Endless Night Part 9

"Go!" she told him. "Don't wait." She threw her left leg high to the side and caught the edge with her foot.

Her right leg still hung down, knee and toes against the wall.

"Watch out!" Andy cried.

And Jody cried out, herself, when her ankle was grabbed.

"Gotcha!"

First one hand, then two. One clutched her ankle while the other rubbed upward on the side of her leg, stopped only a bit below her groin and squeezed her thigh so hard that tears flooded her eyes.

She knew that wasn't where he wanted his hand to be.

Just couldn't reach any higher.

"Leave her alone!" Andy yelled.

Jody looked at the boy. He was blurry through her tears.

He was pus.h.i.+ng himself up. And she knew that he meant to leap on the man and save her.

She shot out her right arm and shoved the side of his face, ramming his head away. His body twisted, started to tumble off the wall.

Without her arm to prop her up, Jody plunged forward. The hands tore at her leg, trying to jerk her down, but all her weight and the momentum of the push at Andy's head threw her toward the other side of the wall.

Probably snap my leg off.

She tensed every muscle in her right leg.

Down below, Andy crashed through foliage, thudded and grunted.

The edge of the top row of blocks dug hard into Jody's thigh.

And into the fingers clutching her there. The man yelped and the hand let go.

The edge acted like a fulcrum.

She felt her leg shoot backward and up, ripping her ankle from the man's grip. The heel of her foot pounded him somewhere. An instant later, her leg flipped high and cleared the top.

She was upside-down, dropping headfirst, her face only inches from the back of the wall. Then her legs started coming down behind her. The rate they were moving, she figured her heels might be the first part of her body to strike the ground.

But her legs kept dropping even after she sensed that her body was stretched out level. They swept lower and lower. Then her rump smacked the steep ground, mas.h.i.+ng crisp and p.r.i.c.kly weeds, bouncing, throwing her forward in a headfirst somersault down the slope.

A tree pounded her shoulder, knocking her sideways, turning her tumble into a quick, wild roll. She flipped and flipped. She tried to spread-eagle, hoping that outstretched arms and widespread legs would stop her, but the ground battered her arms out of the way and knocked her legs together and she kept on spinning downward like a log. Once, she grabbed a handful of weeds. Their roots popped from the soil. Later, something gouged her side. Finally, the ground dropped out from under her.

A freefall made her heart lurch with dread.

But the fall only lasted a moment. She landed on her back on a bed of rocks that rolled and clattered as Jody's momentum slid her across them and flipped her over one last time.

For a while, the world seemed to go on tilting and swaying. Then it settled down.

She lay there, huffing, her heart slamming.

I've gotta get up, she told herself. Gotta get up and run. They're gonna be coming. They'll kill me ...

She didn't hear them coming, though.

The wall's way up there, she thought. Way, way up there. If those guys didn't have the nerve to jump off the balcony, what're the chances they'll make a try at this?

Who knows?

If I hear them coming, I'll get up and run. But not till then.

For now, she didn't want to move. Not even to fix her nights.h.i.+rt.

The fall had twisted her nights.h.i.+rt and rucked it way up, leaving her naked below the midriff. She didn't like it. Bad enough that her b.u.t.t showed, but she didn't enjoy having her bare front against the ground. G.o.d-only-knew-what might be there. Bugs, spiders, worms, snakes ...

All she could feel under her body, however, were rocks. Some small as marbles, some big as baseb.a.l.l.s, some round, some blocky, some pointy-each of them pus.h.i.+ng against her someplace. They were under her legs and groin and hips and belly and ribs and b.r.e.a.s.t.s and arms and face. In some places, they hurt more than in other places. Nowhere did they feel good.

With an effort that made her dizzy, she moved her arms away from her sides and folded them under her head. She pillowed her cheek on a forearm.

Better.

But she still ached everywhere. The rocks weren't the worst of it, either. Her skin seemed to b.u.m with countless harts. Beneath her skin, her muscles everywhere quivered and jerked and flinched. Under the muscles, her bones seemed to ring from the pounding they'd taken.

Just to make sure her legs weren't broken, she moved them slightly. The rocks beneath them rolled a bit. Some scratched her skin. The movement hurt her in many ways. It convinced her, though, that she'd broken no bones in her legs.

Broken bones.

Andy! Where's Andy?

Slowly, Jody lifted her face off her crossed arms. She swiveled her head.

The area was very dark, but specks and patches of moonlight glowed here and there. She seemed to be lying on a path of rocks. Its sides were bordered by steep banks a few feet high.

A creek bed. A dry creek bed.

Up ahead, where she could see over the banks, the place looked like a jungle.

This is okay, she thought. This is really good.

They'll never find us here.

She knew that she had to find Andy, though. Lowering her head, she rested for a while longer. Gradually, her breathing and heartbeat calmed down.

While she waited, she listened. She heard birds twittering and squawking, cars pa.s.sing on a distant road, the far-off hum of a prop airplane, a door banging shut, a dog yapping, music and voices that apparently came from a television.

She did not hear anyone crunching through the foliage on the hillside.

That was a very good thing.

It was also good that she could hear a television. Though sounds might carry long distances on such a quiet summer night, the TV meant that a house was within a reasonable distance. She could probably get to it if she needed to.

She didn't want to think about going in search of a house.

Maybe later.

For now, she was well hidden and safe. She felt very lucky to be alive. She sure didn't want to jeopardize herself by venturing out into an unfamiliar neighborhood.

The thing to do is find Andy, she decided.

Gritting her teeth, Jody pushed herself up to her hands and knees. Though her hurts flared, she didn't allow the pain to stop her. On her feet, she pulled at the twisted damp rag of her nights.h.i.+rt, unwound it, and drew it down her thighs.

To her right, she saw the hillside that slanted up, heavy with trees and bushes, toward the rear of the Youngman house. She couldn't see much of it. She certainly couldn't see the wall at the top. But nothing seemed to be moving down toward her through the darkness.

To her left, she saw more trees and undergrowth. Splashes of moonlight, but no light from houses or streets. How odd. They had to be there. She'd visited the area often enough to know that every hillside had a road curving around its base, that every such road was lined with houses.

Houses on the hillsides always had houses somewhere below them. Being at the bottom of a hill, she must be fairly close to the back of someone's place.

So where are the lights?

Maybe a power failure, she told herself.

She didn't like the idea of that. Not one bit. A power failure might've been caused on purpose by those men to give them darkness.

What if it wasn't just the guys I saw? What if they're all over the place? Hundreds of them. Like The Night of the Living Dead, or something.

No, that's crazy.

This whole thing's crazy and sick. I don't need to make it worse by going nuts with my imagination.

She knew there hadn't been a power failure as of five or ten minutes ago; the Youngman house had still been lighted up the last time she'd seen it from over by the wall. Besides, if that bunch had wanted to knock out all the lights in the area, they certainly would've done it before starting their attacks.

I bet there isn't any power failure, she thought. I just can't see the lights because of all the trees and stuff. Fences, too. Almost every house was likely to have a solid fence of wood or cinderblocks to protect it from the wilds at the base of the slope.

Probably no way to reach a street without running into a fence.

More climbing.

I'll need to give Andy another boost.

Have to find him first.

She listened again for sounds of anyone approaching. They're long gone. They've gotta be.

"Andy?" she called softly.

She stood motionless, listening. No answer came.

"Andy!" she called more loudly.

She waited.

Maybe he's out cold.

He had dropped from the same wall as Jody, must've tumbled down the same slope. Even though they'd started at almost the same place, however, he certainly hadn't ended up in the creek bed with her.

It seemed likely that he'd stopped short, somewhere up the slope.

How far up?

She hadn't seen or heard him rolling down the slope. Maybe he'd landed by the wall and stayed there.

What if they got him?

"Jody?"

She whirled toward the slope. "Andy?"

"Where are you?" The faint, fearful voice of the boy came from above and off to her left.

"I'm on my way," Jody called.

Chapter Seven.

It took only a few minutes to find Andy. He lay in the darkness beneath an overhanging lip of rock. Jody could only see the dim gray of his torso and face. His jeans made him invisible below the waist.

As she approached him, he propped himself up on his elbows.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah. What about you?"

"Fine." She sat down beside him. The ground was springy with weeds. They were damp and soft. They felt a lot better than the rocks of the creek bed. She leaned back, bracing herself on stiff arms, and stretched out her legs beside Andy's. "You didn't tell me there was a cliff behind that wall," she said.

"Yeah, well. They didn't get us, did they?"

"Not so far. Have you heard anything from up there?"

"No. You?"

"Huh-uh."