Ashes by Ilsa J. Bick Read Free Book Online Page B

chute was forty, fifty feet farther on, but there was a scrub pine corkscrewing out of the mountain only twenty feet away; she could grab that. Ellie would have to slide past before she reached the chute, and if Alex got there in time …
    A slurry of dirt and scree skittered down the slope, breaking over Alex’s head. She heard the rattle of more rocks as they slalomed into the funnel; saw a spray of them slam and then pinball against bigger rocks and into thin air. Ellie was turtled on her back now, arms nearly vertical as the pack rode up the girl’s shoulders.
    Kicking the toes of her boots into the mountain, Alex dug in with her knees, then hooked on to the pine with her left hand. Her hand screamed as the bark’s scales knifed into her already bloodied palm. “Ellie!” she shouted. “Over here! Give me your hand, give me your hand !”
    She surged for the girl, and then Ellie’s hand clamped around her wrist. There was a mighty jerk that nearly tore Alex’s shoulder out of its socket, and would’ve pulled her off and sent them both crashing toward the chute if the slope had been any steeper.
    Ellie slid, slowed … and stopped falling.
    Gulping, Alex closed her eyes. Over the boom of her heart, she heard Ellie crying and shouting: “I told you this was a stupid idea!”

    In a little under two minutes, she’d saved a kid who hated her guts and, in the process, lost her pack, her gear, her parka, her food.
    And, oh, yes, some maniac was shooting out there.
    They were so completely screwed.

11
    Four power bars.
    Five packets of instant Jell-O: two lime, one orange, one lemon, one cherry.
    A space blanket.
    A small brown bottle of ancient iodine tablets.
    One bottle of water. Her car keys with a working mini-flashlight. A spare magazine of 9mm bullets for the Glock.
    An airline travel pack that contained a sliver of soap, a folding toothbrush, and a teeny, tiny tube of toothpaste she must’ve squirreled away after a flight somewhere.
    In the Altoids tin she always carried in her fanny pack, she hit real pay dirt: fishing line and weights, a cable saw, waterproof matches, a couple Band-Aids, two small X-Acto blades, a couple safety pins, a tiny baggy of cotton balls, a mini-tube of Vaseline, and four foil packets of alcohol wipes. A miniature compass.
    That, along with the Glock and her knife, was the sum total of their gear, everything she had left. Of course, Ellie hadn’t brought a thing down the mountain other than her little Hello Kitty daypack. Except for a collapsible fishing rod, a small box of lures, and an ancient Black & Decker flashlight—working, thank God—the pack was crammed with kid stuff: a handful of toiletries, wads of clothes, a water bottle with three gulps left. A patched, grimy Gund bear that was more thread than anything else.
    Okay, so maybe they weren’t completely screwed. The basic four for survival were warmth, shelter, water, and food. Well, Alex could start a fire, which she would need because all she had were the clothes on her back. She could build a debris shelter easily enough. Her filter had been in the frame pack, so that sucked, but she still had the one full bottle, and she knew where to find more water. She had the compass and the sun, and she knew roughly where they had to go, how far away they were, and that she’d have made it on her own without too much trouble.
    Food was kind of a problem. There was the Glock, but aside from the spare magazine, the rest of her ammunition—an entire brick—was gone, along with the rest of her gear. Not that she knew the first thing about hunting with a pistol, or was about to waste bullets figuring it out. She might set a snare. Deadfalls were relatively easy, but using any kind of trap meant setting several and staying put, and no way was she interested in that. They could certainly fish; they were heading for the river, and the rangers were only a couple