T Connor: Bitter Cold Apocalypse

I nodded. “And I should be able to use my weight as well, to point us in one direction or another.” I put the sled on the ice and stood up straight to look at him. “Are we really going to do this?”

“It’s the only way to get her to a doctor quickly, John,” he said quietly. “And you and I both know how vital that is.”

A sudden gunshot in the distance had us both jumping, and without another word, we were getting Angie settled in the roughly middle seat of the toboggan, Marlon’s pack at the back of the open space and mine at the front. Neither Marlon or I sat down, though. Not yet.

We were going to be in charge of the running start.

Once we had the sled in position, Marlon and I got up alongside it, one of us on each side. I bent down and grabbed onto the rim on the side closest to the shore, while Marlon took up the same position on the other side, behind Angie.

This was ridiculous. And I hoped to God that it worked. Because by my count, we now had wolves, a woman on the verge of hypothermia, and insane hunters on our tail.

Another gunshot in the distance set Marlon and I both to sprinting forward, the sled between us, our feet churning through the thin dusting of snow on the ice as we belted ahead in our bid to get the sled as much speed as we possibly could before we jumped in. I wasn’t sure how much the hill was actually going to help us—or if we were going to end up doing this same thing again and again throughout the day—but we’d never know unless we tried.

And I was growing more and more afraid that if we didn’t at least try, we might well find ourselves dead before we came up with another idea.

Once we were going at a decent clip, Marlon shouted for us to get in, and I jumped into the air next to the sled, pulling my legs up in front of me and crossing them into position before I landed on my butt in the hard plastic.

“Oof!” I grunted, unable to stop myself. I’d felt the jolt go through my hips and all the way up to my spine, and I felt like we were lucky that I hadn’t cracked the ice with that move alone—let alone the fact that Marlon and I must have both done it at the same time.

Hell, if we’d thought about it, maybe we would have figured out that we should do it separately. But it was too late now. I held my breath, partially because I was having trouble breathing after that landing and partially because I was waiting to see whether the ice cracked around us.

“John, pay attention!” Angie suddenly screamed in my ear.

I looked up to see that we were heading right for a tree that was hanging over the river, going at a fairly decent clip, and remembered that I had responsibilities here. I leaned far out over the left side of the sled, guiding us with my weight around the tree, and once we flew past it, I leaned back toward the shore. I didn’t want to lean too far, for fear of turning the sled on its side, and with steering this rudimentary I knew that the chances of me oversteering were going to be high.

If we started going in the wrong direction there’d be no way to fix it until it was too late.

But I thought that I was starting to get it down. I was able to navigate past the next set of bushes, in part because Marlon was helping with his feet, and at the next obstacle I shouted for Marlon to keep his feet in the sled.

“They might slow us down!” I shouted back toward him, leaning slightly to the left to take us around a large stone.

In truth, though, I didn’t think anything was going to slow us down. The downhill slant of the river hadn’t seemed like much before, but now that we were flying down the ice chute, I could feel that we were going more and more quickly with every foot. The combination of the ice underneath us and the weight of the sled and our bodies—plus my pack in the nose—was giving us enough momentum that it would have been extremely painful to fall out of the sled at this point. The scenery was actually flying by, and if we hadn’t had my pack in the front of the sled, I would have worried about it going airborne.

Another set of bushes, and I leaned far out into the river, then guided the thing back toward the shore.

“How are you doing?” I shouted over my shoulder at Angie. “Is that quilt keeping you warm?”

“This is amazing!” she shouted back. “Why didn’t we try this the first time? It’s so much faster!”

“Because it’s also verging on suicidal,” I said grimly to myself. I made sure she didn’t hear me, though. I didn’t want to worry her. She had enough to deal with already.

We flew through the increasingly gloomy afternoon, skirting rocks, trees, and bushes, and it soon became obvious that we wouldn’t have to worry about getting the sled started again. Instead, I was starting to worry that we might be going too quickly. It was growing more and more possible that we were actually going to lose control of the sled entirely, and I didn’t want to find out what that was going to look like at the end of the day.

All thoughts of speed flew out of my head, though, when someone behind us suddenly started shooting at us.

We all ducked away from the first bullet that flew past from somewhere behind us on the river, sending the sled skidding directly toward the middle of the river, and then, at my shouted “Right!” we all ducked in the other direction.

Only we were now going full-force right toward the mud, trees, and bushes of the bank of the river.

“Left!” I screamed, knowing already that I wasn’t going to be able to steer the sled away from that collision course by myself.

This time, we all managed to lean more slowly rather than actually throwing ourselves in one direction, and the turn was more gradual. Almost easy. Within seconds, the sled was moving rapidly down the river again on a somewhat straight course.

Right toward Ellis Woods. Right toward safety. Except that we were still on the wide-open ice of the river. And there was someone behind us with some sort of gun.

“Down!” I shouted to the duo behind me, and we all ducked down and forward, until I was sure that we probably actually looked like some sort of insane, out-of-place bobsled team. Angie was undoubtedly the most protected of all of us, courtesy of being so small. Marlon was undoubtedly the most exposed.

“Marlon, I don’t suppose you’ve got a bulletproof vest on, do you?” I called back over my shoulder, my eyes glued to the river ahead of us. We were in a miraculously clear section, which meant I didn’t have to steer around anything, and I hoped that meant that we would pick up enough speed to get away from whoever was shooting at us.

Whoever. I snorted. I had exactly one guess as to who it was. Unfortunately, I hadn’t known him long enough to know whether he was a good shot or not.

“I left it at home!” Marlon shouted back. “Figured it was too heavy for this sort of outing!”

“Glad to see your sense of humor is intact,” I muttered to myself.

Another shot rang out, and the bullet hit the ice somewhere to the left of us. Like… way to the left of us.

And at that, I started hoping that he wasn’t a good shot after all. We were moving on a relatively straight course on wide-open ice. Randall—or one of his cousins, I supposed—should have been able to sight on us very easily, hold the gun still for a moment to get an idea of our momentum, and then pull the trigger, hitting one or several of us.

Instead, he’d shot so far left that I hadn’t even felt the bullet pass us.

Another shot, and it flew into the trees to our right.

Another, and it hit somewhere behind us.

We weren’t moving fast enough for that to happen, unless he was a complete rookie. And with him living in the forest as he did, I didn’t think rookie status was a remote possibility.