Near the Bone by Christina Henry (ebook reader color screen txt) 📗

but Mattie still didn’t see any sign of clouds. The only way they could hide their trail from William was if snow fell in the night. Without the cover of a fresh layer, then all he’d have to do is follow their tracks.

And the creature can probably track us by sound or smell, so there’s nothing we can do to keep it from us.

Her stomach churned. The thought of William or the creature catching up to them made her want to throw up. She didn’t know which of them frightened her more.

William. If William catches up to you, it’s a lifetime of hell for you. The creature can kill you in an instant.

Or creatures. If there actually are two and it wasn’t a figment of your imagination.

Mattie didn’t have any idea how far they’d gone from the site where William had attacked. She knew they’d walked in a circle, or something like it, as they’d hurried away from William in the direction of the caves and now they were going back toward the cabin. Maybe they’d already gone past it.

“That’s it,” C.P. said, stopping so suddenly that Jen only kept Griffin from tipping forward just in time. “I can’t walk anymore.”

“We can’t stop here,” Jen said before Mattie could protest. “We’re out in the open.”

They were directly in the center of a trail, but there was an-other clump of large boulders to their left, on the forest side, and the trees rose up over them. The cliffside hadn’t changed—it was still a steep drop-off to a ground that was far below. Mattie wondered when they would encounter the stream that was close to the cabin. It seemed they’d gone a long way from the place where she’d lived.

“It’s not that exposed,” C.P. said.

Mattie could see his point. The boulders seemed to provide a kind of cover, something sturdy to lean against. But the four of them were still easy to see, easy to find, especially since they had just stopped a few inches away from their snow trail.

“We can’t keep going like this. Even with two of us we can’t carry Griffin fast enough to get away from that guy if he’s got a gun.”

“So, what, we’re just going to lay down here and let him find us and shoot us in our sleep?” Jen said.

“We have to pitch the tents now. The light is going to be gone very soon.”

“We can’t pitch the tents. Are you crazy? We have to get Griffin out of here and into cell phone range as soon as possible. He’s been out cold for the last half hour. He’s going to need a helicopter.”

“Jen, we can’t just keep trudging forward until we all collapse.”

Why not? Mattie wanted to ask. That’s exactly what she had done the day William abandoned her in the woods. And if C.P. truly understood the danger they were in, he wouldn’t suggest stopping.

Mattie recognized that all of them were hungry and exhausted, including herself, but she couldn’t imagine feeling safe inside a tent.

Her memory of tents was limited to a play tent that she and Heather had pitched in the yard, a small pink-and-purple cabin for small children to run in and out of. Even if the tents that the others carried were sturdier than her play tent, they were still only cloth, and cloth was easily torn by claws or broken by bullets.

“Look, I’ve gotta eat something or I’m going to pass out, too,” C.P. said. “Let go of him.”

“We can’t just drop his unconscious body in the snow,” Jen said, clinging to Griffin’s shoulder even as C.P. released him. “He’s going to get hypothermia.”

“Wait,” C.P. said, slinging his large pack off his back and rummaging around in it. He removed a small object that Mattie couldn’t quite make out in the gloom and waved it at Jen. “Wrap him in this. I keep them for emergencies.”

“Good idea,” Jen said.

“She actually said I had a good idea,” C.P. said to Mattie. “I should mark this day on the calendar.”

“Unwrap it for me, dummy,” Jen said, handing the item back to C.P.

“Aaand everything’s back to normal,” he said, pulling off the wrapping and unfolding the object.

It was a large silver blanket, very shiny even in the deepening gloom.

“It’s a space blanket,” C.P. said in response to Mattie’s questioning look. “They don’t look like much but they really do keep you warm, and they don’t take up a lot of room in your pack.”

Jen and C.P. carefully wrapped Griffin in the blanket and lowered him down to the snow, propping him against one of the boulders. Griffin didn’t move or protest. His eyes were closed and he appeared completely unconscious.

Mattie shivered. Now that they’d stopped moving and the sun was gone, she realized how cold it was and how unprepared she was—for the second time in just a few days—to be out in it.

(Think how disappointed William would be if you died of the cold instead of at his hand)

I’m not going to die. I’m going to get off this mountain. I’m going to tell people what he did, what he did to me and my mother.

C.P. and Jen were both rooting around in their packs. C.P. threw several items out in the snow.

“Take something,” he said to Mattie. “You have to be starving.”

She stared at the variety of wrapped objects. It was packaged food, something she hadn’t seen in a very long time, and most of it was unrecognizable except for one item.

Even in the deepening gloom she could see the word on the package clearly, white letters against a dark background.

HERSHEY’S

“Can . . . I . . . have . . . that?” she asked, pointing at the chocolate bar.

“Have whatever you want,” C.P. said. He picked up a bag, tore it open noisily, and began stuffing something crunchy into his mouth.

“Do you have to eat like a cow chewing cud?” Jen said. “Close your mouth, for god’s sake.”

Mattie tentatively picked up the chocolate bar. She felt the ridges of the bar through the wrapper and suddenly remembered