canopy overhead. When the ground started to rumble underneath her boots, she grabbed onto a tree trunk and held tight as the mountain shook violently. The flashes of lightning lit up the sloping side of the mountain, and she watched in fascinated horror as a river of mud, water and broken trees rushed down into the valley. The destructive force of the flood shocked her.
With each bolt of lightning, she watched the flood move lower and lower until it crashed into the prison camp. From her vantage point, she could see the buildings blown off their foundations and the cells crumpling in on themselves. If the guards hadn’t decided to take her, she would have been caught in that maelstrom of debris and water. She would have died along with all of the other prisoners. She could only pray that they had made it far enough away and up to high enough ground not to be swept away in the crush of floodwater.
The mountain shook so violently that she fell forward onto her hands and knees. She grasped for purchase, grabbing handfuls of leaves and mud until she caught hold of a tree root. She held tight as the entire mountain seemed to tilt. Pressed against the ground, she could feel the incredible vibrations. She closed her eyes and hoped that she wasn’t about to take a ride down the side of the mountain.
As the rumbling passed, she staggered to her feet, leaning heavily on a tree. Her head ached, and she couldn’t quite believe her eyes. Each flash of lightning revealed the horror that had just occurred. The entire side of the mountain had sheered right off in a gigantic landslide. It was just...gone.
Determined that her life wasn’t going to end here on this godforsaken mountain, she turned away from the violent flood swirling below and shoved away from the tree. She didn’t care how far or how long she had to walk, she was getting off this mountain and off this planet—or she would die trying.
Chapter Two
For the first time in his life, Terror felt despair. It bloomed in his chest like a poisonous flower. He wished that he could chew its petals and succumb rather than stand there, ankle deep in mud and shit and rotting garbage while he endured a soul-crushing sense of failure.
I’m too late.
She’s dead.
Gone.
Drowned in mud and lost forever.
Raindrops pelted his head, running down his neck and under his uniform shirt. It soaked his undershirt, leaving him cold and uncomfortable, but he didn’t feel like bothering with a jacket. He deserved to feel like this. He deserved to feel cold and wet and miserable.
“Fuck me,” Vicious said, seemingly shocked. Holding out a jacket, he came to stand next to Terror and stared at the destruction that surrounded them. “I’ve never seen the aftermath of a landslide and flood.”
“Looks like half the mountain fell,” Lethal remarked. He crouched down a few feet from them and poked into the mud with the long blade of his knife. “It’s solid mud.” He glanced around and shook his head. “If there are any bodies here, they’re buried deep.”
Terror’s eye closed briefly at the image of Maisie, broken and suffocated beneath a slab of mud. Pushing away the painful thought, he asked, “Where are the vehicles?”
“The guards?” Vicious clarified and turned to look at the flattened pile of mud that had once been the guardhouse according to the satellite images they had accessed during the flight. “As heavy as some of those trucks were, they wouldn’t have gone far in the landslide. We should have been able to see them when we came in for the landing.”
“They probably left,” Lethal said, standing up and wiping the gunk from his knife blade on his pants. “I would have. No way in hell I’d stick around to drown or be crushed if I had the means to escape.”
“I agree.” Terror uncrossed his arms and picked his way across the field of debris and puddles. He tried to recreate the scene in his mind, placing the prisoner holding cells and the guardhouse on the location. He envisioned the wave of floodwater and then the crash of the landslide wiping out the camp and dragging everything down to the base of the mountain. “If the guards decided to make a run for it, they would have headed down the mountain.”
Lethal considered the wiped-out road. “If they didn’t leave quickly enough, they would have been caught in the flood or the landslide or