Polar (Book 2): Polar Day Read Online Free Page B

was just so crazy,” Will said. “We heard someone chanting right before the fire started.”
    “Chanting? Chanting what?”
    “We didn’t know. Whatever he was saying, it wasn’t in English.”
    “You said he. So it was definitely a man’s voice that you heard?”
    “Yes,” Melissa answered. “It just sounded like random words from God knows what language. We couldn’t tell.”
    “Does either of you two know any languages besides English?”
    “I take Spanish in school,” Will said.
    “I know some French.”
    “So you don’t think it was either one of those two languages you heard?”
    Both teens shook their heads no.
    “Not even close to either of them,” Will said. “The words sounded kind of harsh.”
    “We couldn’t figure out who was talking,” Melissa said. “It was like the voice was right in front of us over by the jogger but we couldn’t see anyone.”
    “We just kind of froze,” Will said, hanging his head. “We were so scared.”
    Danny patted the boy on the shoulder. “So was I, buddy. Everyone here was.” He paused before resuming his questions. “When you first went into the woods, did you hear anything else weird before the chanting started? Smell anything?”
    Both teens shook their heads. “It was just all the baseball game stuff,” Will said.
    The conversation was interrupted by a woman calling Will’s name as she ran towards the trio. “Will! Will, are you okay?”
    “Your mother, I assume?” Danny asked.
    The boy nodded.
    “You two go catch up to her,” Danny said. He fished out a business card from his pocket and handed it to the girl. “Keep this and let me know if you remember anything else that might help us. Thanks for talking with me.”
    The teens ran as quickly as possible across the field to Will’s mother. Danny watched them go before turning to scan the crowd around him. There was an older black couple leaning against the fence and trying to quiet their dog, a nondescript brown mutt who reminded him of Sox. A younger dark-haired white man in a Mariners baseball cap stared at the medical examiners and the coroner as they arrived on the scene. Two middle-aged white women sat on the grass and wiped tears from their eyes.
    There were literally thousands of witnesses to this scene of carnage and all of them had to be interviewed. In addition, odds were good that at least 95 percent of the people here had cell phones with them. There was a good chance that someone recorded the fire and may have even caught footage of the jogger before he was burned alive. In spite of the fact that every available officer on the Fairbanks force had been dispatched to the scene it was still going to be a very long night.
    ****

Chapter 5
    Danny stumbled through the woods, his dimming flashlight a solitary shard of light in the ink black darkness of the night. His feet felt as if they weighed 100 pounds each as he struggled to lift them enough to walk through the knee-deep snow. He wasn’t dressed for winter and his thin shoes had long ago become encased in ice.
    The wind shrieked through the trees around him, but it couldn’t block out the sounds of the footsteps Danny heard coming towards him. Or perhaps footsteps weren’t the right word for the sounds he heard. It sounded more like someone was gliding towards him, skiing over the snow with an effortless grace that merely emphasized his own clumsiness.
    Clumsy or not, he had to keep going. He had to get away. The flashlight sputtered and Danny knew the battery wouldn’t last much longer. He had to find his way out of here before he was left in total darkness.
    He dared to glance backwards towards the sound of the skier behind him, only to realize the sounds were now coming from the front. Or were they coming from the side? Was more than one thing out there, closing in on him from all sides?
    Frozen in place, his eyes darted from left to right as he tried to decide the safest direction to move. The howl of a wolf made him