White Cave Escape Read online

  Bits of fluffy, white ash drifted down through the gloom, stinging the backs of their necks and hands. The Devil’s snowflakes, thought Shawn.

  He shuddered and shook himself. This was no time to let his imagination run wild. He could feel the fingers of panic scrabbling at the edges of his mind, trying to find a way in. He swallowed hard to lock out the fear. He realized Tony was speaking.

  “The wind is blowing that way,” Tony was saying, pointing at a thick tangle of brush and branches. Ahead of them, the trail curved away in the opposite direction.

  Shawn glanced at Petra. “What do you think? Follow the wind or follow the trail?”

  Petra chewed her lip nervously. “The trail might curve back around into the fire. We could get cut off. But cutting straight through the woods will slow us down. A lot.” She shook her head.

  The smoke wafted around them.

  “We have to get moving,” said Shawn. “What’s it going to be? Woods or trails?”

  “Heads or tails?” asked Tony, shrugging helplessly.

  “WOOF!” Hobart was suddenly on his feet, staring hard down the path. The kids looked at him in surprise. “WOOF WOOF!” Hobart barked again and took a step down the trail. He whined.

  “What is it, Hobie?” Petra asked.

  “He’s saying, stick to the trail!” said Tony, pointing down the path. He patted Hobart. “I’m with you, big buddy—the trail it is!”

  Tony started to move forward, but Hobart stood motionless and continued staring straight ahead. The fur rose along his back.

  “I think he hears something,” said Petra uncertainly.

  A long, low growl rumbled out of Hobie’s chest.

  “Whoa, dude!” said Tony, staring at his furry friend in surprise. “I didn’t know you could even do that!”

  “I’ve never heard him growl before either,” said Petra. She followed Hobart’s gaze to where the path curved around a corner. “Uh, guys,” she whispered. “I think maybe there’s something out there.”

  “Okay, woods it is,” said Tony hastily. He spun on his heel and headed away from the trail, towards the bushes.

  “Wait!” said Craig suddenly. “Do you hear that?”

  A thin, desperate cry shivered through the smoky air: “Help!”

  “Where’s that coming from?” asked Shawn, looking around frantically.

  “That way,” exclaimed Craig, pointing down the trail in the direction of Hobie’s stare.

  “Come on!” said Shawn. They sprinted down the path. Just before they reached the corner, Hobart surged forward in an uncharacteristic burst of speed. The big dog hip-checked Shawn as he rushed past, bumping the tall, slim boy off the trail.

  “Hobart! What the—?”

  But Hobart had already disappeared around the bend in the path, a snarling growl seething through his bared teeth. An instant later, a piercing shriek of terror cut the air.

  “Hobart!” screamed Petra.

  The friends tore around the corner.

  There on the trail was a four-wheeler, lying on its side.

  Pinned beneath it was the dark-haired kid from the quarry.

  “Help me,” he whispered.

  chapter

  9

  Friends and Enemies

  “Oh, man, you have got to be kidding me,” said Tony in disgust.

  The kid struggled frantically to pull himself free of the heavy machine.

  “Get me out of here!” he cried, reaching out to them. “A bear! It was just here!” The kid rolled a pair of terrified eyes at a clump of trembling alder bushes at the side of the trail. The alders looked dishevelled; broken branches and tattered leaves indicated that something large had just crashed through them.

  But Shawn barely glanced at the battered bushes. He thought of the fallen fawn, of the teens’ jeering laughter. He felt the sour taste of hate rise like bile in the back of his throat. He stared coldly down at the struggling boy.

  “Help me, please!” begged the kid desperately. He twisted and squirmed, trying to pull himself free, but the heavy machine had him pinned.

  “Gee, I’d really love to stay and chat,” said Tony, sarcasm dripping from his voice. “But I’ve got places to go, people to see, forest fires to avoid…You know how it is.” He stepped deliberately around the wrecked ATV and started walking away. “Come on, guys.”

  “Wait!” screamed the kid. “Don’t leave me here! The fire! The bear!”

  Tony walked back to the boy and crouched down by his head. “Let me explain a couple of things to you,” he said with exaggerated patience. “First of all, it wasn’t a bear. It was a dog. A very big, very black dog…but just a dog.”

  “No, there was a bear, I swear!”

  “It was a dog. Trust me,” said Tony. “Second of all, we don’t associate with murderers of baby animals, so why don’t you just ask your pyromaniac friends to help you instead?”

  Before the boy could answer, a black shape bounded out of the bushes and onto the trail.

  The kid howled and pointed. “Bear!”

  “Nope. Dog,” said Tony, taking Hobart’s drooling head in his hands and turning it to show the kid. “See? I told you.”

  Petra threw her arms around Hobart. “Where were you, you goofy dog?” she asked him. But Hobart just whined and glanced uneasily at the forest.

  The kid stared at Hobart in bewilderment. “But— but I was sure I saw a bear,” he stammered.

  “The stress probably made you hallucinate,” said Tony. “It happens.”

  “Yeow!” Craig jumped suddenly as a spark landed on his arm. Another spark landed on a pile of dead leaves by his feet. The leaves started to smoulder. Shawn jumped forward and scuffed out the glowing embers with his sneaker.

  “We have to go,” he said. “Now.”

  “Don’t leave me!” begged the kid, swatting at a spark that was eating into the ground a few inches from his head.

  “Sorry, man. Gotta go,” said Tony. He turned and was about to walk away when Shawn reached out and caught hold of his shirt.

  “Hey, hands off the fabric, man!” protested Tony. “What’s your problem?”

  Shawn sighed. “We can’t leave him like that, you know.”

  “Aw, come on—sure we can,” argued Tony. “We’re in a bit of a hurry, remember? We don’t have time to rescue this nose-wipe. Let him help himself—it’s what he left us to do.”

  Petra put a hand on Tony’s arm.

  “Listen,” she said in a low voice. “I don’t like this kid any more than you do, but we can’t leave him to get caught in the fire. Nobody deserves that.” Tony looked skeptical.

  “If we leave him behind, we’re no better than he is,” added Shawn.

  Tony let out his breath in a long, noisy sigh. “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” he groaned, rolling his eyes. “I hate it when you guys are right. Okay, let’s get this rescue business over with so we can get out of here.”

  The three boys grabbed the frame of the ATV. Petra gripped the teenager by his arms, ready to pull.

  “Ready?” said Shawn. “One…two…three…heave!”

  Together, the boys strained to lift the heavy four-wheeler. A spark landed on the teen’s plaid shirt. Petra flicked it away. She glanced down at the boy’s white face. He stared back at her, his dark eyes wide.

  “Don’t worry,” whispered Petra. “We’ll get you out.”

  “Ugh! It’s no good. The thing’s too heavy!” grunted Shawn. The boys let go of the quad, panting.

  Panic flickered across the trapped boy’s face. “You’re not giving up, are you?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

  “Trust me—giving up isn’t our style,” said Shawn, grimly. “Hang on a minute…” He disappeared into the underbrush. A moment later he was back, dragging the slender trunk of a fallen fir. He dropped it with a thud and wiped his sweaty forehead with a grimy hand.

  “There’s our lever…now we just need a fulcrum.”

  Tony glanced skyward. “Falcon? What the heck do we n
eed a falcon for?”

  “Honestly, Tony, when was the last time you cleaned the wax out of your ears?” sighed Petra, steering him towards a cluster of boulders by the side of the trail.

  “What?” said Tony.

  “JUST HELP ME MOVE THIS ROCK!” Petra said, prying a large rock loose from the dirt.

  “Okay, okay. You don’t have to shout,” huffed Tony. He helped her roll the rock across the trail. “But I still don’t see why we need a falcon.”

  “Fulcrum, not falcon,” Shawn told him, dropping the tree trunk on top of the rock so it was balanced like an uneven teeter-totter. “See?” He wedged the short end of the teeter-totter under the chassis of the ATV. Then he walked around to the long end.

  “All right, guys. Let’s try this again.”

  Craig and Tony took up positions on either side of the log.

  “This better work,” muttered Tony.

  The air around them was getting hotter and smokier. Shawn looked over at Petra.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready.” She tightened her grip on the boy’s arms once more. “All we need is a few millimetres.”

  “Now!” shouted Shawn. The three boys threw themselves on the end of the log. The wood creaked and groaned against the metal frame of the ATV. “Come on,” grunted Shawn, pulling down on the log for all he was worth. The machine shifted ever so slightly.

  “It’s working!” said Petra. She pulled. The kid’s body moved—a centimetre. Another centimetre.

  “We can’t hold it!” yelled Shawn, struggling to keep his grip on the log.

  “Hold it! Hold it!” shouted Petra.

  The boy’s body slid forward a tiny bit more. And then:

  “He’s clear! We’ve got him!” cried Petra, tumbling backwards onto the path.

  The boys let go of the log and jumped back. The machine settled back onto the trail with a heavy, metallic groan. Tony and Craig collapsed on the ground, panting.

  “Get up!” Shawn barked at them. “We can’t rest now. We have to get out of here!” His face, streaked with sweat, dirt, and blood, looked fierce and wild in the eerie light that was seeping through the trees. Tony and Craig scrambled hastily to their feet and followed Shawn, who had turned his back on the ATV and was already heading down the trail.

  Petra hesitated. She glanced back at the boy standing by his wrecked quad. He was thin. Taller than Shawn, but not by much. Probably not that much older, either, Petra realized. “What’s your name, anyway?” she asked.

  “Colin,” he murmured, staring at the ground. His eyes were dark in his pale face, and the shadows under them gave him a hunted look.

  “Can you put weight on that leg, Colin?”

  He shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Petra, come on!” hollered Shawn. He and the others were already several metres down the path. Petra glanced from her friends back to Colin. He looked at her with his strange, hollow-looking eyes but said nothing.

  “Well, um…bye,” said Petra finally. She sprinted towards Shawn, Craig, and Tony.

  “Where’s Pyro Boy?” Tony asked when Petra had caught up with them. She glanced over her shoulder. Colin was still standing by the ATV.

  “I guess he’s going to find his own way out,” she said shortly. “And his name’s Colin, by the way.”

  “Who cares?” said Tony, but he turned, cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted down the path: “Hey, you! You’d better get away from that ATV. Gas tank plus fire equals big kaboom, you know!”

  Colin gave no sign of having heard. He stood motionless, a forlorn and lonely figure. Tony shrugged and turned away. “Whatever. Suit yourself, but don’t say we didn’t warn you.”

  The four friends ran a few more minutes down the trail, then Petra stopped short.

  “Hang on,” she said. The others stopped and looked at her questioningly.

  “I don’t feel right about this,” Petra told Shawn. “About just leaving Colin there by himself, I mean.”

  “Why?” asked Shawn. “We freed him. He can go where he wants now.”

  “Yeah, let him look after himself,” chimed in Craig. “It’s his fault we’re in this mess in the first place.”

  “But maybe he’s in shock or something,” argued Petra. “We should have made him come with us.” And with that, she turned and raced back the way they had just come.

  “Petra, wait! There’s no time!” chorused the boys, running after her.

  “Colin!” Petra called as she rounded the corner. She stopped so quickly that Shawn, Craig, and Tony almost piled into her. There was the ATV.

  But no Colin.

  chapter

  10

  Lost

  “Weird,” said Tony, looking around the empty clearing. He shrugged. “Oh well. Let’s go.”

  “But he was just here,” protested Petra. “Where did he go?”

  “Uh…guys?” It was Craig. He pointed a trembling finger at the ground. “What’s that?”

  Shawn, Tony, and Petra hurried over to look. Pressed deep into the mud beside the ATV was a paw print.

  A very big paw print.

  “P-p-p-please tell me that’s a Hobart track,” quavered Tony.

  “Way too big for a Hobart track,” said Shawn, shaking his head. He knelt down and placed his hand inside the track. The print had a rounded pad and five toes. On the end of each toe was a long, sharp claw. Shawn looked at Petra. Petra looked at Tony.

  “Don’t say it,” Tony begged her. “Please don’t say it.”

  “Bear,” said Petra.

  Tony gulped. “She said it.”

  Craig’s gaze moved from the fresh paw print to the abandoned ATV, still lying on its side.

  “Oh man,” he breathed. “You don’t suppose Colin…I mean, the bear was just here and…and now Colin’s… not.”

  “You think Bambi Boy is bear bait?” Tony shuddered.

  Petra’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh no!”

  With a loud snapping of branches a large, brown body sprang out of the underbrush and landed on the trail in front of them.

  “GAAAAAAAHHHH!” yelled all four friends.

  The deer threw them a look of white-eyed terror and leaped away, vanishing into the forest in a single bound.

  Tony clutched his chest. “Oh man,” he gasped. “I can see the headline now: ‘Twelve-year-old dies of heart attack after being ambushed by white-tailed deer.’”

  “Come on!” Shawn urged. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They ran.

  But now bear-shaped shadows seemed to lurk behind every bush. Was that a paw with long, cruel claws reaching toward them…or just a gnarled branch? Was that a breeze blowing those leaves…or a bear’s hot breath? The trail rippled along the forest floor, caged in by a wall of tall, silent trees. Branches closed over their heads like interlocking fingers, shutting out the sky. The trail was changing.

  Knee-deep weeds and ferns now obscured the dirt track. Craig tripped over a dead branch that lay hidden beneath the greenery. Tony stumbled in a rut. The air was hot and close.

  “What I would give to have my water bottle right now,” moaned Petra. She rubbed the back of her hand across her dry, cracked lips.

  “Look!” cried Craig. “Another path.” Another trail flowed through the forest, slicing across their own before vanishing again into the trees.

  “Maybe that’s the way out,” said Shawn, leaning against a tree to catch his breath. They swerved off of the overgrown path onto the new trail. But a few minutes later, this track was bisected by yet another path that snuck off into the trees in an entirely different direction.

  “Oh, brother,” said Craig. “Which way do we go now?”

  “Which way is the wind blowing?” panted Petra, holding a stitch in her side.

  “Eeny-meeny-miney-mo,” said Tony, picking a handful of grass, “please tell us which way to go.” He tossed the grass into the air. The green bits fluttered briefly before dropping back down around his feet. “Great,” said Tony. “
There’s no more wind.”

  “I have no idea where we are anymore,” said Petra, shaking her head.

  “Or where the fire is,” added Shawn uneasily. Smoke wafted around them from all directions like a poisonous fog.

  “Let’s go this way,” said Craig. He turned right, heading down a path with a decisive stride. The others jogged to catch up with him.

  “Why this way?” Tony asked him as they ran through the never-ending trees.

  Craig shrugged. “I dunno. I’m right-handed.”

  Another path appeared and skittered out of sight around a mossy knoll, as if teasing them to follow. The kids stumbled to a stop and looked at it in confusion.

  Tony groaned.

  “It’s like being lost in a maze! Which way leads out?”

  “Who makes all these paths?” wondered Craig.

  Caw-caw-caw!

  High above them, a flock of crows flapped overhead, cutting through the smoky air like black arrows. Through the treetops, the black shapes flitted in and out of sight, moving with remarkable speed. Petra stared at them. Suddenly, she jolted to life.

  “We’ll follow the crows,” she yelled. “They’ll fly away from the fire, not into it! We can follow them to safety!”

  “Petra, wait—” Shawn started to say. But Petra had already bolted into the forest. The boys sprinted after her. They raced pell-mell through the underbrush, crashing through bushes, scrambling up and down banks and gullies, dodging boulders and dead logs. But it was hopeless. The crows were gone. And so was the trail.

  “Petra!” Shawn hollered, trying to catch up with the galloping girl. “Forget it! We can’t keep up with them. They’re gone!” But Petra didn’t slow down.

  “I can still hear them!” she shouted back over her shoulder. “I can still—”

  Shawn saw the danger before she did.

  “Petra, STOP!” he roared. He launched himself into a flying football tackle. The impact caught Petra just above the hip. Down they went with a crash that knocked the breath out of both of them.

  “What did you do that for?” Petra gasped. She struggled to get to her feet. “We have to follow the birds. We have to find a way out of here! We—”