If he isn’t here by then, I’m going to have to start a fire.
16
The Wolf Pack
BOYD
The heat actsas a distant memory.
I press my back against the engine block’s valve cover, but the iron runs dead. The warmth keeping me alive for the last hour bled out into the storm, stolen by the wind and the sub-zero dark. Now the metal feels like just another slab of cold, sucking the life out of my spine.
I should move.
The thought forms slowly, drifting through the slush in my brain like a piece of driftwood.
Merge, run, kill.
But the signals don’t reach my legs. My body turns to a tomb. I can’t feel my feet or my hands. The shivering, violent enough to rattle my teeth ten minutes ago, has stopped.
That’s the end.
I know the physiology. The cessation of shivering signals the body waving the white flag. Thermogenesis has ceased. The core temperature dropped below ninety degrees. The blood thickens, turning to sludge. The heart slows down, preparing to stop.
Get up.
I try.
I command the quadriceps to fire.
Nothing happens. I freeze in place, curled into a fetal ball inside the engine bay of a wrecked truck, wrapped in a piece of crinkling foil offering as much protection as a prayer.
The darkness at the edges of my vision creeps inward. Soft. Velvety. Promising sleep.
Iris.
Her face swims up out of the black. Not terrified or crying. She looks like she did in the kitchen, her hand on my chest, telling me to stop being a wall.
Come get me, Boyd.
“I’m trying.” I push the whisper out.
The words don’t make a sound. My lips freeze shut.
The hallucination shifts. The wind howling through the grille changes pitch, becoming a rhythmic beating.
Thwup-thwup-thwup.
A heartbeat.
No. Too loud. Too mechanical.
The ground beneath the truck vibrates. The snow on the hood dances, shaking loose.
A light cuts through the storm.
It hits blinding, a pillar of white fire descending from the heavens, sweeping over the wreckage, illuminating the trees, the snow, the blood.
Angels?
