Текст книги "The Wall"

Автор книги: Lauren Nicolle Taylor

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

“I have to go,” Matthew said quietly. “We leave at dawn.”

I pulled my head out of my soft, squishy cloud long enough to register that Matthew was coming with us. I hoped he was going to one of the other towns. I couldn’t look into his penitent face anymore.

Apella and Alexei hovered over me, waiting for me to do something. Erupt into tears… melt into a puddle of self-loathing, I don’t know. I was blank. My mind turned white as snow and I was nowhere in it. Apella shook my shoulder and I heard her whisper, “She’s in shock. Get her a glass of water.” Alexei’s hand slipped off my leg. I hadn’t even noticed it was there. I could feel my eyes blinking slowly, snapping scenes like a camera. Table. Cup. Fireplace. Strange picture of person screaming.

What was I doing before this?

My two unlikely parents kneeled before me. Alexei held the glass to my lips and I sipped slowly. Apella tucked my hair behind my ear so she could see my eyes. “Rosa, you have to get going. You’ll miss the train.” Her words were far away, an echo.

Alexei’s rough hands grabbed my face and held my eyes to his. It occurred to me that I’d assumed his hands would be soft like a baby’s, like he’d never worked a day in his life, but I was wrong. I’d been wrong about so many things. “We are both so proud of you, for what you are about to do. You’re very brave, Rosa. Do you know that?”

Things clicked over. Wheels started turning. Brave? I was brave? I could be. I will be. I slid the door down on the past with a bang. Nothing could be gained from dwelling on this news. I will be brave.

I stood and they stood with me. “Thank you both so much.” I hugged them and strode to the door. Newfound strength welled from their faith in me. I turned and gave them a smile. “You’re good parents. Though I don’t know where you find the strength, with a daughter like me.” I heard a sigh from both of them and the sound of Alexei laughing quietly.

It was a gift. I wasn’t sure if I felt they were my parents but they were as close as I had at that moment.

I ran down the stairs, telling myself over and over, You can do this. You can do this. I tripped my way towards the station on the other side of the Wall, trying hard not to think about Joseph’s hand searching for the warmth of my body beside him and finding nothing but cold, empty sheets.

The plan was to ride the spinners as far as we could. In some cases, that was within a few kilometers of the target town. In others, it was a few days’ walk to the outer ring of the town. We couldn’t use the dogs. They were too noisy and we couldn’t hide them or feed them once we reached the wall of the outer ring we had to climb. Deshi had invented a small device to be placed over the latch of the gate of Ring seven. It would open every gate simultaneously for four hours. We were to slip in and out as quickly as possible. Some Spiders had been detained in other towns. With those, the Survivors would incapacitate the guards and grab them. No killing allowed.

Each Spider had a homing device embedded in their upper arm, so at the time of rescue, we would all know exactly where to find them using our handheld trackers. The Spiders knew we were coming and would be ready. We didn’t know their names and they didn’t know ours—it was safer that way.

None of this really applied to me but Careen and Pietre went over and over the details as our spinner traveled out from dawn to a bright scarlet-and-pink sunrise. I just stared out the window, dreaming about my night with Joseph, blushing at the thought of our skin touching, his lips brushing over new places. I missed him like a pulsing hole in my heart. Careen snapped her fingers in front of my face.

“Rosa, this is important.” Her head was a flaming hue with the sunrise penetrating through the curtain of her strawberry hair. It matched her temper.

Pietre had a handheld and he was showing us where the spinner would stop and how far we had to walk. It looked like we got the worst town. Pau Brasil was at least sixty kilometers from the train line.

My mind receded like the tide, pulling on the facts like sand, grabbing the information for a second, only to have it wash out of my grasp with the next wave. I pictured Joseph waking and realizing I was gone. Orry would already be awake and searching for the comfort of warm milk in his belly. Odval would be wondering why I was taking so long. I ran my fingers along the cool, plastic table, swirling circles and imagining the weight of my child in my arms.

“We will walk at night and hide by day. There’s no snow, at least, but it means there may be Woodland police patrolling the borders. Is there anything useful you can tell us about Pau Brasil?”

My ears pricked and my senses returned as I remembered how much I hated Pietre. “Not really, they’re all the same,” I mumbled without looking at him.

“Figures,” he said snidely.

My head snapped up, regarding his snarling expression with distaste. Did he ever really smile? My anger reached out like a straggly hand looking for something to hold onto. It found Pietre’s hateful face and dug in with pointed fingernails.

“Don’t speak to me,” I said, my face brimming with hot-blood anger. “I haven’t forgotten what you did. You’re an intolerable man. Well, not even a man—a boy. And I wish you would drop off the end of the earth!”

Joseph would be storming around the house, banging into things and clumsily getting dressed. He would be so sad; I will have made him so sad. He will hope I’ve changed my mind. I could see his face looking to the door, hoping I was coming back. My heart heaved at the pressure I put there. What was I doing?

As I expected, Pietre enjoyed my outburst and a sickening smile crossed his lips. He put his arm around Careen, who looked up at him confused, and pulled her closer. I directed my voice at Careen’s blinking face. “I know the plan and I would like to get some rest before we charge off into the wilderness again, all right?”

She nodded. Poor girl, she had no idea what was going on between Pietre and me.

I returned to staring out the window. I tried to force my face to relax but I felt like I was trying to unroll a tightly wound map. Every time I took the band off and tried to flatten it out, it would curl back up again. I sighed deeply. We would travel for a week like this, close to each other, invading each other’s space. Already it felt like the sides of the spinner were pressing down on me. I didn’t know how I would stand it. Pau Brasil was the last stop on the line.

Along the way, we would stop and drop off the others close to their assigned towns. Each group had a designated time they had to return by if they were to catch the train back. This was entirely dependent on our little group. We would have to bring the spinners back from the end of the line and pick everyone up. “Timing is extremely important,” Pietre drummed into to me, pressing his finger into the table until it turned white and beating me about the head with the information. I rolled my eyes and nodded, arguing with him was pointless and a waste of my moping energy.

The landscape was peeled back. It whirred past us and held no interest to me anymore. Bleak and brown. Greenery mottled the background like camouflage clothing but I was blind to the beauty. The leaves rustled like the trees were shaky fingers scared to touch us. They reflected my anxiety. I still couldn’t decide if I’d done the right thing. I hoped maybe when my feet hit the grass and I was trekking towards my mother, I would feel differently. But my purpose escaped me. It was like trying to find my key; I knew it was on me somewhere.

The spinners stopped every six hours for toilet breaks and leg stretches. It was unnerving going from the cool, pristine environment of the spinners, to the dank, mossy richness of the woods. Usually, I would have loved the difference. It would have motivated me. The others were certainly energized. They could see change around the corner. Normally, the atmosphere would have been infectious. I could see the anticipation rolling around them like a velvety blanket, comforting and reassuring them they would be ok. But I could only catch the corner of it and it seemed frayed and easily torn. All I could see was naivety. I worried they didn’t realize how dangerous this would be. They seemed too confident that nothing could go wrong.

I spent the first break, and every one after that, quickly peeing and squatting on a rock. I sullenly dug in the dirt with a stick to see how big a piece of dirt I could excavate without it breaking into smaller pieces. The others practiced their moves and went over their plans. Gwen approached me on the first day. She put her hand on my shoulder, an unfamiliar move for her, and it felt more like a slap. Her face scrunched, showing those odd dimples on her cheeks. “Is it Cal?” Her voice wavered. Did she grieve him or was she just nervous?

I shook my head, but I wasn’t sure. It could be. My brain refused to deal with his death the same way it had refused to back down from coming out here in the first place. It threw ineffectual but heavy covers over the things that might stop me. I sucked on my lip and let my eyes brush over to her for a second. I couldn’t speak, if I did, I would cry.

She patted me again. “Look, if it is, you shouldn’t blame yourself, no one does. He was sick long before you arrived. You should put it behind you.”

I nodded and watched her feet as they shuffled away from me, kicking a rock in frustration. I think that was the problem or at least part of it. I had put it behind me, but not dealt with it, so it just sat there. An angry ball of anger and sadness that kept a steady distance behind me, but always followed. And I always knew it was there.

I dragged at myself, my own company as irritating as being with people. I knew this wasn’t helping but I did nothing other than feel sorry for myself. I wished I’d done things differently but it was too late. I could feel Joseph moving through the town, his heavy footsteps heavier still with the weight of my desertion on his mind.

I saw Matthew through the shifting trees, his face as dark as the bar-like shadows cast across his face. He was as miserable as I was. We never spoke. I wondered if we would ever speak again or if he was done with me. It would be fair enough if he was.

By the time we got to the last stop before Pau Brasil, everyone stopped bothering to talk to me and left me to my self-pitying behavior.

Doing my usual scratching in the dirt, I etched a pattern of concentric circles when my arm was wrenched up violently. “I’ve had it with you,” Pietre snapped. “I thought you wanted to be here. If we’re going to get through this mission, you need to get yourself together.” He was shaking me like a ragdoll and I let him.

“I’m s-sorry,” I said between shakes. But he was sewn-up furious and couldn’t be undone with an apology. The world was wobbling in my vision, trees were wriggling like snakes, the world was heaving. “Stop, please! I-I said I’m s-sorry, Pietre.” My voice quavered with the world as his fingers pressed hard into my arm. I felt a pang of pain as the joint in my shoulder started to strain from him twisting it.

In my reverberating vision, I saw red hair alight in front of brown, scratchy trees.

Without a word, she punched him hard in the jaw. I heard the crunch of knuckles connecting with bone. I saw his eyes roll delightfully into the back of his head as he stumbled backwards and hit the ground, letting out a small, “Ugh”. He sat in a daze for a second and then he scraped himself off the ground, storming lopsidedly away from us, clutching his face. I stared at Careen, mouth agape.

“What? He was taking it too far. He needed to be taught a lesson.” Smiling with her perfect white teeth, she held out her hand and I took it. She looked into my eyes seriously. “He’s right though. You need to snap out of it and focus. You have a job to do.”

She was right.

We walked away, with him cursing her in the distance. “Shouldn’t you go apologize or something?”

Careen raised one eyebrow in a perfect arc and smiled wickedly, “He’ll get over it. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before.” She grabbed my arm somewhat urgently and we skittered across rocks and dirt towards our spinner.

We climbed in the carriage. Careen closed the door and pressed the lock button down. “I’ve had enough of him today, haven’t you?” she said. I smiled. I’d had enough of Pietre from the moment I met him. I was glad Careen was starting to agree with me.

A bit of light poked through the trees now and settled in our hair. I could do this. Despite Pietre’s stupid way of demonstrating it, he was right. I was here and I had to stand by my decision. One more night and we would set off for Pau, for my mother and my baby brother or sister. I needed all the strength I could muster for this. The rest of my woeful feelings would simply have to wait.

The weather had been mild right up until the last stop, the sun lightly warming and only the slightest breeze to rustle our hair. But the temperature started to drop as soon as we pulled up to the Pau Brasil stop. We shrugged on our packs, and the door hissed open. The cold wind hit our face like a block of ice had formed around the outside of the spinner. Quickly, we pulled out our winter coats and gloves. Pietre held the map in front of his face, constantly wiping the sleety rain from the screen and pointed northwest, directly towards a dark grey, craggy collection of rocks. It couldn’t be called a hill more than a hostile, sharp and uninviting tumble that looked like it would cut you just for looking at it. So this was the outside of my old home. It seemed fitting. I closed my eyes and prayed we would not be climbing over it.

It was barely light. Just enough to see the black mass of rock and the dark, thickly wooded forest sprawled beneath it, the trees leaning towards it as if in worship. Everything else could be shadow or form. It was too hard to tell. I imagined eyes watching us as we traipsed headlong into the howling wind, each drop of rain pelting our faces like sharp bits of gravel.

Pietre yelled, his voice barely cutting through the wind, trying to convince himself as much as Careen and me, “Bad weather is a good thing. It will keep the predators away.” I thought, After a night of walking through this, I might want a wolf to end my misery.

We walked all night. Freezing cold and soaking wet, there was nothing to do but keep putting one foot in front of the other. I was sandwiched between an angry and determined Pietre in the lead, and an unrepentant Careen in the back. I couldn’t think, couldn’t talk, could only walk. We couldn’t hear each other anyway. The way the wind swirled around us and slammed against the grey rocks that seemed to continue to rise higher and higher out of the ground to our left, it was like some deranged woman was screeching in our ears, her hands cupped to her jagged mouth, warning us to turn back. It went on for hours, endless hours.

As the sun rose, the wind eased and we could at least hear each other speak. We were so cold our lips were blue—every extremity felt like it was splintering and migrating away from the rest of my body. I honestly don’t know how we managed to keep walking, but we did. We found a cave not too far off course and made camp. We couldn’t make a fire; it would be too easy to spot, especially during the day. So we huddled together in our sleeping bags and tried to sleep, pressing ourselves into the shadows of the scooped-out cave that felt and smelled like the inside of a rotted carcass.

I thought I would have trouble sleeping, but after a night of walking, my body collapsed in dreamless exhaustion. I only awoke when someone was again shaking the life out of me.

“Rosa, wake up. We have to get moving again,” Careen whispered.

Pietre snored loudly, sleeping sitting up awkwardly, with his back pressed against the bare rock. I kicked him with my boot and his eyes snapped open, the sheen of purple still evident along his jaw where Careen had punched him. He rubbed his chin absentmindedly and winced when his hands brushed over the bruise. Smiling, he held his arms out to Careen and grappled her into an embrace. She fought him at first but then relaxed against his chest. My eyes started to sting for how much I missed Joseph and Orry. When I watched the two of them in their bizarre, dysfunctional relationship, I was jealous.

“I’m not sorry,” Careen whispered.

“I know, me either,” Pietre said.

When they’d finished snuggling, which I took to mean he’d forgiven her for hitting him, we started out for another night of walking. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, hoping when I opened them the entrance to the cave would not still be streaming water. I prayed for the rain to end.

I wish I hadn’t.

Our packs were heavy and we were so fatigued, but we kept moving, doggedly putting one foot in front of the other, stumbling every so often in the dark and following the red arrow on Pietre’s handheld.

It was still impossible to talk, not that I had much to say. Thoughts were rubbed clean from the constant outward assault on my senses. All our concentration went into not falling over, not losing each other or losing our way.

The world was black and slimy, the pale light of the handheld illuminating only the closest branches, slick with rain and slippery with moss. It showed us what direction to take but it didn’t account for tree roots and jagged rocks. The number of times we fell over in the mud or walked directly into a huge rock, seemingly placed there just to annoy us, I couldn’t count. I started to despise that red arrow, blinking tauntingly and not seeming to bring us any closer to our destination.

At the end of the second night, the rain eased and we all sighed in relief. Pietre even clapped me on the back happily. Pulling off his hat and running his hand through his hair, he gave me a genuine smile. I pulled back in surprise.

“What?” he said, looking boyish and self-conscious all of a sudden.

“Nothing, you just look different when you smile,” I commented shyly, instantly regretting it.

“I smile plenty,” he snarled, returning to his abrasive self. “Just not when you’re around.”

I shrugged. I’d expected that.

We’d been walking to the right of the jagged rock formation and dragged our sorry bodies up into another cave. This one was shallower and smaller, but at least it wasn’t wet and pelted with horizontal rain.

We ate quickly and shrank into our sleeping bags, lying touching each other. Normally, I would have objected but I was actually quite grateful for the warmth. Even though the rain had cleared, the air was so much colder.

My eyes didn’t want to open. My poor body clock was so back to front. Waking at dusk and going to sleep at dawn was killing me. My body ached from sleeping on the rock floor and I felt like I was frozen to it. I wiggled around and heard cracking and something sliding across my bag with a nylony ‘zip’. Careen had turned towards Pietre and her warmth deserted me.

I looked out the cave opening. It was still light. I blinked, unbelieving, and prayed for the rain to return.

A late snow.

The woods had been transformed to winter again. The entrance to the cave frowned to the outside, white iced around its mouth. Jagged icicle teeth grinned at us and swallowed us whole.

I shook Careen’s shoulder and she batted me away with the flat of her pale hand, smacking me the face. I punched her shoulder hard and she sat up with an irritated look on her face. But when she saw the snow, her face changed to utter dismay. What the hell were we going to do? It had been hard enough to walk in the rain in the dark. With icy rocks and roots to slip on, it was going to be disastrous.

Careen rattled Pietre. He sat up violently. “Crap!” he said and then he proceeded to curse for a good couple of minutes while we watched. His shoulders and head hunched, he kicked things around our tiny cave.

Finally, I’d had enough. “Will you shut up? There’s no point in getting angry—we have to keep moving.” Jolted out of his rampage, he took a deep breath and shrugged.

“You’re right, we…” The sound of metal slicing the air silenced us both. We turned our heads to the cave opening and saw a blade flying towards a young deer that had, surprisingly, not been scared off by Pietre’s cursing.

Pietre’s eyes opened wide in horror and his mouth fell open as the blade hit the creature in the throat, blood spurting out onto the fresh snow. The poor deer stumbled around uselessly, trying to shake the blade from its neck, and collapsed awkwardly against a tree. Sweet black eyes frozen like its surroundings, unblinking.

Pietre was furious. Angry whispers progressed to shoving as he manhandled Careen to her feet and shook her. “Have you got a brain between those pretty ears?” he spat.

“What?” Careen said bewildered, between shakes. We were genuinely baffled at his anger. I thought what she’d just done was awful but I didn’t understand why he was so upset? I thought he enjoyed this kind of thing.

“Do you think we can eat a whole deer, or even carry the carcass somewhere safe? You’ve just alerted every wolf in the area there’s a fresh kill waiting for them.” Pietre put his hands down and flexed his fists while he talked. “And once they’re done with the deer, who do you think they will come after next?”

Careen eyes became pools of alarm as she realized her stupidity. “I’m sorry,” she stuttered. Pietre turned his back to her and started shoving his things into his pack.

He swung around and jumped out of the cave, burying his legs up to the knees in snow. Bashing his way to the deer’s body, he grabbed it by the back legs and threw it into a branch. It was grotesque and as good a warning as any to get as far away from it as possible.

The sun had set. The blood was dripping down the tree trunk and pooling in the snow like a red ink blot. Pietre turned his head up to us, his eyes showing a hint of panic, and said bleakly, “We have to run.”

We ran in the darkest dark, bashing our way through trees and slapping branches. The snow had stopped falling but it was icy, cold, and slippery. Every time I put my foot down, I would think it was safe, only to find my heel digging into a sharp rock or a buried branch catching my foot and sending me flying face first into the snow. Every now and then Pietre would stop abruptly and listen, his ears pricked for the sound of a wolf following us. But we heard nothing, save footsteps crunching through the powdery snow and our own breathless panting.

After hours of running, I stopped. I couldn’t breathe. My heart and lungs a connected bulge of stabbing pain. I had to rest for a second. I reached out in the dark and found Pietre’s sleeve. I tugged it and he halted. “I… have… to stop… for a… second,” I said between puffs.

“No. We have to keep moving.”

“Please?” I begged, releasing his shirt and bracing myself over my knees, desperately trying to drag in another breath.

He hadn’t ignored me. I couldn’t hear his footfalls moving away. He raised the screen to his face and tried to ascertain how far we’d traveled by tracing his finger along the path we’d followed.

“One more hour. Then we’ll stop and find shelter,” he said, gripping my wrist and squeezing it uncharacteristically gently.

I couldn’t do one more hour. Careen was puffing and panting behind me but she didn’t back me up. She was probably feeling too guilty for forcing us to set this ridiculous pace.

He didn’t wait for me to answer but I saw the handheld floating further away from me. Then I felt the drag of someone pulling me along like a donkey. I had no choice. I put my head down and thought of my mother.

The blinking arrow brought us closer to the rock formations and sometimes when I stuck out my hand, it grazed the natural wall. The rock was sharp and cold, but reassuring. If wolves were chasing us, we could scramble up there quickly if we had to.

I was desperately trying to keep up but I was so much smaller than the two of them. One of their steps was two of mine. My legs pulled up out of the three-foot deep ditches of snow and slammed down hard against the earth, begging me to slow. Trying to keep myself motivated, I imagined the wolves were right on our heels and the adrenaline caused by my fear spurred me on. All I could hear was our breathless pants and our chorus of crunching boots. We sounded like twenty men, not three.

A wolf howled.

I heard a shuffle of fabric as something caught and nylon ripped open with a neat shriek.

Then, a sickening snap.

I reacted quickly, stumbling over to the glowing screen of the handheld. I kneeled down and found his face. I clamped my hand over his mouth but not before he let out one hollow scream.

He pulled himself to sitting, my hand still over his mouth, his hot breath on my palm. In the half-light, I caught him nod and I released my hand. I risked the torch in my pack and turned it on, shining it on his face and down his body.

His expression was painful, his jaw tight, but to his credit he didn’t scream again. His face was greenish white and beads of sweat were forming on his brow, despite the cold.

Several wolves howling broke my concentration. They’d heard him. They were coming.

Careen was standing over us, her hand covering her mouth in shock, her body trembling slightly.

I tried to think. What should I do? What would Joseph do?

Pietre spoke before I could make any decisions. “My leg is broken. You’ll have to leave me.” He clenched his jaw and tried to find a more comfortable position but found none.

I was stunned. “What? No.” No way was I leaving him there to be eaten.

“It’s ok; at least I’ll slow them down. Give me the stunners and a torch,” he said calmly, holding out his hand.

Careen fumbled around in her bag and handed him two stunners. He dragged himself towards a tree and leaned his back against it. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. These Survivors. This self-sacrifice stuff was so over the top. “I’m not leaving you here. Get up. We’ll help you walk.” I tried to get him to put his arm around my shoulder but he sank into his position like an immovable rock.

“No, you won’t. The mission is too important. Besides, they’ll catch up to us and then we’ll all die. Just stay out of it, Rosa. This is my decision.”

I stood there, exasperated. This wasn’t going to happen. I wouldn’t let it. There had to be another way. Think. Think.

I took a few steps towards him and smacked the side of his head with my torch. His eyes went blank and he slumped forward. The stunners tumbled out of his hands, coming to rest at his feet, stark black against the white.

“Rosa, what the hell did you do that for?” Careen whispered angrily. I ignored her and set to cutting down a straight branch with my knife. I lined it up, cut it down to size, and used the set of bandages we had to splint Pietre’s broken leg. I unrolled a sleeping bag, unzipped it, and tried to roll him inside. He was so heavy, a dead weight.

“Careen, help me.” The clueless redhead squatted down with me and we rolled him into the bag, zipping it up. I shone the torch up at the rock formation, searching for a cave entrance, a hole, anything. My heart fell when the only opening I could see was three meters off the ground.

One mournful, long note sounded off, not far away.

“We have to get him up there,” I said, pointing with my torch, tracking the seam of rock where snow had settled. It zigzagged upwards to the entrance, showing us a way up. It was only a foot and a half wide but it would have to do. Careen nodded and we started to drag him towards the base of the cliff.

Pietre wasn’t a huge man but unconscious, and not giving us any help at all, it was like he weighed three-hundred kilos. We pushed, pulled, and heaved until we’d dragged him halfway up the cliff. Resting on the ledge for a second, I thought my arms might actually twist and fall off if I tugged on them hard enough. My lungs burned from the cold, my legs strained as we tried to roll him up and over the next ledge, his whole dead weight crushing us both.

He woke up and started cursing and wriggling, his unaware antics sending him sliding down the ledge and on top of us. My heart buckled at the idea we would have to start all over again. Without thinking, I grabbed his broken leg to stop him from slipping all the way back down. I clamped down on it hard, wrapping both my arms around him while pinning my front to the rocks’ surface. My muscles pulsed, ticking involuntarily. He shrieked and then, silence. Thank God. He passed out from the pain, but then we were back to dead weight.

I don’t know how we did it. It was a blur of pain and pressure. The wolves were approaching—the air was stripping my lungs. But we got him up there. We pushed him up over the ledge and into the cave like a sack of potatoes. We watched as he rolled over a few times, deep into the cave like a loose one, and came to a stop, nestled awkwardly around a boulder. I stood at the edge, shining my torch down over the side of the rock, shaking my head in disbelief. What we just did was impossible. The rocks petered down towards the ground with barely a foot of outcropping to cling to. I’ll never understand how we did it.

Careen rolled and then arranged Pietre at the back of the cave. She laid out some food, one stunner, and filled his water bottle with fresh snow. We piled both our sleeping bags on top of him and stood to look out of the entrance. She put her arm around me and pulled me close. I turned to face her and hugged her fiercely. Her body initially stiffened but gradually relaxed.

“If we can do that, we can do anything,” I cried. Tears streamed down my face. It was so hard, more physically testing than anything I’d ever done. And the worst was yet to come. How would we survive this? Especially without Pietre.

“That’s good,” she said into my hair, her hand resting on my shoulder, “because now we have to outrun wolves.”

The new plan. Well, the only plan, was to leave Pietre in the cave and run all the way to the edge of the town. We’d left our sleeping bags with Pietre and removed anything inessential so we weren’t weighed down. We didn’t even take water bottles—we would rely on snow. Careen was going to run east a kilometer or so and kill something, hopefully something big, to distract the wolves. Then she would run back to the cave and we would set out together.