of descent, she tried climbing down. The wound tore wide from the stress, and the bandage wasn't helping anymore. Blood froze and stiffened the denim. She struggled down to level ground and pushed through the tangle of branches, but he was nowhere to be seen. Panic pierced her. They needed to make it back to the station. She wouldn't be the reason four people—including two
children
—froze to death.

Snarls seemed to come from all sides.

“John!” she shouted, no longer caring what else might hear her calls.

She'd never find her way back without him, so she might as well sit down. He had all the supplies, even her rifle. He'd taken the weight to make it easier for her. How the hell could he fight?

A gunshot rang out. Then another. Then the sounds of a struggle and a human cry.

He'd live for her, no matter what the cost. Even if that meant her soul. Wrath and purpose fused into something new, harder than steel, more fluid than mercury. This new feeling transcended pain.

Jenna rose—or at least part of her did. It felt like dying. For an eternal, minuscule moment, she stared down at her body from a great distance. Wracked with convulsive shudders, she shook and trembled on the ground.
Was
she dying?

No. She watched as her flesh began to roil and realign. She saw, but did not feel, as bones snapped and refitted into new lines. And then she slammed back, twisted through an unseen wall. Tremors rolled over her. On the other side lay a plain of pure pain. It washed her senses in fire, and her mind snapped in two. The thinking part fell down a deep, dark hole and lay weeping at the bottom.

The other part of her raised its head and sniffed the wind. She lay on her side, trembling and winded. But she was warm. A white paw lifted, tested the snow.
Cold.
She investigated a fallen tree limb and squatted on it.

On the wind came the scent of decay. She growled. Walking things shouldn't smell like that. A need arose, deeper than hunger.
Kill.

More loud noises. She followed her nose.

The woods offered many trails. She sniffed.
Dead squirrel. Fresh blood. Human stench.

There was something she had to do. Her right hind leg hurt, but it didn't slow her down. She felt strong and sure. Liquid grace rolled through her as she took leap after leap, following the human scenttrail. Her muscles bunched as she bounded through the trees, wind streaming through her fur.
Hunt.
Her stomach growled.
Find meat.