High Country- Pigeon 12 (22 page)

Over the years, she'd fashioned a lot of splints. With the leather boot, thick sock and trousers protecting her flesh, this one didn't need to be padded, smooth or pretty. Strong, relatively straight sticks tied around ankle and calf with strips of red fleece hacked into service by her pocketknife would have to do.

She put her weight on it. It hurt. A lot. She could stand it, but she didn't know for how long, and there was no way in hell she was going to outrun anybody.

Cloaked in utter darkness, cold but alive, she set her sluggish mind to figuring out how to stay that way. She could not survive the night injured in a damp turtleneck with no food to warm her. Her pack, if the men had not retrieved it while she slept, was somewhere on the ice. Without moon, stars or flashlight she would never find it. Crippled and without light she wouldn't be able to hike out. Mark and his buddy had the things she needed, but they weren't likely to share, at least not intentionally.

With no plan but to refrain from sleeping and so returning to death's bright and inviting sea, Anna made her way toward the creek. The complete absence of light played havoc with her sense of direction. She was reduced to following the sound of water over stone, hands in front of her, gait lurching. Night of the Living Dead, she thought, then pushed the image away. Too apt. Too scary.

When she heard her boots splash she knew she'd reached the water. She couldn't see her feet. She couldn't see her hand in front of her face. Her ankle would not allow her to crouch. Bending at the waist, one glove removed, she reached for where her toes should be and found the water. This simple maneuver took the concentration of a high-wire act.

Cold as liquid ice, the creek burned over her fingers. Anna waited till she was certain of the direction of the flow, then followed it, one baby step at a time, downstream toward the lake. Twenty steps-Anna counted simply because it gave her at least an intellectual knowledge of forward progress-and the toe of her boot struck something solid. In the black world she traversed, her sense of hearing had become acute. The boot didn't knock or clack but thudded. Not suitable for anything she'd fallen over as yet.

An unpleasant shiver coursed through her at the thought she'd come across a dead body, perhaps the frozen corpse of one of the four missing kids. For reasons rooted in childhood nightmares, fear that a cold dead hand would grab her ankle rattled up her spine. To fight it, she forced herself to bend closer. Folding at the waist like an old woman picking flowers, she put both hands on the thing.

It was a body: soft but not too soft, a squared torso clad in nylon. No legs. No arms. No head. Her hands slipped over straps and buckles. Too many straps and buckles. Not a body. "Thankyoubabyjesus," she muttered. A backpack. Hoping for a flashlight, a warm coat or food, she fumbled the top open. Plastic and frozen straw. The pack was filled with dope mined from the lake of the dead.

Disappointed, she straightened then stood still till the dizziness passed. The pack probably belonged to Caitlin, Trish, Patrick or Dix. Since the dope had not been taken, she surmised whoever was carrying it had dumped it and run. Mark and his buddies must have tracked the kids down as they were trying to do with her. They must have found the owner, but not the pack. Come spring the bodies would show up, gruesome surprises for unsuspecting wilderness enthusiasts. Unless the rangers found them first.

Having moved carefully to the pack's other side lest she get turned around in the dark and lose her way, Anna continued following the creek.

Darkness, her body an invisible source of misery with no size or shape in relation to the world around her-indeed, no sense of a world being around her, no sense of anything but cold so thick it seemed as if it pressed in on her with actual weight-there was no way to anchor in reality. Thoughts, well begun, would fray out, unravel till she'd come to a standstill, her mind choked with immense amounts of nothing.

Despite the overcast night the lake's shore was not without light. Years before, deep underground in LechuguillaCave in New Mexico, Anna had known true darkness, darkness so intense she couldn't but feel that staring into it would blind her the way staring too long at the sun was said to. Here, out from beneath the trees, the snow-covered ice gathered to itself what tiny insignificant particles of light managed to make it through the clouds. It didn't glow as a snowfield did on a clear night. It didn't show white, or even gray, but the black of the lake's surface was less than that of sky or trees. There were now two places; an up and a down had been created. Blurred edges cut through the ink canvas, forcing the horizon away from the bridge of her nose.

Filling her lungs, she realized she'd been subsisting on small sips of air as if afraid the crushing dark would drown her.

She pulled the navy-blue watch cap she wore down to her eyebrows and the neck of the turtleneck up over her nose. She doubted the precaution was necessary, but she couldn't afford any mistakes. Without strength, speed or artillery she would be relying on stealth. If she didn't succeed on the first try she wouldn't succeed at all.

Moving more easily without the oppression of mind and eye and the worry a fearsome invisible thing would strike at her face or trip up her injured foot, she walked onto the ice. Order restored to the universe by a simple line of lighter and darker to navigate by, she knew the scree slope was to her left, the shore from whence the first bullets had come, to her right. She turned right. It had been late in the day when they'd seen her. An hour, maybe two would have been wasted chasing her then following her phantom trail up the creek. Dark came early. Unless they'd chosen to hike out at night-and hiking downhill wearing heavy packs over icy surfaces was far more hazardous than hiking uphill with the packs empty-they would have camped.

No light indicated this was true. Slowly, she limped over the ice. Halfway down the frozen lake the red-gold spark she'd been searching for glimmered between the trees or rocks that had shielded it from sight.

For a moment she rested, took the weight off her ankle, and stared at the fitful flames. With complete certainty, she understood the awe prehistoric man must have experienced on first discovering fire. It was the most beautiful sight she'd ever seen. Had Paul Davidson been standing beside it, an orange cat on his shoulder and a three-legged dog at his feet, she would have known the glittering shore for a trap and this red-gold shimmer the true promise of heaven. Primitive DNA lingering deep in her chromosomal helixes urged her toward it, a lame wolf hoping for something slow or small or stupid to kill for its supper.

Nearer the shoreline she began to hear the murmur of voices. By the time she was close enough to smell the smoke and feel the change beneath her feet as snow-covered ice changed to snow-covered earth she could make out words. The filthy smothering night, so recently an enemy clogging eyes and mind, switched allegiances and became her ally. If she was careful to stay beyond the campfire's seductive circle of light, they would never see her. Had her body in its innate frailty not been awkward with cold and pain, she might have felt as ephemeral and powerful as a malevolent ghost, coming to this fireside gathering to prey. Trapped in an imperfect vehicle of bone and flesh, dragging an all-but-useless leg, she just concentrated on moving without making a racket.

With the men awake and outside their tent, there was little she dared do. Ignoring the fire's siren call, she stayed back. Moving slower than any Mississippi box turtle, she eased between the trunks of two good-sized pines, close enough she could see the camp and hear the conversation.

She would have dearly loved to cuddle down between the supportive trees, hug her knees to her chest for what little warmth they offered and rest, but if she did she would fall asleep. Come morning the wretches would find Christmas had come early and a macabre Kris Kringle had brought them the gift of a frozen corpse.

Allowing herself the small luxury of leaning, she took stock of their camp. The ranger part of her brain, not quite lulled to sleep by hypothermia, was outraged. These men were as slovenly outdoors as in. Food cans were scattered over the ground along with cigarette butts, chip bags, candy wrappers and plastic eating utensils. The fire, built for security as well as warmth, wasn't in a fire ring but raged in a circle of trees the limbs of which had been chopped off to feed it. Littering and unauthorized fire; crimes that could add two to three minutes to their prison sentences should a federal judge ever find out. Sleeping bags hung like pupa from a limb, probably in hopes the fire would drive out the chill and damp before bedtime.

Set to one side was a tent, a skiff of hoarfrost glittering on its rain tarp. Chances were good the tent had been there some time, pitched when they'd first hiked in and left as a bivouac for future expeditions. Anna was relieved. She'd been hoping they would have a tent. Now she hoped they would retire into it before she froze to death.

None of the niceties required for backcountry camping were in evidence: no bear-proof canisters, gas stove, latrine shovel. These, had they been brought up the mountain, which was unlikely, had been jettisoned to make room for dope. Two backpacks lined with black garbage bags bulged with marijuana mined from the lake. Behind them, near the tent, the double-bladed ax leaned against a tree.

The bigger of the two men pulled a bottle from the pocket of his jacket, unscrewed the cap and took a swig.

"Go easy on that, Phil," Mark said. "She's still out there somewhere."

"Probably froze or bled to death by now. There was blood on the snow."

"Probably. Give me that." Mark took the whiskey bottle and drank. "Still, go easy."

"Like I always do," Phil said and laughed.

Eat drink and be merry, Anna thought and wished for a case of whiskey that they might drink themselves insensible. While she was at it, she wished it weren't winter, that the black bears weren't in hibernation and would descend like a biblical plague and rend these unbelievers.

"We gonna fiddle around trying to find her? I want to get the fuck off this rock pile. Packing this shit out forty pounds at a time we'll be here till the Fourth of July," Phil complained.

"You don't want your cut, just say so. I'm sure the boss will be understanding."

"Yeah. Right." Phil took another drink and held the bottle out to his comrade. To Anna's disappointment, Mark resisted temptation.

Hell of a time for rehab, she thought bitterly.

"We do it till we've got what we can. This is prime stuff," Mark said.

"Soaked with God knows what weird shit."

"It'll give the college kids a new kind of kick. We ought to charge extra."

They laughed and it grated on Anna's nerves. The desultory conversation continued. Soon she heard nothing but a mangle of voices. Standing, leaning, she'd fallen asleep on her feet like a horse. Weight shifted and she would have fallen but that her ankle sent a vicious wake-up call. Either she grunted or stumbled. She came awake to full silence. Phil and Mark stared in her direction.

"What was that?" Phil said.

"Shh."

"There's nothing."

"Shut the fuck up."

Anna stopped breathing. Her heart beat loud in her ears, so much so it seemed they must surely hear it.

"Snow falling off a tree or something," Phil said. "The bitch is dead or about to be. It's colder than a witch's tit up here. We got her pack. She's got nothing."

They listened a moment longer.

"I guess," Mark conceded. "Give me her pack."

Phil lumbered to his feet and retrieved Anna's backpack from a pile of debris that had accumulated at the base of a tree.

Mark took it and dumped it out. Her good down jacket was thrown on the fire. Her compass pocketed. Phil grabbed up a granola bar, ripped off the wrapper and began eating it. Till then, Anna had not realized how hungry she was. Great ravening hollow-eyed hunger thundered over her, leaving her weak, shaken and so livid that for a moment she was no longer cold. Slobby, malodorous Phil scarfing down her food made her angrier than being shot, chased and left to die of exposure.

Mark continued to go through her belongings, throwing everything into the fire after he'd looked at it, including the things that wouldn't burn. When it was empty he turned it inside out.