Chapter 6 Snowline #2
Dane hated that hope could still be used as a weapon.
“No one in there is alive.”
“You don’t know.”
“I know enough.”
“You always know enough to leave people.”
Rosa said, “Nell.”
The girl’s eyes did not leave Dane.
“You left the hand at the rest stop. You left Dr. Quist. You were ready to leave Lark until you decided he was useful.”
Lark turned from his watch but said nothing.
Dane felt each sentence land where it was meant to.
He could have defended himself. The hand at the rest stop had likely been bait.
Quist had chosen death before Dane entered the room.
Lark had been a risk they could barely afford.
Every practical answer was true. None of them would make Nell less right about how it felt.
He said, “Yes.”
Nell flinched, not because he was harsh, but because he did not fight.
Elias shouted from the plow.
“Battery’s low but not dead. Fuel’s gelled some. Otto says warm it, curse it, and maybe it’ll start.”
“I said the first two parts were yours,” Otto called.
Rosa looked between Dane and Nell, then touched the girl’s shoulder.
“There is nothing kind waiting inside that bus.”
Nell’s voice dropped.
“Then why does it feel cruel not to check?”
Rosa closed her eyes for half a breath. When she opened them, she looked older.
“Because you’re still human.”
Something hit the inside of the bus.
A single dull thump.
Everyone froze.
Another thump followed, weak but deliberate.
From beneath the seats near the rear, a voice called, “Please.”
Not a moan.
A voice.
Dane’s body moved before his mind finished cursing him.
He grabbed the bus door handle and pulled. It stuck, frozen in the bent frame. Rosa came beside him, shotgun ready. Lark limped closer with the rifle. Nell stood behind them with both hands over her mouth.
Dane pulled again. The door shrieked open six inches.
The smell came out, cold and trapped and terrible.
Something stirred in the front seats. A small body in a winter coat lifted its head, eyes filmed white, mouth opening around teeth broken against the seatback. Rosa fired once, the shotgun blast deafening against the rock face. Farther back, two more shapes jerked awake under frost.
Lark fired through a broken side window, precise and controlled. Dane forced the door wider and climbed the steps, boots crunching glass and old snow. His flashlight beam cut through the dim interior.
The dead children moved badly in the cold, stiff and slow, but the aisle was narrow, and there were too many memories attached to every small hand reaching from between the seats.
Dane shot only when he had to. Rosa stayed at the door, face white, finishing what came too close.
Lark fired from outside through windows when he had an angle.
Near the rear emergency exit, a woman lay under a pile of coats and torn seat cushions, one leg trapped beneath a collapsed bench frame.
Alive, but barely. Mid-twenties or younger.
Her lips were cracked, hair matted to her face, eyes fever-bright and terrified.
She clutched a metal lunchbox to her chest like a shield.
“Don’t shoot,” she whispered.
Dane crouched two seats away, breathing hard through his mouth.
“Bitten?”
“No.”
Rosa came up behind him, checked the aisle, then pushed past.
“I’m EMT. Let me see.”
The woman shook her head with weak panic.
“No, no, they said don’t leave the bus, they said help was coming.”
Rosa’s face broke for one second before she controlled it.
“Help got lost. We’re what came instead.”
Nell climbed into the bus despite Dane’s sharp look.
The woman saw her and began to cry without sound.
“There was a girl,” she whispered. “Lucy. She had red boots. I told her stories until she stopped asking.”
Nell stood very still.
Rosa knelt by the trapped leg.
“What’s your name?”
“Mae. Mae Talcott. I was the substitute. I wasn’t supposed to be on the route. I just took the shift because Mrs. Heron had flu symptoms, and everybody was scared of symptoms, and I thought if I helped, then—”
Her words collapsed into a shudder.
Rosa touched her wrist, checked her pulse, then looked at the trapped bench frame.
“Leg’s crushed. Maybe infected, maybe not. She’s severely dehydrated.”
Dane looked back toward the door. The gunshots would carry in the mountains. Sound behaved strangely here, bouncing between stone faces, traveling farther than it should.
“We move her fast.”
Lark appeared at the emergency exit outside, trying to force it open.
“Exit’s jammed.”
Elias shouted from the plow.
“Truck coming!”
Dane’s head snapped up.
From somewhere below the curve, faint but growing, came an engine.
Not Tomber.
Not the plow.
Rosa swore softly.
Nell looked at Mae, then at Dane.
“We are not leaving her.”
There was no accusation this time. No challenge. Just a line drawn.
Dane stared at the trapped woman, at Rosa already reaching for her medical kit, at Lark bracing himself against the window frame despite the blood darkening the fresh bandage at his side. He thought of the hand at the rest stop, of all the maybes he had driven past because maybes got people killed.
Then he thought of Nell asking what to do if they did not die.
“Otto!” Dane shouted. “Get the pry bar!”
Otto appeared at the bus door with eyes too wide.
“Truck below. Definitely not us. Likely them. Very enthusiastic engine.”
“Pry bar!”
“Right. Tool, not panic.”
He vanished.
The engine grew louder.
Outside, Elias fired the plow’s starter. It ground once and failed.
“Come on, you orange government bastard,” he shouted. “Earn taxes nobody’s paying!”
Dane wedged himself beside Rosa and took the pry bar from Otto when he returned.
Together, he and Lark levered the collapsed seat frame inch by inch while Rosa worked Mae’s leg free.
Mae bit down on her sleeve to keep from screaming, but some sound escaped anyway, high and animal.
Nell knelt near her head, holding her hand, saying something too low for Dane to hear.
The engine below reached the final curve.
Rosa pulled Mae free.
“Now!”
Dane lifted Mae under the shoulders. Lark took her legs and almost dropped her when his wound seized, but Elias came up behind him cursing and grabbed the weight.
“Move, soldier, before your stitches file desertion papers.”
They carried Mae out of the bus as a dark pickup appeared below the bend.
Not two this time.
One.
Its front bumper was bent from some previous collision. The black circle and white slash marked its door. Silas Pike sat in the passenger seat. When he saw them, he leaned out the window and raised a hand as if greeting neighbors.
Rosa lifted the rifle and fired.
The shot cracked the windshield but did not stop the truck. It accelerated.
Dane pointed to Tomber.
“Get Mae in the cab!”
“There’s no room!” Otto shouted.
“Make room!”
Nell climbed in first, pulling the cooler under her feet. Rosa shoved Mae in after her, half across the seat, while Otto scrambled into the footwell with a noise of deep personal despair. Elias ran back to the plow.
Dane stared at him.
“What are you doing?”
“Moving the damn road!”
The plow starter screamed again.
This time, the engine caught.