The remaining Reds stand transfixed as the gores rip their leader to pieces. One jerks himself out of shock and shoots, bringing a gore around snarling, red blossoming on its spotted neck. The other gore latches on to Kai’s bloody leg and drags his body into the trees.
The soldiers finally come together, firing point-blank into the injured gore charging them. Snapping its jaws down on a gunman’s shoulder, the gore ignores the bullets as they burn smoking trails through its fur, not forceful enough to penetrate its thick hide. Leaving the Red in a crumpled heap, the thing lunges hungrily toward Kasim. Its formidable jaws rip through the unconscious Menghu’s coat before one of the bullets finds its way past the tough hide, dark drops of blood matting the coarse hair at its hip. Keening squeals raise the hairs on my arms, the unearthly cries sending creatures all around us streaking away through the forest. The wounded monster darts out of the clearing, uneven gait spattering blood behind it in a slippery red trail.
The Reds left standing don’t have time to lower their weapons before they fall, one after the other, in an ungraceful heap around Kasim. I didn’t even hear the gunshots.
A Menghu coat steps in, gun out, switching aim between the fallen soldiers. Pulling the men off Kasim, she twitches his coat aside, eyeing the ragged tears in his chest. Another Menghu stalks out of the trees, and I catch sight of a wide mouth. It’s Cale listening to see if Kasim is breathing, Mei standing watch with her gun drawn.
I yell out to them, half climbing and half falling as I come down from the tree, stumbling toward the pile of Reds around Kasim. The gashes in his chest aren’t deep, but blood is flowing. Cale’s gun follows me down the tree trunk.
“What are you doing out here?” she asks. Casually. As though her finger isn’t one twitch away from blowing off my head.
Mei pulls her hood back, looking around at all the dead Reds. She kicks the girl as she walks by, the soldier’s head jerking lifelessly against the ground. When she kneels by Kasim, her face is calm. “He’s alive, but not in good shape. They must have hit him pretty hard for him still to be unconscious. I think the cuts on his chest are superficial, but this”—she points to his leg, twisted underneath him—“is definitely broken. We need to get him out of here.”
“I’ve got some medic experience. . . .” I falter. Even at the orphanage, they would have sent Kasim to the hospital. Backing away from Cale, I jerk my attention from the gun still following my every move.
Easing Kasim’s leg so that it is straight, I pull off my jacket to pad it. With Mei’s help, I splint the break with a straight branch from nearby. Not perfect, but it might get us back to the Mountain.
“They were setting those.” I nod toward the two disks piled next to the bodies as I tie the splint. “I heard one of the Reds say they were supposed to leave them and run.”
Mei rolls one up on its side, brows knitted together as she looks it over. “Too small to be mines. What do you think, Cale?”
Cale’s gun is still on me, her eyes narrowed. The weapon tucked into my coat pinches at my side, my hands shaking a little as I try to concentrate on Kasim, not the thoughts that must be running through the Menghu’s head.
She blinks. Finally lets the pistol fall. Dropping down by one of the Reds, Cale looks over at Mei. “You got one of them, Mei. I’m proud of you.” She stuffs something in her pocket, stepping on the dead girl’s hand as she stands back up.
“Can you lift him?” Cale asks as she stoops behind Kasim, threading her arms under his wide shoulders to pick him up. “Or are you really as useless as I thought?”
I kneel at his legs, balancing the splint on one shoulder and wrapping an arm around his other knee. He’s heavy. Too heavy. But I’m not going to admit that now. Mei grabs one of the disks and follows.
As we walk by the Reds’ packs, Cale catches a toe on a loose strap and skips a step, landing on one of the disks still lying on the ground. The light in the center of the disk flashes red, white . . . and then my ears are inside out, boiling with noise, the bright white of an explosion all around me, tearing at my hair and clothes. A loud hissing fills my ears as I try to pick myself up from the ground. I break a quicklight, but the air is so clouded with dirt and gas it’s like being underwater, my eyes straining to identify dark shapes in the blur.
When things start to clear, Cale lies crumpled on the ground at my feet, Kasim an inanimate heap next to her. Fragments of the disk lie smoldering all around them, burning holes in Cale’s coat. As I take it all in, smoke blooms around her head, her tangled blond hair bursting into flame.
I frantically roll her over in the dirt, batting at the fire’s crackled touch until it’s dead. Her eyes don’t open. Anxiously checking for a pulse, I take a few breaths to calm myself enough to be able to feel it.
It’s there. Fluttering like a hummingbird’s wings. Bending close to her upturned face, I feel faint brushes of air against my ear.
Mei crashes down next to me, and I have to look twice to make sure I’m not giving in to a hallucination. Black plastic obstructs the bottom half of her face, curling up over her nose and into her mouth, clasping a mesh filter, making her look like a monster from the First library fairy stories. She rips through her bag and pulls out another one like it, shoving it up against my face and helping to untangle the rubber clasp. “Check Kasim!” Her breath rasps through the mask in a tinny hiss as she pulls Cale’s mask out. “Get his mask on if he’s breathing.”
Kasim’s eyes are open when I get to him, but he bats my hands away when I start looking for the mask. I have to turn both of the Reds over before I find his bag. When I hand him the mask, he just looks at it. Taking it back, I try to fit it over his mouth, but he jerks away, landing an open-handed slap across the back of my head.
Mei tries to pull him up into a sitting position, but he fights her, too. She lets him slump back to the ground, and pulls me in close. “We have to move. I don’t know who else is out here . . . or what. We’ve made so much noise. . . .”
She picks up fragments of the disk and shoves them into her pack, far enough from Kasim that he can’t reach her. “I’ll stay with him while you go for help,” she says. “Can you get Cale back?”
The filter on Cale’s mask is painted with sharp teeth, a grotesque imitation of the monsters that just ran away into the forest. Pushing back a shudder, I boost her up, sliding her over my shoulders. The bone bracelet she’s always wearing flops off onto the ground, so I pick it up and tuck it into one of my pockets.
By the time Kasim and Mei are out of sight, my steps are already heavy. Running back toward the Mountain soon becomes walking, then trudging. It feels as though Cale has gained a hundred pounds in the five minutes I’ve been carrying her.
A rustling in the bushes off to my right turns my head. Eyeing the leaves as they sway in the wind, fear kicks through me, Cale’s unbearable weight pinning me to the spot. A low growl whispers toward us and something large moves, leaves swirling around its shadowy outline. A pointy nose and black sunken eyes swish through the curtain of vines. The thing’s mouth opens wide in an excited yip, yellow teeth jagged and bloody.
The gore charges us, its graceful bounds lopsided by dark trails of blood running down one of its legs. Cale is on the ground and my gun is out before my mind registers that I am about to be torn to pieces, but my shots ring out in quick succession.
The barreling hulk seems to trip and fall midstride, momentum tangling its legs, sending it to the ground in a heap, nose twitching inches from my feet. It snaps at my boot and I trip over Cale in my hurry to put distance between me and its sharp snout.
It thrashes closer to Cale, eyes on her unmoving form. Hungry, even moments from death. I level my gun, find its eye, the cold metal reflected in the endless black pupil. Fire.
CHAPTER 30