Chapter 39 #2
A loud crack came from the door, and then metal pinged as the swing-bar popped free.
Tean couldn’t help glancing over his shoulder.
The ironing board held—for the moment—but through the opening, he could see wolf heads—Halloween masks that were latex and acrylic fur.
In the dark, backlit by the emergency lights, they looked real enough.
One of them howled again.
“We have to go!” River screamed.
Tean joined her at the window. She had knocked the glass out of the bottom of the frame, and now she sat with one leg hanging out over nothing.
Tean gauged the distance to the ground and said, “I’m going to lower you as far as I can.
Then I’m going to drop you. The snow will cushion your fall, but you have to help me get the kids down. ”
River gave a tight nod. “What about you?”
“Here we go,” Tean said. He took hold of her wrists, and he held on as River gripped the frame and lowered herself down from the window.
She made it look easy, but then, she looked like one of those ultra-fit people who did things like CrossFit in their spare time.
The tendons in her wrists stood out like iron under Tean’s grip.
The hardest part came when she let go, and Tean had to struggle not to drop her. He leaned out over the window as far as he dared, fighting to keep himself inside while balancing her weight. The frame dug into his stomach. The muscles in his arms and shoulders strained.
“Okay,” he grunted.
“Go,” River called up.
He released her. There was a long second, and then an explosion of snow and River’s startled cry. A moment later, though, she was on her feet—and waist-deep in snow. Shaking it off her face, she shouted, “The kids.”
“Maeve, you first.”
Shouts from the hallway broke the silence, followed a moment later by a hollow metallic bang that came from the ironing board. Holding Maeve by the hands, Tean lowered her out the window.
“Go!” River shouted.
He released Maeve, and a moment later, the thud of bodies echoed up out of the dark.
“Good!” River shouted.
Below, Maeve was crying again.
“Milo,” Tean said.
The boy was lighter. In fact, he felt like he weighed almost nothing. He stared up at Tean with huge eyes as Tean dangled him out over all that empty space.
“Go!”
Milo fell into the dark, and then came the thud, and River shouted, “Hurry!”
Another of those rattling booms came from the ironing board, and then a metallic skittering noise came, and the door flew open.
The glow of the emergency lights filtered into the room and backlit the first figure—a wolf, Tean’s brain said—as it stepped inside.
There were no details, only the shape of it: a man’s body, the outline of the muzzle, tufts of fur picked out by that distant light.
In one hand, it carried an axe. In the other, a tool Tean didn’t recognize—one that ended in two metal forks.
He howled. And then he passed out of the light and into the dark.
Another wolf stepped into the room behind him.
Tean didn’t wait to watch. He gripped the window frame, swung himself out, and let himself fall.
Darkness.
Air whistling against his face.
And then the gritty fluff of snow—up the back of his sweatshirt, on his neck, in his face.
He hit the ground, but not as hard as he’d been expecting. The snow spilled in on top of him, cold on his face, then wet as it began to melt. He shot upright, shaking his head, wiping his glasses as best he could.
“This way! This way!” River was already taking off, wading through the snow without looking back.
For Maeve and Milo, the drifts came almost up to their chests. They didn’t have coats. They didn’t have heavy clothes. They were both shivering, and Tean knew he had to get them—and himself—inside in a matter of minutes.
“Here we go,” Tean said as gently as he could. “Follow the path she made. It’ll get easier once we’re out of this deep snow. Maeve, you first, then Milo. I’m going to come behind you.”
Maeve didn’t say anything; the girl seemed to have passed beyond fear and into some sort of dissociative state, and she stumbled along the trail River had plowed through the snow.
Milo trudged after her. Tean shot a glance up, but there was nothing to see.
No wolves clambering out after them. No one jumping down to follow.
The moon and stars weren’t bright, but there was enough light that Tean could make out the darkened bulk of the lodge, the ground sloping down toward the pool, the lines of the observation deck, even the plastic arc of a few of the alpenglobes.
River was still forcing a path through the snow, angling away from the deeper drifts against the side of the lodge and—Tean hoped—aiming for the relatively shallower snow that marked a buried footpath.
If they could get back inside the lodge, they’d be safe.
Of course, the part of Tean that was never quiet pointed out that they’d already been inside the lodge. And that hadn’t stopped the wolves.
The level of the snow did seem to get lower after the first few yards.
Tean kept glancing over his shoulder. Still nothing at the window.
And no one following them, either. Maybe the wolves were afraid of heights.
Or maybe they were cutting through the lodge, trying to catch them when they re-entered. But something didn’t make sense—
Maeve let out a cry, and Tean turned forward again to see the girl face-first in the snow, trying to pick herself up. Milo hunkered down, shivering and huddling, his little face blank.
“It’s okay,” Tean said, as he kicked a path around Milo. He bent to help Maeve. “It’s hard to walk through the snow like this. You’re doing great. You’re doing such a good job. We’re almost there—just a little farther now.”
He was standing, his hands under Maeve’s arms, when he saw the wolf come around the corner of the building.
River never saw him. She was watching the ground as she fought her way through the snow.
Light gleamed on steel.
A dark spray dappled the snow.
River fell sideways and didn’t get up.
That cold came again—a wave of it washing through Tean.
For a moment, there wasn’t even thought.
And then there was one: Where’s Jem?
But Jem wasn’t coming. Jem couldn’t come, or wouldn’t come in time. There was only Tean, and he had to do something.
The children still hadn’t seen what had happened, so he turned Maeve and Milo and forced them away from the wolf. Away from River’s body. Maeve started to cry. Milo locked his legs and screamed, “No! No! No! No! No!”
“We’re almost there,” Tean said. Tears stung the corners of his eyes, hot and then frozen. He scooped Milo up. The boy was kicking now. His other hand on Maeve, he half-steered, half-forced the girl forward. “We’re so close. You’re both doing so well!”
Milo’s scream had gone beyond words and into shrill, full-lunged panic.
Run. Run. All they could do was run.
There were three wolves. Two inside. One out. And they had worked like a pack, chasing them out of the room.
That was what predators did. That was what wolves did. They chased their prey. They ran it to ground. They harried and snipped, and they separated the weak from the strong—
Think, Tean shouted at himself. You have to think!
But all he could think about was prey animals. Herd animals. They ran. That was their defense. They ran, and they ran, and they ran. And the ones who couldn’t run, the ones who were too old or too sick or too young—
Maeve pitched forward into the snow again. This time, she started sobbing uncontrollably. When Tean tried to pick her up one-handed—because he still had Milo over one shoulder—she twisted away from him, digging herself deeper into the snow, her panic blooming into hysteria.
The wind picked up, spinning snow into the air, slicing at Tean’s cheek.
The wolf trudged after them. And he was howling.
Tean knew that howl. He remembered that howl. Even though the wolf was nothing but shadow and fur, he remembered that howl, and he knew this was the one he’d faced in a darkened basement not too long ago.
Prey ran.
Prey ran until they couldn’t.
The clarity was like moonlight tipped into his cupped hands. Milo’s kicks and struggles, Maeve’s screams, the crisp-crack-crunch of the wolf’s steps as he broke the frozen surface of the snow and came after them—it all faded.
Tean put Milo down. He grabbed Maeve and dragged her to her feet.
“You have to run now,” he told them. Something in his voice must have reached them because Milo grew still, and Maeve quieted. “Run to the lodge and go inside and find an adult. Do you understand? Maeve, you’re in charge. Do you understand?”
She gave a tiny nod. Tears had frozen on her cheeks.
“Run. Run for the path and get inside.”
Maeve grabbed Milo’s hand, and they ran. The snow hit them at the knees, but they ran.
And Tean turned to face the wolf.