Her hand slid over the gleaming silver cores and encountered the shovel. She yanked it out and shoved it through the narrow opening between sled and floor, toward the other end of the ice tunnel.
Panting, she dropped to her butt, avoiding her knee so she wouldn’t pass out, crawled on her side, worked her way farther into the narrow space, under the sled, beyond it. She crouched to rummage through the last of their belongings—the food they’d been so happy to have, the tent that felt so much like home. Hurriedly, she threw them down. None of it mattered anymore. Nothing mattered but life and death.
A footstep crunched on the ice. She went still.
“Think that was enough to get me?” Sampson growled out a sound possibly meant to be a laugh. “That’s okay. I’m fine.”Crunch. Crunch.Was he limping? Had she hurt him, at least?
Frantically, her hand sought one last thing from the sled.
“Where you at, darlin’? You inhere?” Sampson asked, entirely too nonchalant for a man who was about to meet his maker. “Really need to stop meeting like this, don’t we?”
He coughed, the sound rough and phlegmy. “Sure am glad you decided to bring me in here. Reminds me of last time. Man, that was…” He stopped to cough again, then snorted and spat a wad of something no doubt repulsive. “Fuck!”
A deep, loud inhale. He crunched forward and then stopped.
“Holy shit.” His whisper reached her where she still searched frantically from the other side of the sled. “Are they righthere?” He cleared his throat. “Son of a bitch. They are, aren’t they?”
Deep inside the tunnel, with nothing but the sled between her and pure evil, Angel’s hand finally closed around a flat cloth packet, as familiar as anything she’d ever owned. She pulled it out, unzipped her coat, and shoved it inside, close to her body.
Now she was ready.
Come here. Come here and get me, you piece of shit.
With one elbow jammed into the wall, she pushed herself until she was up, supported by the shovel, shaking—a wreck—but also weirdly solid inside.
He was close, breathing hard, like maybe his lungs hurt. Good, she hoped he hurt, wanted to hurt him worse. Over and over and over again.
She hesitated for one second and then moved away, into the darkest part of the tunnel, turned the corner, and rather than run toward the light as he’d probably expect her to do, stopped, waiting against the ice, just out of sight.
Come on.
Slow footsteps, the scrape of the sled being yanked out of his way.
“Been looking all over for you little bastards.” It took her a second to realize he was talking to the ice cores and not to her. “Angel. So sweet of you to bring them here.” A painful clearing of his throat and then more footsteps as he closed in with nightmarish speed.
She lifted her arms up and over her head, gripping the shovel like she was batting in a softball game, only with much, much more adrenaline. She counted out two more of his steps, pushed herself off the wall into his path, and took a swing at Sampson’s head.
Up, up, keeping it close in the confined tunnel, shifting her weight to her bad knee, which sent a shockwave of pain through her, so hard she had to fight back the darkness…thenthwack!
Connection, painful, solid, and satisfying.
He staggered back into the wall opposite, shook his head, and let out a low animal moan as she moved back into position again, ready to swing.
He whipped off his goggles and ski mask to swipe his arm over his bloody face, and she stuttered to a surprised stop.
Wait, that’s not Sampson,her brain supplied, dumbfounded, followed by the quick realization that it was. This wasn’t the smooth, smiling man she’d met at Burke-Ruhe. In the last couple of weeks, he’d become almost unrecognizable, his face swollen, oozing sores scattered over it, red and rough.
She tightened her hands, recovering from the shock just in time to swing again. But he came at her low and astonishingly quick, shoved her back, so she fell to the ice with a brain-shattering thump.
At least now, she thought a split-second later, as Sampson tried to suffocate her to death, his outside matched his evil innards.
His hand was tight around her neck, squeezing every drop of life from her.
Starved of air, her vision blocked by a constellation of shooting stars, the weirdest feeling came over Angel. An out-of-body dreaminess she’d never experienced before. One at a time, the actions to take lit up before her like a neon-yellow brick road.
One: unzip coat. The thought came as she struggled hard against the monster’s hold, dragging the zipper down maybe an inch or two, but it was all she needed to reach inside. She pulled at the cloth roll, reached in, slid her hand around the biggest handle—too bulky—before moving to the next one. Boning knife. She pictured herself quickly and efficiently cutting and pulling the membrane from a rack of pork ribs. Slicing sure and straight between flesh and bone.
Perfect.
