by Harley Tate
Not that different than a motorcycle. He looked behind him at the caterpillar tread and then up front at the pair of skis. “Here goes nothing.” With his left hand, he turned the key and pulled the cord. The engine sputtered to life.
After letting the vehicle warm for a few minutes, Walter stuck his feet on the footwells, grabbed the handlebars, and eased on the gas. It didn’t move. He frowned and tried again, tightening his grip on the gas. The snowmobile shot forward, kicking snow behind him in an arc. Walter let up and it stopped.
Okay. Really different than a motorcycle. Walter gave himself a pep talk about flying 747s across the ocean and tried again. The snowmobile eased forward and Walter leaned into it, taking it up to barely above a jog.
The snow on the side of the road was relatively compact and he followed what looked to be other tracks slowly toward the tree line. The single headlight illuminated the snow in front of him enough to follow the tracks when they joined a disturbance in the snow. More tracks joined and diverged at the edge of the woods, but Walter couldn’t tell which ones were made by Brianna’s Jeep or the snowmobiles.
He shook his head. Whoever made the tracks didn’t matter. He was following a path and at some point Walter would either find his daughter or find the men who ambushed them on the road. Either way, he made the right choice.
The snow deepened the farther he drove into the forest and every time the tracks curved, he slowed to keep from tipping the snowmobile. His progress slowed to a few miles an hour.
The trees closed in and Walter grew wary. Could the Jeep even fit through a space this tight? His visibility declined the denser the forest grew and Walter narrowly missed sideswiping a fallen pine. The sky darkened even more and he needed the single headlight to see anything. It slowed him even more.
I’m taking too long.
The temperatures were rapidly dropping and without a helmet, his ears and face were freezing. If he didn’t find Madison soon, he’d risk frostbite and hypothermia. Without a vehicle to hunker down inside, he wouldn’t be able to keep himself warm. For the first time, Walter regretted hopping on the snowmobile without a real plan, but it was short-lived.
Madison needed him. There was no turning back.
As the ruts in the snow curved to the left, Walter leaned and followed. They opened up into a clearing and he squeezed the gas. The snowmobile shot forward. Finally, he could cover some ground. The snowmobile flew across the snowy field and Walter edged it faster.
He didn’t see the hump in the snow until it was too late. Straight ahead, something was buried. The headlight flashed against the black fiberglass and Walter jerked the handlebars.
The sled rolled up onto one ski. Walter jerked the other direction. The single ski contacting the snow slipped and Walter lost control. The back twisted out from under him, and the front of the sled flew up and tossed Walter off the back. He landed hard in a bank of melted and refrozen snow. Pain radiated across his lower back. His face burned from the ice and wind.
He lay there for a moment, catching his breath. The single headlight of his wrecked snowmobile shone into the forest twenty feet away. He rolled over and fished out his flashlight before hauling his bruised body up to stand.
Even from that distance he could see the snowmobile was a goner. One of the skis was bent in half. It wouldn’t drive again. He turned toward the lump in the snow, easing up to it with the flashlight in one hand and his other inside his pocket, ready to pull out a pistol.
He shined the flashlight on the housing. Another snowmobile. He spun around in a circle and found a boot sticking out of the snow about ten feet away.
The man was sprawled out, half his face a bloody mess. Walter bent to check for a pulse. Practically frozen. He probably died before his body hit the ground.
Walter shivered. That wouldn’t happen to him or his daughter. Walter rooted around the body, found another handgun, and shoved it in his ski pants pocket before turning back toward the track. On foot, he could make out the deeper marks of tire tracks.
Brianna’s Jeep.
Weaving in and out of the pair of tracks was a set of three shallower tracks, one similar to a tire and two straight and even. A snowmobile.
Walter steeled himself. The girls were being chased. At first by two snowmobiles, then only one. He clenched his fist and started jogging down the middle of the most compacted track. Hold on, Madison. I’m coming.
Chapter Sixteen
SILAS
Woods north of Truckee, CA
6:00 p.m.
Silas came to with a pounding headache and no feeling in his legs. At first he thought the crash severed his spinal column and he’d lie there, paralyzed, until death finally took him. But after a few minutes, his brain began to function.
He thumped on his leg. Stone cold. He leaned forward with a grunt, tipping his whole upper body over until he found purchase in compacted snow. Using his arms as braces, he shimmied back and forth, working his lower body out of the snow. Every twist brought a surge of icy pain shooting in needles down his thighs and calves, all the way to his toes.
Judging by the rapidly diminishing light, he’d been unconscious for at least half an hour. Plenty of time for his lower body to suffer frostbite. At last, he managed to free his legs, not that it did much good. Silas tried to stand, propping one foot on the snow and dragging his body up using the nearest tree.
He collapsed and ate a mouthful of ice, cursing as he spit it out.
Chasing those girls had been a mistake. Just like everything else that happened that afternoon. He couldn’t believe their luck when they first spotted the U-Haul and the productive little worker bees trundling box after box into the back end. The idiots guarding the pharmacy were finally good for something: doing Silas’s work for him.
When his uncle heard the good news, he’d clapped Silas on the back and forgiven him then and there for Beckett’s death. For a moment, Silas felt the first stirrings of pride. But they’d been extinguished with Elias’s next announcement.
A roadblock? They couldn’t just swoop in there, guns blazing and take them all out at the hospital? Efficiency wasn’t his uncle’s style. Not when they could make a show of it for everyone to remember.
But Silas had kept that opinion to himself, dutifully loading up his Polaris and following his uncle through the backwoods trails up to Northwoods Boulevard. No one had anticipated the F-150 with the snowplow attachment. Ingenious, if you asked him. If those pansy-ass guards had some balls and charged the snowmobile line with the truck, it would have been over quicker.
Instead, they chose the hard way: a gunfight. They might as well have been back at the freakin’ O.K. Corral in the middle of a shoot-out. One after the other, his cousins went down. Silas almost took a bullet to the head. He was ten seconds away from cutting out to save his own skin when the Big Bird took off for the woods.
Silas and his cousin Aaron followed. That kid had never been good on a pair of skis. When he went down, Silas managed to swerve around him, but watching Aaron’s sled slam into a tree threw his concentration. He didn’t see the rifle until the bullet hit his thigh.
Everything after that happened too fast to remember. Now he sat in the snow, ass half frozen, with a bullet in his leg and an upside down snowmobile beside him. He didn’t know if it would start, but what choice did he have? Unless some fairy godmother floated down from the heavens with a blanket and a flask of whiskey, he needed to get home.
Silas dragged his body over to the snowmobile. The front half was buried in about two feet of snow that had melted from the heat of the engine and then refrozen into ice. There was no way to dig it out without a pickax and Silas didn't have the strength. He clawed through the softer snow using his gloved hands until he found the ignition. He turned the key.
Reaching, he stretched to try and find the choke. It was buried on the other side under even more snow. There was no way for him to reach it without climbing over the sled or crawling all the way around. He tried to sta
nd again and fell, landing hard in the snow on his good leg.
Shit. He couldn’t manage anything with an untreated gunshot wound. If the cold didn’t kill him, bleeding out would. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he fumbled in the snow for the snowmobile’s saddlebags. As he found a buckle and unlatched it, a myriad of contents tumbled out. Extra gloves. A box of ammo. Cigarettes and a lighter. Finally the two things he needed most of all. A handkerchief and small roll of duct tape.
It wouldn't be the greatest tourniquet, but it was all he had. With a grunt, he propped himself up against the snowmobile’s side and ripped a wider hole in his pants. The wound stopped bleeding a while ago, more from the cold than any sort of healing. The second he warmed up or tried to walk, it would ooze all over again.
He felt around his thigh for an exit wound.
None. Just my luck.
That meant the bullet was still lodged in his leg. It would have to come out, but not here. All he could do until he reached somewhere warm and secure was wrap it up tight and give his leg some support. He would need it for the road ahead.
Silas ground his teeth against the pain, holding the handkerchief tight against the wound with one hand while he wrapped the duct tape around his leg with the other. After four trips around his thigh, he ripped the last six inches of tape off and used it to seal his pants as best he could.
Night set in fast. He couldn't see more than a foot in front of his face and even that much was fuzzy and indistinct. Using the snowmobile for support, he hobbled around to the other side before digging out the choke. He flipped it up and gave the cord a pull. Nothing.
He tried five more times, using so much force on the last pull the cord broke. Silas landed in the snow and the pain radiating from his wound stole his breath. He smacked his face. Get it together.
With shaking fingers, he reached for the other saddlebag and fished out the two-way radio they used for communication short-range. He tried channel two. “Silas to Cunninghams. Can you read me? Over.”
He waited, listening to the static for a minute before trying again. “This is Silas, is anyone out there? Can you guys hear me?”
No response. Either he was out of range or everyone who took part in the ambush was dead. He assumed it was the latter. Out of ideas, Silas stuck his hand in his pocket and fished out a baggie of venison jerky. He chewed the tough meat slowly, using handfuls of snow to wash it down. When it was gone, he leaned back and closed his eyes.
Visions of his father swam in the darkness. Butch Cunningham would be turning in his grave right now if he saw his kid giving up. Once, when Silas was about eight, his dad walked him down to the thrift store and let him pick anything he wanted for ten dollars. Silas chose a bike.
He’d never ridden one before and his old man asked if he was ready to learn. Silas nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, sir. I’m ready.”
Three hours later, two scraped knees and a bloody nose proved otherwise. “I’m just no good at bike ridin’. That’s what it is.” Eight-year-old Silas wiped the snot from his nose with the back of his hand.
“Is that so?”
“Yes, sir.”
His father looked at the bike and then looked at him. “I thought you told me you was ready to learn?”
“I guess I was wrong.”
“Are you saying you quit?”
Silas kicked at the dirt. “Maybe.”
“Well, no Cunningham gets the luxury of quitting. Come here.” His father held the bike and Silas walked toward it. “Get on.”
Silas climbed on and held the handlebars.
“I’m going to push you, and you’re going to go.”
“What if I fall?”
“Then you wipe off the dirt, get up, and do it again.”
“How long?”
“Until you can ride.”
Silas missed dinner that night. By the time he figured out how to ride a bike, the rooster down the street was crowing his scrawny little head off and Silas was covered in scrapes and bruises. He never asked his father for anything after that.
He never gave up, either.
“First time for everything, old man.” Silas reached into his pocket and fished out the cigarettes and the lighter. He lit the end and sucked a puff into his lungs. As the nicotine flooded his brain he squinted into the dark.
“What the…”
He held up the lighter and flicked it. Something shimmered in the distance. He waved the light; it waved back. It was the side mirror to a car.
Chapter Seventeen
MADISON
Woods north of Truckee, CA
6:00 p.m.
Her teeth wouldn’t stop chattering. Madison tucked the spare coat around Brianna’s feet before unfolding an ultra-thin mylar emergency blanket. It felt like metallic tissue paper and tore almost as easily, but it might be enough to keep hypothermia at bay for one of them at least.
Before most trips, Brianna ensured the Jeep was stocked with a small supply of essentials including several MREs, emergency blankets, and potable water. But this hadn’t been an ordinary expedition. When Brianna set off for the Jacobsons’ farm, she expected to be gone a few hours, not multiple days.
Thanks to the snowmobile jerks, her day trip turned into a three-day bender of standing guard at the ransacked pharmacy and loading medicine onto the U-Haul. There wasn’t much left in the Jeep to use.
Madison climbed into the back and rooted through the tossed-about gear. The MREs were gone. One jerry can still held about a gallon of water, but it was too cold to even think about drinking. There were plenty of medical supplies to deal with cuts and scrapes and typical scavenging injuries. Nothing to treat a swollen knee, broken leg, or concussion.
They had one fire puck and a lighter. If she could find something to make a fire, maybe they would stay warm enough until the morning when she could see to hike out. Madison glanced at the rearview window. The world was black. It might as well have been a total canvas cover with no clear plastic at all.
She chewed on her lip, worrying about the last snowmobile driver. Why hadn’t he attacked? If he was out there, surely he would have tried to do something by now. One look at the Jeep and anyone would know it wasn’t operational.
Maybe he thought they were already dead. Maybe one of the shots she fired out the back hit its mark. She knew the first man crashed, but did the second one as well? After mulling it over for a few minutes, Madison grabbed the fuel puck and the lighter and climbed out the rear passenger-side door.
Wind whipped against her face and stole her breath. She closed her eyes and fought down the panic. They wouldn’t freeze to death. She could start a fire. Madison spun around in a circle. There had to be some dry branches somewhere.
With agonizing slowness, Madison searched the nearby area, too frightened to use a flashlight in case their pursuers were still out searching. After what seemed like an eternity, she collected an armful of dead branches she was able to snap off the closest pine trees and hauled them over to the Jeep. Using her boot-clad feet, she pushed the snow around to make a clearing several feet across.
She stopped and looked around. Back when she was younger, she took a trip with her best friend up to Lake Tahoe in the summer. The days were warm, but the nights were cool and to warm up after a day of swimming, they would duck into a small log shack and create their own hot rock sauna.
A Jeep wasn’t a log cabin, but she could do the same thing here. All she needed was a collection of large, substantial stones and a means of carrying them. She hiked around the Jeep and up to the rocky outcrop where the right front tire met its end. Crawling on her hands and knees beneath the front bumper, Madison felt around in the dark for rocks small enough to carry, but large enough to retain heat.
She found three. The rest were bits of gravel or too big to lift. It wouldn’t be enough. Frustrated, she turned to face the wind and almost shouted for the man on the snowmobile to come and get them. At least then she could shoot him and maybe use his vehicle to find help
.
She gave herself a mini pity party before sucking back her tears and wiping her face. Giving up wouldn’t save her or Brianna. After collecting the rocks, she brought them over to the clearing. Three are better than none. She set them on the ground, broke the branches into foot-long pieces, and constructed a tepee over the fuel puck.
She fished the lighter from her pocket and flicked the wheel. It didn’t start. She tried again. Sparks, but no flame. Come on. Madison shook the lighter. The faint sound of butane sloshing around gave her hope. It wasn’t empty. She flicked the wheel again.
A flame.
Bending low, Madison cupped the flame and held it against the fuel puck until it lit. She exhaled in relief as the glow of a small fire spread across the surface of the reddish-orange circle. The pucks were advertised as having a three-hour burn time, but through trial and error Madison and the rest of her group discovered they burned much quicker.
If she couldn’t get the fire to stay lit without the puck, she had maybe an hour, not much more. A gust of wind blew and the flames sputtered and hissed. Snow landed on the puck and sent wisps of smoke into her face. She moved to block the wind as best she could, but it swirled in the small space between the Jeep and the trees.
The branches wouldn’t catch. She didn’t know if they were too wet or not old enough or if the wind was too much to bear, but the puck shrank with every passing minute. Sooner or later, it would burn out.
This isn’t working. Madison turned back to the Jeep and tugged open the closest door. She shoved a rifle and the water out of the way, searching for anything that could burn. Everything was plastic or metal or synthetic. She could create plenty of smoke if she needed to send up a signal or boil the water in the can, but she couldn’t sustain the fire.
As she shut the door, the branches above the fire puck collapsed and a shower of sparks pocked the snow. The fire turned to smoke and soot. Madison crouched beside the remnants and flicked the lighter. Holding it against the scraps of wood, she willed something to light.
