Страница 22 из 86

Thin air

Кейн Рэйчел

I shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“It might, yeah.”

“Does it matter enough to freeze our asses off talking about it right now?” I demanded. “Because in case you hadn’t noticed, you’re shivering again.”

“Am I?” He looked honestly surprised, and reached into the tent to grab his coat, which he draped around his shoulders. “There. Happy?”

“Thrilled, man.”

Lewis quickly moved on to other, more practical things, like breaking camp, which Cherise and I didn’t do all that efficiently, and then leading us on the second half of the Winter Wonderland Death March. Cherise asked questions, some of which I could answer and a lot of which I couldn’t. Lewis rescued me on the biggest one, which had to do with what had happened to Cherise and Kevin.

“You remember being sent out by the Wardens,” he said. “To fight the fire in California?”

“Yeah.” Cherise was flushed and breathless, but on her it looked good. Lewis wasn’t exactly immune to it, either, even if it wasn’t conscious attraction on his part; he was simply lagging back, paying more attention to her than mercilessly slave-driving us through the snow like a pack of sled dogs. “He was showing me how he did some stuff. Like creating firebreaks. It was cool.”

“Do you remember what happened then?”

She was silent for a few seconds, blue eyes far away, and then she nodded. “This woman came out of the trees. At least, I think it was a woman.” She frowned. “Why can’t I remember what she looked like?”

Lewis sent me a look that clearly said, Demon. I didn’t disagree. Once you’re already off the cliff, you might as well pretend you’re flying.

“What happened after that?” Lewis asked as we puffed our way down another treacherous hillside, feeling for good footholds beneath a cruelly smooth blanket of snow. I nearly slipped on a rock that turned under my foot, and grabbed wildly. Lewis caught my arm and steadied me.

Cherise took her time answering. “Um…I remember falling, and there was-I don’t know. Pain, maybe. I mostly remember passing out. And waking up out here, in the snow. Freezing.”

Eerily similar to my experience, in fact, except that she’d managed to hang on to her clothes. Lewis and I traded another long look.

“Could I have been-”

“No,” he said, definitely. “What happened to her was clear. What happened to you isn’t.”

He tested the featureless snow ahead of us with a long twisted branch, then nodded for us to come ahead. We trudged in silence for a while.

“I do remember something,” Cherise said suddenly. “I remember-hey, did you shoot me?” She frowned and unzipped her coat to peer at her sweater. “Oh, man. You really did. But I’m not-”

“We’ll talk later,” Lewis promised. “Save your strength. We’ve got a ways to go.”

No kidding. Hours of it, breathlessly scrambling over cold, slippery terrain. Not my best time ever. But I had to laugh when Cherise, clearly tiring, accepted Lewis’s help across a narrow frozen stream. His big hands spa

“Ditto.” Lewis gri

“Hey, Lewis?” Cherise’s cheer had faded almost instantly, and she grabbed his sleeve to drag him to a halt. “You haven’t said, about Kevin. Do you think…Did whatever happened to me happen to him, too? Was he out there looking for help?”

Lewis glanced over at me, then focused on the snow. “Not likely,” he said. “If what I think is true, Kevin would have lasted longer. Been of more use. For all I know, he could still be under her control.”

“Her, who?” We reached the bottom of the long icy hillside and started the tiring trek up the next one, hauling ourselves by grabbing icy branches when the going got too tough. “Come on, you guys are like superheroes or something! There’s got to be something we can do for him!”

Lewis looked at her for a second, and his eyes looked dark and cold. “If there was,” he said, “I’d be damn well doing it. But I can’t take chances. Not with the two of you.”

Cherise’s foothold broke loose, and she began to slide. I gripped a handy branch, reached down, and grabbed her by the coat sleeve, hauling her upright again. Lewis helped me get her to the top of the hill, where we paused for breath. The view might have been gorgeous, except for the low clouds obscuring the mountains and pressing down like dirty cotton on the treetops. Snow continued to fall in a steady, soft, relentless assault.

I wanted to ask how far we had left to go, but it wasn’t worth wasting my breath. I didn’t think it would help if I knew. My legs were burning, sore in the calf muscles, and I had scrapes and bruises and my headache hadn’t gone away. My acquired memory of Cherise’s experiences had settled into an uneasy, slippery state that felt like I could have imagined them or dreamed them. But at least I had a memory of me, of the television station, of Cherise, of Sarah, of…

Of the girl calling me Mom.

“Lewis,” I said. He hesitated in the act of stabbing the branch through the snow, then took two or three more steps. “I saw Imara. In Cherise’s memories.”

He didn’t answer. He took another step. I followed in his wake, puffing for breath. The air felt icy and wet around us, and sleet burned my face. The sky was an unbroken gray bowl, and it felt oppressive, as if it were slowly lowering down onto my head. Nature. Who needed it?

“You going to talk to me about her?” I demanded. It came out sharper than I intended.

“No,” he said. “It’s one complication you don’t need right now. One thing at a time, Jo. Let’s get ourselves safe before-”

“Before we talk about my dead kid?” I shot back. “Well, if you’re worried about me breaking down, don’t. I can’t even remember her. All I have is a name and a face.” That wasn’t true, but I didn’t want him to know how raw and bloody that simple vision had left me.

Cherise stopped in her tracks, puffing hard. “She’s dead?” she blurted, and made a gesture as if she were going to reach out toward me, but then thought better of it. “Oh, my God. What happened?”

“I don’t know,” I snapped. “I don’t know anything. That’s the problem.”

Lewis poked the stick into the snow with u

“I want to know how she died,” I said.

“If wishes were horses, you’d be doing one fifty in a cherry red Mustang on the autobahn.” He sounded bleak and cool. “No.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Probably.” He gave me a smile that was equal parts apology and sadness. “But I’ve always been like that. You’ve just forgotten about-”

He stopped in his tracks, straightened, and held up a hand for silence. Cherise and I both froze, too. Wind swirled across the clearing, picking up snow crystals and peppering me in the face with them, but I didn’t move.