Chapter 8 The Maintenance Road #2
“Decide fast. The trap buys minutes, not salvation.”
Nell looked at Dane.
“You said I decide.”
Dane kept his eyes on Mara.
“You decide about you. I decide whether the truck drives into a fenced yard with a woman who worked for Reeve Calder.”
“That sounds like deciding about me.”
He hated how quickly she found the seam.
Rosa looked at Nell.
“She may be lying.”
“I know.”
“She may trade us the first chance she gets.”
“I know.”
“Then?”
Nell looked at Mara, and in her face Dane saw the residue of every cage the world had tried to build around her: Harbor Nine’s quarantine language, Reeve’s bounty, the lodge’s fear, his own protective orders.
“She looked away from the cooler,” Nell said. “Everyone else looks too long.”
Mara’s expression shifted once, almost invisibly.
Dane glanced at Rosa.
Rosa did not like it. Neither did he. But dislike had never been a map.
He put Tomber in gear.
“Open the gate.”
Mara moved at once.
The maintenance yard became motion. Mara cut the chain with bolt cutters and waved Tomber inside.
Elias jumped down despite the rain and hobbled toward the loader parked beneath a sagging metal awning, insulting its tires before touching them.
Mara slapped his hand away from the ignition panel and started the machine herself, which earned from Elias a look of reluctant professional respect so strong it was almost indecent.
Otto climbed out with a handheld radio and immediately slipped in the mud.
“I am fine,” he said from the ground. “The earth and I are renegotiating.”
Nell stayed near the truck with Rosa, but she did not hide behind her. Lark climbed down from the cargo box and took a position near the fence, rifle aimed toward the lower road. His bandaged side was bleeding again. Rosa saw it and swore.
“You tore it open.”
Lark did not look away from the trees.
“I noticed.”
“You are unbelievably aggravating.”
“That’s been mentioned.”
Mara drove the loader to the trail entrance, dropped the bucket, and shoved aside a rotted fence post, two equipment racks, and a pile of rusted cable. The machine roared and spat black smoke. Mud churned beneath its tires.
Below, a pickup exploded.
The sound rolled up the mountainside and slapped the maintenance yard silent for half a second.
Otto looked downhill.
“Was that part of your trap?”
Mara did not turn from the loader controls.
“Fuel drums.”
Elias shouted over the engine, “That’s wasteful!”
Mara shouted back, “So is dying!”
Dane got out and checked the trail with a flashlight. The first turn was ugly, but possible now if he used every inch and did not care about scraping the cargo box. Beyond it, the track dropped through trees toward a wider old snowcat road. The mud was deep. The slope was worse. But it went west.
Rosa came up beside him.
“You believe her?”
“No.”
“Trust her?”
“No.”
“Taking her anyway?”
“She has a road.”
Rosa watched Mara through the rain.
“I hate how often that’s enough.”
“So do I.”
Nell approached, cooler strap over her shoulder.
“Dane.”
He turned.
She looked smaller in the rain, but not younger.
“If we help her brother later, that’s not just because she’s useful, right?”
The question struck near the same bruise Mae’s bus had left. Dane looked at the maintenance yard, at Lark bleeding quietly near the fence, at Elias arguing with a machine, at Otto trying to keep his radio dry under his hoodie, at Rosa waiting for an answer she probably needed too.
“No,” he said. “Not just.”
Nell studied him long enough to decide whether those two words had cost him anything.
Then she nodded.
At the fence, Lark fired once.
“Contacts!”
A shape stumbled out of the trees below. Then another. Infected, climbing from the trap site toward the loader noise and human voices. Behind them, farther down the slope, a headlight swung wildly between trunks.
One Milemen pickup had survived.
Mara saw it and went still.
“Silas.”
Dane looked.
The pickup appeared through rain and branches, damaged but moving, its hood crumpled, one headlight out. It climbed the left fork they had taken, engine screaming in low gear. A man stood in the bed behind a mounted gun, trying to keep balance as the truck lurched through ruts.
Rosa raised the rifle.
“That gun gets line of sight, we’re done.”
Mara jumped from the loader.
“Then don’t let it.”
Dane grabbed her arm as she passed.
“What are you doing?”
“Changing his angle.”
She pulled free and ran toward a yellow snowcat parked near the far shed, half-buried under tarps.
Elias stared.
“That thing run?”
Mara shouted, “It will if it wants revenge!”
Otto ran to Tomber.
“I vote for leaving while revenge considers its options!”
Dane did not disagree.
He climbed into the cab. Rosa shoved Nell in after him and took the passenger side. Otto squeezed behind the seats with less elegance than panic. Elias scrambled into the cargo box, but Lark remained outside, firing controlled shots at infected near the fence.
“Lark!” Rosa shouted.
He backed toward the truck, rifle up.
The Milemen pickup broke into the yard.
The mounted gun swung.
Mara’s snowcat roared awake with a shriek of belts and old engine fury.
She drove it straight into a stack of steel pipe beside the shed.
The pipes spilled across the yard in a clattering avalanche, bouncing into the pickup’s path.
The driver swerved. The mounted gunner fired, but the burst tore through the roof of the utility shed instead of Tomber, sending splinters and insulation into the rain.
Dane punched the accelerator.
Tomber moved toward the trail.
The turn was worse from behind the wheel than it had looked on foot. The right side scraped a post. The left mirror gap caught branches. Metal screamed along the cargo box as the truck forced itself through.
Behind them, Lark grabbed the rear handle.
Rosa saw him in the side opening.
“Stop!”
“If I stop, we don’t start again!”
Lark ran three steps with the truck, slipped, caught the handle with both hands, and slammed against the rear bumper. Elias grabbed him from inside the cargo box, roaring curses, and hauled him in by the shoulder straps.
The mounted gun fired again.
Bullets ripped through the trees above Tomber. One punched through the rear cargo wall, passing so close to Elias that his curse stopped mid-word. Nell ducked over the cooler. Otto made a sound that was mostly apology to his own bones.
Mara’s snowcat rammed the pickup from the side.
The impact was slow compared with a road crash, but heavy, grinding, final in its intent. The pickup tilted against the fence. The gunner fell from the bed into the mud. Infected reached him before he could rise. The driver tried to reverse, but steel pipe jammed beneath the axle.
Silas Pike climbed from the passenger side, blood running from his forehead.
For a moment, through rain and broken headlights, he looked directly at Dane.
Then he saw Mara.
His expression changed from anger to recognition to something colder.
“Mara!” he shouted.
She stood on the snowcat’s side step, one hand gripping the frame, rain flattening her hair beneath the cap. She did not answer him.
Silas raised his pistol.
Lark fired from the cargo hatch.
The shot struck Silas in the shoulder and spun him against the pickup. He fell but did not stay down. Men like Silas seemed built from unfinished consequences.
Dane forced Tomber down the trail.