Cold Heart

by Chandler McGrew

  Stop it!

  There had to be a million reasons Dawn wasn't answering. The obvious one was that El was too close and she had turned the radio off so that he wouldn't hear it. The thought that she or Stan might have just given Dawn away sent a chill up Micky's spine.

  Dawn had made a connection with Micky. Her voice over the radio was like a call from the past. It had been eerie, as though, somehow, the radio were not connected to a sixteen-year-old girl, somewhere in the depths of the McRay valley, but to another girl, years ago, in a dark room in a dark building in Houston, hiding. Micky wasn't picturing Dawn Glorianus when she spoke into the transceiver. She was speaking to a young Micky Ascherfeld. Trying to reassure her that everything would be all right. Trying to let her know that help was coming.

  As help had come in Micky's own past.

  But was it too late for Dawn?

  Was it too late for all of them?

  Micky stared at the raw flesh and bone where the flap still hung loose on the side of Marty's face. She clicked her front teeth together, trying to make up her mind. Marty groaned. Stan looked at her expectantly.

  It might be a long time before they could get professional medical attention for Marty.

  Should she leave his face an open wound like that?

  She'd swabbed it off as best she could with alcohol. Even unconscious, that had been enough of a shock to elicit a moan and a jerking movement of Marty's jaw. But she continued until it was all cleaned, going so far as to peel back the four-inch-wide flap and wipe off the bear hairs and grit.

  But should she just leave it like that and bandage it?

  “Stan,” she said, “I think I ought to stitch up his face.”

  Stan just nodded as though he thought that decision had already been made.

  “I'm not a surgeon, Stan. I could scar him for life.”

  A burst of hysterical laughter came out of Stan's mouth and she laughed too in spite of herself. She and Stan glanced down at the eighteen-inch cuts she had just sutured and then back at one another.

  “All right,” she said.

  It had to be done. She was afraid that if she just bandaged the wounds, the skin might die before Marty could get professional help. At least if she sutured it together the skin had a chance of getting enough blood to survive. The surgeons might have something to work with to try to save his face.

  The problem was that the skin hadn't torn cleanly.

  At the base of the ear and at both ends of the tear, near the scalp and out along the jaw, the skin had ripped and stretched and the flap was ragged and uneven. She couldn't be certain that she was attaching skin to skin close to where it had begun and the needle she was using was straight, not curved like a surgeon's. It would be an horrific job, especially around the ear. A picture of the railroadtrack scars on the face of Frankenstein's monster flashed in her mind and she wondered if Marty would come to hate her for what she was doing, every time he looked in the mirror.

  Surprisingly, Stan swallowed his fear enough to swab Marty's face tenderly as she sutured. The skin was softer, thinner, more pliable than on his back and the stitching was easier. But the skin was harder to pull together tightly. And she kept catching the needle on muscle and bone. The stitches tugged and stretched at Marty's face, leaving slitlike holes that again reminded her of the old Boris Karloff movie.

  “He's gonna be okay,” said Stan. He glanced at Micky the way a ten-year-old kid might, looking at a vet over the body of his favorite pet. Guilt stabbed at Micky's gut.

  “I'm doing my best, Stan,” she said, feeling even more incompetent than before. She stared at the jigsaw puzzle of bloody skin and flesh.

  It's just like glass.

  Broken pieces.

  Put them together so they're right. That's all you have to do. Hopefully Marty would live.

  Hopefully he would be able to live with what she had done to him.

  3:49

  EL SAT ON THE four-wheeler with his back to the store and focused on the trail on the other side of the bridge. The view of the far creek bank came and went but the storm seemed to be thinning a little. The sky was lightening in the east and his own tracks were clearly visible. He wanted more snow.

  But he didn't want it the way other people would.

  He closed his eyes and wanted it.

  He willed the clouds down.

  He desired the flakes to fall.

  He'd done it before. Sitting alone in his cabin, in the dark, with only his face visible through a small opening in the blanket that covered the window. Sat for hours on end, drawing the weather down into the valley. He'd brought rain and wind, snow and sleet. And he knew he could do it now. He wanted the snow to cover his tracks.

  But his powers seemed to have diminished and, as the flakes thinned out he stared through them, down the trail toward Howard's cabin. He'd heard shots before, when he was at work beneath the bridge, though he hadn't been able to tell where they were coming from because he'd left the motor running on the four-wheeler. His first thought had been that he'd been discovered. He ducked, whipping out the Ruger, cocking it and hugging the frozen gravel beneath the rough bridge posts.

  His mind raced and icy tendrils of fear trickled down his spine. He breathed faster, sucking up the fear like a plant spreading its leaves to the sun, and his senses came alive.

  First one shot.

  Then another.

  The echo slapped the mountains hard in the face but by the second blast he was certain that the shots were farther away than he had at first thought.

  Close to Terry's place.

  Maybe his own.

  Marty or Stan. Not Micky.

  She had only the Glock and he knew where everything in her cabin was kept. She was neat. Just like him. A place for everything and everything in its place. And only the one pistol.

  As he realized the danger was distant, El's body and mind once again began to cycle down. His breathing slowed and the welcome fear slowly dulled. He felt almost like a windup toy running down. El's mind sometimes dimmed to the point of going out, like a guttering candle.

  He could stare for hours at the wall and not remember what he had been thinking when he came back around. But he knew he hadn't been asleep. He hated sleep. Sleep left him hopelessly vulnerable. Defenseless. Sleep terrified El with a mind-numbing fear that even he could not enjoy.

  Even when he was gazing in numb silence at the walls of his cabin he was aware. Aware in a way that other people would never understand, perhaps, but he knew that if anyone approached the cabin, he would know.

  He kept the pistol in his lap, always.

  He would be ready for them.

  Ready to defend himself.

  But sleep he could not control. It came on its own and it left on its own.

  El hadn't slept in days. And he wasn't about to sleep now.

  But he was recharging his batteries.

  He leaned on Clive's rifle and Rita's shotgun, which were now strapped across the handlebars, and stared into the flitting snow. If anything moved on the trail, he would snap back to attentiveness. If anyone spoke, he would hear. If Marty or Stan came down the trail, he would move back to the safety of the store and wait for them.

  But, for just a moment, he needed to stare into the snow.

  4:05

  MICKY AND STAN DRAGGED Marty over close to the stove, which now cast a comforting warmth, and covered him with a blanket from the loft. The railroad tracks of stitches Micky had created from his forehead to his chin bristled crimson, but there was little bleeding, and Marty was moaning more. She took that as a sign that he was strong and not going into shock, so they elevated his head and tried to make him as comfortable as possible.

  “I'm going to the store,” said Micky, standing and inspecting a Ruger carbine she pulled from the wall beside the door. The gun fired heavy-grained.44-caliber pistol slugs. She checked the chamber to make sure it was loaded.

  “You stay with Marty,” she said.

  But Stan was
already on his feet, shaking his head.

  “We should wait here,” he said.

  “Wait for what, Stan?”

  “For help,” he said, nervously running his hands up and down his pants, though he had no blood on them. “We're all together here. We have guns. El's alone. We should wait.”

  “Stan, we can't just sit here and wait. Dawn's hiding down there at the store. She's all alone.”

  “You can't go down there by yourself,” Stan said, changing his tune completely. Stan was pliable, but it didn't look as though she was going to get out of El's cabin without him.

  Still, someone did need to stay with Marty and, like it or not, she was trained to face an armed man and Stan wasn't.

  Didn't that suck?

  “I don't want to leave him by himself,” Micky said, nodding at Marty. “He might go into shock.”

  “I wouldn't know what to do if he did. He needs help and the only way he's going to get it is if we call for it. The only place to do that is Cabels’.”

  “Stan. I don't want to argue.”

  “Then don't,” said Stan, grabbing his rifle.

  She remembered all the arguments she'd witnessed between Stan and Marty over the years. They'd seemed funny. This did not. But she sensed that she was not going to win no matter what she said.

  “All right,” she said, pulling aside the blanket and sliding out the window. She held it aside for Stan to follow. The snow was only an inch deep and the wind was warming fast. The clouds were already higher overhead and rising. If the temperature went up much more, the snow would turn to slush and be gone in less than an hour. But for now she could read their history in the thin layer of white. The staggering steps, the blood. She stared down toward where the battle had taken place and shuddered.

  She slipped the radio out of her pocket and called Dawn again.

  Still no answer.

  “I don't want to go down that trail,” she said, nodding toward the spot where the mauling had taken place.

  The thought of passing the spot where the bear had attacked Marty sent a shiver up her spine. In her mind's eye she saw the frenzied attack again, the bear just a brown flash of fur and razor-sharp, blood-covered claws.

  Stan looked down at the snow and shook his head.

  “Me neither.”

  She slipped her finger onto the trigger of the carbine. “Where do you think the bear went?”

  “No telling.”

  “Do you think she's alive?”

  “Bastards are tough,” he said. “But she was hit pretty good or she wouldn't have run off. She might have gone a long ways though.”

  “Or, she might be right through those trees. Waiting for us.” Micky pointed the rifle barrel down toward the trail to Terry's.

  “Yeah.”

  “We'll cross the creek,” she decided. “We can follow the lower trail. It's more open. If the bear's around, we'll see her easier.”

  She started down the steps.

  “Wait,” said Stan, disappearing back into the cabin.

  He reappeared, carrying the ledgers.

  “Evidence,” he said, hurrying down the steps.

  “Of what?”

  The books were trying to work their way out from under his arm. “I'll bet it's a diary.”

  Maybe.

  Serial killers often kept journals. But she didn't think she and Stan needed evidence at the moment. What they needed was help.

  “Leave them,” she said, turning.

  She glanced back over her shoulder to see Stan reluctantly slip the books under the porch. Then he hurried to catch up, panting alongside her.

  Micky noticed how Stan kept glancing around, into the trees, then back over his shoulder. She was as worried as he was about the bear and about El. But Stan's face was open, curious, and frightened, all at the same time. And he stuck close to Micky. Very close. Again she was struck by his resemblance to a small, terrified child.

  When they reached the creek, Stan waited for Micky's okay before sliding down the slope to the water's edge.

  “How long have you and Marty been together?” asked Micky, trying to distract Stan.

  “Twenty years,” said Stan. “Give or take.”

  “Wow,” said Micky. “I never realized.”

  She eyed the creek. It was a natural shooting gallery. Long and straight. It wouldn't take but a minute to cross. But out in the middle they'd be balanced on slippery rocks, easy targets.

  “I don't know what I'd do without Marty,” said Stan.

  Micky caught his eye.

  “He's going to be all right, Stan.”

  Stan nodded, biting his lip.

  “Really,” said Micky, praying she wasn't lying.

  4:15

  EL SAT MOTIONLESS ON the four-wheeler.

  The snow had stopped altogether and, although Dawn couldn't feel the temperature rising outside, she noticed the increase of natural light in the store.

  She now not only had quite a hoard of food, and water in a plastic canteen, but she had discovered a better hiding place right inside the store!

  The upstairs bedroom was little more than an enclosed loft with a polished spruce floor and a steep ceiling of tongue-and-groove pine over rough-sawn rafters. But before the ceiling reached the floor it had been intersected on each side of the eave with five-foot-high knee walls, and those, in turn, were covered with vertical tongue-and-groove boards. On the wall opposite the bed was a full-length hanging closet that was open to the room except for a six-foot section where Rita had draped a wool blanket.

  Dawn had considered hiding behind the blanket but when she crawled inside she noticed that she could still see the door and, besides, all El would have to do would be pull the blanket aside and she'd be dead.

  But as she was climbing back out of the closet, she tripped and knocked a box aside. And suddenly her hand wasn't on pine. It rested instead on a metal cabinet handle. She slid her head in between Rita's coats and Clive's snowmobile pants and found herself staring at a door, cut out of the pine siding that covered the knee wall. She tugged it open and discovered a dark, triangular tunnel that ran the length of the loft. The area was filled with cardboard boxes and stacks of more blankets and clothes as far as Dawn could see.

  On the next trip downstairs she found a flashlight. She brought in cans of soda and candy bars from behind the counter. She moved the boxes around so as to make it seem as though the whole tunnel was filled with them, but in actuality there was a narrow maze for her to pass through to the tiny cave she had constructed at the far end. She could close the whole thing off with a false wall of boxes, clothes, and blankets.

  It was perfect.

  Even if El found the door, he might not search behind the boxes.

  Not if I'm quiet.

  But how would I know if he was inside the bedroom?

  Maybe her hidey-hole wasn't perfect after all. In fact, even as she was stocking her nest she worried that she might not have heard his return from inside the well-insulated tunnel. She hurried back down to her spy station beneath the window.

  But he was still there, down by the bridge, his back hunched over the handlebars as though he were regarding something incredibly interesting stuck to the front tire of the four-wheeler.

  What was he doing?

  4:17

  MICKY'S LEGS STUNG LIKE fire. They were soaked to her thighs and the icy water sloshed in her boots. She and Stan trudged along the trail, Stan kicking noisily as he walked, his pants snapping. They were both trying to shake off some of the biting cold. But a warm Chinook wind already buffeted the valley. The temperature was climbing over fifty now, the sudden cold front come and gone.

  The clouds dissipated overhead like frightened gray birds, the sky between them so deep that on any other day Micky could have lost herself in it. Thin snow still crunched underfoot, but it was quickly turning to slush. The sticky flakes that managed to cling to the rough bark of the tall spruces laced the trees with streamers of diamond threads. The f
orest glittered in a white-and-platinum embrace.

  There was no blood on this snow. There were no open, gaping wounds here. There were no moans or guttural gasps or beastly roars. Right here, right now, it was almost possible to believe that nothing had happened in McRay. That it had all been a ghastly dream.

  But, not that far behind them, lay Marty, clinging to life.

  And, behind him, lay Aaron.

  And, up ahead somewhere, there was El.

  “Stan,” said Micky, “have you seen Damon today?”

  Stan shook his head. “You think, maybe—”

  “He wasn't in his cabin.”

  “He could be anywhere. I'm sure he's okay. You know Damon. He might be gone for days if he's prospecting. This is a good day to be gone.”

  “Yeah.”

  Micky kept the carbine at port arms, the red warning stripe around the safety button visible. Micky had reassured herself before leaving El's cabin stoop by ejecting all seven bullets and replacing them. They were large and heavy and solid in her hands. Bullets that could cut a man in half if he wasn't wearing body armor. And that, at least, she was certain El didn't have. Dawn would have noticed that. She would have commented on it. A man wearing full body armor in McRay would stand out.

  Micky kept glancing around, and Stan stayed on the lookout, too. They didn't know where the hell El was and now there was a wounded bear somewhere in the neighborhood.

  What next?

  They were halfway to the clearing, past the Glorianus place, just about across from Howard's cabin, though it was still invisible over the lip of the creek and the trees.

  On a whim, Micky reached down and turned up the volume on the radio. She only caught the last few words but she clutched at it, whipping it out of her jacket pocket.

  “Guess you're gone…”

  “No! Dawn! Are you there?”

  “Micky?”

  Micky's heart melted like the snow. Her knees went weak. Stan moved up even closer, listening.

  “Yes! It's me! Where are you?” said Micky.