She stuck the meals in the outside pocket of her backpack before she gave Cullen the warmed baby bottle. Tot grabbed for it.
“Well, okay, a drink before we hit the trail,” Cullen said. Kit offered her a few gulps.
Tot let out a loud burp.
He laughed. “Don’t yak on my shoulders if you need to spit up, Tottie. I don’t have an extensive replacement wardrobe, now do I?”
The duffel bag and backpacks bulged with supplies. Cullen shouldered the duffel, and she lugged the others from the cargo area. She felt a pang as she closed the ATV’s doors for the last time and gave the vehicle a pat. The metal contraption had kept them alive, along with Cullen’s expert driving and the shelter from the lumbermill. She imagined it almost had a personality of its own, like her truck. She turned away resolutely.
The tunnel would be their safety now, she prayed. It had to be.
As they trudged past the campfire, she scraped a layer of dirt with her shoe and kicked it over the flames.
Cullen chuckled. “Because you’re worried about starting a forest fire?”
They both scanned the landscape for a moment, the sprawl where there had once been a majestic army of trees. Now it was a pulsing moonscape of desolation. It would take decades, if not centuries, to regrow what Mount Ember had wiped away in a blink. How many lives had it taken already? Archie’s? Annette’s? Was poor John still lying in the dirt, face turned to the sky he could no longer see?
She smothered the flames because she could not walk away from a burning fire, no matter what the circumstances. As she turned to follow him, something flickered up the slope where the slide had originated. She froze, staring through the dust-thickened air.
Cullen turned and joined her, instantly alert. “What did you see?”
She squinted. Snowflakes and cinders dampened the feeble light until the sun vanished fully behind the hills, leaving them in an eerie gloaming. “I don’t see anything now. I thought I noticed a flash is all. A dot.”
“Where?”
She pointed.
“Could it have been from a flashlight?”
Her heart thudded. “Maybe, or it might be a figment of my imagination.” Her senses were addled, her body tired,nerves stretched to the breaking point. Had she seen something? Her eyes were as overwrought as the rest of her.
He gestured for her to turn and pulled the night vision binoculars from the pack she had slung over her shoulders. He scanned while she held her breath.
“Anything?”
He shook his head. “Nothing I could make out.”
An idea made her breath catch. “What if it was Archie? He made it and came back to search for us.” She scanned frantically, praying she’d see the old soldier signaling them of his presence. Cullen’s next comment burst her excitement.
“He was headed in the opposite direction. He wouldn’t have had time to turn around and come back looking for us by now. Not to say it couldn’t be someone else, though.”
The someone else would be two determined killers, relentlessly pursuing them for the envelope she’d tucked carefully in her pack. The thought of them made her blood simmer. “Nico and Simon would’ve given up by now,” she said firmly. “They’d have to be insane to risk their lives out here when it’s practically a guarantee that the volcano will do their dirty work for them.”
Cullen’s eyes narrowed. “Unless Nico saw that we made it to the mill. They were already looking for us in the hollow when the slide happened.”
“But even if they did, they wouldn’t know about the tunnel. That’s certainly not visible to anyone outside these walls. It’s tucked back behind the ruins and a bunch of foliage. As far as they know, we’re stuck and we’ll die before help reaches us.”
His expression tightened. “Guys like that will watchto make sure. They don’t leave much to chance, and they don’t like waiting around.”
“Cullen, this is the worst motivational talk ever,” she snapped.
He cocked his chin. “Sorry. Probably there’s no one out there. And anyway, they can’t take a vehicle down here to get us with the fallen trees and debris everywhere. They’d have to hoof it, and that’d take a long time. We’re safe.”
From pursuers, maybe. What lay before them was most certainly the polar opposite of safe. Climbing into a dark tunnel without knowing for sure where it led or what conditions they would experience was the definition of reckless in any other circumstances. It made her skin crawl to think it through.
They lingered for a few more moments with no further indication that anyone was watching. If it was indeed a watcher she’d seen, she prayed it was Archie, safe and sound, and he’d have the good sense to give up the search and get himself up the trail to safety. Just because Cullen didn’t think it could be Archie didn’t mean she had to agree.
But if it was him and he’d made his way up the trail to try to find them in the debris field, wouldn’t that lead him to the exact position Simon and Nico would have taken to escape the landslide? Would they run into each other? Thoughts chased each other around in dizzying circles.
