Arena (18 page)
You’re okay
, she told herself.
You’re almost to the top
.
Taking a trembling breath, Callie forced herself to open her eyes— the worst thing she could have done. She was looking down, and the ground seemed a hundred feet away. Adrenaline fired in hot prickling waves. She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth.
Not again. Please,
not again. I have to do this
.
Her palms were slick with sweat, her fingertips slippery on the stone. The soles of her boots teetered on their purchase as memories of the Disneyland Skyway resurfaced—vivid and awful as the day they were born—the small car swinging in the breeze as her panic rose along with her father’s rage.
“You’re doing fine, Callie,” Pierce murmured from somewhere below and to the right. “Don’t stop.”
She couldn’t open her eyes. Couldn’t move her arms or legs. Couldn’t do anything but cling to the wall in desperation.
I can’t do it!
I can’t do it!
The words shrieked like a whirlwind through her mind. A violent trembling overtook her.
Oh no . . .
Her foot slipped from its knob. She clutched harder to her handholds, but her efforts only made her situation worse. Both hands began to slide off the ridges they clung to. Then the other foot gave way— and she was falling.
Images whirled through her mind—the Skyway’s chrome railing, the puffy clouds, the dark things pulling at her as she cried and clung to her daddy’s arms. They could not make her lose hold of him, would
not
. She would hang on with all her might. . . .
The arm to which she clung was suddenly warm and slick with sweat and Callie opened her eyes. Pierce was bent over her, gently slapping her face. She blinked and released her grip on him.
They were in a shadowed cleft. Rock walls soared on either side, framing a narrow rectangle of sky. Pierce’s brow ran with sweat and he was panting. He must have carried her.
She started to speak, but his fingers pressed her lips, and shaking his head, he mouthed, “Are you hurt?”
Her knee throbbed and her back ached, but neither injury seemed incapacitating. She shook her head.
“They’re just below,” he whispered, “searching for our trail. I ran through the stream to confuse them, but it won’t last. We have to get to the road.”
She eyed the sheer rock faces, the slit of sky above, then shook her head again. “I can’t. You saw what happens to me.”
“It’s only about six feet of vertical, then it slopes back. Just wedge yourself into the chute and work your way up. I can help you.” He regarded her soberly. “If you won’t try, we might as well slit our throats now.”
Callie rubbed her palms on her thighs, staring down the narrow cleft to the green slash of willows and weeds below. Faint sounds drifted up—splashing, snuffling, the rattle of pebbles. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, squeezing down the fear as she squeezed her fists. Finally she swallowed hard and nodded.
He helped her up. Bracing her back against one side of the chute, her booted feet against the other, she inched her way upward. It wasn’t long before her legs shook from the effort, and pain shot from both knee and spine, but she gritted her teeth and kept on. She was past the halfway point when Pierce started up. Soon she heard him breathing right below her.
The facing wall became harder to press against as the chute widened. Her legs straightened, and she had to use her toes and the upper part of her back. Panic fluttered in her belly.
“You’ve done it,” Pierce said. “Now shove with your legs and roll over the edge. I’ll help you. On three.”
At the end of his count Callie pressed hard with both legs, twisting and arching her back as she did. The movement wrenched a smothered cry from her lips, and she teetered on the lip of rock, not quite strong enough to roll all the way. Then she felt his hands on her bottom, thrusting her up and over. And all at once she lay facedown on the rock, a prickly weed in her face.
“Here I come.”
Wincing, she scrambled aside as Pierce shoved out of the chute and rolled to his feet in one fluid movement. From there, as he had promised, a narrow, easily managed path ascended to the rim, not twenty feet ahead of them.
As a snarling ruckus erupted below they hurried up the trail, Callie in the lead. When she reached the stand of oily-smelling willows on the rim and pressed through it to a grassy flat—there it was. Fifty yards ahead, the broad white surface of the gate road gleamed like a beacon.
Exultant, she was about to emerge from cover when she spotted four Trogs approaching from the right. She dodged back into Pierce, and he saw them at once. Using the foliage as a screen, they circled the clearing, the sounds of their passage lost in the commotion being made by the mutants still searching the riverbed. But when they came to the end of the willows, thirty yards of open grass still separated them from safety.
“We’ll have to run for it,” Pierce whispered.
Callie looked at the four creatures gathered across the clearing at the edge of the cliff, hooting and bellowing at their companions below, then met his gaze and nodded.
Terror overrode the pain in her knee, and Callie ran all out, dodging and leaping clumps of sage and yellow grass. Pierce ran behind and to the side, shielding her from the mutants, whose cries of discovery they heard all too soon, the road still an eternity away. Her breath tore at her throat, and her chest burned. The round weights of a Trog’s bola whirled past her head. Another clattered behind her, followed by a heavy thump. She glanced back. Pierce rolled in a cloud of dust, legs entangled as his knife flashed.
“Run!” he yelled, the bonds already falling free.
As she obeyed, a third bola clattered around a sage plant, its heavy black head slamming her ankle. She staggered, vision flashing with the pain as she regained her balance and dashed on. Two dark giants burst from the trees to her left, so close she could see their eyes and hear their grunts as they ran. Then Pierce caught her arm and hurled her forward as he dove for the road. They sprawled in a tangle on its far side.
Shoulder and cheek stinging fiercely, Callie rolled back against Pierce, and his arm tightened around her. Along the river side of the road, a mere four feet away, nine huge Trogs leered down at them, their chests broad and solid, their hands big as dinner plates. Lank, greasy hair hung over their shoulders, framing mostly bearded faces with piggish eyes and heavy brows. Ragged, too-short britches wrapped their bodies, exposing furry shins above worn boots. Surprisingly, one of them was female, an oddity among Trog populations since most women did not survive their initial months of capture. This one had grown almost as big as the males, so coarse and heavy of feature her gender was only distinguishable by the most basic of female accoutrements, and even that took a second glance.
Gagging on the stench of urine and old sweat, Callie cringed against Pierce, feeling unspeakably small and helpless. And yet, though the mutants grimaced and growled, they did not advance or lift their weapons, though bolas dangled from several hands, and all had knives and crossbows.
After all its inconsistencies, the manual appeared to be right in one thing: The road
was
a safe zone.
As her terror waned, Callie took note of the mutants’ deformities, side effects of their exposure to the fire curtain. The one in the tight red trousers had a flared, piglike nose with a large, oozing, dark-crusted mole. Another sported two hornlike knobs sprouting from his forehead. A third had a clubbed hand so large it resembled a flipper. And a fourth continually changed form before her eyes, alternating between a handsome, almost stark-naked blonde and a lizardlike creature squatting at the roadside.
They hooted and snarled and roared, made threatening motions with bolas and knives, but not one of them set foot on the white pavement.
We can probably get up and walk away
.
She was preparing to test that theory when the creatures ceased their fussing and murmured, “Andrews . . . come with us. . . .”
Andrews? Wasn’t that Pierce’s last name?
“Taste the fire. . . .”
The wind kicked up a veil of dirt around them as overhead one of a growing number of cotton-ball clouds blotted out the sun.
“You know you want it. . . .”
Pain in her bicep drew Callie’s attention to Pierce’s hand, tightening viselike around her arm. His bruised face had paled, his good eye darted wildly, and he panted like a trapped animal. She sensed he was near to breaking, that any moment he might bolt, panic-stricken, or curl up inside himself and seal it all out.
“Andrews . . .”
Fear for him tightened her throat. She pried his fingers off her arm and turned to face him. “Pierce, they can’t hurt us. Don’t listen to them.”
He gave no sign he’d heard her.
“Come on.” She took his hand and stood and, when he did not respond, bent to shake his arm. “Pierce! Come
on!
” Behind her the mutants jeered. “Won’t do no good, babe.”
“He’s not listening, girlie.”
“Give it up, sweet cakes. He knows what he wants, and it ain’t you.”
“Forget them!” She grabbed his bearded chin and forced him to look at her. He was trembling, and sweat sheened his brow as the wind fanned locks of hair at his temple.
“Don’t,” he said in a small, tight voice. “Don’t let them . . .” His eyes flicked to the Trogs, came back to her, full of terror, then glazed.
“No!” she cried, shaking him hard. “You’re not giving up now.” She stood again and tried to pull him to his feet, but he was dead weight. “We’re on the road!” she cried. “They can’t hurt us. Come on, Pierce! Don’t do this.”
Her vehemence must have gotten through—for a moment his eyes focused on her, and then he helped her pull him up, let her tug him into motion. But after that he marched mechanically, his hand limp in hers, face blank.
The Trogs followed alongside, taunting and hooting, and after a while they even included Callie in their abuse, offering obscene comments and lurid suggestions of what they wanted to do with her. Occasionally the shapeshifter leaped ahead and, assuming his lizard form, screamed wildly. It scared her at first, then became mildly amusing. With time, even the taunts ceased to unnerve her—being nothing but noise and bluster. As long as she stayed on the road, they couldn’t touch her.
She wondered why they persisted. Did they really expect them to panic and bolt? Maybe. It seemed the mutants weren’t strong on brains—the enlargement of their bodies appeared to work a reciprocal shrinkage of gray matter.
Up on the rim, the clouds knocked together and rumbled with thunder, but they offered little relief out here on the plain. The sun beat at her like a mallet on a gong, burning her exposed skin and raising a sweat that stung the raw spots on her face and shoulder while pain stabbed her knee with every step. The river’s cool shimmer grew increasingly tempting, especially since the Trogs frequently went down to douse themselves, returning wet and pungent smelling to offer her bags of water, which they then laughingly drank in front of her.
Callie’s mouth grew dry, and the sun’s heat intolerable. She floated through spells of dissociation, caught up in visions of a cool, sweet plunge into one of the river’s deep eddies, and finally found herself stopped at a break in the bank where a path led down to it. It wasn’t far, and she ached for a drink and a rest.
Surprised by the silence, she glanced around. When had the mutants left?
Oh well, what did it matter? They were gone. And she needed water. She’d come right back, just be a minute.
The voice at the back of her mind—the one she always seemed to ignore—told her not to be foolish, that she wasn’t
that
thirsty. But look—Pierce was already running down the path, so she might as well follow him, right? As she started after him, she wondered at his sudden recovery. And several steps off the road, she realized he hadn’t recovered at all. Whirling back, she saw him standing where she’d left him, staring blankly back in the direction from which they’d come. As she raced to his side, a bola sailed after her, flying over the road and pin-wheeling around a sage bush.
Reverting to his lizard form, the shapeshifter came back up the bank to watch them. Callie seized Pierce’s hand and glanced over her shoulder. Sure enough, the Trogs were hiding in the willows along the bank’s edge. And not just Trogs. Beyond them, also in the willows, stood three gray, spidery-limbed Watchers.
Waiting for her to walk into the trap?
Shuddering, she limped on with Pierce in tow. One thing was certain— they weren’t leaving this road until they reached the Safehaven.
As the shadows lengthened, the anvil of clouds building above the cliffs finally spilled out over the plain, lightning raking its black underbelly as thunder rumbled across the land. The wind kicked up and rain scent rode the air. Callie reflected sourly that, where earlier she would’ve welcomed the storm, now it only promised a wet and miserable night—to say nothing of the possibility of their being electrocuted. But when she topped a rise, the sight of a low white building awash in warm light revived her flagging spirits. Although she tried to pick up the pace, Pierce continued to walk like a zombie, so by the time they plodded through the gate in the Safehaven’s outer wall, fat silvery droplets were splatting the pavement around them. Even then he wouldn’t hurry, mechanically crossing the white flagstone patio to the pair of entry doors, which slid open before them in a rush of foliage-scented air.
“We made it!” Callie cried as they stepped into the plant-choked atrium and the doors slid shut. Smiling, she turned and almost crowed with joy to see Pierce emerging from his shell.
His gaze roved the hanging ferns, the fishpond and fountain, the blue-and-white tile—and came to rest upon her. He looked long into her eyes, then drew his hand from hers to touch her cheek. “Thank you.”
His words came out ragged, more breathed than spoken, and she stared at him, vibrating with unexpected emotion. Suddenly her eyes teared and she turned away, swallowing a lump in her throat. Perplexed and embarrassed, she hurried through the atrium into the common room beyond and stopped in amazement.
