Voyagers: Escape the Vortex (Book 5) by Jeanne DuPrau

Author:Jeanne DuPrau [Duprau, Jeanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780385386708
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2016-05-03T06:00:00+00:00

Slipping in the snow, tumbling down and rising again in an instant, slapping waist-high drifts out of their way, Dash and Carly ran for the Streak. The ice crawler, made for snow travel, came after them. It was fifty feet away, forty feet, closer and closer.

The Streak was just ahead now. They reached it, flung the doors open, and jumped in. Carly hit the start button—and the engine made a choking sound and died.

“Try again!” Dash cried. “I got that pipe cleared!”

Outside, the ice crawler came closer, humping up and thinning out, like a strange sort of whale dipping and rising through a vast white sea. It slithered forward, not with the smooth glide of a snake but by bulging and stretching, hauling itself across the snow at a speed amazingly fast for such a great monstrous blob of a thing.

Again, Carly pressed start. “Come on, come on,” she urged. The engine coughed, but still the Streak didn’t move.

And then the ice crawler was upon them, right beside the passenger window. It swelled itself up into a great wobbly mound, thirty feet tall at least, with its tail thrashing and its mouth gaping. Its shadow fell across the Streak and darkened the light inside.

Dash shouted, “Get off! Get away from us!” He could hear the thick glass top creaking in its frame. The crawler’s gray-white skin pressed against it, inches from Dash’s face.

Carly jabbed at the start button. The engine caught for a second and then choked.

The crawler shoved the Streak with its whole body, full force, and the Streak tipped toward the slope and rolled over, leaving Carly and Dash upside down for a moment before it rolled again. It landed farther down the slope, upright—but the glass top had cracked and flipped off.

“Our roof!” cried Carly. “Can we get it back on?”

“I don’t think so,” said Dash. “Look at it.”

The glass top lay in the snow, broken into three pieces.

They were in the cold. They had no time to feel it, though. Carly jammed a finger on the start button. “Come on, Streak!” Dash yelled, looking out at the ice crawler oozing toward them down the bank. “Go, go, go!”

And finally, the intake pipe sucked in the last of the mashed locusts, the engine caught and roared, the ice crawler fell back, and Carly steered them sharp to the left, up through the drifts, and away.

Escape! It felt terrific for the first ten seconds, and then they understood their danger: they were out in the open now, going at high speed, exposed to the killing cold of Tundra. They could feel it deep in their bones.

“We’ll head for the cave,” said Carly through clenched teeth. “We can last ten minutes, can’t we?”

Dash didn’t answer. He didn’t know.

He twisted around in his seat and looked behind. He could still see the ice crawler, like a hill in the distance. Was it following them? They were outrunning it.

“How are your hands?” He radioed to Carly as they skimmed over the snow.

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