Arena

  A rapid clicking issued from the den as a second, larger mite burst from the darkness to seize the fallen prize. Suddenly Pierce was at her side, stomping book and bioform with a heavy, booted foot. She heard the crunch of exoskeleton as he jerked her upright and pulled her away.

  “The manual!” she cried.

  Cursing, he snatched it up and shoved her forward with his free hand. “Get out of here!”

  Eyes smarting with the pain of the pincer still clamped to her thumb, Callie hurried around the bank. As she reached their gear on the rock she was panting hard. Pierce was already there, scooping up the packs and his rifle and urging her onward.

  Together they scrambled over the tiered bank and up the mesa. Glancing back, Callie was horrified to see a tide of red bodies inundating the flat rock and clambering over the first bank in pursuit of them. With both packs slung over his shoulder, Pierce fired into the advancing tide, spraying the mites with a line of light that left the front edge of the hoard charred and smoking, while those behind recoiled in a rush of clicking claws. Pinning his weapon to his chest with an arm, he drew his knife, grabbed the mite still hanging from Callie’s thumb, and severed the insect’s body from its pincer. The mite landed on its back, legs writhing. He crushed it.

  For what seemed like hours, they raced over hummock and ravine without pause. White light was creeping into the edges of Callie’s vision when Pierce finally let her stop. She collapsed against a mound of sunwarmed sandstone, gasping and dizzy, hardly noticing when he seized her wrist and pried off the disembodied claw with his knife tip. She sagged back, nauseated by a renewed rush of pain, while he rustled in her day pack. Through the pain and exhaustion she felt him apply something slick to her thumb, and blessed numbness swept away the fire. Reveling in relief, she slid to the ground.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Pierce’s voice came low and tight. “Didn’t you hear me tell you to stop?”

  She looked up at him. “It had the manual.”

  “You should’ve let it go.” His blue eyes flashed. “The stupid thing’s not worth dying for—and they would’ve killed you.” He tossed her pack into her lap and walked away.

  Callie pressed her lips together, smarting from the reprimand and feeling unjustly accused.

  How was I supposed to know? she thought at his back as she pulled herself upright. I’m just a rookie, remember? And I’m not losing the manual, no matter what you say. I’m not the one who’s spent five years wandering through this nightmare because I didn’t follow instructions.

  She followed him up a steep grade, nursing her indignation. Gradually, though, other thoughts intruded—that he was partially right, that she should have used more sense, that he could have hung back and let her pay the consequences of her folly but instead had come to her rescue. Again.

  Most curious of all was that he was the one who’d saved the manual.

  Some time later, he stopped so suddenly she ran right into him. Recoiling in embarrassment, she started to apologize, then saw he wasn’t listening, at least not to her. He stood rigidly, staring over the sunbaked mesa.

  She scanned the landscape in sudden alarm. What was it? Rock dragon? Harry? Something else? Something worse?

  She glanced at him again. The breeze toyed with his hair and parted his beard, but beyond that he might have been stone, his eyes glazed, as if he searched with an inner sixth sense.

  At length he unslung the rifle to hold it before him and started on.

  “What?” Callie asked, moving at his side. “What’s the matter?”

  He regarded her as if he’d forgotten she was there. An expression of—horror?—spasmed across his face.

  He shook it off. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

  “Don’t tell me it’s nothing.”

  “It was a false alarm, all right?” Irritation sharpened his voice. “Forget it.” He lengthened his stride and drew ahead of her.

  They crossed a rocky ridge and dropped into a ravine, heading up its dry bed toward the cloud-wreathed mountains. Callie’s abused feet welcomed the smooth sand, and she hoped they might stay on it awhile, but Pierce soon stopped again, crouching over something on the ground. As she peered over his shoulder he touched an apelike footprint in the sand.

  Humanoid, but not human. Could a Watcher have left it?

  His fingers—long and expressive—moved to a depression beside and behind the first track, then to another farther away. Telling her to stay put, he climbed the hill, occasionally stooping to peer at the ground. He searched the other slope as well, then stood on the ridge, gazing into the distance. She was about to slog up after him when he turned and skidded down the slope to her side.

  “They’re old,” he announced. “Probably a day at least. Looks like they were heading southwest.”

  “Who?”

  Pierce shifted his pack and squinted at the ridges enfolding them. “Good thing we’re downwind. Come on.”

  “Why? What is it?” But he was already striding away, angling up the hillside off the line of tracks.

  Callie hurried after him, sensing he had not ignored her out of discourtesy. She had to jog to match his strides but didn’t complain. He gripped his rifle tightly, scanning the landscape as if attack were imminent.

  They left the ravine to scale an expanse of barren rock. Shadows streamed across the red-lit land as gloom gathered in the hollows. The mountains loomed before them now, and the terrain roughened, rising steeply in tiered sandstone shelves. Limestone teeth jabbed up between sage and juniper. A faint acrid odor rode the capricious breeze.

  The shelves ascended to a small flat-topped mesa ringed by stunted junipers and tall red rocks. A stench of urine, so strong it made her eyes water, all but knocked Callie over. As she followed Pierce across the flat, the awareness that something dreadful had happened here hit her hard. Long black lines scored the rock, and pieces of what looked like shattered bone littered the ground. To the right, an old juniper stood charred and skeletal, while its neighbors, still green, were torn and chewed, the earth at their roots churned up as if spaded.

  She stopped where four stout wooden pegs protruded from the sunbaked earth in a man-sized rectangle. There were no straps or bindings, but a damp red-brown stain at the rectangle’s center hinted of a grim purpose.

  Pierce passed the pegs with a cursory glance, stopping at a narrow trench beyond them. Six inches deep and three wide, it carved through the hardpan for a good five feet and linked two deeper postholes. To either side, a fine blue powder dusted the ground.

  Something about the scene repelled her, as if an object of great evil had stood at that spot and the fabric of reality had not yet recovered from its presence. With a shudder she gave the site a wide berth and went to investigate a curious scatter of white sticks farther on.

  Only they weren’t sticks. They were human arm and leg bones, broken and recently stripped of flesh, the bloodied shanks sucked dry of marrow. Trembling, Callie continued along the edge of the flat. She found a broken arrow amid spots and streaks of blood, and then a rose-hued one-inch cube caught at the base of a weed. She found another nearby. And another, splotched with turquoise. Scooping them up, she realized they were spent E-cubes and hurried back to show Pierce.

  But when she saw his face her words died in her throat.

  He still stood rigidly before the trench, his blue eyes moving over it in weird, shifting jerks. His face was pale and sweat-sheened beneath his beard, his terror unnerving in its baldness.

  “This was your friends’ camp, wasn’t it?”

  He didn’t answer. His eyes flicked from the trench to her, and then to the rocks, the ruined trees, and the ravaged ground. More E-cubes lay scattered along the rocks where his companions must have taken cover. There was a great deal of blood.

  He grabbed her arm, hard enough to hurt, and dragged her back down the way they’d come. By the time they stopped, he was hyperventilating. His eyes darted wildly as he gaped around, seemingly unable to decide which way
to go.

  More unnerved than she’d been since this whole nightmare had started, Callie laid a hand on his arm. “Pierce?”

  He didn’t respond. She squeezed the muscle, rock hard beneath her fingers. “Come on. Get a grip.”

  The blue eyes swam around to her.

  “Whatever happened, they’re gone now,” she said quietly. “And you’re our only hope of survival. Calm down. Think.”

  He stared at her, his distress shooting out in ragged spears. Then he closed his eyes and drew a long breath, shuddering beneath her touch. When he opened his eyes, he was himself again—or at least close enough.

  “What happened up there?” she asked. “Who attacked your friends?”

  He stared across the crimson-dyed mesa. “Trogs,” he whispered and shuddered again.

  She thought of the arrows and pegs and ravaged bones and swallowed a suddenly sour taste. “Aliens?”

  He shook his head. “Humans . . . sort of . . . mutants.” He speared fingers through his hair. “We can’t stay here.”

  “But they’re gone—”

  “They’re less than two miles away. I couldn’t tell earlier, but—” He swallowed and caught her arm. “They’ll smell us the minute the wind changes. Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the mountains. That’s where my friends will have gone. If any of them survived.”

  CHAPTER

  5

  Though the cloud-cloaked peaks loomed higher than ever, by nightfall the mountains’ forested lower slopes remained a good ten miles away. As the sun dropped below the distant horizon, Callie and Pierce had only scrub pine and juniper to shield them, and not much of that.

  Pierce stopped at the foot of a steep slope and turned to search the land below them. Callie followed the direction of his gaze, the wind enfolding her from behind as it swooped off the mountainside. “When the wind changes they’ll smell us,” he’d said. Now he loosed a breath of decision, stripped off his pack, and pulled out a small hatchet. They continued up the ragged slope, zigzagging over uneven shelves of rock to a hollow bounded by a juniper-studded ridge. Midway across it, a gnarled old juniper bowed beside a massive sandstone block, and it was there he decided they’d shelter.

  “Do you know how to build a lean-to?” he asked her.

  “Sort of.”

  Turning, he hacked and tore a good-sized clump of sage from the ground, then handed Callie the hatchet. “Cut as many branches as you need from the other junipers. Pile ’em around this big one—between it and the rock. Make it look natural.”

  She stared at him. “We’re going to hide?”

  “Yes.”

  “But what if they come?”

  “If I do my job right, they won’t. Keep your SLuB ready. And watch out for the redclaw over there. I won’t be long.”

  Callie swallowed her protest as Pierce turned and descended the bank, dragging the sage after him. At the bottom he tossed the bush aside, reshouldered the pack, and jogged into the gloom, leaving Callie on her own. From this vantage she could see the pale outcropping where the Trogs had attacked Pierce’s friends, steeped now in twilight. On a promontory several miles beyond it, a gleam of light flickered amid a cluster of dark spots. She could not tell if they were moving.

  The hatchet’s thunking chops echoed across the hollow like gunshots, advertising her presence to anything nearby. Even without it, pulling and twisting the branches free made a horrible racket, and it took nine good-sized limbs to complete a lair under the juniper. By the time she was finished, her hands were cut and scraped, her bitten thumb throbbed, and her legs shook with fatigue.

  She climbed onto the rock beside the juniper to await Pierce’s return. It might be wiser to hide in the lair, but she couldn’t bear the thought of huddling there alone, unable to see what might lurk outside.

  Overhead, stars twinkled into view against the rapidly darkening vault of indigo, while out on the distant promontory two fires flickered now, bright pinpoints on a sandstone sea. She turned to the mountains behind her, pulling a strand of windblown hair from her face. Junipers jabbed the skyline to her right—dark, twisted witch forms climbing the ridge. In the hollow below, the gloom had acquired a foglike substance, thick and dark among the darker blots of the trees.

  Restlessness simmered within her. Why was Pierce taking so long? Had he surprised something unpleasant? Lost his way? Stumbled off a cliff in the darkness? Doggedly she put her worries aside, assuring herself he knew what he was doing and would be back.

  The breeze died to a faint stirring of air perfumed with sage and juniper. She folded her legs yoga style on the rock, which was still warm with its store of the day’s heat, and sighed. If I hadn’t left the road, would I be in one of those Safehavens now? She wished suddenly for Meg. Though this was so much bigger than a simple, airheaded misjudgment, it was hard for Callie to continue being put out with her. And right now, she longed for a friend. Had Meg stayed on the road? Had she been dropped off at the same point, or was she hundreds of miles away? It was a depressing thought.

  Out in the shadow-clad trees a twig cracked, followed by a rattling of rock. Callie sat forward, adrenaline prickling across her back and arms. Trying to remember Pierce’s instructions, she drew the SLuB and turned it on. The immediate fine vibration against her palm comforted her, but her sore thumb made it hard to hold the weapon.

  Another rattle and scrape. Closer this time.

  Her scalp crawled. Her palms grew damp.

  Peering into the twilight, she willed a form to appear in the thickening fabric of night.

  It’s probably Pierce, she told herself. I should let him know where I am. But visions of huge, hirsute humanoids stilled her tongue and made her heart pound in her throat.

  How long she sat there rigid and trembling she did not know. The last light waned, wrapping her in folds of velvet blackness. Starlight limned the junipers and rocks with silver, washed the ground with a pale glow. The last flippet of breeze died, and stillness settled over the land.

  “Miss Hayes?” Pierce’s low voice came so unexpectedly—and so close—that she flinched and sucked in an involuntary gasp.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Don’t shoot.” A round shadow moved by her knee, and she dangled her legs down the rock face. His hand touched her thigh, moved to her waist, and then to her arm to steady her as she slid down beside him. He didn’t let go when she was down, and she didn’t pull away.

  “Where’s the shelter?” he asked. The familiar musky tang of his body odor was unexpectedly comforting.

  “Here.” She groped for the opening, his hand on her shoulder, and then crawled under the branches. The pungent scent of juniper filled her nostrils, and spiny leaves pricked her palms and knees. Pierce eased in beside her, pulling the last branch across the opening.

  His pack and leather vest were gone, but it was a close fit, nonetheless, pressing them shoulder, arm, and thigh against each other. He was hot and sweaty, and she could hear the rush of his breathing, his face only inches from her own. Normally she would have found such closeness intolerable. Now she had to fight to keep from pressing against him like a lost child.

  “What if they come?” she whispered. “We’ll be trapped.”

  He shuddered, but his voice was firm. “Trogs’ night vision is way better than ours. After dark, we’re better off going to ground. I’ve laid a false track in case they come by.”

  “And if it doesn’t work?”

  “That’s what the weapons are for. Now we’d best keep quiet. Voices carry a long way out here.”

  He fell silent, and from the rigidity of his body, Callie guessed he was searching again with that inner sense of his. She sat equally rigid at first, adrenaline surging with each new rustle or crackling twig. But as time passed and nothing happened, exhaustion overpowered her fear, and soon she was dozing off, dream images mingling with reality—Meg pointing a TV camera through the branches, her father standing in her kitchen doorway, backlit
by the bright afternoon outside, Pierce shuddering beside her, warning her not to let them smell—

  Her body jerked, startling her awake, and the SLuB shifted. Something was pulling it from her grasp. She grabbed for it—

  “It’s all right, Miss Hayes,” Pierce whispered. His fingers had closed around her hand and the SLuB at her first movement. “I’ll keep watch.”

  “But you did it last night.” Her voice was slurred. “And don’t call me Miss Hayes.”

  “Okay, Callie.” He tugged at the SLuB. “But I’d rather not be shot in the knee, if you don’t mind.”

  As he slipped the weapon free she relaxed against him, her head falling onto his shoulder.

  Her sleep was plagued by horrible howlings as unseen monsters chased her down an endless red-walled canyon. She woke once, disturbed when Pierce moved his arm from under her head. Cold air rushed against her, and she shifted closer, seeking his warmth and the comforting contact of his body. He did not pull away and, after a few moments, dropped his arm around her shoulder. The next time she woke, dawn light filtered into their juniper-bough shelter. Pierce was sound asleep with Callie curled securely in his embrace, one arm draped across his chest.

  Realization stiffened her, and she pushed away—

  Which startled him awake. Mortified, she leaned forward and pretended to listen for sounds from outside the shelter. It was a few moments before she heard anything but the rush of her own blood.

  An innocent quiet, punctuated by birdsong and insect whirs, pressed around them. Pierce said nothing and, to her intense relief, presently eased away the bough at the opening and crawled out.

  Dismayed by how stiff and sore she was, Callie reached back to brush the prickling leaves from her side and struck the hard carapace of a sand mite clinging to the back of her shirt. With a cry of revulsion, she lurched out of the lair, jittering around as she tried to slap it loose. Pierce jumped down from the rock, seized her shoulders, and spun her around to pluck it off. She heard it crunch beneath his boot.