The attack came at 5:05 p.m., as the forest that had surrounded them began to thin, the winds to die and clouds started their slow descent on the mountain, bringing a damp chill and the premonition of darkness.
The immense amount of food Rae had consumed this morning had vanished on the trek up the mountain, and she had been pleading for an hour. “Please, Mommy, can we stop and eat dinner? I’m starving.”
“Have a breakfast cookie.”
“I don’t want a breakfast cookie. It’s not breakfast time. My feet hurt. I want to stop and have a fire and a hot dog and a bun and steak on a stick and a s’more.”
“You’re killing me. That sounds so good.” They’d had a rest every hour since leaving the Cyclomaniacs, and a snack every time, but they had climbed far enough, fast enough, high enough that ahead, Kellen could see the end of the tree line: barren earth, boulders that stuck out of the earth like splintered bones and a trail worn into the hard-packed dirt. The path funneled between two steep ten-foot cliffs and there was even a sign, battered by wind and rain and cold: Horizon Lookout, 1 Mile. “We’re almost there. Wouldn’t you like to go to the lookout, give Zone the Triple Goddess, get warm, know we’re safe?”
“No, I want to eat dinner.” Rae, who never whined, was in power whine mode now. She stopped and said defiantly, “I’m not having fun anymore.”
Kellen killed a smile. The child was serious. Through all the shooting, the terrors, the rough conditions, the lousy food, she had been more than simply stoic. She had been almost unrelentingly cheerful, making the best of everything. When she said she wasn’t having fun anymore, that was a serious statement, and Kellen needed to treat it as such.
“Do you want me to carry you?” Despite the fact her hip had been protesting for the last three hours.
“No!”
Kellen walked on. “We have to keep going. I have an itch at the back of my neck.”
Rae caught up. “A mosquito bite?”
Without looking, Kellen could tell she’d stuck out her bottom lip, and she decided to treat Rae’s comment seriously. Because honestly, she didn’t know if Rae was being sarcastic—which seemed a little advanced for a seven-year-old—or honestly didn’t understand. “It’s just a saying. I’m afraid we’re being hunted. If we can get to the lookout, we’ll be safe.” She hoped.
“I thought you said riding the bicycle would put us ahead of the bad guys.”
“That’s what I hope. But they knew where we needed to take the goddess’s head, and we know they split up. If some of them came this direction right away, they’re already here...somewhere.” The story of Horst and his slit throat scared Kellen. That casual violence raised the stakes; Rae’s young life could not be a sacrifice on the altar of the Triple Goddess.
Yet Rae was blissfully unaware. She only knew she was hungry and tired and cross. She stopped again. “Mo-o-o-mmy!”
Kellen wheeled around, knelt in front of her and took her arms. “Look, Rae—”
A roar. Bark and wood chips blasted around them, and for one stupefied moment, Kellen stared at the smoking hole in the tree where she had been standing.
The Mercenaries had found them, and they were shooting to kill.
She slammed Rae to the ground, pulled her behind that tree and held her close for one moment, long enough for Rae to catch her breath, long enough for Kellen to whisper, “Crawl. To that rock.” She pointed and pulled her pistol. “Stay low.”
Rae crawled.
Kellen peered around the tree.
From her right side, a rifle thundered, ninety degrees from the last one.
Crap. There was more than one of them.
She vaulted up the hill after Rae, picked her daughter up by the waist and sprinted zigzag toward a boulder, a clump of trees, another boulder.
Shots followed, some from below, some from the side, some from above the tree line.
Kellen’s mind clicked off the possibilities. Three or four shooters. Trying to corner Kellen and Rae, maybe send them away from the Restorer, back down the mountain and into the arms of more mercenaries.
No. Kellen heaved Rae over the top of a four-foot high boulder, vaulted over it, knelt beside her daughter and waited for a shot from that side. If it came, they were surrounded.
Nothing. So one direction to go—first sideways along the tree line, then up the slope and into the fog.
For the moment, they were safe here. Kellen put down the backpack, found the defective computer tablet, pulled it out and turned it on. She looked up, ready to explain her tactic, and saw Rae, round-eyed and with a trembling lip. “Are you okay?”
“You hurt me.” Rae hugged her ribs.
“I’m sorry.” Kellen was, for all the reasons. “I’m going to create a diversion.” The tablet was heating in her hand. “I need you to stay low and run as fast as you can. Can you do that?”
A shot hit the rock above their head.
Rae nodded, an exaggerated up-and-down movement.
Kellen leaned sideways and assessed the landscape. One shooter’s likely cover: a once-tall hemlock laid flat, its roots ripped from the ground by last winter’s wind. He was in a good position to nail them. “Rae, go that way.” She pointed toward a stand of trees, stunted and warped from the high winds that blasted off the Pacific.
Rae ran.
Kellen skipped bullets along the top of the log—and flushed him out. She fired again, a barrage of six bullets, more than she could spare. But she nailed him. His leg spurted red, flailed beneath him. He screamed and went down. Lucky shot at this distance, but she didn’t take the time to congratulate herself. She sprinted after Rae, zigzagged toward a windswept pile of downed branches and needles and flung the tablet in among them. With luck...
She raced behind a tree, then another tree, then another, then into a clump of shrubs.
Shots followed her every time.
One shooter down, two or three left. Stormtroopers who couldn’t hit anything. Or Kellen would be dead already.
She sprinted to the clump of trees where Rae hid, heard the barrage of shots, felt the slam of a bullet against her left arm between her elbow and wrist. Like a baseball player, she slid through the low-hanging tangled branches and into shelter and scrambled onto her knees.
Rae gasped. “Blood, Mommy!”
“I know.” Kellen had been shot before. It never got easier. This burned like hell and bled a river, and until she pulled back the torn material, she feared it had sliced through an artery. But no. The bullet had slipped through her flesh like a hot knife through butter, a clean slice of pain that bled too freely and needed stitches. “It’s okay. I probably won’t lose my arm.” An Army joke, an offhand way to say it wasn’t fatal.
Rae burst into tears.
Wrong thing to say, Kellen. Again. “It’s just a scratch. I promise. And you can’t cry. I need you to help me.”
“I don’t know how to shoot.” The child was trembling. “But I can try.”
“Not that. Darling, you don’t have to shoot anyone.” Kellen rolled up her sleeve.
“I can throw a rock.”
“No rocks. We’re not that desperate yet.” Kellen realized the shooting had stopped, and she held up one finger. She heard the soft fast shuffle of light footsteps. In a whisper, she said, “Not this time...someone’s sneaking toward us. Be small.”
Rae hunched down, wrapped her arms around her knees and squeezed her eyes shut.
In her mind, Kellen reconstructed the terrain. These trees, the cliff, the entrance to the canyon...the rocks whose shelter they had left. Whoever stalked them had followed Kellen’s trail. Very smart. How unfortunate. She didn’t want smart trackers, especially one moving at that speed. She didn’t have time for subterfuge. She had to get off a shot. On her belly, she crawled around a tree trunk, stuck her head out and ducked back.
The bullet hit so fast it ripped a chunk of hair from her head.
She didn’t take time to absorb the shock but leaped to the opposite side of the trunk and aimed in the direction of the shooter and pulled the trigger.
A low-voiced furious curse.
She zeroed in and shot again.
A scream, long and loud and vicious. High-pitched. A pause. More screams, longer and louder.
Okay. Okay. Two shooters dealt with. It didn’t even the odds, but it helped.
Kellen leaned her back against the tree trunk. She had to raise her voice above the shrieks. “Rae!”
Rae lifted her head. “Mommy?” She sounded calm, but her eyes were dark; the pupil almost swallowed the iris.
“I need you to help me stop the bleeding.” Kellen scooted toward her. “Get one of my socks out of the side pocket of the backpack.”
Rae wrestled with the zipper and found a sock.
“And something to use as a pad to absorb the blood.” What? Kellen needed to figure that out. Rae couldn’t—
Rae extracted the small remaining square of her blankie.
Kellen was surprised at the depth of her own shock. “Not that! That’s your blankie!”
“Mommy. I know what it is.” Rae’s voice trembled. “Now what do I do?” She took Kellen’s wrist and carefully pulled the arm toward her. She was still weeping, leaking tears, but she was ready to help.
Kellen almost choked on some emotion she didn’t understand. But she couldn’t cry, too. She was the adult. No, more than that, she was the mother. Rae looked to her to be strong. “Press the pad on the bleeding part.”
Rae gingerly placed it. “Does it hurt?”
“You bet. When we get to safety, I’ll blubber really loud.” Kellen wanted to urge her to hurry, but she couldn’t. Not when Rae was already trembling in fear. “Now tie the sock around the pad.”
Rae didn’t know how to wrap it, so Kellen showed her, held one side as Rae clumsily wrapped the first stage of a square knot, then helped her tighten it down.
Kellen touched Rae’s cheek. “Thank you. That’s perfect. It feels much better.”
“I’m glad.” Rae’s little hands were balled into fists. “Mommy, I don’t like the screaming.”
“Better him than us.” Callous and probably not what a good mother would say.
But Rae said, “Yes, and the other bad guys can’t hear us while he screams.”
Kellen looked at her daughter. Pine needles tangled in Rae’s blond hair. She had dirt smeared on her face and packed under her fingernails. The sparkle and charm of her pink clothes was lost beneath the forest’s grime. Despite Kellen’s diligence, Rae’s cheeks had lost their plump roundness and her eyes were too big in her face. Most of all, she now knew things no seven-year-old should know, like a wounded man’s screaming can be used as a concealment.
As Kellen stared, Rae’s features rearranged themselves, became that of a brown-skinned girl with big eyes too sad for her young face.
The Afghan mountains. A burned-out house. A melted coil of metal. The stench of desperation and death.
“Mommy.” The child was Rae again. “It’s getting dark.”
“Yes.” Fog was slipping its pale fingers down the mountain, into the gulleys, coming to rescue them. If they could hold out long enough for it to get here, they had a chance of making it up the mountain. “Good. Here. Put on my hoodie.” Kellen pulled it off and wrapped Rae in it, rolled up the sleeves and zipped it up.
“It’s long!” Rae stuck out first one foot, then the other.
“It’ll keep you warm.” More important, the camouflage would conceal her from watching eyes.
Rae peeked around the tree. “There’s smoke!”
Kellen smiled with evil delight. “Your tablet.”
“Uh-oh. Daddy’s going to yell.”
Kellen gave a spurt of startled laughter. “About so much.”
The pile of branches smoldered.
Rae’s short legs couldn’t run fast enough; Kellen would have to carry her. Everything else had to stay. Everything.
That was it, then. The Triple Goddess was the sacrifice for Rae’s life. If Rae wasn’t along, if it was only Kellen, she’d figure out somehow to save that head. But just as these days had changed Rae, they had changed Kellen, too. She knew why, but she didn’t want to think it, to speak it.
The Triple Goddess would be the ultimate diversion.
The smoldering branches caught and blazed.
A shot came from above, scattering burning branches.
Below them, a man shouted, “McDonald, no!”
But now Kellen knew the shots had come from about halfway up one of the sandstone cliffs. She also had a fair idea of the guy below, his location and his position in the gang. He was the boss. She had wounded two of his men. McDonald and the boss were left.
If Kellen and Rae were going to make it up the mountain, she needed to eliminate the sniper above. He had shot at her diversion, so he was trigger-happy and maybe nervous. Good news. She peered through the brush and waited.
Rae watched her. “Mommy?”
Kellen cut the tie that held the head to her backpack. “One more down and we can make a run for it. Get the ball of yarn out of my backpack. We’re leaving everything else behind.”
“B-but...the Triple Goddess.” Rae’s voice got squeaky. “She’s our talisman.”
“The Triple Goddess has cared for herself for three thousand years. She can do it a little longer. In fact, she’s going to help us.” Ignoring the ancient staring eyes, Kellen picked up that head with her good hand, held it aloft and shouted at the man below. “The head is what you want. I’m leaving it. Look!” Keeping her own head down, she placed the Triple Goddess on the stone to the west. “It’s yours. I don’t know who you are. I can’t identify you. You’re safe, so take it!”
No shots. No answer.
“Now get the yarn.” Kellen spoke calmly, clearly, although her vision wavered. Blood loss and pain were compromising her abilities “I promised to crochet your blankie.”
Rae dived for the backpack.
“Dump it out,” Kellen instructed, “and take the yarn.”
Rae did as she was told and the whole time watched Kellen anxiously, which told Kellen how bad she must look.
Had any of the shooters seen Rae? Would the thieves let them go? Kellen had seen too much of war; she had little faith in the decency of mercenaries.
“That fog is almost here.” Rae pointed at the damp white spreading out like a delta from the shallow canyon of the path.
“Be ready to climb on my back.” Kellen got into a crouch, almost fell over, steadied herself with a hand on the rock. She spotted movement on the cliff; with her shouting and holding the head aloft, McDonald had figured out where they were and scooted into a precarious position, twenty feet up on a rocky shelf. “Stay down. Plug your ears,” she said, aimed and fired seven shots, fast and loud. Then nothing. She’d emptied her magazine.
Worse, her wavering vision had betrayed her; she missed McDonald, hitting below him, sending up a cloud of sand.
McDonald’s rifle steadied. He leaned out—and her luck changed for the better. The sandstone shelf disintegrated, gave way. The rifle fell first, a Barrett M98B with a scope. It clattered as it tumbled, and fearing an accidental discharge, Kellen threw herself over the top of Rae’s body. When no shots followed, she peered around and saw McDonald scrambling for a toehold.
The sand kept giving way. Like a skier taking a fall, McDonald fell, twenty feet down and onto the sandy slope below. He landed on his chest. The air left his body with an audible, “Oof!” He rolled, all arms and legs and ominous silence.
Probably not dead, but at least unconscious.
“Come on!” Kellen said.
Rae climbed onto her back.
Kellen leaned down and ran into the fog, doing her best to keep a low profile. She didn’t believe that the boss meant to let them go.
But would the goddess head occupy him long enough for them to escape?
Or would he come after them and go back for the goddess head? A single well-placed rifle shot, a through and through with a powerful rifle, would kill them both.
What if he pursued them? Kellen was moving as fast as she could, but she was exhausted, bloodied, in pain from her hip, carrying a thin little girl who should weigh nothing to her—but she did.
The stony path narrowed and narrowed, nothing more than a canyon between two cliffs. The fog came in patches, pale wisps and blank cool white walls. Far above and to the west, the sun still shone, and Kellen was grateful; as she ran, she could see where to put her feet. And she was terrified; if someone was following, maybe they could see her. She strained to listen for footsteps—or worse.
Then it came. The crack of a rifle.
Kellen fell to the ground and rolled to put Rae beneath her. She couldn’t protect her from a bullet fired from a high-powered rifle, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t try.
“Mommy?” Rae whispered. “Ow.”
Kellen lifted herself to give Rae some breathing room. She looked behind them but could see nothing but swirling white fog. She strained to listen, but could hear no sound of pursuit. “Climb on my back,” she said to Rae. “We have to hurry.”
When Rae was in position, Kellen found she couldn’t get off her knees. She couldn’t stand, not with Rae’s weight on her back. She let Rae slide to her feet. “Mommy’s kind of tired, so let’s see if we can find a rock for you to use like a mounting block.”
“Like a pony?”
“Exactly. I’m your own personal pony.” Yet even without Rae on her back, Kellen couldn’t stand. Exhaustion, hunger, too much exertion, the altitude and maybe something much, much worse...
She got up on her hands and knees and waited for the earth to stop spinning. Ick, she’d put her left hand in a brownish pool of... “Oh, no.” Her blood had soaked the pad and was dribbling through her fingers. She’d left a handprint...
“Mommy?” Not during this whole ordeal had Rae sounded as frightened as she did now. “Are you bleeding?”
Kellen looked up at her daughter.
Rae wavered in the fog.
No, she wasn’t wavering. Kellen was losing consciousness. “Listen to me. You have to go on by yourself.”
“I can’t!” Rae wailed.
“You can. You’re LightningBug. You’re brave and strong. Follow the path. You’ll get to the lookout. Get Mr. Zone to let you in.” She hoped he would. “Stay safe inside.”
“I don’t want to leave you!” Rae tugged at Kellen’s arms.
“You have to go on by yourself.” Kellen was starting to sound like Bambi’s father. “Please, baby. I need you to go be safe.”
“I’m going to bring him back to save you!” Rae whirled and started running.
“No, don’t think that. Don’t...put pressure on yourself. Get him to let you in and—” Kellen stared into the fog.
Rae was gone.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay.” Her strength gave out. She collapsed onto her face to die.