“Hurry!” Lynn said.
Sabrina turned back, and though hurrying certainly sounded good, she knew she would get only one chance and couldn’t rush it. She mimed the toss, like a practice swing, gauging the weight of the cuffs and envisioning how they would fall.
Please God, please God, please God…
She repeated the exact same motion, but this time, at the top of her extension, she released the cuffs. They flew up, arced down, and the top cuff collided with the top copper wire and whipped around it in a flare of sparks.
Not enough. It wrapped too tight and now it will not be long enough to-
When the bottom cuff swung back and made contact with the lower wire, sparks weren’t all that came-there was a loud, clear boom somewhere behind them, and then the hum was gone.
It worked. Holy shit, it worked.
Lynn said, “Is it safe?”
Sabrina reached out with a shaking hand and touched the copper.
Nothing. Just cool, harmless metal.
“It’s safe.”
“Then let’s go!”
Lynn began to climb to Sabrina’s left-she was so fast, scrambling to the top in a blink, while Sabrina’s right foot slipped as she struggled to get past the dangling handcuff. There were three strands of barbed wire at the top of the fence, but Lynn swung her leg over them without hesitation. Sabrina could see that the wire had raked her badly, but Lynn didn’t show any reaction. She paused at the top. She was looking behind Sabrina and could see what Sabrina could not.
She screamed, “Hurry!”
Sabrina was hurrying, but when she reached the top of the fence she couldn’t immediately ascertain how Lynn had swung over the barbed wire so easily. It was angled in, and just to get a grip seemed impossible, as if it would require holding the actual barbs for support. Then she saw that there was a post just a few feet to her left. Lynn must have used that.
Sabrina struggled sideways, reached with her left hand, and had just wrapped it around the post when Lynn screamed again, no words this time, just a scream, and then a hand closed around Sabrina’s ankle.
She thought, I just need to hold on to the fence, but in the instant that she tried to tug her captured foot free, she was jerked down in a single motion, whipped backward with tremendous power. She not only felt her ribs break when she hit the ground but heard them, and then Garland Webb was looming above her, his face furious, his fist balled. The fence rattled and Sabrina saw that Lynn was actually trying to climb back down.
“No!” Sabrina rasped. “Ruuun!”
She saw Lynn hesitate, and then Garland Webb’s massive fist hammered down and she saw nothing at all.
Part Four: The Flash Zone
59
The territory where Larry drove them was a rugged stretch along the southern face of the Bighorns, not far from the Cloud Peak range, not all that far from Medicine Wheel.
They’d climbed steadily on the rural roads outside of Greybull, and the prairies and plateaus of Lovell and Byron were forgotten-this was mountain country, and it hadn’t heard any rumors of spring yet. Splashes of scattered snow gradually turned into snowbanks lining the road. They were deep in the woods and the country was just as desolate as Larry had promised, but it was also not empty. They had seen countless tracks on their way in. ATVs, mostly. One set of truck tires.
Eventually, Larry left the road entirely, putting the truck in four-wheel drive and navigating a boulder-strewn path that had Mark’s back aching and his teeth clacking. They followed this for a mile that felt like fifty, and then Larry almost hung up the truck. He put it into four-low and the tires roared ruts into the snow, the truck leaning at a precarious angle before it finally found purchase and kicked them loose. From there, the ride was too rough for talking. The only words spoken came from Larry after they had clipped one snow-covered rock with enough force to bounce them both into the air: “Glad the fella we stole this from had a skid plate.”
Larry stopped when the boulder-strewn path turned to sheer slope and they saw the white Silverado in front of them.
“Well, now,” Larry said softly. “You got some special instincts, Markus.”
His gun was already in his hand.
They got out of the truck quickly and quietly, staying low as they advanced to the Silverado. It was empty, and when Mark touched the hood, it was cold against his palm. The woods were silent except for the soft sounds of a stream a hundred yards away. The steep slope ahead of them was laced with even more tracks.
“A lot of traffic going up there today,” Mark said.
Larry squinted at the summit. “Are my eyes playing tricks on me, or are those telephone poles?”
Mark shaded his eyes and stared for a few seconds before he said, “Those sure as hell look like poles.”
“If anybody up there has a scope…”
“Yeah. Let’s get into the trees in a hurry.”
There weren’t many trees to speak of. The closest was a cluster of three dead lodgepole pines that had lost their branches and pointed upslope like waiting missiles.
Mark returned to the truck for Larry’s rifle and then ran in a crouch into the trees, where Larry had already taken up position at the base of a towering fir. Mark sighted on the summit. The telephone poles came into stark relief immediately-they were outfitted with transformers and insulators, but no lines.
“This would be the place,” Mark said.
“Pass it here and let me look.”
Mark lowered the rifle and extended it to Larry reluctantly. Without the scope, he felt clueless as to what was going on up above, and exposed.
Here on the side of the slope, sheltered only by the fir and a small rise that had a higher snowbank than the surrounding ground, they would be easy targets for someone firing on them from above, and going in any direction required side-hilling, moving across the steep grade and over the snow. The change in altitude created a remarkable change in environment; the hot dusty road and glaring sun where Mark had traded fire with Garland Webb seemed as far away as Cassadaga now. The snow also meant that they’d be leaving obvious tracks.
It was quiet on the hillside, the sounds of the stream farther away, but everything seemed intensified somehow, from those soft water noises to the feel of the breeze and the smell of the snow. Mark’s hands were cold and numb, and even the tingle in his flesh felt stronger than it should have. All of his senses seemed unusually sensitive, sharp.
“We could work up that gulch,” he said, blowing on his hands. “Getting there, we’d be pretty exposed, but once we’re in it, we’ll have protection. Looks like it leads all the way up, almost.”
Larry had just returned his attention to the scope when a scream came from up above. It wasn’t loud; it was so faint, in fact, that both of them looked at each other with a question, as if needing confirmation. Then another came, and while it was still soft, there was no mistaking it.
“We’re either too late,” Larry said, “or just in time.”
He returned the rifle to his shoulder and lowered his eye to the scope. Mark ached for it, their only set of eyes here.
After a few seconds of silence, Larry said, “There’s a woman up there, and she’s running like hell.”
“Anyone behind her?”
“Not that I see, but the way she’s moving, she expects there is.”
“Which way is she headed?”
“Toward the gulch. Maybe two hundred yards away. Shit, she just fell.”
“I need to see her,” Mark said, crawling closer. “I need to see if I know her.”
Larry didn’t want to turn over their only pair of eyes any more than Mark had, but he gave up the rifle. Mark put his eye to the scope but couldn’t find the woman.