Chapter 44 - Bloodline in the Blackout
The wind screamed through our clothes as the unpowered cart hurtled down the terrifying forty-degree descent.
Behind us, the boulder struck the rear bumper with a deafening metallic screech, sending sparks cascading over our heads.
I wrestled with the ancient iron brake lever, the rusted brake pads smoking and squealing against the frozen rails.
The smell of scorched metal and friction-burned asbestos choked our throats as the cart shuddered violently on the track.
"Too fast! We’re going too fast!" Marcus yelled over the roaring wind, gripping the iron handrail with white knuckles.
Ahead, the tracks made a sudden, lethal switchback over a sheer drop that plunged into an abyss of absolute darkness.
I threw my entire body weight backward against the brake lever, the metal biting into my palms as the cable screamed.
The cart’s wheels locked, throwing us sideways as the vehicle skidded across the switchback on two shrieking steel rims.
For an endless two seconds, the iron chassis hung suspended over an empty, bottomless chasm carved by ancient subterranean ice.
Clara shielded the baby with her entire torso, her forehead slamming against the iron siding without a cry of complaint.
With a bone-jarring crash, the right wheels slammed back onto the iron track, and the cart finally ground to a halt against an emergency bumper.
We sat in the absolute, ringing silence of the deep earth, our lungs burning with thin, freezing mountain air.
"Everyone alive?" I asked, my voice trembling as I reached out to touch Clara’s face in the pitch dark.
"We’re alive," Clara whispered, her warm breath hitting my cheek as she kissed our sleeping daughter’s temple.
Marcus groaned from the floor of the cart, spitting out another curse as he pulled a glowing flare from his tactical vest.
He struck the striker against the cap, filling the cavern with an eerie, hissing flare of chemical magnesium light.
The red illumination revealed an abandoned subterranean maintenance depot dating back to the Cold War.
Concrete walls covered in chipped German warning signs stretched toward a set of rusted metal stairs leading upward.
"Where does this lead?" I asked, shining my light toward the spiraling staircase cut into the solid stone chimney.
"The high-altitude weather observatory on the peak," Clara said, checking the battery on her encrypted smartphone. "It’s abandoned."
"Not abandoned anymore," Marcus pointed out, shining his flare toward fresh boot prints pressed into the frozen slush on the steps.
Two sets of prints—one narrow and hurried, the other heavy, deliberate, and dragging slightly at the left heel.
"Arthur and Eleanor," Clara said, her voice dropping into a register of cold, unyielding lethality.
"They have a twenty-minute lead on us," I noted, checking the magazine of my sidearm. "Three rounds left."
"That’s three more than Arthur deserves," Clara said, taking the point as we began the grueling ascent up the vertical stairs.
Every step brought a drop in temperature, the frigid alpine draft howling down the stone chimney like a pack of wolves.
May you like
Halfway up the hundred-foot staircase, a sharp, echoing gunshot rang out from the observatory above us.
Then came a woman's blood-curdling scream that belonged unmistakably to Eleanor.
