Free Shadows by Ilsa J. Bick Page B

shelter, one of the drifts stirred. She blinked. For a crazy second, she flashed to a Jack London novel she’d read in seventh grade English and thought, Sled dogs. Burrowing into snow was how Buck and the other sled dogs got through the night. Yet the mélange of warmed odors which pillowed out was full and round—and all wrong. Besides, dogs hated the Changed.
    She watched as the lumps of snow broke apart. Two clenched fists punched through and then more fists and arms and now legs and heads—
    People.

14
    Three women and two men, all well along in years, struggled up from the snow. With no fire, rudimentary snow caves would be their best option. She’d have done the same thing.
    Ten eyes set in five slack faces watched her watching them. They said nothing. Neither did she. They were—she sniffed— what? Not frightened. No one could stay scared to death all the time. Aside from their rancid flesh and that fruity fizz, these old people smelled like cold oatmeal, an odor that was almost no odor at all. Apathetic: that’s what their scent said. She even understood. Endure a couple rounds of chemo that didn’t kill the monster and only made you puke your guts out, and see just how interested in living you were. You really, truly didn’t give a shit.
    She also thought, though, that pasty guy in the middle was legitimately sick. His illness hung like the fetor of a stagnant, scum-choked swamp. A diabetic? Or starvation? Maybe both, judging from the loose flesh and hard planes and edges of bone tenting skin on the faces of the others. And now her association to the hospice wing where the terminal waited to die made sense. A body smelled like that when it was eating itself to stay alive.
    They’ve been here at least an hour and probably longer. So why didn’t they run? Wolf tugged, and she staggered forward as Beretta waded into the knot of bodies and began fishing for something in the snow. The oldsters shrank back, jostling and bunching the way skittish zebras clustered as the lions gathered. There’s no guard. It can’t be just that they’re scared . . .
    Her thoughts stumbled as something icy brushed her left wrist. She looked down and saw that Beretta held a rope, hard and stiff with cold and as thick around as her thumb. She sucked in a startled gasp. What the hell? She followed its length and saw how it looped from one oldster to the next. Now that she was closer, she realized their wrists were bound. So were their ankles. More rope snaked from their legs and was tied off to the support beams of the old camp shelter.
    Hobbled. That’s why these old people hadn’t run. They couldn’t. The Changed were gathering them up like cattle to be kept until it was time to slaughter—
    “No!” Horror blasted through her body on a harsh wind. If she let them tie her up, she wouldn’t be able to fight; it would be the end, like giving into the monster. Gasping, she bucked and wrenched away, shaking free of Wolf ’s grip, and then she was swinging with her good right arm, whipping around, screaming, screaming, screaming , “No, no, no , I won’t let you!”
    Startled, the scent of his surprise spiking her nose, Beretta jerked up just as her fist jackhammered his jaw. With the tidal wave of adrenaline-fueled fear surging through her veins, she felt nothing and heard the impact only as a distant, airy crack, like a punch landed in a television show: a sound effect with no substance. Later, when she studied her bruised knuckles, she would think it was a miracle she hadn’t broken her hand. The blow dumped Beretta on his ass, and then she was staggering, off-balance both from her own momentum and the snowshoes still strapped to her feet. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Slash making a grab, and she shrieked again, tried ducking out from under, but the rigid toe of her left snowshoe jammed into deep snow. Her knee twisted, and she cried out again, this time with pain. She would’ve gone down, maybe even broken her