were just . . .
“There!” Jayden cried as the little girl’s head ruptured through the
surface not six feet from the Changed. “Take it, Chris, take it!” “Ellie!” Chris shouted, hoping she heard and understood. “Don’t
move!”
The crack of the shot. The kick against his shoulder. A sudden red
mist ballooned above the Changed’s shoulders, and then the headless
body listed left and floated, buoyed by a bubble of air trapped under
the dead kid’s parka.
“Ellie!” Jayden was clutching a coil of rope he’d knotted to his
packhorse’s saddle. “Swim this way! Can you swim?”
“I don’t think she can do it,” Chris said. At the sound of her name, Ellie had turned an almost listless circle. She wore the shocked expression of the lone survivor of a car crash. Ten feet beyond her was Mina, who looked just as spent. She won’t make it. Stripping out of Jayden’s parka, he sucked air against a slap of cold on his bare chest, then dropped to the ice and began working the laces of his
boots. “I’m going after her.”
“Are you crazy?” Jayden clutched his shoulder. “You’ll drown, too.” “No, I won’t,” he said, stripping off his boots. But people his age
did die; he’d read about a fifteen-year-old kid who’d fallen through
ice and had a heart attack from the shock. “Even in freezing water, it
takes a little while, and I won’t be in that long. You’ve got the rope,
you’ve got the horse.” Peeling off his socks, he scooped up the rope
and threw in a quick bowline knot. Ellie would be too frightened and
probably too weak to hold on, but if he could get the rope under her
arms . . . He stood, screwing up his face against the sting on his bare
feet. “All I have to do is get to her. Then you pull her in.” He would
try to grab the dog, too, or at least coax it to follow.
“All right.” Jayden’s jaw set. “Go. Hurry, Chris. Go go go!” Blowing out two quick breaths, Chris inhaled deep and long, then
plunged off the ice. The cold was much worse than he’d expected,
but he kept focused, kept moving. Surfacing, he blew out, sucked in
another breath, and started pulling for the girl.
“Ellie,” he panted. He was trying not to hyperventilate, reminding
himself that he would use up less energy if he stayed calm, took slow
breaths. But, oh my God, the burn . . . His bare chest was already numb.
“Muh-huh-huh,” Ellie gasped. He could see the white crescents as her eyes began to roll back into her skull. Her fingers were chalk. “Cuh-Cuh-Chrisss . . .”
“I’m h-here,” he stammered. Won’t let you go. He sucked in a breath and pushed it out in a shout: “Juh-Jayden, pull! Pull!”
87
“It should be me,” Ellie said, cradling Bella’s head in her lap. Despite the dance of orange light from a fire Jayden and Connor had started two hours ago, her face was drawn and ashen. Her eyes crawled from Jayden, who looked uncertain, to a tight-lipped Hannah, who only looked more furious by the second. “She’s my horse.”
“But there’s no need. Jayden can do this, or Connor,” Hannah said, and Chris thought she really was trying to keep a lid on it. Jayden had refused to go anywhere without warming Ellie first. Chilled to his marrow, Chris hadn’t argued. Stripping the girl out of her sodden clothes, they wrapped her in a saddle blanket and Jayden’s parka. Chris had accepted Jayden’s sweater and then waited, next to the fire, with Ellie cradled in his arms and the dog practically in his lap, too, while Jayden rode for help. He’d returned with clothing, thermoses of hot soup and tea—and a fuming Hannah.