In the Barren Ground by Loreth Anne White Read Free Book Online Page B

gather herself.
    “I’m fine.” She dusted snow off her pants.
    He hesitated. “You sure you’re not hurt?”
    “What part about ‘fine’ did you not hear?”
    He eyed her a second longer, then turned and resumed his climb. But he’d dropped his pace noticeably.
    “No need to slow down on my account,” she yelled after him. “I said I’m fine. ”
    He had the audacity to chuckle softly. Smug asshole.
    It was 11:40 p.m. and snow had stopped falling by the time they crested the ridge. They heard them first. A wet snarling, snapping, growling. Crunching. The sound of animals feeding on flesh. Bones.
    Human flesh and bones.
    Van Bleek made a rapid sign for her to lower herself. She crouched slowly to the snow beside him.
    “See?” he whispered, pointing. “Over there.” Tana blinked, her brain trying to process what she was seeing in the darkness.
    Shapes. Shadows. Animals—the wolves, she couldn’t tell how many—were fighting and tearing at what she reckoned were the bodies of Selena Apodaca and Raj Sanjit. Bile rose up into her gullet. “Sweet Jesus,” she whispered.
    “What do you want to do?” Van Bleek said.
    “Scare them off those kids,” Tana said without hesitation. From her breast pocket, she removed two little pencil rocket launchers, gave one to Van Bleek. She handed him flare cartridges. “Take these. I want to see how many animals are down there, and what kind.” She screwed a flare cartridge into her own launcher, using the light of her headlamp to see what she was doing. “You go first,” she said. “Try to fire into the air right above them. Then I’ll shoot mine.”
    Van Bleek shot off his flare. He aimed true. It exploded into a mushroom of bright pink cloud above the massacre. There was a yelp, squeals. Some of the wolves retreated, but two big ones stood their ground over their kills—wet, foaming, bloody mouths as glowing eyes looked in their direction. A kick of fear shot through Tana’s adrenaline at the aggression she saw in the alphas’ postures. She fired her own flare farther to the right of the one Markus had expelled, in the direction several animals had run. Her flare exploded with a massive crack above them, frizzing brightly into the mist. The canines cowered, but this time they did not flee. Five in total that she could see. One of the two alphas and a smaller wolf slinked back to the carcasses.
    “They’re not going anywhere,” she said quietly. “They’ve been emboldened by the blood.”
    “And the taste of human meat,” Van Bleek said quietly.
    Tana slid her rifle out from her pack. “You take those two big ones on the left,” she said, focusing through her sight on the carnage below. “I’ll start with the animals on the right.”
    They fired, reloaded, fired, and launched more flares. Like soldiers on a ridge they worked in concert to slaughter the pack. Below, wolves cried, yelped. Snapped. And fell. The killing was over in minutes. Silence was suddenly deafening. She could smell the sulfurous powder from the flares. Tana’s heart boomed. Sweat slicked her body. A kind of pain burned behind her eyes. “We had to do it,” she whispered more to herself than Van Bleek. “They’ll need those animals for necropsy. They’ve eaten from those kids’ bodies—they’ve been acclimated to human flesh. We had to kill them all.”
    Van Bleek remained silent beside her, just staring down into the valley as the light from their flares dwindled and flickered out. Darkness closed around them. Tana swiped the back of her glove over her mouth. Her hand was shaking. “We need to get down there,” she said. “Before more scavengers come. Need to secure the remains of those poor kids.”

CHAPTER 6
    “Looks like a bloody butcher’s shop,” Van Bleek said, panning his beam over the slaughter.
    Or big game kill . . . apart from clothing and other gear that had been shredded to ribbons and littered the site. The snow had turned pink and red and was all