James Axler – The Mars Arena

“It’s okay,” he said, reaching around her to hook his fingers in the thick leather belt at her back.

Just as he was beginning to think something had gone wrong and J.B. hadn’t gotten his knots tight enough, the rope yanked up fast around Ryan’s boots. The force bruised his ankles despite the leather and despite the elasticity of the nylon weave, and the rope felt as if it had cut into his flesh.

He came to a sudden stop.

While the rope held him, giving enough to keep his legs from popping out of his knee or hip joints, he was the only thing holding on to Krysty. He growled with the pain of it all. His legs, his back and his arms and shoulders suddenly felt as if they’d been subjected to the fiery kiss of an incendiary gren.

Before he could recover, the helicopter was on them, batting them aside like a pinata as it nose-dived into the abyss. An instant later they were slammed against the side of the fissure.

The rough rock bit into Ryan’s back, but he didn’t think there were any skin abrasions, since the dead man’s coat provided padding. He bounced a couple of times, twisting along the rope’s trajectories, swapping sides with Krysty, then came to a rest against the underside of the second fissure.

“Fireblast,” Ryan said weakly as soon as he was able to draw a breath. He kept his arms locked tight. Krysty sagged in his arms, not quite limp. “Krysty?”

“Here, lover.” With effort she lifted her head and met his gaze. “I’m right here.”

“Don’t let go,” he warned. “Don’t know how much I can trust my arms.” They felt weak and numb all at the same timea bad combination for a man needing his best from them.

“Ryan!” Jak called.

“We’re here! Haul us in! Careful!”

Krysty shifted her grip, grabbing fistfuls of Ryan’s coat and putting some of her weight on the garment instead of in his arms. “Thank you. I thought I was dead and done for, lover.”

He shook his head, finding the unconscious movement difficult under their present circumstances. “Not as long as there’s a breath left in me and I see a way clear.”

J.B., Doc, Mildred and Jak pulled them up, keeping the tension on the line steady, moving them along. Ryan and Krysty scraped along the fissure wall until they were raised above it. With the line unanchored, they twirled out of control until they reached the lip of the top fissure.

J.B. grabbed Krysty’s arm and helped her onto solid ground. The echo of the tremors from the last wave of the quake still vibrated through the mountain.

“Truly, my dear Ryan,” Doc said as he offered his hand, “that was one of the most outstanding exercises in courageous gallantry that these old eyes have ever beheld.”

“Speak for yourself, Doc,” Mildred said, flicking out a knife and cutting the rope from Ryan’s ankles. The knots were drawn up too tight from the fall to ever untie. “I nearly wet my pants when I saw them both go over the edge.”

Ryan kicked out of the cut rope, gritting his teeth against the pain in his ankles, legs and back. Everything still seemed to move when he wanted it to, which was a good sign.

“Thought lost for sure,” Jak added. “Glad not.”

“Me, too.” Ryan took Jak’s hand and forced himself to his feet.

A harsh, spitting bolt of snake-tongued lightning suddenly fried the sky above them, leaving the harsh, acrid smell of ozone behind.

Ryan glanced up just in time to watch a second jagged streak of lightning blaze across the sky. “Brushwooders’ll probably hole up in this if they’re smart.”

J.B. nodded. “They’ll probably be thinking we’ll be doing the same thing.”

Ryan bared a feral grin. “If we had a choice, we’d more than likely do that. I think mebbe a little farther on, we could find a better place to set up that tent Jak found. Distance is a weapon we got right now, and we’d be better off using it.”

Mildred was the only one who voiced an objection. “With the temperature dropping like it is, we’re going to be risking exposure out here.”