The Last Oracle (Sigma Force 5)

Pyotr suddenly grabbed Monk’s hand, clamping hard.

Something crashed through the trees, coming right at them.

Oh, no…

Monk yelled, knowing what was coming. “Go! Run!”

Monk snatched up the boy, who struggled and cried out. Konstantin splashed away, his knees high, dragging his sister behind him. Monk’s left foot sank to his calf. He tugged, but he could not free his limb. It was as if it had sunk into cement.

The rip and snap of branches aimed for them.

Monk tossed Pyotr ahead of him and twisted around to face the charge. He heard the boy splash into the water. But instead of running away, Pyotr scrabbled back to Monk.

“No! Pyotr, go!”

The boy continued past him as a large shadow leaped out of the trees and landed heavily into the water with a splash. Boy and shadow fell upon each other in a warm greeting.

Marta.

Monk fought the hammering in his heart. “Pyotr, next time…some warning.” He wormed his foot slowly out of the muck.

The chimpanzee hugged the boy and lifted him bodily out of the shallow water. Konstantin and Kiska splashed back to them. Marta let Pyotr go and gave each child a tight squeeze. She came next to Monk, arms up and wide. He bent down and accepted a hug from her, too. Her body was hot, her breath huffing in his ear. He felt the tremble of exhaustion in her old body. He returned the hug, knowing how hard she must have fought to rejoin them.

As Monk straightened, he wondered how Marta had found them. He did understand how she had overtaken them. While they had slogged through mud and water, she had swept through the bog’s trees, closing the distance. But still, how had she tracked them?

Monk stared back into the dark fen.

If she could follow them…

“Let’s keep moving,” he said and waved toward the heart of the swamps.

Together again, they traversed the swamplands. The reappearance of Marta invigorated the children, but the weight of the bog soon had them all heaving and struggling again. Konstantin drifted farther ahead. Pyotr hovered next to Monk, while Marta kept mostly to the trees, swinging low, her toes skimming the waters.

Slowly, the sun vanished behind the mountains, leaving them in dark twilight. Monk could barely make out Konstantin. Off to the left, an owl hooted in a long hollow note as full night threatened.

Konstantin called softly back to them out of a denser copse of willows, sounding urgent. “An izba!”

Monk didn’t know what he meant, but it didn’t sound good. Hauling after the boy, Monk found the water growing less deep.

He pushed through a drape of willow branches and saw that one of the ubiquitous tiny islands rose ahead. But it wasn’t empty. Atop the low hillock squatted a tiny cabin on short pylons. It was constructed of rough-hewn logs and topped by a moss-covered roof. The single window was dark. There was no sign of life. No smoke from the chimney.

Konstantin waited at the edge of the island among some tall reeds.

Monk joined him.

The tall boy pointed. “A hunter’s berth. Cabins like this are all over the mountains.”

“I’ll check it out,” Monk said. “Stay here.”

He climbed up onto the island and circled the cabin. It was small, with a chimney of stacked stone. Grasses grew as high as his waist. It didn’t look as if anyone had been here in ages. There was a single window, shuttered closed from the inside. Monk spotted a short pier, empty of any boats. But a flat-bottomed punt—a raft with a pointed prow—had been pulled into some neighboring reeds. Moss covered half the raft, but hopefully it was still serviceable.

Monk returned to the front of the cabin. He tried the door. It was unlocked, but the boards had warped, and it took some effort to tug it open with a creaking pop from its rusted hinges. The interior was dark and smelled musty. But at least it was dry. The log cabin had only one room. The floor was pine with a scatter of hay over most of it. The only furniture was a small table with four chairs. Crude cabinets lined one whole wall, but there was no kitchen. It appeared that all the cooking was done at the fireplace, where some cast-iron pans and pots were stacked. Monk noted a stack of dry wood.

Good enough.

Monk stepped to the door and waved for the kids to come inside.

He hated to stop, but they all needed to rest for a bit. With the window shuttered, Monk could risk a small fire. It would be good to dry out their clothes and boots, have a warm place for the coldest part of the night. Once rested and dry, they could set out before dawn, hopefully using that raft.

Konstantin helped him get a fire started while the two children sat on the floor, leaning on Marta. The older boy found matches in a waxen box, and the old dry wood took to flame with just a touch of kindling. A fire stoked quickly, snapping and popping. Smoke vanished up the chimney’s flue.

As Monk added another log, Konstantin searched the cabinets. He discovered fishing tackle, a rusted lantern with a little sloshing kerosene, a single heavy bowie-style knife, and a half-empty box of shotgun shells. But no gun. In a closet, he found a few curled, yellow magazines sporting naked women, which Monk confiscated and found a good use for as kindling. But on the top shelf, four heavy faded quilts had been folded and stacked.

As Konstantin handed out the quilts, he pointed to Monk’s discarded pack. Monk glanced over. The boy indicated his radiation monitor. No longer white, it now had a pink hue to it.

“Radiation,” Monk mumbled.

Konstantin nodded. “The processing plant that poisoned Lake Karachay.” He waved toward the northeast. “It also slowly leaked down into the ground.”

Contaminating the groundwater, Monk realized. And where did all the runoff from the local mountains end up? Monk stared toward the shuttered window, picturing the bog outside.

He shook his head.

And he thought all he had to worry about was man-eating tigers.

7:04 P.M.

Pyotr sat naked, huddled in a thick quilt before the fire. Their shoes were lined up on the hearth, and their clothes hung out to dry on fishing line. The line was so thin it was as if his pants and shirt were floating in the air.

He enjoyed the flickering flames as they danced and crackled, but he didn’t like the smoke. It swirled up into the chimney as if it were something alive, born out of the fire.

He shivered and shifted on his backside closer to the bright flames.

The matron at the school used to tell them stories of the witch Baba Yaga, how she lived in a dark forest in a log cabin that moved around on chicken legs and would hunt down children to eat. Pyotr pictured the stilts he’d seen outside that held up their cabin. What if this was the witch’s cabin, hiding its claws deep beneath the ground?