Everything was mud gray-the sky, the ground, the air-and the people and animals moved like big ashy lumps in front and behind. Bunny was so tired and so full of ash and smoke that only her sore tailbone let her know that she was not traveling in a dream. Then Nanook began racing forward and back to them until they quickened their progress in anticipation of what he might have found. He led them to a place where the snow and ash still bore faint indentations of human feet, the long flat marks of copter skids, and a pile of discarded effects, all but the metal reduced to scraps of melted or fused material. Fingers of cooling, hardening mud crept up the side of a canyon wall.
Nanook leapt the few feet from the edge of the canyon to the mud, and Bunny caught her breath, fearful that Nanook might be risking injury. But the cat was far from stupid, and he landed and solemnly stretched out on a surface that was apparently comfortably warm. He began licking his filthy paws as if he were back in Sean’s laboratory.
“Trust him to find the perfect spot to relax,” Clodagh said, amused.
Dinah also settled down to lick her paws clean. She had trotted dutifully by Diego’s mount, her red coat barely visible under its ashen cover.
They slipped the saddle blankets and hackamores from the horses and fed them. They munched trail rations as they unstrapped the snowshoes that they hoped would give them better footing over the ash-covered mud and snow. While they made a final check of their packs, Steve Margolies called their position in to Adak. Bunny only hoped the transmission was better than the reception. All they could hear was a hiss and crackle a little louder than the wind, which was blowing steadily east.
“I hope they got all that,” Steve told the others. “I didn’t hear exactly what they said but, having done a personal on-the-spot review of conditions, I think they said this is a no-go area. There was also some gibberish about there being no one in command to give orders.”
Clodagh gave a contemptuous sniff and, with a groan, once more began to spread herself flat on the ground. The others stood about for what seemed a very long time-at least the curly-coats had moved a good distance away in search of any grass the mud and ash hadn’t buried-before she moved again.
She hauled herself up, mopped the ash from her face and neck, brushed it off the front of her clothes, and then pointed. ‘That way.”
“The volcano’s that way,” Steve protested, pointing elsewhere.
Clodagh moved her arm slightly toward the north. ‘The volcano is that way.” Then she dropped her snowshoes to the ground and stepped into them. Scooping up her pack and twitching her shoulders so that it settled on her back, she started off in the direction she had indicated.
Bunny looked at Diego and shrugged. Sinead jerked her head at the perplexed Steve, and very shortly, all were following her down into the valley, Dinah sticking right at Diego’s heels. In several leaps, Nanook caught up and passed the humans. Clodagh took particular notice of where he put his paws. For all her bulk, she moved with unexpected agility as she followed the cat’s tracks.
Chapter 16
Yana and Torkel dragged Giancarlo back to the uncertain safety of the boulder, the three of them hostage to the hot mud surrounding them. Yana bound up Giancarlo’s pulped arm and leg, but the heat of the mud and flying rock had pretty well cauterized the wounds inflicted by the blast-or so she would have to hope, she thought ruefully. The colonel would be lucky to live long enough to get infections.
Torkel had taken a worse beating than she, for although her back was pretty well skinned, her hair hadn’t been as badly singed and her scalp hadn’t been peppered with ash because she’d had sense enough to protect her head. Torkel’s face was scored and swollen where rock had hit it before she had pulled him down, and he was ravaged with grief besides.
She had had to prod him painfully to get him to move enough to help her with Giancarlo.