Snowblind (17 page)

Monty Harper leaned back in his swivel chair, peered out his office window at the short, husky African-American woman in the bright blue parka and yellow ski cap. She stood beneath the broad starboard wing of the Twin Otter, one of four airplanes parked in the fluorescent light of the C.A.P. hangar. She appeared to be inspecting the flaps. Or the landing lights. Or something...

"You sure she's flown an Otter before?" Harper asked skeptically.

Josh looked shocked. "An Otter? She could fly an Otter with her eyes closed."

Monty stroked his chin. "I don't know, Josh. The weather's still bad. Main airport's still shut down."

"That's why I'm here," said Josh. "My Cessna's locked in a hangar on the main field. You're my last chance."

Harper eyed Lorraine again. She pulled off her mittens to feel the blade of one of the airplane's huge propellers.

"How come I haven't seen her before?" he asked. "I mean, how many black lady pilots can there be around here that I haven't heard about?"

"You only hear about the pilots that get in trouble," said Josh.

Harper noticed one of Lorraine's white mittens fall to the floor behind her. "I just don't want to be hearing about you, that's all."

"Come on, Monty, give us the plane. The longer you make us wait, the worse are our chances. We gotta go now if we're gonna make it back before the next storm hits."

Harper continued staring out his window. "What did you say her name was?"

"Lorraine. Lorraine Turner."

"I think your Miss Turner needs some help."

Josh stepped over, looked out the glass.

Lorraine was crawling around the floor, groping for her lost mitten. She was hopelessly off the mark.

Harper peered up slyly at Josh. "Looks like she needs a spotter," he said.

With a roar, Frosty attacked the broken shutters with Curly's steel-bladed axe. The axe crashed through the slats of wood, clanged against the iron bars. The boards shattered to pieces, splintering to the floor.

Kris screamed, shaking with terror at the sound of the blows. She struggled to control her fear, to free herself from the grip of panic.

Think... Think...

Her hands groped over the wooden table. She grabbed the plastic bottle of tanning chemical. She picked up the knife. Trembling, she crept across the floor to the wall, then worked her way toward the crashing blows. Frosty howled, the axe glanced off the iron bars. As she neared the window, she stopped, set the bottle down, and sliced off the top part using the knife. She jerked her head away as toxic fumes welled out, burning her sinuses.

The axe locked into the window sill.

Kris grabbed the bottle, flung the noxious fluid through the open gap.

SPLASH! The giant wailed madly, whirling in the snow.

Kris hurried to the table. She lifted the great harpoon and swung it — crashing through furniture — toward the window. She propped the pointed end up on the sill, then went to the hole and called out at the blinded killer:

"Hey!"

Frosty roared, turned toward her voice. Kris raised the tail of the harpoon to her shoulder. She waited, then heard a clamor of piercing beeps — he was racing toward the opening, growling fiercely. Kris rammed the harpoon forward with a yell—

It stopped abruptly, spiking into the body of the giant. He gasped, choking, stunned. She thrust the spear forward, deep into his flesh. He screamed in agony.

She had him!

Suddenly she felt his grip on the lance. With a painful shriek, he tore the barbed tip from his body, then yanked the spear out of her hands. Kris stumbled. She heard him howl. She crashed back into the room, scrambling away from the window. As she reached the table — he yelled — she turned.

The harpoon whooshed past her face, sticking like an arrow into the timber wall.

Kris gasped. She heard the killer groan. Then she heard beeps, and the sound of the axe whacking at the sill, sparking off the iron bars.

In seconds he'd break through — he'd be in the cabin!

Kris grew wild with panic. She had to leave — but how? How could she outrun him? How could she escape?

She frantically searched the floor by the stove, found her backpack, and hurried to the table. She stuffed the pack with the matches, spices, ammonia bottle, can of gasoline, the hammer, the carving knife. She detached the reel from the fishing rod and shoved the reel into the pack. The flare pistol went into her coat pocket with the cartridges.

At the window, Frosty finally smashed loose an iron bar. His crazed raspy breathing filled the inside air. Beeps resonated in Kris's ears. Her heart beat wildly.

She pulled on the backpack, hurried to the wall, grabbed her skis and poles. The skis were her only hope, she thought. With them she might outrun him, she might have a chance.

She raced to the door — and banged into the harpoon lodged in the wall.

The killer's roar shook the cabin — he was climbing inside!

Kris whirled, grabbed the pistol from her pocket. She pulled out a cartridge, tried to slip it into the gun with her jittery hands. The cartridge fell, rolled across the floor. As she reached for it, she lost her grip and dropped her skis with a clattering crash.

The beeps blared — the creature roared — he was coming through the room.

Kris whipped out another cartridge, jammed it into the gun. She raised the pistol toward the howl — and fired!

The flare struck him, exploding. Kris felt a shower of sulfurous sparks. Frosty wailed, burning, blinded by the brilliant light.

Kris grabbed her skis off the floor. She ducked under the harpoon and scrambled to the door. Slamming the bolt aside, she yanked the door open and raced out onto the porch.

She frantically climbed into her skis. Grabbing her poles, she pushed to the edge of the porch. Her pole stuck.

Inside, the killer wailed.

Kris tugged. The pole tip was caught between the floorboards. She worked the stick back and forth, pulling hard.

The door to the cabin banged open behind her. The beeps blared as Frosty charged.

Kris pulled with all her might — the pole broke free. She pushed off the edge of the porch as the giant swung his steel axe. The blade missed her, but caught her pole. Kris stumbled, crashing out into the snow.

Frosty howled — leapt out after her—

Kris flipped over, grabbed her pole, raised its pointed tip, handle to the ground.

The giant impaled himself on the pole, tumbled screaming into the snow beside her.

Kris rose up tottering on her skis, pulled the bloody rod from his body. The beast groaned, grabbed the pole. She jabbed the point into his neck and yanked it back out of his hands.

Then she raced off down the hill toward the road.

"I don't need a pair of eyes," Josh said, "I need a pair of ears."

"Sounds like something my wife used to tell me," Monty said.

Lorraine said, "So you didn’t listen to her, either?"

Monty squinted at her. For a second he wondered if she really was blind. "With all due respect, Miss Turner, we can't accept the liability of sending up a... an unqualified copilot in one of our airplanes."

Lorraine snarled silently. Josh leaned over Monty's desk.

"
I
'm flying the plane," he said. "All she's got to do is wear the phones and pick up the signal from the transmitter."

"It's against C.A.P. rules. You know that."

"This is an emergency," said Josh. "Can't we bend the rules?"

"Not in this weather," Harper insisted.

Josh turned with a sigh, stared out the office window. The C.A.P. pilots were watching an old black-and-white television, propped on a crate in the corner of the hangar.

Harper stepped up next to Josh, nodded toward the TV. "I don't want to see you on the six-o-clock news," he said. He looked at Lorraine. "A... pleasure to meet you, Miss Turner." He walked out of the office and went to join his men.

"A pleasure to meet
you
," said Lorraine, imitating Harper's voice. "Who does he think he is — General Petraeus?"

Josh continued staring at the television. The fuzzy screen held a flickering image of a news anchor at his desk.

"Wait a minute..." he said. "Andrea's husband — Myron. He manages the KNBC station, right?"

"Yeah..."

"Let's go." Josh grabbed her wrist, headed out the door.

"Where we goin’?"

"We gotta hurry." He led her across the hangar toward the exit.

The men looked up from the TV. Leo called, "Where's the fire?"

Josh ignored him. He whipped open the exit door, guided Lorraine out into the parking lot. The first storm had broken; beams of morning sunlight slanted through the clouds.

"Sky’s opening," Josh said. "This is our chance — before the next storm."

"Where the hell we goin'?" Lorraine cried.

"We're going to the station. I'll call Myron on the way."

"For what?"

"I think their news division has a Bell JetRanger."

"Another plane?"

"No," he said. "A helicopter."

Your eyes conceal the darkness. Your hands turn and destroy me. Bold as a wolf you hunt me. You increase your vexation toward me. You send me sprawling, and build roads for my ruin.

From your mouth go flaming torches; sparks of fire leap out. Though your fire reaches me, it does not avail — nor does your spear, your gun, or your sword.

Be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, so that you may know there is a judgment.

*  *  *

On the road below the cabin, Kris had turned right, heading away from the fork where Erin had ventured and never returned. The previous night, if Erin's mother had not stopped at the cabin, if they had continued driving through the blizzard, this was the road they would have traveled.

Kris had no idea where it led, or how far it went. She skied along warily, following its winding course by listening to the bass tones pulsing in her ears. Trees sounded to either side; before her lay deep, silent snow. The road turned and twisted, rose and fell; Kris pressed on, stumbling, pushing, fueled by fear and the hope of escape.

The low tones sharpened abruptly: an object lay before her on the road. Kris slowed as she approached, then stopped altogether. Was it a car?

"Hello?" she called. "Is someone there?"

No answer came. Kris turned up the volume of her infra-red sensor. She could hear no beeps, no hint of a warm body. The object lay still in the middle of the road.

Cautiously, she moved closer, the tones increasing in number and volume. At last she reached the thing. She stretched out her hand to touch it.

A metal shell. A vinyl seat. A windshield. Like a car turned inside out — a snowmobile!

Kris's heart soared. Her hands searched excitedly for the keys. If she could start it up...

But she'd never start it up — the keys were gone. The vehicle stood sideways on the road — abandoned, apparently, by its driver.

What had happened to him?

Kris slowly circled the vehicle, poking the snow with her poles. Several yards away, her pole struck something. She knelt down, picked it up.

She pulled off her glove and felt the object with her fingers. A fur cap — with a metal shield. The hat of Ranger Tom.

Patches of the fur were crusty and hard. Kris smelled the scent of dried blood.

The killer must have got him, she thought. The ranger had never made it back, never called Erin's father. No one knew that Kris was here. No one was coming for her. Kneeling in the snow on the empty road, surrounded by the vastness of the silent forest, Kris felt an overwhelming hopelessness and fear. She was alone — utterly alone.

A blood-curdling howl sent a chill up her spine.

It came from behind her, far back near the cabin. She rose to her feet, listening to the call. It was the killer's wail — the same she had heard when Erin had gone out after her mother — a wolf-like cry of hunger and desire: deep, infernal, half-human. From distant parts of the forest, a multitude of howling wolves joined the dreadful wail. The beastly blend of savage sound roared through the trees like a wind.

A cold shudder crawled up Kris's limbs; her icy hands trembled with fear. This is what happened to the others, she thought. He's calling the wolves now to hunt for me.

Kris turned up the road, stumbling, skiing madly ahead over virgin snow. The howls dissolved into yaps and cries, carried by the hounding wind. The sound of the barks, amplified in her headpiece, were growing swiftly louder and louder. In minutes the predators would be on her.

Kris turned suddenly, veered sharply off the rising road. Her only hope was to outrun them; she had to head downhill — and that meant through the trees. In the rush of adrenalin a sudden sureness came back to her limbs. She skimmed toward the forest on the downward slope, picking up speed as she went. Her skis glanced off buried rocks, tore through clawing brush. The bass tones boomed; she held her breath, passed fleetingly into the woods. Guided by the fast-changing tones, she wound her way through the scattered trees, dodging trunks like obstacles on a slalom course, brushing through needled branches of spruce and leafless limbs of aspen.

The baying of the wolves echoed off the mountain behind her; high beeps clamored in her earphones. They were closing in, despite her speed.

She thought of the knife in her backpack. She thought of the pistol and the chemicals. She might fight off the wolves for a while, but she wouldn't last for long. She continued racing down the snowy slope, coursing through the trees.

Suddenly the howl of the maniac roared out from among the yapping wolves.

Kris could not believe her ears — could he be with them? How? Not with his hacked foot.

Then she remembered the giant skis in the cabin — Curly's skis, hanging on the wall. He's taken them, she thought. He's skiing after her. He's leading the pack!

Kris flew out of the trees into open snow. The mountain suddenly dropped out beneath her—

Kris plunged in terror through the air. She landed hard, tumbling down a precipitous slope. She rolled through the deep snow, arms and legs flailing, until she barreled to a stop on an outcropping of rock and brush.

The predators' cries echoed above her. She had banged her hip and bruised her shoulder, but the rush of fear numbed her pain. She crawled back up on her skis, and faced the downward slope.

The low tones sounded few and far between. Kris stood shaking over the steep incline, caught in a paralyzing memory. The image of the fall to the icy river locked itself in her mind. "I can't," she said, trembling uncontrollably. "I can't..."

The chilling yelps of the wolves shattered her nerves. All at once she screamed and pushed out over the edge. In seconds she was hurtling full-speed down the barren slope. No tones sounded in her ears — the slope was clean! Her skis whistled over the virgin snow, the wolves cries fading behind her. Kris felt the wind blasting her face as she soared downward, her whole being focused on the sound of the tones.

An onrush of low tones suddenly welled up in her ears — the schuss ended in a bank of alders at the sloping base of the hill. Kris tried to bring herself to a stop before she plunged into the trees. She pushed out her skis to plow through the snow, but caught an edge on an alder sapling and flipped over, tumbling through deep powder, rolling to a stop at the edge of the woods.

She lay there a moment, stunned. The sound of the wolves reached her ears. She staggered to her feet, shook off the snow, and listened. The barks and bays sounded far up the mountain, paused at the brink of the towering slope. The killer, she knew, would be close on their heels.

Kris turned to the woods. From the sound of the tones, she realized the trees were actually widely dispersed — she could pass easily through them. But if she could pass through, so could they.

Unless...

She quickly pulled off her backpack and grabbed the fishing reel. She skied down to a forward-lying birch, wound the line low around the papery trunk, then skied laterally to the next tree, where again she tied the line around the bark. Continuing across the bank of trees, tying the line from trunk to trunk, she stretched it taut across the bottom of the slope.

Clear line against white snow in the shadowy light of the dawn — an invisible trap!

Above she heard the killer roar. The wolves howled in answer, and the high beeps of her infra-red sensor began sounding in her ears. The predator army was barreling down the mountainside. Kris tossed the reel into the snow and raced up a path through the trees.

The woods quickly opened on a rocky gully that ended in an uphill climb. Kris was at the bottom of a mountain bowl — there was nowhere to go but up. Exhaustion was setting in; unrelenting fear had drained her strength. But the same fear spurred her on. She started up the slope, pushing with her poles, then side-stepping her way up the broad incline.

She turned at the amplified sound of the killer's skis, whispering down the slope behind her. She held her breath as he barreled toward the alder forest, the wolves plunging headlong beside him.

All at once a welter of yelps rent the air as the hunters ripped through the cutting line. Kris heard the killer scream, tumbling with a wail into the snow. The wolves whimpered and whined in pain, scattering through the woods in confusion.

The stunned giant fell silent.

Kris struggled up the opposite slope, weak with fatigue, dizzy in the rarified air. The wind blew gusts of snow from the heights, and the coldness froze her fingers. Her skis sunk in the soft dry powder, her limbs grew limp and numb. She could not tell from the sound of the tones how high the ridge was, or how far she would have to climb.

She prayed the killer would not revive before she reached the top.