Killing Hour - Lisa Gardner [99]
Mac surged ahead. Kimberly put her head down and forced her shorter legs to keep up.
They came crashing down the heavily wooded slope into a sudden, broad clearing. Thorny bushes and tightly packed trees gave way to knee-high grass. The ground flattened out and footing eased up.
Kimberly didn’t slow. She was still tearing forward at full throttle, trying to pick out the trail in the fading light, when she registered two things at once: the jagged tumble of hundreds of boulders off to her left and then, just fifteen feet up the pile, a startling strip of red. A skirt, her mind registered. And then . . . A human body. The girl!
They had found the girl!
Kimberly streaked toward the pile of rocks. Vaguely, she heard Mac yelling at her to stop. He grabbed at her wrist. She pulled away.
“It’s her,” she shouted back triumphantly, springing onto the pile. “Hey, hey you! Hello, hello, hello!”
Three sharp whistles sounded behind her. The international call of distress. Kimberly didn’t understand why. They had found the girl. They had saved the day. She had been right to leave the Academy. She had finally done it.
Then the girl came fully into view and any bit of triumph Kimberly had felt burst like a proverbial bubble and left her halted dead in her tracks.
The streak of red was not a piece of brightly dyed cotton, but a pair of white shorts, now stained darkly with dried blood. The sprawling white limbs—not a young girl lying peacefully down to rest, but a bruised and bloated body, twisted beyond recognition. And then, as Kimberly watched in the dusky pall, she swore she saw one of the girl’s limbs suddenly move.
The sound hit her all at once. A constant, building thrum. The deep vibration of dozens upon dozens of rattlesnakes.
“Kimberly,” Mac said quietly from the ground behind her. “For the love of God, please don’t move.”
Kimberly couldn’t even nod. She just stood there, perfectly frozen, while all around her, the shadows of the rocks uncurled into the shapes of snakes.
“The girl’s dead,” Kimberly said finally. Her voice sounded hoarse and faint, the tone of a woman already in shock. Mac eased closer to the boulders. By his third footstep, a fresh round of rattling shook the pile. He stopped instantly.
The sound seemed to be coming from everywhere. Ten, twenty, thirty different vipers. They seemed to be everywhere. Sweet Jesus, Mac thought, and reached back slowly for his gun.
“She must have been tired and dazed,” Kimberly murmured. “Saw the rocks. Climbed up for a better view.”
“I know.”
“My God, I think they bit every inch of her body. I’ve never . . . I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Kimberly, I have my gun out. If something moves, I’m going to shoot it. Don’t flinch.”
“It won’t work, Mac. There are too many of them.”
“Shut up, Kimberly,” he growled.
She turned her head toward him and actually smiled. “Now which one of us is being earnest?”
“Snakes don’t like us any more than we like them. If you just remain calm and don’t move, most of them will disappear back into the rocks. I’ve sounded the whistle; help will be here shortly.”
“I almost died once. Did I ever tell you that? A man I thought I knew well. It turned out he was just using me to get to my father. He cornered Rainie and me in a hotel room. He held a gun to my head. There was nothing Rainie could do. I still remember just how the barrel felt. Not cold, but warm. Like living flesh. It’s strange to feel so helpless. It’s strange to be trapped in the arms of another human being and know he’s going to take your life.”
“You’re not dead, Kimberly.”
“No, my father surprised him. Shot him in the chest. Thirty seconds later, everything had changed and I was the one still alive, wearing his blood in my hair. And my father was telling me everything would be all right. It was nice of him to lie.”
Mac