Snowblind (7 page)

It was night when Jake awoke, hanging upside down in a tangle of straps. One eye stung, its vision blurred; he realized it was filling with blood that flowed from a gash behind his ear. He pulled himself up and grabbed hold of the bottom edge of his seat. This gave some slack to his harness, and allowed him to unbuckle the straps. He slipped free, dropped to the ceiling of the cockpit, and collapsed in pain.

His foot was broken and bleeding.

Gusts of swirling snow blew in through the shattered windshield. The broken cockpit exit door hung ajar, knocking in the wind. Jake felt the deep cut behind his ear and pressed his palm over it to stem the bleeding. He crawled back along the ceiling to the cargo door. It was jammed shut and would not open.

In a compartment in the wall behind the copilot's seat, Jake found the emergency kit and a flashlight. He jammed the flashlight through his belt, then pushed open the exit door and climbed out onto the underside of the broad wing. Trying to step gently down the icy wing, he lost his grip and went sliding over the edge. He landed on his back, mercifully cushioned by the deep snow.

Jake stood up, pulled out his flashlight and aimed it at the aircraft. He could see the wind had already built snowdrifts against it. He stood up, putting all his weight on his one good foot, and limped painfully through the falling snow toward the tail of the plane. The rudder fin had broken off, and the fuselage was cracked wide open. Jake aimed his light into the opening.

"Donny?"

He listened, but heard only the howl of the wind.

Jake climbed inside.

The hold was pitch dark. He squinted his blurry, blood-caked eye, and scanned his flashlight across the baggage and debris that littered the overturned ceiling. Torn bags, tarps, broken boxes, stove parts, scattered Christmas presents. It had all tumbled and mixed up in the chaos of the crash.

"Donny?"

He continued searching with his light, moving deeper and deeper into the dark.

He stepped on something metallic. He pointed the light down and saw the tail end of a thick chain. The chain disappeared beneath a pile of crates. Jake knocked the crates aside and saw a hand sticking out from beneath a cardboard box.

"Donny!"

Jake threw off the box and grabbed Donny's hand.

He screamed with fright — the arm was detached from the body! Jake held it in his hand, staring in horror at the gnawed end, ripped or chewed from the shoulder. The white bone of the upper arm stuck out from ragged flesh. Jake dropped it to the ground and backed away, shaking.

He felt fingers at his neck and screamed. He whipped around, pointed his light at Donny's face!

The copilot's twisted body lay atop the sapling cage, head hanging upside down over the edge, arm dangling in the air. His neck had been ripped open, the trachea exposed like a bloody vacuum hose. The shoulder of the other arm was jammed tightly between the wood bars, as though the arm had been yanked in before being chewed off.

The cage was empty. The bars in the front had been torn apart; a huge, gaping hole remained.

Jake whirled around, flashing the light in all directions.

The abomination was loose.

Tiny balls of ice hung in Curly Ander's beard. In the frigid night air, the big burly trapper was working up a sweat. He set another log on the block, swung his axe and split it clean through the core. Then he set up and quartered each half, tossing them on the pile by the side of the cabin.

He'd been chopping wood for half an hour and the pile was getting high. Enough to warm me for a week, he thought. He paused to watch the smoke from his chimney feed the rolling clouds. The storm had been building all evening; he knew he might be shut in for more than a few days. Snowflakes whirled in the light of his lantern; a foot and a half mantled the eave above his head. It was coming fast.

He split six more logs, then stopped again. He stared off into the darkness of the rustling pines and down the trackless road that led up to his cabin.

He'd thought he'd heard something, though it was more a feeling than an actual sound. Like that sense he had when a grizzly was nearby. But the grizzlies are all asleep in their dens, he thought. Just like I should be.

The gusting wind whistled. He picked up the axe and split one last log. Then he slammed the blade into the block and left it there. He went to the woodpile, pulled on his caribou-leather mitts, and began stacking the logs to carry inside.

The wind blew snow up in his face as he bent over the pile. He loaded his arms with logs and stood up. Then he turned toward the cabin, and froze in his tracks.

The axe was gone.

Curly spilled his armful of logs in the snow. He turned, slowly, his eyes widening.

With a whispering hiss, the blade swept through the air.

SPLIT!

Curly's huge body remained standing, spurting a fountain of blood from the neck. His head rolled down the slope toward the trees, gathering snow as it went.

*  *  *

Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see as humans see? Are your days like the days of humans, or your years like human years, that you seek out my iniquity and search for my sin?

Remember that my life is a breath; my eye will never again see good. The eye that beholds me will see me no more; while your eyes are upon me I shall be gone.

Have the gates of death been revealed to you, or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?

Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?  No one can.

See, I will kill you; you have no hope. You will perish forever like your own dung; those who have seen you will say, where is he? You will fly away like a dream and not be found, you will be chased away like a vision of the night.

O that I might be sated with your flesh! Your loins full of milk and the marrow of your bones moist. The folds of your flesh clinging together. After your skin has been destroyed, then in your flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold him, and not another.

The wolf possesses the land, the weak live in it. Their bodies are my prey. No one is so fierce as to stand before me. There is terror all around my teeth. Who can confront me and be safe?

Under the whole heaven, who?

At the chart table in the Fairbanks Airport control tower, Dr. Katukan joined Chief Adashek, who was studying a topographical map of central Alaska.

"It's 200 miles to Caribou Mountain," said the Chief. "Highway Patrol says there's eight-foot drifts growing on Dalton Highway. They've shut it down north of the Yukon River."

"Are they looking for the plane?" asked Katukan.

"They've been alerted," said the Chief. "But don't count on anything. Plane could be anywhere in a twenty-mile radius of the last contact. They'll never find him searching from the ground."

A voice called from across the room. "Chief Adashek!"

Dean Stanton waved them over. They hurried to his control desk.

"It's 403," he said. "They've activated the ELT." Stanton turned up the volume on the VHF receiver. The quick, successive beeps of the emergency-locator beacon were unmistakable. "I've triangulated their position with the airport in Ruby. The signal's coming from somewhere off the western slope of Caribou Mountain. Might be on the Kanuti River. But wherever it is, at least we know somebody's alive out there."

Stanton turned, looked at Katukan. "Sorry, Doc."

*  *  *

Jake watched the red light flash with each "beep" of the beacon. He'd mounted the device on the upturned underside of the airplane's broken wing. He figured nobody would come looking for him until the storm died down, but at least this might let them know he was here.

Jake had found deep footprints in the snow, heading out across the lake toward the trees. That freak is out there somewhere, he thought. They may not be in a hurry to come for me, but they'll sure bust their asses to get a hold of him.

The wind howled across the lake. Beneath the broken wing of the plane, Jake had found a sheltered place where he could watch for his rescuers. He had packed it with blankets, tarps, food, and supplies from what was left in the cargo hold. But now he was in excruciating pain. He could no longer walk.

He cried out as he pulled the torn boot off his broken foot. His wool sock was soaked in blood. He removed the sock, and saw the exposed bone of the metatarsals showing through the abraded flesh. He wrapped the swollen foot with a bandage from the emergency kit. Then he wrapped a blanket around the bandage and lashed it up with tape.

He was getting colder by the second. He estimated the temperature was at least 15 below. He knew if he didn't start a fire soon he'd freeze to death — long before any rescuers showed up. His frigid fingers fumbled for a match. He struck it and tried lighting the maps he'd brought down from the cockpit. The match blew out in the wind. He numbly struck another, and then another, and another.

The wind is a dog of the devil.

Finally, covering himself with a canvas tarp, he managed to light a match and touch its flame to the tattered blue and white paper. It blazed quickly, warming his face. He stuffed it under a crumpled cardboard box, and the box took. He piled on fragments of broken pine slats and cordwood. Soon he had a healthy blaze.

He leaned back against the fuselage, exhausted. The flames crackled before him, and the beacon flashed in the dark. He'd lost much blood and body heat, but he was alive, and he had food, and fire.

I might just get out of this alive, he thought.

The cry of a wolf echoed across the lake.

Jake peered out into the dark. He realized, with a shudder, that he was not alone.

Kris had fallen asleep. She awoke when the music on the Jeep's radio came to an end, and a deejay's upbeat voice announced: "Get out those snowshoes, folks — this blizzard's only gettin' worse! As the cold front continues to move over the Brooks Range, we're looking at limited visibility and poor travel conditions through the weekend. Tune in for road closings and a full weather update with the news report at eight."

A hard-charging commercial for Panther Snowmobiles came on, and Andrea shut off the radio.

"Maybe we ought to go back," said Erin after a moment of silence. Her voice had lost its sharp-edged tone. Kris could feel her unease.

"I'm afraid we've gone too far for that," said Andrea. The Cherokee seemed to be straining uphill. "I shouldn't have taken that short-cut," she added, half to herself.

The car pulled to a stop. "I've got to do something about this ice," said Andrea. "I can't see." Kris heard Andrea's door open. Then she heard her scraping the windshield. The jeep was idling; Erin was silent.

Kris cracked open her window and felt the rush of cold air and the tingle of snowflakes. She listened to the sound of the blowing gusts in the trees. She thought the woods must be thick, and tall, and very close. Then she heard something else, high and plaintive, carried in the wind.

She was trembling when Andrea climbed back into the Cherokee and slammed her door shut. Kris quickly rolled up her window. She heard the jeep slam into first gear, and the tires spin in the deep snow. For a moment her heart sank; she reached for the armrest.

We could get stuck here, she thought. With
them
.

The tires grabbed and the Cherokee lurched forward. Kris took a deep breath and tried to relax.

"You okay, Kris?" asked Andrea. She must have been looking in the rear-view mirror.

"Yes," said Kris. "I just... I thought I heard something back there."

"What?" asked Andrea.

"A wolf, I think. It sounded like a wolf howling."

"It may not be a wolf," offered Andrea. "There are lots of animals in these woods."

"Probably just the wind," said Erin.

"I think it was a wolf," said Kris. "My hearing is very sharp. I know what a wolf sounds like."

An uneasiness crept over all of them. Finally Andrea spoke.

"Well, I wish you could hear where the right road is. I can't see anything. We better find a place to stop till this blows over."

No one said anything for a long moment. Then the Cherokee slowed to a stop.

"Oh, no," said Erin.

"What is it?" asked Kris.

"Mom, do you have any idea where you're going?"

"Well, as a matter of fact I don't. I'm afraid we're officially lost."

"What is it?" Kris asked again.

"The road forks here, Kris, and I don't know which way to go."

They were silent for a moment.

"Where's Robert Frost when you need him?" asked Andrea.

Kris heard a squeaking sound coming from Erin's window, like she was rubbing fog from the glass.

"What's that over there, Mom?"

"Where?"

"There, on that tree up there."

The jeep lurched into gear, moved off toward the right. After a short moment it slowed to a stop.

"TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT," read Andrea.

"Oh, great," said Erin.

Andrea drove forward cautiously.

"Look, Mom!"

"A cabin! Kris, it's a cabin!"

*  *  *

From the glowing kerosene lamp that hung outside, Andrea expected to find someone home. The cabin lay square and low on a flat expanse of the sloping hill, surrounded by a dark forest of towering spruce. Snow lay deep on the long-lash eaves, and the gusting wind ripped a thin tail of smoke from the chimney. The lamp hung on the corner of the cabin's open front porch, throwing dim light on a snow-dusted pile of chopped wood and an old pick-up truck, nearly buried in a drift.

Andrea approached the door warily, her eyes on the mighty five-foot rack of moose antlers that hung above in the dark shadow of the gable.

She knocked on the door. She waited.

Not a sound came from inside. She turned, glanced back down the hill toward the road, where the girls sat waiting in the idling Jeep. She turned back to the door and knocked again, pounding hard, almost hurting her gloved hand on the rough-hewn timbers.

No one answered. She raised the wooden latch and pushed the heavy door open.