As the Polaris ground to a halt, smoke belching from the tailpipe, Ray cursed his luck, or lack thereof. He cursed the malfunctioning beast, cursed the fact that if it had only waited another twenty minutes, he would have been back at the Davis camp, or at least within walking distance of it, cursed Grandfather for convincing him to make the trip, cursed himself for agreeing to it. Still swearing angrily, he squinted in the direction of the BP camp, or where the lights of the camp had been. They were gone now. The storm was playing games, snow lifting to reveal great expanses one moment, settling in to smother him the next. It had to be at least a couple of miles to BP. Maybe more.
He tried the ignition. The Polaris sputtered once, then died beneath him, leaving only the wind to keep him company. It was louder than ever, seemingly ecstatic that he was stuck, alone and helpless within its domain.
Check the engine, he told himself as he dismounted. Find the problem. Fix it. If it can’t be repaired, radio for assistance. Stay warm, wait for help to arrive. If help doesn’t arrive … well … It might be necessary to take a little walk and find out exactly how far it is to that BP camp.
TWENTY
RAY FISHED A penlight out of his parka, unlatched the hood on the snow machine and glared at the engine. What an ordeal this was turning out to be. As if being subjected to Grandfather, Maniilaq, and their spooky psychic forecasts wasn’t bad enough. Now his machine seemed to be giving up the ghost. Just over a year old, the Polaris had performed almost flawlessly the previous winter. The dealer in Fairbanks had promised that it wouldn’t need so much as a tune up for the first eighteen months. It was still under warranty. A lot of good that did him out here.
After a few moments of examination, Ray determined that the malfunction might have something to do with the carburetor, maybe the one the Davis mechanics had installed was a rebuilt one. Poorly rebuilt, apparently. He flicked on the battery-powered engine warmer and checked the gauge. The needle was frozen to 0. Either the gauge was broken or the battery had been totally drained. Great.
As he trudged back to the sled, fighting the urge to give the Polaris a swift kick, Ray rethought his strategy. He would radio in first. Then, while the cavalry was inbound, he would work on resurrecting the carburetor.
When he pulled back the tarp on the sled, he realized that there was a serious problem with his plan. Most of the crates and boxes were intact, but they were empty. There was a shadowy hole where the survival kit was supposed to be. His sleeping bag was gone. So were the tent and stove. And the extra fuel. And his shovels. And his flashlight. And his compass. And his rifle. No wonder the sled hadn’t gotten stuck in any drifts along the way. It was too light to dig in. The steel toolbox, which was still there, contained a pair of pliers and a plastic jar of miscellaneous bolts and nuts. Lifting a crate, he found his snowshoes. The radio sat at the back of the sled, outside the tarp, where he had placed it at the start of his trip.
A radio, snowshoes, a pair of pliers, and a tarp. Things could have been worse, he decided. A gust of wind wrenched the tarp from his hands. It peeled away, rippled violently, and then, before Ray could grasp one of the ties, lifted into the air like a majestic bird and disappeared into the darkness. He trotted a few steps in pursuit, shining the tiny beam of the penlight in the direction of the prodigal tarp. It was gone. The night and the storm had swallowed it whole.
A radio, snowshoes, and a pair of pliers … Things could have been worse. A little anyway. Taking up the radio mike, he flipped the power switch.
“This is Officer Raymond Attla of the Barrow Police Department. I’m stranded approximately three miles west of the BP camp at Prudhoe Bay. Request assistance be dispatched immediately. Repeat, immediately. I am without shelter or emergency survival equipment.”
He let up on the button and waited. When there was no response, he tried again. Bending, he placed a hood-covered ear to the speaker and strained to hear through the angry elements.
“This is Officer Raymond Attla of the Barrow …” That’s when he noticed the power light. It was dark. The radio wasn’t even on. He toggled the switches, twisted the knobs, banged the device with his fist. Nothing. It was as dead as the snow machine.
That left him with snowshoes and a pair of pliers. Things could have been worse, but Ray couldn’t imagine how. Time for a new plan. The primary objective was to remain calm.
Snowshoes and a pair of pliers … He pulled back the sleeve of his parka and examined his watch under the pale glow of the penlight If he didn’t show up back at Davis in the next couple of hours, someone would come looking for him. Wouldn’t they?
Ray kicked at the snow with a bunny boot. It had the consistency of fine sand: individual grains of brilliant white powder. He knelt, took a handful in his mitten and gave it a squeeze. Opening his hand, he was rewarded with a palm-sized mound of albino flour. It had resisted his attempt to compact it and exploded into dust with the next blast of wind. He wouldn’t be building any ice houses this evening. At this temperature, without the aid of water and a decent shovel, it would be virtually impossible to sculpt any sort of shelter. That left only one alternative. He would have to hoof it to the BP camp. The odds of successfully hiking three miles in this weather were slim. But it was a chance, possibly his only chance, to avoid becoming a popsicle.
Ray sat on the edge of the sled and strapped on his snowshoes. Unlike the bulky, ungainly wooden and gut shoes Ray had grown up clomping around in, the same four-foot monsters Grandfather still used, these were compact models, a combination of titanium, rubber, and webbing.
As he abandoned his rig, he wondered who had done this. A thief? Was someone back at Davis so hard up for tools, a propane camping stove, a sleeping bag, that they would rip off a cop? He aimed the penlight toward the horizon, wishing it was a spotlight and could show him the way to BP. When had the equipment been removed? It was there after the mechanics worked on the carburetor. It was there when he set off for Grandfather’s. Wasn’t it?
He had taken a dozen or so steps beyond the relative stability of the icy road, into a vast sea of glistening white waves, when he was struck by a sobering thought: I could die out here. Fall, get buried in a drift, become a popsicle, not to be found until July. And even then the wolves would probably be the first ones on the scene. It wasn’t an inspiring mental picture.
Ray plodded on, wind pulling at his RefrigiWear pant legs, tugging against his hood as if it was determined to invade his cocoonlike suit. He had covered what he estimated to be a quarter of a mile before an idea occurred to him. What if bisrig had been sabotaged? What if someone had purposefully ransacked the sled, taking out his equipment so that …
Maybe the cold was taking its toll on his mind. Maybe it was fatigue. Whatever the reason, Ray’s thought processes seemed to be moving at the speed of molasses. Why hadn’t he figured it out earlier? Someone was trying to kill him—or at least, to ensure that the land and this hellish storm killed him.
Striding with a steady rhythm, he studied the theory with as much objectivity as he could muster. His nose was numb now, but he could still feel his toes, his kneecaps, elbows, and fingers. The key was to keep moving.
The first breakdown, on the way in from the rig, that could have been the luck of the draw. The Polaris simply had a problem. But the second one … It seemed highly unlikely that an engine that had just been repaired by two qualified mechanics would give out again. Both times he had been alone and the possibility of freezing to death had been real—and still was.
If he were closing in on solving the case, Ray could have understood why the killer would do something drastic to silence him, but he was light years away from finding the murderer. He had yet to make sense of the crimes or line up any suspects. So why get rid of a police officer? Maybe the bad guy, whomever it turned out to be, had an attitude about Natives. Nah. Not even a bona fide white supremacist would go to the trouble of disabling a snow machine and stranding him without survival gear. Would they? Prejudice and hatred were venomo
us emotions, but …
Right now, it didn’t really matter who was responsible. What mattered was that he keep walking. His arms were stiff and cold, his calves threatening to cramp. He wanted to stop, to rest, to sleep. That was the beginning of the end, he knew. Hypothermia and frostbite teamed up to cloud your thinking and sap your strength. When your head was foggy, your body unfeeling, uncomplaining, you sat down for a little break, and never got back up again.
Keep going! Ray demanded. He began repeating the words as if they were part of a life-sustaining mantra.
He had walked for nearly seventy minutes and was on the verge of collapse, buoyed only by the hope that he would ascend a pingo rise and see the BP camp at any moment, when something materialized on the horizon. Flickering lights. The vision crushed him. It was the camp, alright, but it was off in the distance, far to his left. Still miles away. He could have been there by now if only he had known what direction to walk. It would take another hour to reach those lights. An hour he wasn’t sure he had.
Reorienting himself, he did his best to pretend that it was no big deal. It would merely be a little longer before he was rewarded with a hot meal and a warm bed, but the miscalculation had taken its toll.
Ray had no sensation in his legs from the thighs down. They were dead weights that swung forward awkwardly, begrudgingly. His fingers burned. His forearms and shoulders were numb. He was slightly dizzy.
Hypothermia. Ray recognized the early stages. His feet and hands were probably already frostbitten. He wondered what Margaret would say if they had to be amputated. Would she marry a man who couldn’t walk without assistance, who didn’t have any fingers to run through her hair? Suddenly overcome with emotion, tears streamed down his cheeks beneath the neoprene mask. The penlight fell, burrowing deep into the snow. He knelt to retrieve it, trying to remember why he was crying.
The darkness seemed to swirl in around him. The wind had stopped. The snow was gone. The cold had retreated, replaced by a comforting warmth.
Stretching out on the soft, overstuffed mattress, he gave himself permission to think of something happy, something that would carry him to the morning.
Margaret … He could see her, a seductive apparition in a daring, purple dress. She flew toward him, arms extended. Embracing him, she gave him a long, mischievous look. Finally she kissed him, delicately at first, then with the passion of a banshee just loosed from a centuries-long imprisonment. Her lips were like honey, her perfume a narcotic. Ray ran his hand down her neck, tracing a line along the smooth curve of her shoulder. Margaret moaned her appreciation, her breath hot and rapid. She kissed him again, almost violently, as if a fire had been ignited in her soul, a raging inferno that sought to consume him.
Ray was in heaven.
TWENTY-ONE
YOU’RE DYING.
The diagnosis was conveyed in a calm, almost contemplative tone. Ray heard it, tried to dismiss it, but couldn’t. Somehow he knew that it was true. He was dying. His life was being stolen from him, drained moment by moment. And he was content to simply sit by and let it happen.
He watched himself with Margaret, studying the scene passively, a tangle of determined limbs, throaty sighs and grunts, smooth olive skin glistening with the heat of passion. The decision seemed remarkably clear: continue to embrace the fantasy and die a contented man, or fight to wake up, maybe live a little longer, and then face a brutal death. It was not an easy choice. The pleasure of Margaret or the pain of deep winter? The first was easy, immensely satisfying. The second horribly difficult. He knew what he wanted to do, but the survival instinct was powerful—even more powerful than his overactive libido.
Shaking off the delusion, he saw Margaret waver and disappear, abandoning him like a wounded lover. Consciousness returned slowly, as if reality were the dream. The world became black again. He opened his eyes. More black. Maybe he was already dead.
The wind assured him that he wasn’t. It roared over his hood, peppering his goggles with snow. The cold was still beyond him, his body paralyzed, an unfeeling lump of frozen flesh. He tried to rise, his brain issuing the order to stand, but his muscles refused to obey.
Lying there, impotent to alter the situation, he was reminded of something Grandfather used to tell him. When a man starts to freeze to death, the old man had explained, it’s like putting on a rabbit parka. There is a sense that you’re getting warm, when, in fact, you are really at your end.
Death … It was greatly feared by the Inupiat. Sick people were left alone to die, their friends and family not wanting to be near when the spirit made its exit. The ailing themselves tried not to linger. Spirits of the dead were considered powerful and extremely dangerous. Not even a shaman could tend to a dying person. Traditionally, the Eskimos of the far north had chosen not to bury their dead. Instead, they placed the deceased in old animal skins and dragged them into the wilderness for the wolves, foxes, and ravens to consume. In that way, the bodies would return to the Land, continuing their journey through the circle of life.
He could feel himself sliding again, moving effortlessly toward unconsciousness, like a sled gliding across a lake of ice. The wind was still howling, but it was faraway now, an unobtrusive soundtrack accompanying his mental reflections.
Suddenly there was light. It was everywhere, surrounding him, engulfing him in a brilliant, comforting glow. He was no longer cold. He could move his arms and legs. Renewed energy actually pulsed through him. Ray laughed, giddy with a sense of overwhelming relief. It was like nothing he had ever experienced. Light, life, existence seemed to merge into a singular emotion: joy.
In the next instant, the light retreated, soaring away toward the horizon. Ray stood, determined to chase after it. That’s when he realized that the snow was gone. So was his parka, his boots, his mask, and goggles. He was naked, but warm. It was summer. He was in a boat, a single-seat kayak resting on a body of water that seemed limitless. The light was beckoning, calling to him. Ray took up a double-ended paddle and set out for it.
He was excited, almost ecstatic with anticipation. He didn’t understand this, and didn’t try to. Instead he made each stroke count, pulling at the water with renewed strength, with the fresh, tireless muscles of a zealous youth.
The light was growing, golden tongues reaching skyward, lapping up the remnants of dawn. A mist materialized out of nowhere. It stretched to touch the kayak, then quickly enveloped it in a thick veil of dull gray. No longer able to see the light, Ray was nevertheless confident in his direction, a heavy, inexplicable peace hovering over him.
Without warning, the cloud departed. It rolled away, leaving only a wall of deepest black. The light was gone. The joy, the peace, the unexplained ecstasy forgotten. Ray could feel the kayak bouncing under him. The wind had begun to blow, churning the sea and urging waves to break over the edge of the boat. He was wet, chilled, afraid.
A terrible noise rose above the howling gale and echoed over the water. It was ghoulish, dreadful … alive. Ray twisted his head, trying to discern the source. Before he could so much as lift the paddle, two long arms reached up from the sea. They were like giant, faceless snakes, scaled and slimy. Wrapping themselves around him, they began to squeeze. In the next instant, Ray realized that they weren’t snakes. Rather they were horns or antennae anchored to a hideous green head that shot out of the water. It was a … a creature … a sea monster! Two luminescent eyes glared at him hungrily. Ray tried to move, but the grip only tightened. The thing opened its mouth slowly, revealing hundreds of enormous teeth. It slid toward him, smiling.
As it climbed into the kayak, he realized that it had feet—scores of them. They were small, stunted like a caterpillar’s. The thing roared again, the resulting vibration shaking Ray’s chest, shaking his very soul. It was at that moment, with the creature poised to consume him, that Ray remembered the story. Grandfather had told it to him many times. A Giant Sea Serpent had plagued the People for centuries, until a brave shaman had frightened it away with a drum and a s
ong.
Ray didn’t have a drum. The tentacles were squeezing him, his lungs nearly empty. Singing was impossible. This was it. Death had finally come for him.
The mouth opened, the green teeth approached, the two snakes continued their quest to suffocate him. A pair of fiery, piercing eyes gazed at him, peering into his spirit, searching for fear.
“Great Kila …” Ray gasped. “Great Kila …
“Is he dead?” “Nope. Least, not yet.”
“Good. Let’s get him into the truck. Take off his snowshoes.”
Ray squinted as the glare from the monster’s eyes became intense, painful. “Great Kila …”
“What’s he saying?”
“Got me. Probably hallucinating. That happens when you’re suffering from exposure.”
“Will he make it?”
“I don’t know. Depends on how frozen he is. If we can warm him up fast enough, he’ll probably be okay. Might lose a couple toes or something. Grab his legs.”
Ray could feel himself being swallowed by the creature. The snakes released him and he was suddenly in a free fall, diving into a deep, black well.
“Here … Lay him down in the back here. I’ve got some blankets.”
“Geez, I hope he’s alright.”
“Crazy Eskimo, wandering around in this weather.”
“His snow machine musta broke down again.”
“I guess so. But I thought he was smart enough to pack emergency supplies. Most Eskimos do that, you know. They’re good about that sort of thing.”
“Hey, looky here. A crucifix.”
“Must be Catholic.”
“Must be.”
“Crank up the heater.”
Elements of Kill Page 17
