Winter Study (32 page)

There
was a place in her about the size of a softball just behind her
sternum. A surgeon or MRI or X-ray would never find it, but it was
where her center of energy resided; the tiny machine that had to be
kick-started at the beginning of every hike, revved up when the natural
laziness of mankind wanted to crawl back into the hammock. Muscles
could be tired or weak or cramping, and she could push on as long as
that motor kept running.

Whatever it was — will, stubbornness, pride — ground to a stop.

The
Sked hit the back of her knees and she went down on all fours. Robin
stopped beside her the way an old dog will stop when its master does.

“Fucking
Ridley,” Anna gasped. “Fucking Bob.” The fetal position Robin had
adopted was looking pretty good. Being devoured by beasts wasn’t
looking all that bad either.

She
tried to push herself up. Her arms buckled as if the bones had been
boiled to the consistency of overcooked noodles and she fell face-first
into the snow. She tried to find her feet and couldn’t. Her fingers,
around the grip of the flashlight wouldn’t close.

“Robin!” she yelled. “Help me.”

Robin
looked down into the sepia pool of light where Anna struggled. The
biotech said nothing. Her face showed no emotion, not even recognition.

“Help me up, God dammit!” Anna snarled. “Do it or we both die.”

“Don’t die,” Robin whispered. Anna barely caught the sound under the sawing of the wind.

“I
will fucking die and so will you if you don’t help me.” Anna’s language
was deteriorating. Fleetingly she wondered if she used it to shock
Robin out of her trance or because she was just that fucking tired of
the whole fucking mess.

Something
got through. Robin leaned down and extended a hand. Using the woman’s
strength, Anna pulled herself upright, then began fumbling at the
harness buckles. “Let the dead bury the dead,” she said. “Or eat them.
I don’t” — she was going to say “fucking” again, but it wouldn’t afford
the anger she needed, just indicate how desperate she felt — “much
care,” she finished.

Without
the Sked dragging her down, Anna felt almost strong for several yards,
then exhaustion slammed back so hard it shut down her mind. She held
tenaciously to three things: the faint tracks in the dimming circle of
light, what it would do to Paul if she froze to death and the cuff of
Robin’s sleeve. Anna could abandon the dead, and, once or twice, she’d
turned her back on the living. Leaving Robin would be tough to get over.

The
world shrank till even Paul could not fit in it. Only the circle of
light and her hand clamped on Robin’s parka. Soon, Anna knew, one or
the other of these would go; she would lose Robin or they’d lose their
light. Anna managed to slide her hand up and close it around Robin’s
wrist. If she was lucky, it would freeze there.

“Keep walking,” she whispered to the biotech. “Help me out here.”

Help me.

The
words that had formed on the window glass of the bunkhouse. They’d not
saved Katherine. Had her spirit come and written them with the cold
fingertip of the dead after the wolves had savaged her?

Help me.

Help me. Help me. Anna let the chant move her feet. Lift on

Help.

Down on

me.

Lift on

Help.

“The walking dead.”

Anna
had not said that. She’d not said it in her mind and she’d sure as hell
not said it aloud. Jerking Robin’s arm, she stopped and shined their
pitiful light into the younger woman’s face.

Robin hadn’t said it. Robin was the walking dead.

A
groan pushed through the dark and the wind. The beam of the flashlight
wasn’t strong enough to penetrate more than a few feet, but it was
strong enough to pinpoint her and Robin. Anna clicked it off.

“At
first, I saw, but now am blind,” came the voice. Then: “Don’t tell me
your batteries are dead.” Then an “Uff!” and “I sound like an old man.”

“Ridley?” Anna tried.

“Did your batteries go dead?”

Anna
clicked the light back on and shined it down the trail. First the tips
of skis, then the man came into the circle of illumination.

“Why are you here?” she asked. She would have shouted at him but hadn’t the energy for anything more than mild curiosity.

“Bob
got ahead of me. It was too dark to catch him. Without a flashlight,
I’d have killed myself trying to stay on the trail. So I waited for
you.”

The
flashlight fell from fingers gone suddenly numb. The butt of it stuck
in the snow, sending the light up beneath Anna’s and Robin’s chins.

“Holy moly!” Ridley said. “You okay?”

“Is this the Feldtmann?” Anna asked.

“Yeah. What happened to the Sked?”

Anna
had to chip each thought out of the ice of her brain. Putting them in
words took even longer. A thousand years ago, Jonah had led her off the
Feldtmann Trail. She’d been on her way back, about three miles from the
bunkhouse.

Three miles.

Ridley had on his skis.

“Here.” Anna picked up the light and gave it to him. “Ski back. Fast. Bring the snowmobile.”

“The
Park Service…” he began, then stopped, undoubtedly realizing it would
be easier to explain using an engine in the wilderness than the death
by negligence of a visiting District Ranger.

“Sit tight,” he said.

“Don’t
stop to kill Bob,” Anna managed. She put her arms around Robin and
together they sank to the ground. Anna could have propped her back
against a tree and unfolded her aching legs, but she chose to sit up
straight in the middle of the trail. This was not the place to get too
comfortable.

ROUGH
PAWS WERE SCRAPING at Anna, pushing her back and forth, dragging her
from the first warm, light, pleasant place she’d been in what was
beginning to seem like forever. She’d been in front of the fireplace in
Paul’s house in Natchez. There’d been a huge blaze and her husband’s
arms were around her, and she was just settling down to a wonderful
rest. Then the paws.

“Come
on, sleeping beauties. Don’t want to wake up dead, do you? Wakey-wakey
— well, I don’t have eggs and bacon, but I’ve got coffee. Hot coffee.”

Anna
pushed the hands from her. A jolt of fear woke her up completely and
she began shaking Robin. “Jesus. Right out of the textbooks,” she said
when she saw Robin open her eyes.

Saw it.

There
was light. Adam was hunched over them, his skis making him awkward, a
bright light on a band around his head and another on each arm.

“Where’s
Ridley?” The question sounded so pathetic it embarrassed Anna, but she
couldn’t make sense of anything: how long they’d slept, if it was
tonight or tomorrow night, who, if anybody, had been eaten by wolves or
wogs or Jack Frost.

“I
passed him coming out,” Adam said. “Soon as Bob showed up back at the
bunkhouse all by himself with a cock-and-bull story about ‘getting
things ready’ for when the rest of you arrived, I knew something stunk.”

With
a couple of expert movements, he unlatched his skis and stepped out of
them, then swung his backpack down and began rustling around in it.

“Ho, ho, ho,” Anna said stupidly.

Adam smiled. “Like Santa with a bag of toys,” he said.

That wasn’t it at all. Tall and covered with lights, he reminded Anna of a Christmas tree. Or the spaceship coming down in

Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Her
mind would not track; she had the attention span of a gnat; inside her
cranium, things made a degree of sense, but when she tried to put that
sense into words it didn’t work anymore.

Adam
took out a thermos and Anna remembered he’d said “coffee.” To drink
coffee would be as close to heaven as a woman with a checkered past
would get. Hot coffee. Anna could almost feel it in her mouth, pouring
heat into her.

“This’ll
help,” Adam said and handed Robin a steaming cup. Anna wished he’d
given her the first cup; she wished she was evil enough to snatch
Robin’s from her. She would have given a year’s salary just to smell it
but the wind took the steam and the perfume. Robin raised her hand to
take the cup. Her fingers wouldn’t move and the cup fell into the snow.
Anna wanted to cry.

The
next cup he held to their mouths for them. A sip for Robin, a sip for
Anna, just like the old days when nobody was afraid of catching
diseases, when the offer of a swig out of one’s water bottle wasn’t
considered creepy. The coffee was as good as Anna had known it would
be. Her body was too far gone for a small infusion of heat and caffeine
to do much for it, but her mind sharpened. Even Robin’s face took on a
bit of life. When they could hold the cups without endangering
themselves, Adam went again into the pack and brought out a box of six
Hershey bars.

Dormant
hunger raged through Anna and she took half of one in a single bite. It
was beyond good. The gods didn’t dine on nectar; they ate Hershey’s
chocolate, milk chocolate with almonds. “Canonize Hershey,” she said
sincerely through a third bite.

By
the time Ridley roared back into their night following the beam of the
snowmobile’s headlight, Anna and Robin had enough strength to climb on
behind him. The seat was designed for only two riders. The chocolate
had raised Anna’s spirits to such an extent, she offered to wait for
the second trip. Ridley and Adam saw something in her and the biotech
that made them veto the suggestion. Robin was squeezed in the middle
and Anna on the back of the seat. Using bungee cords he carried in his
pack, Adam lashed both of them to Ridley.