by Nevada Barr
It rankled to curl and hide, blind and helpless. Should trouble come she preferred to meet it head-on, though against a pistol and a double-bladed ax she’d probably make a pretty poor showing.
“Here! She came over this way.” The speaker was not the man who’d introduced himself as Mark and been a gracious host, but the Mark who’d first slammed through the cabin door. The hard-edged misogynist who used showers and women with the same utilitarian contempt. “Where you looking?” A duller voice, thicker, the breath coming in heavy labored gasps. One of the stooges. Not the youngest, not the one with a soul behind his eyes.
“Here, you stupid motherfucker. Look at the rock.”
The chase across the lake, up the hill and down again hadn’t improved Mark’s temper or vocabulary.
They were so close it sounded as if they stood over her, trying to figure out if her gray and curled form was animal, vegetable or mineral. Unaware she did so, she squeezed her eyes shut. Had she covers, they would have been pulled over her head.
“Shit, man”—Mark again—“she’s gone into the creek. Look here. No way to track her. Fuck. Take that side.”
“How am I gonna get across?”
A thump. A splash. A laugh. “Walk. Keep your eyes on the ground. She’s gotta come out somewhere. Jesus. Did you bring a fucking flashlight?”
“I got one back at camp.”
“That’s a big fucking help.”
The conversation faded. They followed the creek. Or rather, followed the script where the hunted inevitably reached a creek, predictably chose to walk in it to lose the hunters. Trackers always checked the banks; ambient knowledge gleaned from America’s fiction.
Without moving, Anna listened till she could no longer hear them. Silhouettes turned to shadows, shadows faded into night so black she could feel its weight on her eyes, its body as she breathed it in and out.
In a moment she would move, get up, put her boot on, figure out how to survive the night. Cold cradled her, as tight and close as a lover, comforting, almost restful. Soon she would get up, but first she must sleep. Just a little, just enough to get her wind back.
Ice and night closed around her brain and Anna felt the bliss of sinking into it.
CHAPTER
12
Aperfect dream of warm sand and blue ocean was being repeatedly interrupted by a need to scrape stinging jellyfish off of her left foot. After what seemed a lifetime of fruitless washing and scratching, the irritation dragged her from the sunlight and the shore. Opening her eyes to the darkness Geppetto must have known in Monstro’s belly, Anna had no idea where she was. Several times she tried to fix her mind on the problem, and several times she drifted away to the delicious heat on the white sand beach. Each time the stinging jellyfish brought her back, unfriendly fire burning her ankle. She tried to think and could not. She tried to move and could not. With a herculean effort she succeeded only in stirring up pain so sharp she heard herself whimper.Make a noise and you die, one part of her brain informed another. The whimpering ceased.I’m already dying. I like it. It’s warm, the brain answered itself, and Anna smiled. It was warm.
Dying. Vaguely she remembered promising someone she wouldn’t do that. Molly. It must have been her sister, Molly. With the blink of a mind’s eye Anna was looking through Molly’s window then and saw her seated in the tiny kitchen of her Upper West Side apartment, her husband’s long legs bent out like a grasshopper’s from beneath the Barbie-sized table. The two of them were sipping fancy coffee, heatedly and happily arguing politics. Molly was okay. Molly was good. Frederick was there to take care of her.
Anna turned away from that airshaft window above Manhattan’s streets and wafted toward her beach. Sunlight shattered on the waves, the glitter as bright as mirror shards. She walked toward it.
Not Molly, came an intrusive voice. Paul. She’d promised Paul she would not die, not this time, not this trip, not this assignment.
Without thought or effort, she was in Mississippi. For some reason it was raining, though it hadn’t been when she’d left. Paul was not in his beautiful historic home in Port Gibson with its hardwood floors and marble-tiled fireplace, stretched out on his overstuffed couch, as she might have expected. He was in her dreary Mission 66 government housing—built in the mid-sixties as part of a grand plan—in Rocky Springs campground, carport full of spiders, backyard full of Baptist Church groups and Boy Scouts.
Hovering above the cracked cement of her front walk, she watched him through the living room windows. Unlike with her sister and brother-in-law, she could not hear him, but his lips were moving and his face was animated as if he spoke to someone.
Piedmont, her old orange-striped tomcat, came out from the kitchen, his tail hooked in its customary question mark. Paul squatted down and the cat trotted over to be petted. Cats liked Paul. A sign of favor from the gods. Taco, her three-legged dog, wasn’t in the scene. When she’d left, Paul had promised to look after her family. Taco, valuing real estate over personality, went to Port Gibson to live in style. Piedmont, for exactly the opposite reason, stayed home.
Anna hadn’t thought to be gone long enough for it to matter.
Paul lifted the big cat and draped him over one shoulder. Having let himself out, he awkwardly locked the door behind him and carried the cat to his truck parked in the driveway.
He’d worried about her cat, come fifteen miles in the rain to take Piedmont home.
Shit,Anna thought. For a while she hovered in the nowhere of her mind between the bright beach and the black cold.
One could break promises. It was allowed.
One could not abandon one’s cat. Not and retain any hope of heaven. Turning her back on the sparkling sea, she opened her eyes, or thought she did. It was too dark to tell. By dint of will, she focused her mind. Hypothermia; irrationality was a late symptom. She seemed to remember being taught that if a patient could raise his or her hands overhead and wiggle them then they weren’t too far gone. Anna couldn’t even find her arms.
Pain was as realistic as life got. She would start with that. Ever so slightly, she moved the foot the jellyfish had been attacking. Pain, duller than she remembered from whatever lifetime she was returning to, coursed up her shin bone.
Better than smelling salts,she thought as the fog in her brain began to clear. Broken ankle, curled in a ball, half-frozen in the backcountry, two, maybe three men trying to kill her, black as pitch: it all came back. Despite the jellyfish, the beach looked better and better.
Move,she ordered herself and kept on repeating it like a mantra till her gloved hands found down and pushed. Elbows locked, head hanging, she rested a moment.
Not resting, drifting,she reprimanded herself.Move. She did and kept on doing so, inch by bloody inch until she was upright, boot in hand, leaning against the rough bark of a pine tree no bigger around than her neck, but sturdy and kind.
Blind, invisible and glad of it, she performed homemade calisthenics tailored to a gimpy ankle. Had she been able to see herself, she’d have been further warmed by a good laugh. Alone in the dark she flapped and writhed and stretched, hugged herself, scrubbed her face and hair with gloved fingers, massaged, patted and pawed various parts of her anatomy till ten zillion exquisitely agonizing prickles announced returning life. Even her butt was numb. At least that was a new, if not pleasant, sensation.
Being alive pretty much sucked, she decided, but no longer harbored any desire for the shore. In memory there was a decidedly sinister aspect about that sunshine-and-warmth routine, rather like the alluring scent of cheese mixed with the slightly metallic tang of a well-used trap.
Eventually enough flapping and posturing had been executed that coordination as well as mental clarity returned. She put her hiking boot back on. Her bad foot had swelled until it was squashed into the other boot so tightly she couldn’t wedge a finger between the leather and her sock.
This was good. The boot created its own pressure bandage to stop the bleeding. Working blind, she gat
hered materials for a splint to immobilize her leg to the knee. Technically the knee should have been splinted as well to keep the pull of muscles and tendons on the injured bone to a minimum. Anna couldn’t afford to cripple herself that much, and she was fairly sure the ankle was only chipped or cracked, not broken through.
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 Lechuguilla Cave 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.
