Snowblind (11 page)

"Erin... wake up."

Erin opened her eyes to the dark. She could barely discern the shadowy outline of Kris kneeling beside her on the floor. Kris was nudging her shoulder.

"Erin..."

"I'm awake," she said. "What do you want?"

"Your mother's gone," Kris said.

Erin yawned. "I know, she went... What time is it?"

"I don't know, but it's freezing in here. The fire's almost out."

"Almost out? She just put fresh logs on five minutes ago."

"Where did she go?"

"To the car. To hear the radio..." Erin sat up. "Wait a minute. How long have we been sleeping?"

"I don't know. I just woke up now."

Erin climbed out of her sleeping bag. "It's so dark in here. And that
smell
." She pulled open the door to the stove. Broken embers shimmered orange and copper. She tossed in some dry kindling and piled on a few quarter-rounds of firewood. Flames rose up quickly, filling the room with a flickering light.

Erin pulled on her parka. "I'm gonna go get her."

"Do you want me to come with you?" Kris asked. She reached for her backpack.

"No thanks. I don't want you to get lost again and panic. You scared the heck out of us last night."

"I'm sorry. I thought it was..."

"Wolves?"

"Something..."

Erin sat down and pulled on her snow boots. "Why are you so afraid of wolves, anyway?"

"I'm not afraid—"

"Did they have something to do with your accident?"

Kris didn't answer.

Erin laced up her boots. "Wolves are really not so bad, you know. They only prey on the weak or crippled. It's like, natural selection or something, it's very normal."

Kris was silent for a moment. "How do you know about wolves?" she asked.

Erin stood up. "Bobby's with the Friends of the Earth. He's told me all about them." As she walked to the door, she caught her foot on the bear skin rug and fell on her face. "Shit!" she hissed.

"Are you all right?" Kris asked.

Erin picked herself up, glaring at the grizzly's snarling teeth. "I'm fine." She opened the door, stepped out, and slammed it shut behind her.

*  *  *

Without the lantern, Erin couldn't see more than a few yards into the inky night. The cold wind was still blowing hard, whipping the falling snow into deep shadowy drifts. She waded through the thigh-deep angled pile at the door, feeling her way to the steps. Suddenly she plunged down off the porch — missing the steps altogether. The snow was up to her knees.

Knowing the Jeep was at the edge of the road, she began making her way down the hill. She followed the faint trace of her mother's footprints, now nearly filled with windswept powder. How long had it been since she'd come out to the car? It may have been hours from the look of the tracks. Erin's worry increased the further she ventured from the cabin. Ranger Tom's warning echoed in her mind.

As the ground leveled off, the footprints disappeared. She was standing on the road, where the hard-sweeping wind had obliterated any trace of her mother's ghostly steps. Erin turned and started down the velvety road. After hiking fifteen paces, she began to wonder if she was heading the wrong way. Then, suddenly, an enormous snowdrift bloomed out of the dark.

Erin stared at it in horror. The Jeep Cherokee lay wholly buried in the wind-sculpted mountain of snow.

"Mother!" she screamed.

The wind ripped the word from her lips.

Erin felt herself starting to cry. She choked back the tears, turning, searching the darkness around her. There was nothing out there. Nothing but the wind and the snow and the trees.

"Mother! MOM!"

The wind snapped at her face. Erin's fear changed into unexpected anger. She tore her way into the drift, clawing madly through the cloak of snow. Mounds of powder fell on her head, covered her arms, slipped like ice cubes down her neck. She pushed through and reached the metal hull, her gloved hands searching for the door handle. She found it and pulled — the door was locked. Erin yanked but it would not budge.

She scraped away at the window and peered in through the glass. She could see nothing but blackness inside.

She dug her way to the back seat door. It, too, was locked. She stepped back and circled the mountainous drift, stumbling through the deep snow to the other side of the car. As she plunged in toward the passenger door, the heap of mantled snow cascaded down upon her. She shook it off, and saw that a gaping black hole had opened like a mouth in the drift.

The window was open. No. The window was shattered.

Erin's heart pounded as she moved toward the hole. She felt the ragged edge of the glass with her gloved hands. Something viscous, like oil, came off on the fingers of her gloves. Her face inched toward the hole, her eyes straining into the dark.

"Mother?"

She pushed her head inside.

"Mom?"

She could not see in the car.

Erin pulled her head back out, reached in with her arm and unlocked the door. Then she grabbed the door handle and forced the door open against the piling snow. When she'd opened it enough, she slipped around and squeezed her body into the car.

It was pitch black, the interior layered with snow. Erin felt her way into the darkness, sliding her hands through the thick powder on the seat, the dash, the floor mats. The slick, oily substance seemed to cover everything.

She found the lantern on the floor, the cold glass dusted with snow. She felt across the floor to the steering column. Her hands slid up the column and came on the keys, dangling from the ignition. She could start the car and turn on the lights!

She turned the switch but nothing happened. The engine made a clicking sound. The battery was dead.

Erin found the headlight switch and turned it off. She began to cry in the dark, while the wind viciously twisted in through the broken glass.

She has to be here. She has to be.

Erin turned around on the seat, cold tears streaming down her cheeks. She reached out into the darkness behind her, feeling for the body of her mother on the seat.

There was nothing there.

"No," cried Erin, "Please, no..."

She climbed over onto the back seat, reached into the rear compartment. She was sobbing hysterically, her hands pushing madly through the pile of ski boots, bags, suitcases.

"Mother, mother..." she wailed. Weeping uncontrollably, she slid down onto the back seat, curling into a whimpering heap in the dark.

"Oh, God..." she sobbed. "Where is my mom...?"

She cried there for a long while, pulling off her gloves to wipe the tears from her face. All the strength drained out of her, replaced with a shivering dread.

Her mother was gone.

Erin lay still while the thought sunk in. Then she sat up in the seat.

Whatever happened to her... could happen to me, she thought. Whoever took her may be out there now.

For a moment she froze in panic. She had to get back to the cabin. Her heart raced as she reached for the door handle. Feeling the icy steel, she remembered her gloves. She felt for them on the snow-dusted seat. She found one glove but not the other. She reached down to the floor.

Her fingers touched
hair
.

A quivering chill rippled through Erin's body. She reached down slowly with her other hand.

She felt cold skin.

She felt an ear.

A nose.

Lips.

Teeth.

Erin reached down her mother's neck. Her fingers sunk into bloody flesh.

She raised the severed head, held it in her trembling hands.

A scream boiled out of Erin's throat, a bellowing, howling, horrifying scream.

She rolled the head off on the seat and slammed against the door, groping frantically for the latch. She rammed it open, tumbling out into an avalanche of snow. She scrambled to her feet, stumbled onto the road, tripped into the snow, picked herself up, fell again, crawled, stood up, turned, slipped, sobbed, walked, babbled in confusion, her heart pounding, her breath pumping frantic and wild.

Trees. Footprints. Huge footprints. Crossing the road.

Where was the cabin? Where was the hill?

There.

Erin charged across the footprints, scrambled up the slope, clawing her way through the snow. She topped the hill and kept running. She tumbled and fell. She stood up. Fresh footprints crossed the snow. Her footprints. She followed them, whimpering, winded, tingling with terror.

The cabin appeared before her, a great shadow in the dark. She ran for it, stumbled on the porch steps, crawled through the snow, rose to her feet, plowed into the drift at the door.

She pounded her bare hands on the giant timbers, trying to scream, trying to call out, the scream and the call choking in her throat.

"Open... please... open..."

The bolt unlatched. The door creaked open.

Erin fell tumbling into blind Kris's arms.

Josh left the glass-walled observation room at the top of the tower, taking the elevator down one level to a floor of airport administration offices, a mainframe computer terminal, restrooms, an aeronautical map library, and a conference room that could accommodate twelve people comfortably, but was now overflowing with twenty National Guard troops, Lieutenant Walbourne, the two paddy wagon policemen from the terminal, three air traffic controllers with time on their hands, and Dr. Raoul Katukan, who stood before a PowerPoint display projected on a screen, pointing to the lunatic killer he matter-of-factly referred to as "Frosty."

"The oil-riggers gave him the name," explained the doctor, "because he seemed to thrive in sub-zero conditions. This picture was taken by an oil company engineer during a routine pipeline inspection near Atigun Pass, about fifty miles north of Coldfoot. It was shortly after dawn, and 46 degrees below zero."

Josh squeezed his way through the crowd to take a seat on the floor between two beefy Guardsmen. The doctor waited until he was settled, then turned back to the slide. "I'm sorry about the image quality — the shot was taken from about 200 yards away. The engineer said he was afraid to get any closer. Judging by what's going on in the picture, I think you can understand why."

The photograph, taken during a heavy snowfall on the frozen tundra, was grainy and washed out, the perspective drastically flattened. It featured a dark, blurry figure crouched in the snow, bent over what appeared to be the remains of an animal carcass.

"He wears caribou and moose hide, tanned with the brains of animals. Patches of sealskin and burlap have been sewn with gut directly to his flesh. As you can see, he likes to eat his prey in the open. But some of his victims have been found buried in the snow. We can only assume they've been 'stored' there for later consumption."

Dr. Katukan clicked up another slide. "This is a blow-up of the same photograph," he said.

It was a closer — and grainier — view of the blurry figure's face. A wide, dark band covered his eyes, with a narrow horizontal slit cut through the center.

"He wears the same whale-skin eye covering some Inuit tribes use to avoid snow blindness. He lost his eyelids to frostbite, and the eyes themselves were damaged as well — the inflamed iris formed scar tissue that adhered to the cornea. His pupils are locked wide open, making his eyes painfully sensitive to light. Like the wolf, he prefers to do his hunting at night."

The slide changed to another long-lens view of the crouched figure, his blurring arms apparently flailing the carcass. Dr. Katukan pointed to several ghostly white animal-forms surrounding the figure.

"Arctic timber wolves," he explained. "Like the gray wolves in our area, they are instinctive and opportunistic predators. Though they rarely attack humans without provocation, they do possess a keen perception of weakness and fear. It is this 'sixth sense' that I believe forms the basis of their curious relationship with the subject."

Josh thought again of the scar on Kris's hand. Perhaps even dogs could sense her vulnerability.

The doctor continued. "One thing we discovered, in the short time he was under our care, was that Frosty had absolutely no sense of fear — of anyone, or anything. Anything but hunger, that is. The wolves seem to recognize and respect this. His bond with them is not unlike the bond between mushers and sled dogs — except, of course, that the relationship has taken a far more sinister turn. Frosty is seen by the wolves as more animal than human. Their hunting together, their sharing of prey, seems to be a kind of... communion... between species."

Josh stared up at the haunting photograph. How had this bizarre and malicious creature suddenly become the primary focus of his life?

A smirking Guardsman raised his hand. "So which is he, Doc–the Werewolf, or Bigfoot?" The soldier snickered, his buddies laughed.

The doctor remained solemn. "Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the Abominable Snowman — these are legends, myths of primitive, uneducated people. No, Frosty is a far greater danger than any legend. He's a flesh-and-blood human being, as real as you or I."

"Who is he then?" asked Josh. "Where'd he come from?"

"Alaska, Mr. Marino. His real name is Job, Job Talbot. His father was a Pentecostal preacher — until he was ex-communicated for trying to start his own religion. He married a young Inuit woman, moved out into the Yukon Territory to pan for gold in Bonanza Creek. They raised the boy in the wilderness."

Katukan was having trouble with the PowerPoint display. He worked to resolve the problem as he went on with his talk. "The boy apparently developed a glandular disturbance in early childhood, a condition that was never properly treated. This may have been because the nearest medical facility was over three hundred miles away, but more than likely the real reason was that his father didn't believe in medical treatment anyway. He believed in the suffering of Job. And the will of God."

The doctor finally fixed the computer problem and clicked a new image up on the screen.

The photograph had been taken in what looked like a hospital examination room. Several orderlies, nurses, and physicians wearing surgical masks surrounded an operating table on which an enormous man lay strapped down in a strait-jacket, his mouth gagged and his head bound. The giant's skin, where visible, was blackened, peeling, and scarred, as if it had been repeatedly burned or frozen. His dark hair was hacked and wild, and his features, though barely discernable from the camera's severe angle and a blurring movement of the head, appeared broad-boned and primitive, like the face of an Australian aborigine with a Mongolian cast.

"The condition of gigantism is produced by an over-secretion of growth hormones in the anterior lobe of the pituitary, causing excessive growth of all the tissues of the body. His extreme height — nearly eight feet — is the result of the inordinate growth of his long bones. In addition, the metabolic rate is usually 20% above normal, which may — at least in part — explain his ability to survive in conditions of extreme cold."

Lieutenant Walbourne spoke up. "This...
gigantism
— does that explain why he eats..." the Lieutenant paused uncomfortably, "...what he eats?"

"No, I'm afraid it doesn't," Katukan said. The doctor looked at the men, as if waiting for the next question. Apparently that was all he was going to say on the subject.

 "Uh... Wait a minute, Doc." It was Frank, the fat policeman. He pronounced his statement like a question: "I heard somethin' about him being trapped in an avalanche, and revertin' to cannibalism in order to survive?"

"Yes," said the doctor. "That's true. A hunting party was stranded in the mountains near his cabin. He was trying to lead them out when the... accident occurred."

"So that's what made him crazy?" asked Frank's lanky partner.

"Well, not exactly, I... I'm afraid it's not quite that simple." The doctor seemed uncertain about whether to proceed. But twenty-six men were staring at him, waiting for an answer. "You see, the avalanche... the avalanche was not the first time that he... that Frosty... indulged himself."

The men murmured, exchanging uneasy glances. They stared back at the doctor.

He reluctantly continued. "When he was a boy... just... eight years old, he and his parents were living up on the tundra of the Yukon Flats. His mother was pregnant with a second child. The winter came in early that year and... well... it was an unusually severe winter and... They were snowed in at their cabin for four months without having been prepared for it. They ran out of food, and his father ran out of shot for his rifles, and... well, they were starving to death up there."

The grimace froze on Frank the Cop's jowly face. "Doc...
What
the hell happened
?"

Dr. Katukan sighed defeatedly. "They aborted the child. The three of them... lived on its flesh for nearly a month. Then his father... decapitated the boy's mother and..."  The doctor swallowed. "He and the boy survived on her body until Spring."

The men stared at him, agape.

"That's when a survey party happened on the cabin. By that time, the boy was catatonic. Apparently, he thought he'd be the next one to end up on a dinner plate. They found him sitting at the kitchen table, reading from the Bible — with his father's head in his lap. He'd chopped it off while the old man was sleeping."

Katukan just looked at them. You could hear a pin drop.