He stood over it and pointed to it. “Get in there,” he commanded.
There was only one burrow. He wanted her to sleep with him. That wasn’t happening.
“I’m staying out here,” she said.
In the darkness she couldn’t see the incredulity on his face.
He approached her. “Then let me have your baby,” he said,
“No!”
He seemed to vacillate for a moment. With him this close, she saw a look of disgust on his face.
“You don’t deserve that baby,” he finally said. “There’s some wood there to feed the fire, but you’re putting your kid at risk.” And with that he went and crawled into the burrow. He took the dog in with him.
“Asshole,” she heard him say as he settled into the burrow.
“I’m not the asshole,” she said.
It got darker and colder. She sat near the dying fire with Whoops cradled in her arms and rocked her. She wasn’t getting in the burrow. She wasn’t going to be raped again. She threw more branches on the fire and, though they made the fire brighter, they didn’t make her feel much warmer. Within an hour she began to wonder if her feet were getting frostbitten. She started to shiver. She knew Whoops was getting cold.
Whoops began to cry, again. She wanted to cry, herself, but she remembered the promise she’d made to herself. But it was about her sister’s survival, now. She wondered if he’d still let her into the burrow. If he wanted sex, what was she going to do? Was she going to give in to save her sister?
She wrestled with her dilemma until she realized she was going to freeze to death. More importantly, Whoops would. She got up and approached the burrow. The way he was breathing, she could tell he was sleeping.
She crouched beside him and whispered, “Hey.”
He didn’t respond. The dog, on the other hand, lifted his head and watched her.
“Hey,” she said louder.
He still didn’t answer.
“Hey!” she shouted and was startled when from out of the dark he pushed a small revolver in her face.
When he saw it was her, he lowered the gun. “What do you want?”
“I’m cold.”
“I can’t do anything about that.”
“Can we get in?”
He sighed and sat up. He readjusted the burrow so there was room for her and Whoops. He put them between himself and the dog.
She was sure she knew what he wanted and, if she had to, she’d fuck him. She closed her eyes and wanted to cry. She waited. But he lay down and faced away from her. Soon, she realized he’d gone back to sleep and she lay there shivering, until she got warm. She wondered what she was going to do when he put her back on the road the next day. After a while the clouds cleared and there was a full moon in the sky. The stars looked warm, but the black sky that cradled them was bleak and cold. The forest was noisier than she expected, what with the creaking and crackling of branches and limbs as they now and then shed their snow.
Whoops surrendered to sleep and, at some point, she did, too. And when she dreamt, it was nightmares in which she was lonely, helpless, and scared. In the distance, she saw her mommy, her father, and her brother, Robert, but they were leaving her. Suddenly, she was startled awake. The stranger was now snuggled up to her, facing her, and had a hand cupped over her right breast.
“Stop!” she yelled and jerked upright.
He sat up startled and stared at her in the moonlight. He had the gun in his hand and it was pointed at her face again.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Keep your filthy hands off my tits!” she screamed. Whoops began to cry. But she now knew that, even for her sister, she wouldn’t let a man rape her.
However, all he did was lower the gun and lay down again, facing away as he had earlier. And soon, she could tell from his breathing, he was sleeping, again.
She couldn’t believe how readily he went back to sleep. She lay back down, wide awake. She felt Whoops. She was wet but she’d already fallen back to sleep, so Danielle let her be.
She had to get away from this guy. There was something wrong with him. She couldn’t figure out how he could have saved her in the morning, yet treat her like this. All he wanted to do was yell at her, push her down in the snow, take Whoops away, and now he was copping a feel. And she knew he was dangerous: She’d already witnessed when he’d killed three men and left another to die. He was one more crazy man, like Hank and Barry. Everything was about violence and sex. But she had to stay with him until she could make her way south. Or until she could get a ride. Or until she could kill him.
Chapter 8
August 27
It was noon before Abby sent a few of the guys out to the field to see what was taking the boys so long. Andrew was still alive when they got there. They brought him home with the bodies of the others.
Had Abby cried, gone on a tirade, or if she’d simply have fainted when she went outside to view the bodies, the others at the compound would have felt better, perhaps even sympathetic to her. Two grandsons and a great nephew were dead. Instead she stood there and viewed them in a stony silence that sent chills through everyone else.
On the other hand, as is often the case, no matter how bad their loved ones treated them in life, many seek—out of guilt, or to find solace, or to obtain the ever-popular “closure”—to canonize the bastards once they’re dead. Thus was Barry’s wife, Terry Higgins, who upon seeing the body of her philandering husband as he lay on the snow-covered driveway with a quarter of his skull missing and what was left of his brains still leaking out onto the ground, she prostrated herself upon his corpse and cried hysterically belying the fact that he had for years made her miserable and she would have, just that morning, blown his brains out herself if she’d thought she could have gotten away with it.
Andrew would live until just before dawn of the next day. Before he died, he recounted his story, as best he could, of the man on skis and the dog, and how Danielle had left him in the field to die. That was when Abby broke out of her silence and went into her tirade. Now there was someone to hate, and that someone was Danielle, Whoops, and the unknown man who had killed her boys. Somehow, Abby Brady was going to get vengeance on the three of them—and anyone else.
That evening, when Hank and the others returned, they were laughing because their foray to the road had been so successful. They’d brought with them two vans loaded with food, clothes, gasoline, weapons, and tools, and six girls, ages eight to sixteen. Behind Abby’s back, they referred to the girls as “fresh meat.” But their celebration was cut short when Abby confronted them with the news of the massacre in the field.
On her orders, the six new girls, just brought in, were taken out to the barn. Abby didn’t want the men to take the chance of walking the girls to the field where the shooter may still be lurking.
Alice, the girl who had coveted Danielle’s jeans that morning, stood in the doorway of the barn and watched. She pointed to one of the older girls and said, “Make her take her pants off. I don’t want her to shit in them when you do her.”
So Hank made the girl take her pants off and he tossed them to Alice with a salacious wink and she smiled at him. The rest of the girls were stripped of their clothes, so they wouldn’t get soiled when their bowels let loose. Then each, in turn, as she stood crying, was shot behind the ear with a .22 caliber pistol, the same way farmers often shoot a pig or a cow before butchering it.
Later that night, Abby gave orders that the boys were not to bring anyone back from the road, ever again. She further announced that, somehow, Danielle and the stranger, and anyone else associated with them, were going to pay for what they’d done. Though no one understood how this helped, she said shooting the six girls was a start toward retribution.
Chapter 9
August 28
When Danielle woke again it was morning. She sat up in the burrow. The sky was blue and almost cloudless. The man was gone; so was the dog. But much of his stuff was still the
re. She didn’t know what that meant. She lay back down in the burrow. Whoops was still sleeping, but she needed to be changed. She felt between the baby’s legs to see how bad it was. She was dry. She was sure Whoops had been wet during the night. She lifted the baby’s wrappings. Whoops was wearing a diaper made from a folded-up T-shirt. That meant…
She didn’t like that the man had taken Whoops away from her without her knowing it.
She waited in the burrow for what she thought was a long time. Suddenly, there he was, almost as if he’d come from nowhere, with the damned ski mask on. She stifled a scream when he surprised her.
He looked at her oddly.
“You scared me,” she whispered.
She saw the skinned carcass of a small animal in his hand and he had the fire going, again.
“We’ll eat, then I’ll take you out to the road. You’ll get a ride, today.”
They sat beside the fire and ate in silence. When they finished, he smothered the fire with snow and broke camp.
He put a strip of cloth over her shoulder. It was obvious it had come from the shirt and pants he’d taken off Eddie back in the field.
“These’ll have to work as diapers,” he said.
He offered to carry Whoops, but Danielle said no. Then they worked their way through the woods and back out to the road. It didn’t seem to take as long to get there in the sunlight as it had taken to get into the campsite the night before.
“We’re back on Highway 101,” he said.
The pristine snow showed that no vehicles had passed during the night.
He stared at Whoops, then at her, then he pointed down the road and said, “That’s south. You’re on your own.
“Here’s some of the porcupine meat. It’s cooked. I chopped some for your baby.”
She nodded and, just as quickly as before, he disappeared with his dog into the woods.
She was half scared, but also half glad, he’d left. She didn’t like him.
She started walking south, again. Sometimes she sat for a while where there was a guard rail, but mostly she walked, her head down watching the ground.
At one point she looked up and there, several hundred yards ahead, a car was parked on the side of the road. She stopped. From where she stood, she could see a passenger-side door was open. So was the trunk. She didn’t really want to get any closer, but it lay in her path. There were no tire tracks in the new snow that led up to it. There was no telling how long it had been there.
She was too far away to see any signs of what may have happened to the occupants. They may even still be in the car. She tried to look into the trees ahead, to see if there was anyone lurking there. She raised herself up as high as she could to see if there were any footprints around the car, and there were—or there weren’t. From this far away she couldn’t be sure.
She looked back and, for a moment, regretted that the stranger wasn’t there, but quickly dismissed that thought.
She began to get colder. She could feel the iciness coming up through her feet. She watched her breath condense before her face. She knew she had to keep moving. So she walked again, leaving her own footprints in the virgin snow.
She kept an eye on the car for signs of life and periodically scanned the trees on either side of the road for any movements in the shadows. Whoops began to squirm in her arms and became a distraction.
The closer she got to the car, the more frequently she stopped. She’d hold her breath and listen, but heard nothing. Several times she thought she saw something move in the trees, but decided her eyes playing tricks on her. Driven by the cold, she would walk another twenty or thirty yards, then stop, watch, and listen once more.
Each stop lasted longer. But each time she walked, she got closer. Finally, when she was thirty yards away, she stopped for the last time surveyed her situation and listened. She let out a gasp when she heard something behind her and spun around. It was only snow falling out of the trees she’d passed. Once again, the air was silent.
She whispered to the baby, “Let’s go, Whoopsie,” and she closed the final thirty yards and was relieved to see the snow around the car was undisturbed. No footprints.
She peered into the trunk. A thin layer of snow coated its contents. But there was nothing there of value: No food, and nothing that would keep her warm.
She rounded the car to the driver’s side and peered in through the windows. The cab was empty.
She looked around to assure herself they were alone and never felt so lonely in her life. She could get in the car if she wanted. But for what? She still had the nerrgy to walk and every step forward took her closer to California. She looked down the road at the untouched snow, then resumed walking.
A while later, she heard something coming up behind her. She turned. A caravan. As they got close, she held Whoops up for them to see. She was asking for a ride. If not her, at least for her sister. But like a train, they went by. No eyes behind the windows met hers. There was no pity. As quickly as they had appeared, they were gone leaving nothing but their tread marks on the once clean snow.
A sense of desperation swept over her and she felt rooted to where she stood. It flashed through her mind that her situation was hopeless. But Whoops squirmed again and Danielle looked down at her in her arms, kissed her forehead, and started to walk. Still, in the back of her mind a haunting thought kept recurring: If they didn’t get a ride, the very fate she had feared for her sister in the field—freezing to death—was going to happen anyway. She wondered if she’d let Whoops die like that, or bring her death on quickly. It was a decision she didn’t want to think about. She tried to think about something else.
Once, she stopped on the road and fed Whoops. Another time, after Whoops had cried for a while, she stopped near a small rivulet that ran beside the highway and changed her. She rinsed the diaper in the water then wrung it out as best she could. The cold water numbed her hands. She slung the wet diaper over her shoulder so it would dry as she walked.
Otherwise, all she did was walk or rest on a guard rail. Sometimes she sang. Sometimes she cried in spite of her promise to herself, but she told herself it was okay to cry if she was alone. But mostly she walked in silence and tried to keep her sister’s fate out of her mind..
Hours later, it was getting dark.
And then, there he was, again, with the dog, up ahead on the road. He wasn’t wearing his ski mask. He looked angry. She sensed he was mad at her.
When she reached him he said, “Come on.”
He skied off onto a trail and she followed him.
She wasn’t sure how much longer she could walk.
Soon, they were in a clearing and there it was: another small fire and a camp in the woods.
He pointed for her to sit.
She sat.
He had more meat.
They ate.
He had warm water.
They drank.
“We’ll get sleep, then we’ll get you a ride in the morning,” he said. It was only the second thing he’d said to her since he’d found her again, and this time she got into the new burrow with him, but she realized he still hadn’t said anything else. Nor was he going to.
Maybe he expected something from her, this time. But soon, she could hear him breathing slowly and softly. He was asleep. It took her a long time to get there herself, even though she was exhausted. But sleep finally overtook her and she slept through the night. This time he kept his hands to himself.
Chapter 10
August 28
The morning of the 28th another meeting was held at the LaCroix ranch; this one on the freshly fallen snow in the circular driveway before the main house. Ten men and two snowmobiles, one with a sled in tow, were assembled. Only five of the men were leaving and they were all well-armed. The sky was a pellucid blue and everyone hoped it was the prelude to another warm spell that would melt some of the snow and bring more traffic down the 101 from up north.
Louis LaCroix had been up most of the night with his
bereaved sister and he wasn’t in the mood for much talk. He looked about to see who was there, once again counting heads for the mission the men were about to embark on. In his right hand he tossed a shell casing almost rhythmically. It was one left by the shooter two days before. The others knew he carried it now as a reminder of what had to be done.
He continued to toss it while several of the men watched. Without breaking the rhythm, he finally kicked the snowmobile in front of him, to get their attention.
When they were all looking his way he began, “I want to go over the plans once more so there are no doubts. I don’t have to tell you: Don’t leave here by way of the road. I don’t want anyone to go out on 101, today, unless you absolutely have to. We don’t need you leaving snow-tracks that this guy—or any cohorts he’s got—can follow back. I want us to find him first.” He was, of course, referring to the shooter.
“With any luck, the weather will turn warm and melt the snow so we don’t leave tracks anywhere.
“Go cross-country,” he said. He looked at the disabled red snowmobile that sat just inside the open doors of the barn.
“Be careful,” he said. And, trying to break the tension, he added, “They’re not selling ’em down at Wal-Mart anymore.”
A few chuckled politely, but the disabled snowmobile was still a sore subject for him.
He kept tossing the shell casing. It was almost mesmerizing to the others.
He turned to Billy Raymond. With Todd Anderson dead, Raymond was the logical choice to lead the expedition. None of the men liked Raymond but, in this case, that would make for a good leader. And though he was occasionally rash, he’d lead the men and he wouldn’t send them anywhere he himself wouldn’t go. LaCroix also liked the fact that Raymond had pursued the shooter two days before. LaCroix made it clear he would have done the same.
“Billy’s in charge,” he said. “Anyone got a problem with that, say so now. You can stay here. We got shit that’s got to be cleaned out of the pig sty, weather damage repairs that have to be done on the barn, and the solar panels have to be cleaned.” The last was a job he had relegated to the women.
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