Reamde

She moved another hundred yards back, troubled by the amount of noise she made as she forced herself and the bulky pack through undergrowth. Then she turned back and looked again, since she had picked up bright lights in her peripheral vision.

A car was coming down the road, approaching the dam. She was thrilled to see it and then horrified by the certainty that whoever was inside it was about to be gunned down.

Instead, though, Jahandar approached, waving arms, bringing it to a stop at the far end of the dam. His rifle was slung on his shoulder. He bent down to engage the driver in conversation.

This must be the scrubs—the backup team. The day before yesterday, they must have driven the RV back to Elphinstone and parked it in a campground somewhere. When Zula had made her break, Jahandar or Ershut must have reached these people by phone or walkie-talkie or something, told them to come quick. The car’s rear doors opened up, and a man got out from each side, pulling a bag out behind him, slinging it over his back.

After a few minutes’ more conversation, the car went into movement again, pulling around in a U-turn, and headed back down the road toward Elphinstone.

She heard a pop behind her: the snap of a twig.

She turned around to see Sayed stealing up on her, about thirty feet away.

He was looking right at her. On his feet he was wearing the pink Crocs she had left behind at the campsite. He was movingly awkwardly because of the Crocs and because his hands were occupied by a black pump-action shotgun.

Her movements were no less awkward. But she knew she had to stay out of the range of that weapon, and so she backed away from him. Realizing he’d been sighted, he picked up his pace and began to stumble forward, flailing the gun around dangerously, dropping to his knees as the Crocs slipped on the steep loose ground, spitting and making little exclamations as branches caught him in the face.

The straps of her pack suddenly jerked violently at her shoulders. She thought she’d backed into a tree, that its branches had snagged the pack, spun her around.

Then she went down facefirst. She threw out her hands in an attempt to break the fall, but the palms of her hands skidded outward and she ended up spread-eagled on her belly. The weight of the pack was on her back. A moment later, this was joined by a weight much heavier. A weight that was moving.

“Got her!” said Zakir. His voice was coming from high above her; he was kneeling on her backpack or something. But then there was a sudden violent reshuffling and his entire weight bore down on her with force that might have cracked her ribs. It was certainly squeezing all the air out of her lungs.

“Bitch, how does it feel to be dead?” he asked her.

She only had one move, which made choosing much easier.

Bending her elbow sharply, she brought her right hand back to her left shoulder, groped upward a couple of inches, found the handles of the knives, picked the big one. It was almost wedged in place by Zakir’s weight, but she jerked it free with a convulsive movement. Then, without pause, she reversed the movement and stabbed straight backward, aiming for the sound of his voice.

He gagged on his own scream and rolled off her. As he moved she felt the knife handle twist in her hand. She maintained her grip on it, jerked it out, felt blood spray. She planted both hands and pushed herself up on hands and knees, then rolled away from him, ending up seated on her haunches.

Zakir was kneeling on the ground with both hands clapped over his mouth. His forearms were turning red. Blood began to stream off one elbow, then the other.

She heard an exclamation. Not from Zakir, who had been robbed of the power of speech. She looked up to see Sayed standing there in his Crocs, no more than ten feet away, holding the shotgun slack in his hands, staring in horror at Zakir.

She was definitely within that gun’s killing range now. She had half her own weight strapped to her back, and she was sitting down, immobilized by the pack.

For the first time in quite a while she didn’t have any particular idea as to what she should do. She was tired of coming up with ideas.

She and Sayed stared at each other for a few moments. He glanced down at her hand and saw the bloody knife.

He probably wanted to go to the aid of Zakir, who was slumping back against a tree, deflating as blood and breath ran out of him. But he didn’t want to come in range of the knife. He ought to just blow her away with that shotgun. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it.

So it was a standoff.

Something flashed through the air behind him. Sort of like a bird, except that it weighed about as much as Zula. But the quality of its movement—a strange, almost supernatural combination of speed and silence—was akin to that of a bird.

Sayed went down on his face as if he had been struck by a car. The shotgun flew out of his hands and went bouncing and rolling across the ground toward Zula.