Ancestor

NOVEMBER 30: 7:34 P.M.

“YOU TWO FUCKTARDS must be on crack to send us up in this weather.”

Sara. Such a way with words. And yet Colding did, indeed, feel like a Grade-A Fucktard, because sending her up in said weather was the only way he could think of to get her to safety. Like that made any sense—get her to safety by putting her in severe danger.

Magnus drove Clayton’s Bv206. Colding sat in the passenger seat, Sara in the back. That’s how bad and how fast the storm had hit—they needed the Nuge to drive down the half-mile road from the mansion to the hangar. Colding had seen many winter storms, but never one from the vantage point of an island in the middle of Lake Superior. Wind seemed to shake the very ground, the clenched fist of a roaring elemental god. The snow didn’t fall, really—it permeated. Thick sheets blew in all directions, including up. And this was just the front end of a killing blizzard that had already cut visibility to a mere twenty yards.

Sara leaned forward over the front bench seat. “Let me make this clear. See this snow blowing fuckall over the place? In the air force we’d ground all flights.”

“You’re not in the air force,” Magnus said. “I got your point the third and fourth times you said it. The tenth is just overkill.” Magnus wore a big black parka, the hood pulled so far forward it hid his face. Colding couldn’t help but think he looked like a modernized version of the Grim Reaper—Death drives a Bv206.

Hazy lights grew visible as the Hummer crept forward. Visibility was so bad they were fifty yards away before Colding could make out the monstrous plane’s tail, and even then the front of the plane remained hidden by the storm. In the whipping haze, the black plane’s dimensions looked even larger, almost otherworldly.

Magnus stopped the Bv206 a few yards from the C-5. The wind’s demonic shriek even drowned out the idling jet engines. Colding, Magnus and Sara hurried out and scrambled up the rear ramp, fighting the wind all the way.

Most of the plexiglass stalls held an extremely pregnant cow, each suspended in a flight harness, hooves dangling just a half inch off the ground. IV tubes ran into each of their necks. The animals seemed surprisingly calm. Their vacant expressions showed no awareness of the danger around them, of the gale-force winds that would soon shake the plane like a martini mixer.

Sara pulled back her parka hood. Short blond hair stuck up in all directions, much like it did after several hours of lovemaking. “We have to wait.” She looked at them both, but Colding knew the words were meant for him. She was begging him to back her play. “I’m telling you it’s insane to fly out in weather like this. We could lose the whole project, not to mention the collective asses of me and my crew.”

Why didn’t she get it? This was her shot to get off the island, away from Magnus. “Fischer could be on the way,” Colding said. “We have to get you out of here now.”

“Come on, guys,” Sara said. “It’s not like anyone is going to land here in this weather. Just wait for the main part of the storm to blow over. We’ll fly out while it’s shit weather, but still doable.”

“I’m done with this,” Magnus said, his voice suddenly so loud even the docile cows turned to look. “You fly out of here right now.”

Colding mentally begged her to stop complaining, to just play ball.

“I refuse,” Sara said. “Flights are my call, we’re waiting. I just don’t like it.”

“Shut up,” Colding snapped. “Nobody said you had to fucking like it. Just do your goddamn job and fly the plane!”

She stared at him, her eyes showing more than a bit of betrayal. Colding instantly hated himself, but he had to get her off the island before her complaints made Magnus change his mind.

Magnus smiled, looking from Sara, to Colding, back to Sara again. “And remember, princess—total radio silence. If Fischer is out there, we can’t tip our hand. No radio until you’re thirty miles out from Manitoba, got it?”

Sara nodded.

“Good,” Magnus said. “You’re flying southwest to get out of the storm as quickly as possible. From there you’ll circle around the storm, then northeast to avoid the radar at Thunder Bay International. After that you’ll head for the home office. Jian, Gunther, Colding, Andy and I are staying here for now. Colding, let’s go.”

Sara looked uncomfortable at the mention of Jian’s name, but she said nothing.

Colding followed Magnus out of the cage and down the ramp. Sara’s safety, and the safety of the others, now rested squarely on her piloting skills.

NOVEMBER 30: 8:46 P.M.

A BRUTAL DOWNDRAFT swatted the half-million-pound C-5 Galaxy, dropping the plane a rattling two hundred feet in the blink of an eye. Sara wondered—for the seventh time in the last fifteen minutes, by her count—if this was it. She pulled back on the yoke, fighting the hurricane-class winds. The gust abated as suddenly as it appeared, and she dragged the C-5 back to five thousand feet.

Alonzo looked white as a sheet, an impressive barometer of his nervous state considering his dark complexion. His head moved with sharp, birdlike movements as his eyes flitted from instrument to instrument.

“This is nuts,” he said. “We’ve got to put her down.”

“Where exactly would you like to do that? We’re over the middle of Lake Superior.”

A crosswind slapped the C-5, shaking it, rattling metal hard enough to make Sara’s teeth clack. She’d flown in some bad shit before, but nothing like this. “We’re here, ’Zo, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Now quit whining and help me get through this.”

If she could take a step back in time, maybe she’d have pulled her Beretta and taken her chances in a shoot-out rather than flying into this storm. Was Peej’s note for real? Was Jian actually dead, or was that just a trick to motivate her to fly out in this ridiculous weather? Was he just using her again?

No. Couldn’t be. He wanted to get her and the boys away from Magnus. Peej had no choice—Magnus had already killed Jian, which meant everyone else’s life wasn’t worth a plugged nickel. If this was her one chance to get off the island, to get her crew to safety, she had to take it.

The plane lurched right, yanking her body against her seat restraints. Even though the cows were another deck down, she heard them mooing, braying. The sound carried tangible terror. She shared the sentiment, wondering at the power of a storm that could knock the C-5 around with such ease.

Alonzo snapped a peek at the instrument panel, then looked at her, his eyes wide. “That last gust was sixty-two knots.” Sweat drenched his face, but he kept his hands firmly on the yoke.

“Just be cool, ’Zo. Nothing to it.”

She focused on the instruments. She didn’t bother looking out the window; there was nothing to see but snow and ice.

NOVEMBER 30: 8:52 P.M.

THE C-5 FELL again, but only slightly this time. Compared with the roller-coaster ride of the past thirty minutes, the drop was barely noticeable.

“Wind down to forty knots,” Alonzo said. He looked better, relieved. They were now on the blizzard’s edge, still in significant danger, but it was nothing the C-5 couldn’t handle.

“Cue the Barry Manilow,” Sara said, “’cause it looks like we made it. I’d better see how the civvies handled that mess. Keep on this heading for another five minutes to get us some distance from the storm, then circle around it. See, ’Zo? I told you there was nothing to it.”

He smiled sheepishly. “Right, boss, nothing to it as long as you don’t mind wet-vaccing the poo streaks off my seat.”

She grabbed the handset to the in-plane intercom. “Deck two, deck two; everything okay back there?”

Rhumkorrf’s voice came back. “Are we quite finished with that tumultuous experience? I wouldn’t exactly call that the friendly skies.”

“You holding up okay, Doc?”

“I’m fine. I’m afraid I had some difficulty in retaining my preflight meal. I assume I am now free to mop about the cabin?”

Sara laughed. “Sure, Doc. Get yourself cleaned up. Don’t worry about it—I almost blew chunks myself. How’s Tim?”

“One of the cows fell out of the harness during flight. Tim is working on her.”

“Bad?”

“Not good,” Rhumkorrf said. “Not good at all.”

“I’m coming down,” Sara said, then put the handset back in the cradle. “Take over, ’Zo. I need to see what’s going on down there.”

NOVEMBER 30, 8:55 P.M.

COAT IN HAND, Sara descended the fore ladder. The second deck was a total mess. Two or three cabinets had popped open during the flight. Debris littered the lab like scientific shrapnel: scattered papers, sterile vacuum packs, broken test tubes and petri dishes. Miller scurried about the area, picking up loose equipment and cleaning up in general.

Pitiful cow sounds filled the air. Sound wasn’t the only thing that escaped them—the lab smelled like a shithouse. Froth clung to the big animals’ mouths and noses, glistening sweat covered their coats. Wide black eyes looked for a way out.

At the far end of the barn near the folded-up rear ramp, Sara saw an open door at stall three. Tim Feely and Cappy were in the aisle, Cappy kneeling and pushing all his upper-body weight on the cow’s head to keep it still. Its eyes blinked spasmodically, its tongue lolled. Tim Feely had one knee pressed heavily on the cow’s big neck. He held up a vial and tried to slide a syringe needle into it. Bright blood covered the sleeves of his jacket.

Sara ran to them. Standing up, the cows had a decent amount of room in their stalls—lying flat, hardly any. The cow lay on its right side, legs pointed toward the front of the plane. Blood seeped from the cow’s ruptured stomach: a ragged, glistening tear ran from the udder almost to the sternum. A small, bloody, clawed foot hung from the tear, flopping limply in time with the cow’s twitches. The fetuses. The predator fetuses. Holy shit… it hadn’t seemed real until this second. If the cows gave birth, were the fetuses dangerous? No, even if they happened to be born at this very moment, they were still just babies.

The cow’s chest rose and fell in an arrhythmic pattern. A crack in the stall wall told the story—the crack was where the harness’s anchor used to be. The rough flying jostled the cow so much that the anchor ripped free and the cow fell, its overly pregnant belly splitting from the severe impact.

A sign, drawn in Magic Marker in Jian’s scrawled handwriting, hung from the stall door. The sign said MISS PATTY MELT. Sara felt a sharp pang of loss for her murdered friend.

Tim kept trying to get the needle into the vial. The C-5 still shook and lurched from the storm, but not bad enough to make him miss like that.

“Tim-dog,” Sara said, “you need some help with that?”

“I can handle it.” His words sounded slurred.

Sara looked down at Cappy, who mouthed the words he’s drunk.

Oh joy. Great timing, Tim.

He finally slid the needle into the vial, then drew back the plunger. A yellow fluid filled the hypo. He put the bottle in his pocket and flicked the syringe a few times, then gave the plunger a test push. Liquid shot out the needle.

“Hold her,” Tim said, and knelt harder on the cow’s neck. Sara leaned in next to Cappy, put her hands on the animal’s head. Even a halfhearted twitch betrayed the cow’s massive strength.

Tim grabbed at the IV line still stuck in the cow’s neck. He slid the needle into a port on the IV line and pushed the plunger all the way down. The cow’s twitching slowed, then stopped.

Sara watched Tim. The man didn’t move, didn’t breathe—he just stared at the cow. Finally, after a few seconds, relief washed over his face.

Tim stood and let out a long, cheek-puffing breath. “Well, time for a drink. I was getting very worried there for a—”

The cow lurched to life with an earsplitting bellow. A front hoof snapped out and hit Tim in his right knee, so fast and powerful it knocked the man’s legs out from under him. He dropped, his legs in the aisle, his body falling into the stall and sliding down the cow’s bloody, torn belly.

Sara dodged the kicking hoof and stuck her left arm into the stall to grab Tim’s hand. She pulled and Tim started to scramble out, but the front leg came back hard, the hoof’s sharp edge clipping Tim’s forehead. His head snapped back, blood instantly pouring from his scalp and sheeting down his face. Sara kept her right hand on the stall wall for balance, her left locked on Tim’s hand.

“Cappy, help me get him out of there!”

Cappy hopped up, his hands grasping either side of the open door. He raised his knees high and came down with his shins pinning the cow’s front legs. A part of Sara’s brain wanted to stop and applaud the brilliant move. Miss Patty Melt’s struggles slowed. Cappy reached deeper into the stall and grabbed the front of Tim’s jacket.

She and Cappy leaned back to pull Feely free. In the same instant, a bloody thing slid out of the cow’s ruptured stomach. Sara saw a flash of wet red, a gaping, triangular mouth and long white teeth that snapped down on Cappy’s left arm. The sound of cracking bones joined the cow’s bellows, followed instantly by Cappy’s agonized scream.

Within the tiny cage, the fifteen-hundred-pound cow thrashed about in a braying, blood-splashing panic. Tim flopped limply, unconscious, thrown about by the cow’s torn body and its kicking rear legs. Cappy’s right hand punched madly at the thing biting his left arm.

Sara drew her Beretta and fired at the cow’s head, the gunshots thinly echoing through the confined space. The first bullet removed most of the lower jaw in a spray of blood and splintering bone. The second missed Miss Patty Melt’s thrashing head and ripped through the floor. The third turned the cow’s eye into a gaping red hole of negative space.

Miss Patty Melt convulsed harder, legs and hooves twitching violently. She let out a strange, sad yell that sounded achingly human, a noise Sara would never forget despite the horrors that were to follow in the coming days.

Sara dropped hard, planting her knees on Miss Patty Melt’s muscular neck. She put the barrel in the cow’s ear and pulled the trigger once more. Blood splashed up, splattering her coat, her face.

The cow stopped screaming.

Cappy did not.

His face contorted in agony, he punched madly with his right fist, raining blows down on the bloody creature locked on his left arm. “Let go let go!” He lurched back into the aisle, pulling the slimy, jaw-locked monstrosity all the way out of the cow’s stomach.

Holy shit it’s as big as he is holyshitholyshit. Sara reflexively jumped back a step, instinct screaming at her to stay away from the thing.

Suddenly Miller was there, throwing himself on the bloody creature, wrapping his arms around the thing. “Sara, shoot it!”

Sara put the barrel against the abomination’s skinless head, angled the Beretta so the bullet wouldn’t hit Cappy’s arm, then pulled the trigger. A baseball-sized chunk erupted out of the skull, spraying blood and brains and bone.

The thing fell limp, its dead jaws opening just enough for Cappy to slide his ravaged arm off the embedded teeth.

Sara wiped the back of her hand across her face, scraping away wetness. Some of it remained, hot but rapidly cooling in the plane’s frigid air.

The remaining cows lurched and bucked against their flight harnesses, probably driven to panic by the screams of Miss Patty Melt. Hooftips scraped the floor, filling the plane with a clicking, scratching chorus.

Sara saw Rhumkorrf in the veterinary area, holding tight to the edge of the lab table.

“Help… me,” Cappy called out in a weak voice, drawing her attention back where it belonged.

“Got you, pal,” Miller said. He leaned in to examine his best friend’s wound.

Sara stood and took in the carnage—two wounded people, a huge cow, a dead thing the size of a Great Dane and more blood than a slaughterhouse.

“Miller, how bad is it?”

He moved so Sara could see Cappy’s arm. She heard her own automatic gasp—the monster’s teeth had broken Cappy’s radius and ulna in several places. Blood spurted from the wound, spilling on his lap and on the floor where it mixed with the blood of the dead cow and the blood of the creature. His hand wobbled sickly each time Miller moved it, as if only a few strands of muscle kept it attached.

“We need help, fast,” Miller said. He tore off his jacket and wrapped it around his friend’s wound, trying to stop the bleeding with pressure. He looked at the bloody fetal corpse. “Sara, what the hell is that thing? ’Cause it sure as fuck ain’t no cow!”

“It’s dead, that’s what it is,” Sara said. “And as soon as we get out of this weather, we’re opening the back doors and dumping every last one of these fucking cows out the rear ramp and into Lake Superior.”

She rushed to an intercom panel and punched the cockpit button. “Alonzo, call Manitoba right away. We need an alternate landing site.”

The speaker crackled with Alonzo’s voice. “But Magnus ordered radio silence.”

“Cappy’s hurt bad. Get Manitoba on the line and tell them we need a landing site with medical facilities. We need it now. If they can’t find us one, tell them we’re heading for Houghton-Hancock.”

“Got it.”

Sara sprinted back to stall three, passing the still-anxious, still-lurching cows. Straps and buckles rattled, hooves clacked hard against thick plexiglass.

The dog-thing remained in the aisle, its blood spreading in a slowly expanding puddle. Redness clung to fur: white with black spots. The heavy, triangular head looked almost as large as the rest of the body. A strange growth stuck out of the back of the skull, like a single antelope horn but parallel to the stubby body. The growth wasn’t bone, though; it looked flexible. Skin ran from the growth down to the bloody creature’s back.

She tried to think, tried to process. She wasn’t trained for this. No one was trained for this. She looked back to the vet lab, where Rhumkorrf was still standing, his hands locked on the black lab table.

“Doc! Get your ass over here, we’ve got wounded!”

He let go of the table with an obvious act of will, then jogged down the aisle. Sara couldn’t bear to look at Cappy, so she focused on the fetus. She could see why Miss Patty Melt had kicked that way despite the poison coursing through her veins. Skinless little arms, still folded against its body, ended in paws with six-inch-long needle-claws.

That… thing, it didn’t want to die. It felt the poison… it tried to get away.

Then Rhumkorrf was next to her, kneeling by Cappy and Miller, his knees dipping into puddles of mixed blood. He took one long look at the wound, then started pulling his belt out of his pants.

“Hold him,” he said to Miller.

Rhumkorrf looped the belt around Cappy’s arm, just above the horrific wound, then slid the tongue through the buckle. Miller grabbed Cappy’s good arm and a shoulder. Sara reached over the top of Rhumkorrf and put her hands on the wounded man’s ankles.

Rhumkorrf leaned close to Cappy’s ear. “I have to put on the tourniquet to stop the bleeding. This is going to hurt very much, yes?”

Cappy’s eyes remained squeezed shut, but he nodded.

“Hold him,” Rhumkorrf said again, then firmly pulled the belt tight.

Cappy threw his head back and screamed.

Rhumkorrf tightened it further, then looped the free end of the belt around the arm and tied it fast. “Get him to the infirmary. I’ll look at Tim and come up as soon as I can.”

“Sara,” Miller said. “Get Cappy’s legs.”

She turned her attention to the task at hand. They carried their wounded friend up the aisle, past the stalls to the lift. The elevator platform lowered. Still holding Cappy, she and Miller rode the lift to the second deck.

NOVEMBER 30, 8:59 P.M.

THEY LAID CAPPY down on the infirmary table. His blood trailed out the door all the way back to the lift, like some twisted version of Hansel and Gretel.

“This fucking hurts,” he hissed through clenched teeth.

Miller ripped open a cabinet, pulled out gauze and an air splint. “Just hold tight, buddy. You’ll be okay.” He looked up at Sara. “We need that landing site, now.”

Sara walked to the infirmary’s intercom and pushed the cockpit button.

“’Zo, what’s our status?”

No response.

She pushed the button again.

“’Zo, talk to me.”

Still no response.

Then she smelled it… smoke.

She felt the rush of yet another adrenaline surge and sprinted down the short hall to the cockpit.

Thin tendrils of white curled up from the closed cockpit door. She wrenched the door open. Smoke hung in the air, expanding the hazy glow of the multicolored control lights.

“’Zo! You okay?”

“Where the hell have you been?” Alonzo kept his hands on the yoke, not bothering to look back at her. “The radio is out. As soon as I tried to transmit I heard a pop. I tried calling you, but whatever it was also took out the intercom. I put out the fire. We’re okay, but we’re deaf and mute until I can get in there and fix it.”

A pop… as soon as he tried to use the radio.

“Oh, fuck,” she said quietly.

She tried to remember where she’d seen Magnus. She looked at the comm station, under the observer’s seat, all over the cockpit. Nothing.

Alonzo turned in his chair to look back. “Sara, what are you doing? What the fuck… you’re covered in blood!”

“Not worried about that now,” she said, then ran out the door. She ran into the bunk room, looked under the metal bunks, ripped mattresses off and threw them. Nothing. She tried the head, in the small supply cabinets, under the tiny washbasin… still nothing.

Please, please, please, let me be wrong.

She moved to the game room. Her eyes instantly fell on the flat-panel TV. She felt a tingling on her scalp as she ran to it, angled her body to look behind it.

There, wedged between the TV and the hull wall, was more plastic explosive than she’d ever seen in her life.

NOVEMBER 30, 9:03 P.M.

SARA STARED AT the bomb. So many wires, connected to the hull, to the back of the TV, to the floor. She knelt, careful not to jostle anything, eyes scanning until she found it—a small, LCD timer that read 9:01… 9:00… 8:59… 8:58.

Calm down calm down keep it cool if you don’t think clear you die.

Colding and Magnus weren’t sending the C-5 to Manitoba; they were sending it to the bottom of Lake Superior. By the time the storm blew over, there would be no trace of the C-5 or anything in it. A thousand feet of water would cover the wreckage forever.

They couldn’t even bail out: in this storm their parachutes would foul and they’d drop. If hitting at terminal velocity didn’t kill them instantly, drowning in ice-cold water would follow shortly. Even if they managed to get into a raft, they’d be up against twenty-foot swells and seventy-knot winds. SOS or no SOS, no one would reach them in time.

She took a deep breath. Think. Stay rational, think. There had to be a way out. Sara synchronized her watch with the bomb—at 9:12 P.M., the plastique would rip the C-5 to shreds. She didn’t know anything about defusing a bomb. Neither did her crew. All those extra wires… if they moved the bomb, she had no doubt it would blow instantly. She could start pulling wires, but only as a desperate final option. She sprinted to the cockpit where she grabbed a flight map and threw it down on the small table in the navigator’s section. Her hands smoothed the map, accidentally smearing blood across the paper.

“’Zo, where are we?”

“Halfway through our circle around the storm. We’re only a hundred miles from Houghton-Hancock.”

She traced the path on the map. “We’re not going to make it to Houghton-Hancock. There’s a bomb onboard, we’ve got nine minutes to live.”

Alonzo quickly set the autopilot and scrambled out of his seat to join Sara. “Nine minutes? Who planted a bomb?”

“Had to be Magnus. I saw him in here a few hours before takeoff.” She checked her watch: 9:04 P.M. Eight minutes. They couldn’t reach Houghton-Hancock. Magnus’s crazy circular flight path had them dead smack in the middle of Lake Superior—they couldn’t reach anything.

Almost anything… there was one place they could reach.

“Take us back into the storm,” she said. “Gun it, full throttle. We’re going back to the island.”

“Back to the island? Where Magnus is? No fucking way!”

Sara’s composure disintegrated. She reached out with her blood-smeared right hand and grabbed the collar of Alonzo’s parka. “We don’t have a choice! Look at the goddamn map. We can’t get anywhere else before the bomb blows up.”

“But he’s trying to kill us—”

Sara’s left hand joined her right. She shook his collar with each word, jerking the slick, down-filled fabric.

“I… know… that! They only turn on the radar for scheduled takeoffs or landings, remember? It’s off, they won’t know we’re coming, so take us back into the storm!”

She released his collar. He blinked a few times, then he scrambled back to the copilot’s chair. The engines whined. She held the table while the C-5 banked.

“Heading back into the storm,” Alonzo said. “But they don’t need radar to know we’re there. Even with this shit visibility, they’ll see us land on the airstrip.”

There had to be a way, something. Her eyes scanned the map… then she remembered Clayton’s words. There. That would work, would have to, or they would all die. She carried the map to Alonzo. “We’re not landing on the strip.” Before he could ask where, her finger jabbed out their destination. He took one look at the map, then looked up, a shocked expression on his face.

“Rapleje Bay? No way.”

“It’s a mile long and frozen over.”

“We’re landing on ice, ice we won’t see until we’re less than a hundred feet from it, and we don’t know how thick it is. I’m taking us to the landing strip, we’ll have to shoot it out with Magnus.”

“He’s got a fucking Stinger missile! The strip is only a half mile from the mansion; if he hears us coming in, all he needs is thirty seconds to blow us out of the sky. ’Zo, if you want to live, you’ve got five minutes to put us on that bay! Land it, then help Miller get Cappy the fuck out fast.”

She ran out of the cockpit, tossing the map back on the table as she left. If they reached the bay in five minutes, that would give them two minutes to get off and get clear. She ran down the hall, back into the bloody infirmary. Miller was still working on the unconscious Cappy.

“I stopped the bleeding,” Miller said. “Get Doc Rhumkorrf up here already, like now.”

“No time,” Sara said. “Listen carefully. There’s a bomb onboard. Strap Cappy down, we’re going back into the blizzard, back to Black Manitou. Emergency landing on a frozen bay. Our chances are shitty, but it’s the only option we have. Do you understand?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Good. When we hit the deck, ’Zo will help you get Cappy out. Move fast or all of you die.”

She took off through the upper-deck lab and scrambled down the aft ladder. Rhumkorrf and the unconscious Tim were still in stall number three. Rhumkorrf had found some surgical thread and was finishing up stitches on Tim’s forehead. Even done in crappy flying conditions, the stitches looked tight and tiny.

Rhumkorrf spoke without looking away from his work. “Tim could have internal injuries. We need a hospital immediately, we can’t move him.”

“I don’t care,” Sara said. “We’re making an emergency landing, and I need Tim in a crash chair, right now.”

Rhumkorrf looked up. “Emergency… what’s going on?”

“Magnus canceled the project, and us along with it. There’s a bomb onboard that goes off in six minutes.”

Rhumkorrf’s jaw dropped. “A bomb? That doesn’t make any sense. The Pagliones have invested millions in this project!”

“And now they’re cutting their losses.”

“But what about the cows, they—”

“Fuck the cows! Don’t you get it? There is no more project. Magnus wants all of this gone, and us with it. Now, go to the cabinets in Tim’s lab. Emergency supplies are there. We have to hide in winter woods for I don’t know how long. Find blankets and jackets, move!”

Rhumkorrf scrambled to the cabinets, leaving Sara with the unconscious Tim Feely. The man looked seriously fucked up. He was still lying next to Miss Patty Melt, soaked in her blood, his head on the cow’s rear legs, his calves on her front legs. The skin beneath his twenty-odd stitches looked red and swollen.

Oh shit, his knee. No blood, but it had swollen so much that the pant leg material looked tight and strained. Didn’t take a doctor to see that Tim Feely wouldn’t be able to walk on his own. She grabbed his hands and pulled the unconscious man into a sitting position. She squatted, slid her arms under his armpits and around his back, then stood. Tim rose up like a limp marionette. Hell, he wasn’t that heavy at all, maybe a buck forty-five soaking wet.

She clutched his right shoulder, then slid her left arm between his legs and pulled him onto her shoulders in a fireman’s carry. Sara carefully stepped over the cow’s legs and into the aisle, then up to the flight chairs. She set him down gently and fastened his restraints.

She checked her watch—9:08… four minutes.

Sara ran across the aisle to Rhumkorrf, who was making piles of first-aid kits, MREs and blankets. They needed everything they could carry. If they came down undetected, and if they survived the landing, the island was big enough to stay hidden, but for how long?

She found duffel bags and tossed one to Rhumkorrf. He started cramming his piles inside.

“Why?” he said. “Why in God’s name would they wipe out the project?”

“Just pack, Doc.”

She’d have to take out Magnus, get him before he knew they were back. He had that arsenal in the mansion’s basement—if he and Andy and Gunther went on the offensive, Sara and her boys didn’t stand a chance.

“They can’t do this,” Rhumkorrf said. “They can’t cancel my project, I simply won’t allow it.”

“Doc, shut the fuck up!”

She’d have to start at Sven Ballantine’s place. It was the closest house to Rapleje Bay. Get Cappy inside, probably take Sven prisoner. No way of knowing what the old man knew, or whose side he was on.

What about Peej? What side is he on?

She had to face facts: Colding was part of the project, and yet his ass wasn’t on the bomb-laden C-5.

The plane suddenly tilted up. Sara held on to the cabinet door as supplies skidded across the floor. Rhumkorrf fell back and rolled into the black lab table. The cows’ big bodies strained against their harnesses, and once again the lower deck filled with their bellowing.

“Doc, you okay?”

“Fine! I’ll get more supplies.”

“No, get in your chair, now.”

The plane heaved sideways even as Rhumkorrf scrambled to the crash chairs and started buckling in. Supplies flew. Sara checked her watch just as the digital number changed to 9:10 P.M.—two minutes to live. They’d be landing any second. She zipped the duffel bags tight and started carrying them to the crash chairs.

The plane simultaneously bucked to port and dropped hard. Sara felt weightlessness for a second. The floor shrank away, then came up fast and slammed into her face. Dull pain filled her brain like an alcoholic buzz. She couldn’t focus. She blinked a few times, tried to stand.

Someone calling her name. Rhumkorrf. Sara shook her head, her thoughts slowly coming back into focus.

“Thirty seconds to landing.” That sounded like Alonzo… but he was… in the cockpit.

“Sara! Get up!” Rhumkorrf, screaming. “Don’t move, I’m coming.”

“Stay there!” Her wits returned in a flash. Another drop like that might knock him out as well.

“Twenty seconds.” Alonzo’s voice, coming over the speakers. He must have fixed the intercom. She’d lost precious time. The plane dropped and lifted underneath her. She ignored the duffel bags and crawled, had to crawl, because there was no way she could stay on her feet. She pulled herself into the chair even as it seemed to move like a wild animal.

“Ten seconds,” Alonzo called out in a shockingly neutral tone.

She slid the first clip home, head screaming, throbbing, hands slow to comply.

“Five…”

…you won’t make it when the plane hits, you’ll be thrown around, you’ll die…

“Four…”

Keep it calm, just find the straps, buckle in…

“Three…”

…we’ll crack right through the ice, we’ll drown in freezing water…

“Two…”

Her hands found the final buckle, the harness clicked shut.

“One…”

…this is it, oh why didn’t you save me, Colding, why why wh—

The free-fall elevator ride ended with a smashing jolt that jarred every atom of her body. They’d come in just a little too steep. Her brain ticked off assumed damage—no way the nose cone would open, which meant the front ramp was useless. Had the fuel tanks ruptured? Would they catch and fill the plane with fire? Would the C-5 turn sideways and roll?

The jolts and bounces threw her against her harness. Five eternal seconds rolled by, filled with the shrieks of creaking metal grinding hard against unforgiving ice.

Momentum pulled her harder against the straps as the C-5 slowed. Ten seconds later the skid ended and her body fell back into the seat. She snapped open her harness and checked her watch: still 9:10 P.M. It had felt like a tortured eternity, but the crash landing had taken less than a minute.

She sprinted aft, down the aisle, the sound of braying cows and their lightly kicking hooves filling her ears. She slapped the button to lower the rear hatch. Hydraulic gears whined as the rear doors opened and the metal loading ramp began to slowly unfold and descend. Wind-driven snow blew inside like a billowing gas. The gale howled, almost with delight, as if it had only been waiting for another chance to get at the people inside the huge plane. Sara turned away from the oncoming blizzard and grabbed the intercom.

“’Zo, are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Holy shit, we’re alive!”

“Help Miller get Cappy down here, move move move!”

Sara sprinted back up the aisle to the flight seats. Rhumkorrf was already up, walking on wobbly legs, leaning on the lab table as he stumbled toward the rear ramp. She passed him by and rushed to Tim, unbuckling the unconscious man and again lifting him into a fireman’s carry. She stood, shouldering his weight…

…and felt heavy steps vibrating through the floor. She turned to face the rear ramp—a cow, huge and black and white and insane with wide-eyed panic, barreled down the bay toward her. Sara ran across the aisle to the lab table and lunged on top, the move awkward thanks to Tim’s extra weight. She lost her grip on the man and he slid over the other side, crashing to the deck. The cow rushed by, hooves slamming on the rubberized deck, its big body grazing her feet before she pulled them up past the table’s edge. The cow ran past the crash chairs and smashed into the folded-up forward ramp so hard the entire plane shook from the impact. It stumbled back, then turned violently, cutting itself on one of the chairs. Blood sheeted the black-and-white fur and splattered on the floor as the cow ran the other way, toward the still-lowering rear ramp.

Screaming, hurricane-force winds poured through the twenty-foot rear opening, filling the cargo bay with billowing snow. Two more cows raged toward the ramp, toward freedom from the terror-filled plane. They pushed against each other in a struggle to get out. One cow’s hoof fouled on the corpse of Miss Patty Melt; it fell hard, the foreleg snapping like a gunshot. The creature bellowed in fear and pain, struggling to get up, to get out, but the broken leg wouldn’t support its efforts.

Sara saw Rhumkorrf moving from stall to stall, opening the gates and slapping the harness release buttons. The heavy canvas harnesses lowered slowly an inch or two, putting the cows’ hooves firmly on the deck, then dropped away, straps falling limply to the floor. The animals bolted out of the narrow stalls and stampeded for the ramp.

“What the hell are you doing?” Sara shouted over the screeching gale and the braying cattle.

But Rhumkorrf didn’t answer. Wind blew his comb-over back and forth. Some of the cows ran to the ramp. Others stood in place, confused, frightened.

She heard the whine of the lift machinery from above. The platform started to lower. On the metal grate she saw Alonzo and Miller standing, each grasping an end of the gurney that held Cappy. The lift would bring them down on the other side of the aisle opposite the lab table.

“Sara!” Alonzo screamed. She could barely hear him over the wind and the cows. “What the fuck?”

“We gotta move, come on!”

The lift slowly lowered, exposing their feet, their shins, their knees.

A panicked cow ran the wrong way, away from the open rear hatch. It slammed against the black lab table, tilting it, dumping Sara on top of Tim. The cow hit the table again and it fell. Sara got her hands up just in time, catching the heavy table’s edge before it smashed into her. Her muscles strained as she tried to push the table clear.

She heard a metallic rattle, the alarmed shouts of men, a bellow of animal pain, heard the lift’s whine stop, then restart.

No, Alonzo was taking it back up!

Sara screamed and forced her shaking arms to push harder. The table slid back a little and she was able to swing her legs free before she let go. The heavy black top hit the floor like a guillotine. The now vertical table-top sheltered her from the bleeding, insane, fifteen-hundred-pound cow.

“Alonzo, come back!”

Up above, Sara saw just one foot move off the grate, then nothing. She was too late. The lift was back on the upper deck, a corner dripping blood where the cow had slammed into it. Alonzo was taking Cappy to the aft ladder, looking for a safer way down. Sara threw a glance at her watch: 9:11.

One minute.

How much of that last minute had already gone by? Five seconds? Ten? Time was up. Sara felt tears—hot and sudden and uncontrollable—run down her cheeks.

Her crew wouldn’t make it.

No time no time no time…

Tim was back on her shoulders before she even gave it a thought. She stepped past the table and ran into a stampede. Bellowing black-and-white bodies heaved around her, hitting her, knocking her from side to side, but she refused to fall, refused to die.

No time no time no time…

She felt the footing change as she moved from the rubberized floor to the rear ramp’s echoing steel, then her feet splashing into icy, inch-deep water. The C-5’s interior lights lit up a cone of swirling snow and a wide, long, wet gouge torn into the snow-covered ice. Water bubbled up from thousands of cracks, a shimmering, spreading surface that ate the falling flakes. Sheets of white soared up and around her, finding ways into her eyes and mouth.

How much longer how many seconds not gonna make it notgonnamakeit…

She turned left, past the gouge, found herself fighting through waist-deep snow. She didn’t feel the cold, didn’t hear the bellowing cows, she just moved, moved away from the plane, away from death, toward life.

We’re going to die anyway any second now any—

A bang and a roar and she flew through blast-furnace heat. She hit hard and skidded face-first over the snow-covered ice.

Sara struggled to her feet and looked back. The blast had shredded the C-5 just behind the cockpit, and also behind the wings—Magnus had planted a second bomb. Blinding flames shot up thirty feet, lighting up the stormy, frozen bay with flickering brilliance.

Tim lay to her left, prone and motionless. Her crew was either dead or burning to death. There wasn’t a fucking thing she could do about it. There was only one person left to save—Tim Feely. Again he went up on her shoulders in the now-practiced move. When had she thought him light? She carried his deadweight, forcing half steps through the waist-deep snow.

Another explosion erupted behind her as the fuel tanks blew. She was farther away this time, and therefore spared the shock wave’s crushing effects. She turned for one last, haunted look. The flaming C-5 seemed to twitch like a dying antelope under a lion’s killing bite. It took Sara a moment to realize why—the plane was falling through the cracked surface. The tail went first, its weight finally too much for the thinning ice. There was a deep, reverberating snap as the sheet gave way, then the groan of metal grinding against the frozen surface, then the hiss of that same red-hot metal sliding into the water. Within seconds the tail was gone.

Sara stared, her eyes hunting through the blinding snow, hoping to see a miracle, hoping to see one of her friends. They might have gotten out, might be on the other side of the plane.

More vibrating cracks. The middle of the broken plane dropped a bit. It stayed on top for a moment, held up by burning wings pressed flat against the ice, then the wings groaned, bent, and finally snapped free at their bases as the fuselage slid into the water. The massive Boeing engines went next, cracking through, dragging most of the remaining bits of wing with them. Parts remained, scattered about the bay’s surface, but the snow was already accumulating, covering them in white.

The C-5 had all but vanished. In four or five hours the crash site would be nothing but misshapen white drifts. Sara heard a final hiss as the last piece of glowing metal slid into the water, then nothing but the sound of the blizzard.

No, there was one more sound—the faint call of a mooing cow.

Sara shivered. They were back on an island where someone really, really wanted them dead. No blankets, no food, no protection against the blizzard save for their black parkas. And she couldn’t even see the shore.

Animals have instincts that I don’t… the cows will find the shore.

She was already exhausted. She didn’t know how much longer she could carry Tim. They had to get off the bay, find some shelter from the wind or die as assuredly as if she’d never gotten off the plane at all. Sara adjusted the human burden on her shoulder, then leaned into the wind, following the cows’ faint calls.

NOVEMBER 30: 9:27 P.M.

THE COWS HUDDLED in a black-and-gray cluster. Too dark for anything to be white. Thick, heavy-limbed pine trees helped block the wind, but not much. Snow continued to fly in great sheets—even in the woods, it was already so deep it melted against the cows’ burgeoning bellies.

Sara leaned against a tree, shaking violently, trying to rub hands that the cold had turned into curled, brittle talons. The tips of her fingers stung badly. Stinging was okay. When they went numb, that meant frostbite. She felt like her entire skeleton was made from icy steel.

She had to find shelter. Tim lay in a heap on the ground, snow already drifting on and around his body. Sara had her doubts he would live through the hour, let alone the night. She guessed the temperature at twenty below zero, far beyond that with the windchill.

Rapleje Bay was close to Sven Ballantine’s place. If she could find Sven’s house, she could save Tim. But which way? Visibility was less than twenty feet. No moon. No stars. The only chance was to strike out on her own, find Sven’s place, then come back for Tim.

Sara found a huge pine tree with boughs so laden down by snow they created a small cave underneath. Ice-cold hands reached in and broke off dry, dead branches, clearing out a space. It wasn’t much, but it blocked the wind. She dragged Tim inside.

She felt an overwhelming urge to lie down next to him and just sleep. Exhaustion filled her body, as did pulsing pain from running amid the stampede and suffering the explosion’s concussion wave. On top of the physical fatigue, her mind nearly choked at the anguish of losing her friends. Had they died quickly in the blast? Had they burned to death?

She’d avoided any serious burns herself, which was the only good news. She ached, she throbbed, she wanted to collapse.

She looked at Tim Feely lying prone amid the pine needles, broken branches and dead twigs. If she didn’t find him real shelter, he would die. She started to cry… she didn’t want to go back out there. No more. She couldn’t take any more.

But she had to.

Her frigid hands wiped away the tears. Sara breathed deeply through her nose, mustering her resolve. She pulled her parka sleeves over her brittle hands, then gently pushed back through the limbs so as not to disturb the snow walls.

NOVEMBER 30: 9:38 P.M.

EVERY FIVE MINUTES or so the hurricane winds died down briefly, only to pick right back up again. In those seconds-long breaks, the blowing snow seemed to relax, improving visibility from about twenty feet to around a hundred—and in those gaps, the small light stood out like a beacon of hope.

Sara leaned on a tree at the edge of the woods, eyes peering across an open field at the flickering glow. She didn’t have much strength left. If this light turned out to be nothing, she’d have no choice but to walk back to Tim’s tree, crawl under, and let nature decide their fate.

She walked out into the field. Unencumbered by trees, the wind blew far stronger, driving stinging sheets into her face and eyes. She leaned into the wind and fought through the waist-deep snow. With each clumsy step, the light became a little brighter, a little steadier.

A few steps more, another lull in the wind, and she took in a sight more beautiful than anything she’d ever seen.

The light was mounted on a barn.

Sven’s barn.

She turned and trudged back through her own waist-deep trail.

FIVE FEET FROM the barn door, Sara’s legs finally gave out. After a half mile of carrying a deadweight, 145-pound man through the waist-deep snow, her body couldn’t do it anymore. She fell face-first into a fluffy eight-foot bank that had been sculpted by wind whipping off the red barn. Tim all but disappeared, powder puffing up and around and on him until only his feet stuck out.

She couldn’t get up. She didn’t want to get up. Fuck it. So she’d freeze to death, so what? It was only a matter of time before Magnus came for her. Why not get it over with now, just be dead like the friends she’d failed to help?

Alonzo.

Cappy.

Miller.

Why not just give up?

Because she wanted to see Magnus Paglione dead. And that was more than enough reason to fight on.

Sara picked herself up. Not even bothering to brush the snow off her face, she stumbled to the barn’s big sliding door. Her numb hands gripped the black handle. Failing muscles pushed, and with a rattle of metal wheels the door opened a couple of feet.

She stepped inside, leaving the storm behind as she entered an oasis of calm.

How did THEY get in here?

Through watering eyes, she saw perhaps two dozen cows lying peacefully in hay-filled stalls. She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. Sven’s cows… not the cows from the plane.

Sara willed herself back into the storm and grabbed Tim’s feet. She pulled the man free of the bank. His face slid across the snow-covered ground, but it was the best Sara could manage. Finally, after all that cold and pain and fatigue, she dragged Tim Feely into shelter.

Sara stumbled to the sliding barn door and put her weight against its black handle. The wind blew snow inside, almost as if it were some supernatural hand making one last grab for the meal that got away. Wheels creaked as the door shut, reducing the wind to nothing more than an exterior howl.

The barn wasn’t warm, but it was well above freezing. Sara heard the hum of a gas-powered generator. She looked around the huge barn and saw the orange glow of several portable heaters.

Safety.

She’d done it. With her last ounce of strength, Sara dragged Tim in front of one of the big electric heaters, then collapsed.

Sleep came almost instantly.