Thunderhead

Sloane raised the gun in her direction, then lowered it again. Nora had not approached the tent, after all. So what had she shot?

As she slowly circled the camp with her light, something resolved itself against the farthest row of tents. Sloane staggered in disbelief.

The cold light had fallen across a terrifying apparition. It stood, humped and ragged, staring silently back at her. Red eyes bored like dots of fire through holes cut into a buckskin mask. Wild painted designs of white along the legs and arms were spattered crimson with blood. Its pelt steamed in the humid air.

Instinctively, Sloane took a step backward, panic and disbelief struggling within her. This was what she had shot. She could see the great wound in its midriff, the blood shining black in the moonlight. And yet it remained standing. More than that: as its chest heaved slowly, she could see that it was very much alive.

Though the revelation took only a split second, to Sloane it seemed as if time had come to a standstill. She could hear her heart beating a frantic cadence in her ribs.

And then, with terrifying, deliberate malevolence, the creature took a step toward her.

Instantly, panic took over. Dropping the flashlight, Sloane wheeled and ran. For a moment, the kiva, the flood, everything was forgotten in her desire to escape this monstrous vision. This was the thing that massacred the horses, desecrated Holroyd’s body . . . then she thought of Swire and Bonarotti, and suddenly her legs were churning even faster, the night air tearing in and out of her lungs.

Now she could barely make out Nora, climbing toward the city. Desperately, Sloane veered to follow, keeping her eyes locked on the ladder, ru

65

NORA HEAVED HERSELF OVER THE RIM, scrambled to her feet, and sprinted away from the edge of the cliff. Vaulting over the retaining wall, she dashed across the central plaza into the deeper darkness beneath the shadow of the roomblocks.

She came to a stop, leaning against a wall, sobbing, sides heaving. As if from a great distance, she heard the steady beating of rain. She paid it no heed. A single, fleeting image was burned into her mind: Sloane, standing outside the door to Smithback’s tent after the sound of that terrible shot. She had found Bill, and killed him. For a moment, the pain and despair were so overwhelming that Nora considered simply walking out into the plaza and letting Sloane gun her down.

A peal of thunder boomed, echoing again and again beneath the vast dome. Just being in the city made her feel sick. Her gaze traveled first to the far wall of the plaza, then back toward the roomblocks and the granaries. There, black upon black, yawned the maw of the Crawlspace. She flitted toward the rear of the plaza, careful not to raise any dust. Perhaps she could lure Sloane inside the Crawlspace, then ambush her, take the gun . . .

She pulled up short, breathing hard. This was stupid; she was panicking, making bad decisions. Not only was the Crawlspace a potentially deadly bottleneck, it was loaded with fungal dust.

There was a fresh slash of lightning, and she turned back to see Sloane scramble over the top of the rope ladder, pistol in hand.

“Nora!” she heard Sloane call out wildly. “Nora, for God’s sake, wait!”

Nora wheeled, diving away from the plaza, back toward the curved rear wall of the city.

Another tongue of lightning ripped the distant landscape, briefly illuminating the ancient city in indigo chiaroscuro. A second later, there was a crack of thunder, followed almost immediately by a second sound, shockingly loud in the close confines: the sound of gunfire.

Keeping to the darkest shadows, moving as swiftly as she dared, Nora crept along the stone wall toward the old midden heap. Careful not to trip over Black’s tarps, she moved along the edge of the city, approaching the dark bulk of the first tower.

The sound of ru

Footsteps again, much louder now; gasping breath; and then, coming around from the front side of the tower, was Sloane.

Nora glanced around in fresh desperation: the midden heap, the back alley leading to the Crawlspace, the benchland trail that led out to the narrow circuit above the valley. Every one was a dead end. There was nowhere left to run. Slowly, she turned back toward Sloane, steeling herself for the inevitable: the roar of the gun, the sudden lance of pain.

But Sloane was crouched at the base of the tower, peering cautiously around its front edge. Her left hand was clenched against her heaving chest; her gun hand was pointed, not at Nora, but out into the darkness of the plaza.

“Nora, listen,” Sloane gasped over her shoulder. “There’s something after us.”

“Something?” Nora echoed.

“Something horrible.”

Nora stared at Sloane. What kind of a trick is this? she wondered.

Sloane remained crouched, gun pointed out into the plaza. She glanced back at Nora for a moment, and even in the darkness Nora could see fear, disbelief, nascent panic in the almond eyes.

“For God’s sake, watch behind us!” Sloane begged, returning her own gaze to the plaza.

Nora looked quickly back down the direction from which she’d run. Her mouth had gone dry.

“Listen, Nora, please,” she heard Sloane whisper, struggling to get her breathing under control. “Swire and Bonarotti have disappeared. I think we’re the only ones left. And now, it’s after us.”

“What’s after us?” Nora asked. But even as she phrased the question, she realized she already knew the answer.

“If we separate, we’re dead,” Sloane said. “The only chance we have is to stick together.”

Nora stared out into the darkness, past the midden heap, toward the granaries and the hidden maw of the Crawlspace. She struggled to keep the panic from clamping down and freezing her limbs. The woman at her back, she knew, had brought tragedy to the expedition; caused Aragon’s death; murdered Smithback in cold blood. But right now, she could not afford to think about that. Now, she could think only of the dreadful apparition that, at any moment, could come scuttling toward her out of the black.

The city was full of recesses in which they could hide. But hiding in the dark was not the answer. It would be just a matter of time until the skinwalker tracked them down. What they needed was some defensible place where they could hold out for at least a while. Daybreak might afford a fresh set of options. . . .

In that instant, she realized that there was nowhere to go. Nowhere, except up.

“The tower,” she said.

Sloane turned quickly to her. The question in her eyes disappeared as she followed Nora’s gaze toward the structure that reared above them.

Grasping the pole ladder, Nora scrambled up to the small second-story rooftop. Sloane followed, kicking the ladder away behind her. They dashed through the low crumbling doorway and into the enfolding darkness of the great tower.

Nora paused within, digging out her flashlight and shining it into the rectangle of darkness above them. The sight was terrifying: a series of rickety pole ladders, balanced on ledges of projecting stone, rising into the darkness. To climb, she would have to place one foot on a series of projecting stones that ascended the inside wall, and the other foot on the notches of the poles. There were three series of ladders, one above the other, separated by the narrow stone shelves that ran around the i