Endgame (Agent 21) (14 page)

‘What for?’ Malcolm asked.

‘They’ll do as sleeping mats if we have to make a camp,’ Zak explained. ‘Better than lying on the snow. Mind the shattered glass in the front. You’ll cut yourself easily.’ And as he said that, he helped himself to one of the larger shards. It had a wickedly sharp point, and would do as a tool or a weapon if the situation demanded it.

‘Look what I found!’ Ricky called from the back of the vehicle. He sounded pretty pleased with himself. As he walked round to Zak and Malcolm, he was carrying a silver space blanket, neatly folded up, in one hand. In the other was an entrenching tool – a kind of lightweight, folded-up shovel. It figured that the driver had carried a good insulating sheet for emergencies, and something to dig him out of drifting snow.

It had taken them ten minutes to strip down the car. Now Zak called them all together. They huddled in a group, absorbing some of the residual heat from the car’s engine while they could. Zak looked up to the sky, where the snow was coming down even more furiously than before. ‘The snowfall will cover our tracks a little, but not completely. Anyone following us will be better equipped for the weather, and there will be more of them. So we have to move fast, and we have to move smart. Understood?’

Pale-faced nods all round.

‘With a bit of luck we’ll find a back route into Anchorage within a couple of hours. But if we don’t, our worst enemies are going to be wind and water. Our winter gear should help with that, but we need to keep our hoods up and the drawstrings closed. Don’t remove your gloves, and look out for numbness in any part of your body – it could be the first signs of frostnip. If any of us starts to feel sleepy, we need to say so – it’s the first sign of hypothermia. Don’t try to be brave about it – it’ll hinder us much more if we don’t deal with it immediately. Be very careful where you step. If there’s running water, there might be a thin layer of ice with snow on top. Trust me, you don’t want to get wet in this cold weather. At this temperature it’ll knock the air from your lungs, you’ll curl up into a little ball and your muscles will seize up . . .’

‘What happens then?’ Malcolm asked anxiously.

Zak sniffed. ‘We’ll deal with that if we come to it. And anyway, with any luck we’ll hit Anchorage in a couple of hours.’ He peered into the distance. ‘Order of march: Ricky, then Malcolm, then me. Let’s move.’

With their backpacks on and their hoods drawn tightly around their heads, they trudged across the road. It was icy underfoot, but at the road’s edge Zak felt his feet sink into a good sixty centimetres of powdery snow. Malcolm was three metres ahead of him, Ricky three metres ahead of that. Zak’s eyes were drawn to the footprints his companions were leaving in the snow. They were deep and obvious. Even though the snow was falling heavily, it would take several hours for it to cover those footprints. It would be the simplest thing in the world for anyone to follow them. Anxiously, he looked back over his shoulder. They’d only been marching for forty-five seconds and already the vehicle was lost among the swirling snow and the darkness.

Zak stopped. He had a sudden hit of panic. This was foolishness. They had no means of navigating properly – no compass, or sight of the stars, or visible landmarks. They were walking blindly into a hostile environment none of them had any experience of. Perhaps they would be safer keeping to the roads after all . . .

These thoughts festered in his head for perhaps two minutes before he hissed quietly to Ricky, ‘Stop!’

Ricky halted, but Malcolm continued to walk – he clearly hadn’t heard Zak, who shuffled up to him and grabbed him by the shoulder.

‘What’s wrong?’ Ricky said. He sounded very tense.

Zak looked back, watching their clear footprints disappear back the way they’d come. He was about to suggest that they retrace their steps, when a noise drifted across the night air. It was very faint – distant – but there was no doubting what it was: a car engine.

Zak quickly turned back to Ricky, who seemed to understand his unspoken worry. ‘If we get lost,’ Ricky said, ‘we’ll have a few hours to retrace our steps before the snow covers them up. I say we keep going, before anyone has a chance to catch up.’

‘Agreed,’ Zak said. ‘Let’s pick up our pace. Keep going.’

The way was slow and difficult. As they continued into the snowscape, the wind above them began to howl, and they felt it swirling around their bodies along with the snow. It was an invisible, icy whip. The powdery snow whirled all around them. There was nothing to distinguish one moment from the next. It was almost like walking on a treadmill – constant movement, but nothing to show for it.

The temperature started to drop. The high-pitched whistling of the wind grew stronger. Zak realized he was in a kind of trance, unaware of exactly how much time had passed. An hour? Perhaps more? He forced himself to snap out of it.

Just in time.

Malcolm was only a couple of metres ahead when he stumbled. He fell knee deep into the snow. Zak called to Ricky to stop marching, then hurried up to help his friend. Malcolm was shaking badly, and there was something worrying in his gaze. He was staring into the middle distance, as if he didn’t know where he was or what was happening.

‘Get to your feet, buddy,’ Zak said. Malcolm nodded, and allowed Zak to pull him up. ‘How many fingers?’ Zak asked, holding up three.

Malcolm squinted. ‘Three,’ he whispered.

Ricky grabbed Zak by the arm. ‘We should
be
somewhere by now,’ he said. ‘The outskirts of Anchorage, or somewhere. But we haven’t seen a road or a building in an hour.’ He frowned, and Zak saw that snow had settled on his eyebrows. ‘I think we’re lost.’ He nodded his head towards Malcolm. ‘And he needs to warm up,’ he said. ‘We all do.’

Zak reckoned Ricky was right. They’d made a bad call. Zak looked back along the trail of footprints. They weren’t too late to follow their path back to the road. But what if someone was on their tail? They’d walk right into them. If they went static now, and lit a fire to warm up, they’d be sitting ducks . . .

‘We need to walk a loop,’ he said.

Ricky looked confused. ‘What do you mean?’

‘We can’t go static without knowing if someone’s following us. If we loop back on ourselves, we can see the footprints of anyone following, then bug off in a different direction. If there are no footprints, we can find somewhere out of the wind and rest up for a bit.’

Ricky nodded. ‘Let’s do it,’ he said.

They veered to the right and started trudging a large loop, several hundred metres in diameter. Zak could see Malcolm’s knees trembling as they walked. He knew it was only a matter of time before he collapsed again. Ten minutes passed. Visibility: five metres. Their pace was slowing because of Malcolm. The slower they went, the colder they grew. Zak heard a strange howling noise, but told himself it was only the wind. Any minute now, they’d reach the trail and would be able to take a rest, maybe even light a fire . . .

Ricky stopped and raised one hand to indicate that the others should do the same. He was staring at the snow, and Zak could tell something was wrong. He hurried past Malcolm to join his other companion.

He immediately saw what was troubling Ricky.

The tracks they’d left had been slightly covered by the snowfall, but they were still distinct. Alongside them, however, was another set of tracks. They were larger, broader – and obviously not human.

‘What is it?’ Ricky breathed. ‘What’s following us?’

Zak stepped towards the fresh tracks and bent down to examine them. Each print was just over thirty centimetres long and half that much wide. There were five toes, each with a distinct claw mark.

He stood up, his jaw clenched and his heart pumping hard. ‘A bear,’ he said.

Ricky froze. It was nothing to do with the cold.

‘I thought bears hibernated at this time of year,’ he said quietly. His teeth chattered as he spoke.

Zak shook his head. ‘They’d be lured out of hibernation if they were very hungry, or if they knew there was easy food nearby.’

There was a sudden screaming gust that blew a flurry of snow up from the ground. Riding on the wind was another noise. Distant, and yet somehow very close. A low, heart-stopping roar.

– What was that?
snapped the voice in Ricky’s head.

– You really need to ask?

Ricky saw that Zak was spinning round. He’d obviously heard it too, and was trying to work out what direction the noise had come from.

‘Options?’ Ricky asked tensely. He looked at Malcolm, who didn’t appear to have registered the roar. He was hugging himself warm, and his teeth were chattering. The fact of a bear in the vicinity didn’t appear to be worrying him. But as Ricky was fast learning, with Malcolm you could never tell.

Zak pointed at their footprints. Their paths made the shape of a T where their current trail had hit the original one at right angles. ‘If we retrace our steps,’ he said quickly, ‘we’ll be doubling up on our scent. The animal will be bound to follow us. I say we head straight on. If it reaches this junction, there’ll only be a one-in-three chance of it following our trail.’

Ricky was about to agree, when another roar reached them on the wind. It was still impossible to tell what direction it came from, but it sounded closer this time.

‘
Run!
’ he hissed.

It was an unspoken thing. Ricky and Zak both grabbed one of Malcolm’s arms and started hurrying him along with them. It meant they could move slightly more quickly than before, but Ricky could tell from the lethargic way Malcolm was stumbling, and the way his body felt so heavy, that he was tiring quickly. He heard Zak say, ‘You can do it, buddy.’ But he wasn’t so sure that Malcolm could.

And suddenly, Ricky wasn’t sure that
he
could carry on much further either. A weird lassitude had suddenly crept over him. It didn’t make sense. Half of his brain was panicking – the sort of panic he’d only experienced in a dream when he knew he was being chased but couldn’t move his legs fast enough to run. The other half felt like it was falling asleep. His limbs were heavy and reluctant. He wanted nothing more than to curl up in the snow and close his eyes . . .

Somewhere in an active corner of his brain, he remembered what Zak had said before they’d set out from the car.
If any of us starts to feel sleepy, we need to say so – it’s the first sign of hypothermia . . .

‘Sleepy . . .’ Ricky muttered, even as they rushed through the snow. ‘Feeling . . . sleepy . . .’

They stopped. Ricky felt his knees buckling, just like Malcolm’s had. He was vaguely aware of Zak walking round to stand in front of him. He felt Zak pulling back his hood, exposing Ricky’s head to the elements. Then . . .

Whack!

Zak slapped him hard across the side of the face. Ricky sucked in a lungful of cold air as a sharp, stinging sensation spread across his cheek. The lassitude immediately fell away. He saw Zak looking at him, head cocked, as if sizing him up. His companion raised his hand again to hit him for a second time, but as he took the swing, Ricky caught Zak’s wrist in mid-air.

‘I’m good,’ he said, catching his breath. ‘Seriously . . . I’m good . . .’ The sleepiness had gone. Ricky watched as Zak moved over to Malcolm and appeared to size him up for a slap as well, but then seemed to think better of it.

‘We’ll up our speed,’ Zak said. ‘It’ll keep you warm.’

They half ran, half walked, barely daring to look back, slipping and sliding through the snow. Ricky was sweating under his clothes, and he started to feel very thirsty. But they couldn’t stop. Whenever Ricky did glance over his shoulder, he saw nothing but snow and darkness. Every few minutes, however, over the howling wind, he heard the same roar. Sometimes it was nearer. Sometimes it was further away. But each time he heard it, it struck an icy fear into his heart far colder than anything the Alaskan winter could throw at him.

– Whatever it is, it sounds hungry.

That one thought was enough to make Ricky up his pace.

Ten terrifying minutes passed. Fifteen. Gradually, up ahead, Ricky thought he could make out something different to the swirling mass of blackness that his eyes had grown used to. Tall silhouettes, lurking high in the distance, maybe fifty metres away, maybe a hundred.

‘Trees,’ Zak confirmed curtly.

They stopped moving.

‘Do we move towards the forest?’ Ricky asked. ‘It’ll be more sheltered there, but isn’t that where bears are more likely to be hibernating?’

Zak nodded. ‘Let’s veer in the other direction,’ he said.

They altered their bearing by forty-five degrees. Malcolm seemed to have regained some of his strength. After they’d travelled just a few paces, he released himself from their grip and started hurrying through the snow unaided. It was a relief. In the panic, Ricky hadn’t realized how exhausting it had been holding him up. Now that they were running separately, their speed increased. Ricky took the lead again, with Zak holding up the rear, so that Malcolm wouldn’t lag behind. They moved surprisingly fast. Fear was a good accelerator.

For three minutes they heard no roaring. But every ten paces, Ricky found himself looking around, trying to spot some movement he thought he’d seen at the edge of his vision. But when he tried to pick it out, there was nothing but the falling snow.

The wind quietened, and for a moment the moon appeared from behind the clouds. It lit up the snowscape all around, which was much more undulating than Ricky had thought. He looked over his shoulder, once more trying to see whatever was on the edge of his senses. But there was nothing, except the treetops perhaps one klick away.

– You’re imagining it. There’s nothing there . . .

Then the moon disappeared again, plunging them back into darkness.

‘STOP!’ Zak bellowed.

Ricky skidded to a halt. But he was a millisecond too late. There was a cracking, splintering sound under his right foot. He felt his leg sinking into cold water. He heard Zak shouting – ‘Ricky!’ But even as he heard the word, he lost his balance completely, toppled forward and fell. The cracking sound was much louder this time. In a corner of his brain, Ricky knew what was happening. He’d stepped onto the thin ice of a hidden river crossing their path. He was suddenly underwater.