The wind rushed into my camouflage netting, billowing it out at both sides as I sped along the path, and the cold air prickled at my eyes so that tears streamed back into the edges of my woolly hat. The night curled around me, the rain hardened, and the sound of the ATV filled everything. It was like there was nothing else in the world except me, and the terrible thoughts that spun in my head. But I had to forget those things. I had to concentrate on the task ahead of me. I had to get to safety.
When I’d traveled a little more than a mile away from the helicopter — away from Hazar — I flicked on the headlights and followed the bright beams that cut into the falling darkness. Rain sparkled in the glow, driving straight down and pounding at my head and shoulders. It drummed against the ATV and hammered the path that would soon be a river of mud. The trees flashed past on either side, and my nostrils were filled with the sweet scent of pine and soil and decaying leaves.
An image of Patu tried to creep into my mind as I drove, dragging so many doubts with it. What if I was doing the wrong thing? Should I have risked passing the meadow? Should I have followed my first instinct and headed back to the Place of Skulls? What if —
WHOOSH!
My thoughts were interrupted by a tremendous noise from above that competed with the sound of the ATV’s engine. I snatched my head up to look through a break in the treetops, just in time to see a white streak of vapor shooting up into the sky. It was followed by a second.
WHOOSH!
Then a third and fourth.
WHOOSH! WHOOSH!
They came from behind me, where the helicopter had been, like giant fireworks rocketing into the air, leaving long white trails in their wake. I slowed the ATV and squinted against the rain, putting up a hand to protect my eyes as I watched the four lines slash out of view across the treetops. Several seconds later, the sky lit up in a blinding flash, followed by a distant boom and crack that fell across the wilderness as if I had ridden into the heart of a terrible thunderstorm.
But the light was too bright, and the sound was wrong. It didn’t build up the way thunder usually did. It didn’t roll and rumble and expand. It was too sudden. It had to be something else. Something to do with Hazar and those metal tubes I had seen.
Rocket launchers.
My suspicions were confirmed within a few seconds, when the sky lit up once again. This time, though, it was not a bright white light, but an orange, fiery glow. Dim at first, somewhere over to my right, but growing brighter. A sound accompanied it: a sort of rattling and screaming and growling all at once. It was as if some kind of monster was coming toward me over the wilderness, making the most awful sound that cut right through me, shredding my nerves.
The noise grew louder and louder, and the light grew brighter and brighter, then came the sound of ripping and tearing as whatever it was skimmed over the forest.
It came like a force of nature — like Ajatar, Mom’s Devil of the Woods — breaking through the trees, falling lower and lower, smashing through the branches, tearing the trunks from the earth like they were nothing but twigs. The clamor of its approach was almost deafening. It drowned the sound of the ATV engine and my ears were filled with that screeching, ripping noise. It vibrated through me, shaking the ground like an earthquake.
There was a second when I thought I should do something — speed up or slow down or something — but that moment was snatched away when a huge ball of fire came smashing through the forest to my right, ploughing burning trees in front of it and throwing them out behind it. Sparks and flames exploded in the night as the object slammed into the dirt fifty yards away, sending tremors through the earth.
There was an ear-splitting BOOM! and fire erupted everywhere as the thing bounced and ripped across the track, gouging a huge tear in the ground and destroying everything in its path. It tumbled and barreled, twisting and careering through the trees as it continued to my left, mowing through the pines and spruce as if they were grass.
All kinds of forest debris filled the hot air. Burning pine needles, incinerated twigs, smoking glowing leaves. Bark and wood splintered like shrapnel; thick tree branches whizzed like spears; pinecones popped and exploded like grenades. Before I knew what was happening, a huge juggernaut of a log came rolling out at me, slamming into the front of the ATV and throwing me over the handlebars, straight into the clouds of fire.
I sailed through the nightmare of black smoke and glowing embers as one thought went through my mind … not again … then a white light of pain flared in my head and I crashed down with a horrible crunch. I skidded and rolled across the forest floor like a rag doll, landing facedown in a large puddle of dirty rainwater, while the firestorm raged around me.