“I’m telling you,” Shore shouted, “that peak over there is Mt. Isolation!”
“You can’t see a peak through this storm, let alone well enough to tell which one it is!”
“Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean that I can’t! I can see it plain—”
“We were heading southeast when Vigil fell—”
“We were heading due east.”
“Southeast. We were about two miles northwest of camp—”
“We were closer to a mile and a half west of camp.”
“So when we diverted east to help Vigil—”
“Northeast.”
“We needed to head to the southwest to get back to camp.”
“No! We needed to head west.”
“But instead we followed the bottom of the valley due south.”
“You’re out of your mind! We were headed north!”
“If we were on either the southwest or the south face of the mountain—as you claim—before Vigil fell, then there’s no possible way we could have headed north! We would have been walking straight back into the same damn mountain!”
“We were following the same valley we crossed maybe an hour before—”
“There’s no way we doubled back!”
“Guys!” Coburn interrupted. They both turned to face him, obviously surprised by the sound of his voice. They’d been so caught up in their argument that they hadn’t heard him approach. “We need to take a step back and look at this objectively.”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing!” Shore shouted. “If it weren’t for Todd contradicting every damn word I say—”
“If anything you said made a lick of sense, I wouldn’t have to!”
“Guys! We’re wasting time we don’t have arguing. We need to figure out exactly where we are so that one of us can head back to camp and call for help. The last thing we want is to set off walking in the wrong direction and end up totally lost.”
“I’ve got news for you, Will. We’re already totally lost,” Baumann said.
Shore couldn’t help but chuckle.
“We can figure this out,” Coburn said. “All we have to do is trace our steps back to where we were when—”
“Shh!” Shore tilted his head away from the wind and closed his eyes. “Did you guys hear that?”
“Hear what?” Coburn said.
“I’m not sure. It sounded almost like…almost like someone screaming.”
“It’s just the wind,” Baumann said. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re smack-dab in the middle of a blizzard.”
“No. No…It wasn’t the wind. I don’t think so anyway.”
“Did you hear anything, Will?”
“No…but that doesn’t mean—”
“I’m certain I heard something.” Shore headed toward the ramshackle house. “And it came from this direction.”
Coburn caught up with Shore at the entryway to the wooden structure. He hadn’t been out there for more than five minutes, and already his eyes were watering and the skin on his face stung from the cold. His toes felt like icicles and his flesh prickled with goose bumps. The flickering glow through the gaps around the door and the boarded windows had to be the most inviting sight he had ever seen. He was already anticipating the warmth when he shouldered open the door and followed Shore inside.
The smell struck him immediately.
He stopped dead in his tracks.
“Oh, God,” he whispered and broke into a sprint toward where he had left Vigil.
* * *
Blood was a like a fine wine: the bouquet grew more powerful and pungent with age. Coburn was intimately acquainted with the smell, throughout the duration of its cycle. The residua in a cadaver’s liver smelled vastly different than either arterial or venous blood. Fresh blood was more metallic than biological. He remembered his first surgery, his first incision into the skin of a living, breathing human being, and how the smell reminded him more of opening up a machine than a man. It was a taste as much as a scent, really. An almost electrical tingle at the back of the palate. It was a smell he experienced nearly every single working day, a smell that he found disorienting and out-of-context in this cabin. A smell that he understood on a primal level meant very bad things had transpired.
Even though he knew what to expect when he burst into the small room, he was unprepared for what he saw.
There was blood everywhere. Arcs and spatters on the bare wood walls. Dripping in syrupy ribbons from the ceiling. Pooled on the exposed dirt floor. All of it glimmering with reflected firelight. The flames whipped back and forth, chasing the smoke on the violent wind blowing through the open window.
He tried to call out for Vigil, but no sound came out. It took every last ounce of effort to force his legs to guide him forward into the room. The blood was cooling and congealing as he watched. The glimmer faded and the streaks and smears darkened. Snowflakes turned to rain in the fire’s heat and spattered his face and jacket. At least he hoped that was water striking his face. He kept expecting to find Vigil sitting on the other side of the fire, behind the flames and the smoke where he couldn’t be seen from the doorway, but Coburn knew better. He had seen the blood glistening on the windowsill the moment he noticed the snow swirling in from the darkness outside. When he reached the window, he shielded his eyes and leaned out into the night.
The weathered sheet of plywood was half-buried in the snow to his right, at the extent of the light’s reach. The accumulation directly below him was a crimson mosaic of suffering. He recognized arterial spurts originating from a human-shaped impression, and the packed channel where Vigil had obviously been dragged off into the night and the dark forest.
The bloodstained snow was stamped with a riot of large, deep footprints.
Coburn turned and looked back at Baumann and Shore, who had barely managed to cross the threshold from the main room. He saw the unvoiced question on their faces.
What in the name of God happened here?
* * *
“We have to go after him,” Baumann said.
“He’s lost so much blood…” Shore said. “There’s no way…”
“Would you rather we just leave him out there? Is that what you would expect us to do for you?”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I—”
“Give it a rest,” Coburn interrupted. “There’s nothing to debate. We’re going after him. And we’re bringing him back alive.”
Coburn ducked back into the main room, grabbed his rifle, and shoved between Baumann and Shore on his way to the window. He glanced down at the earthen floor. There were distinct grooves carved into the dirt where the blood had turned it to mud. It looked almost like someone had clawed at the ground to prevent being dragged toward the open window. There were other scuff marks, but no clear, recognizable prints or animal claw indentations. It had to have been a bear, though. No other animal worked in this scenario. It must have smelled Vigil’s fear or somehow sensed that he was injured, and come straight through the boarded window.
As Coburn expected, he found distinct claw marks in the wood of the frame amid the reddish-brown smears of Vigil’s hand and fingerprints. The wood was lighter at the deepest point of the scratches, at least the freshest ones. Some definitely appeared much older, the wood darker, which was surely just a trick of the dancing firelight or maybe the timber was so old it was close to being petrified.
He hopped up on the sill and glanced back over his shoulder. The others were heading in his direction with their rifles at port arms. He imagined he wore the same conflicting expressions of fear and determination on his face. It was one thing stalking elk through the forest with a warm belly full of whiskey, but going after a bear large enough and strong enough to go through the side of a house to attack a wounded man…one that had now tasted human flesh and blood…
That was another thing entirely.
Coburn raised his Remington and dropped down into a waist-deep drift. Even after a few minutes by th
e fire, the shock of the cold was paralyzing. He bared his teeth and struggled away from the window into snow that was barely six inches deep. The crimson amoebae of Vigil’s blood had lightened in color as the accumulation continued to amass on top of it. The edges of the drag marks were now barely discernible as the wind did its best to erase all signs of passage. Even the prints had been reduced to vague ovular impressions that weren’t even clear enough to confirm quadripedal locomotion, let alone betray the species of animal. It wouldn’t be long before there would be nothing left to follow.
They had to hurry.
Coburn charged toward the edge of the forest. The branches of the evergreens and aspens would trap most of the snow overhead, which meant that he would be able to move faster under the canopy. Unfortunately, it also meant that the tracks would be nearly impossible to follow on the moldering detritus.
He was nearly to the tree line and searching for the path of least resistance when a gust of wind made the shadows shift.
Coburn stopped so quickly that his feet slid out from beneath him. He scrabbled back to his feet, rifle at his shoulder, never once taking his eyes off of the forest through the swirling snow.
“Hurry up!” Baumann shouted as he charged past Coburn on his left. He barely had time to reach out and grab Todd by the back of the jacket. “What the hell are you—?”
Baumann’s rifle was seated against his shoulder in a heartbeat. It shook in his grasp. His eyes were impossibly wide. He took an involuntary step backward.
“Oh, God,” Shore said from behind them.
Coburn didn’t dare look away.
“Help me get him down from there,” Coburn said.
“A bear wouldn’t do something like that,” Shore said.
“Just help me get him down!”
Coburn walked cautiously, one step at a time, sweeping his rifle across the tree line a mere twenty feet away. The Remington was a powerful rifle that could drop a bull at three hundred yards like it was a point-blank shot, but at such close range, the scope was not only useless, it was in the way. The load didn’t scatter like buckshot from a shotgun; there was one bullet that was less than half an inch in diameter. And if he missed it would take him nearly two whole seconds to draw back the bolt, eject the spent casing, chamber another, slam the bolt home again, and pull the trigger. Based on the evidence around him, Coburn was certain that he wouldn’t have that kind of time. He’d once read that a grizzly bear could run at speeds of up to thirty miles an hour. At that rate, it would be upon him in half a second.
He halved the distance and stopped ten feet from the wall of pine trees. The wind was blowing so hard that it was snowing sideways. The flakes flew past so quickly that even standing still felt like he was moving to his right, but he could clearly see Vigil’s silhouette against the dark shadows lurking under the canopy. He’d been somehow suspended upside down from the skeletal branches of an aspen, his arms dangling toward the ground. He bounced gently up and down from the bough as he swayed in the wind. It was obvious he’d been stripped to the bare skin…and then gutted.
“No bear could do that,” Shore repeated.
“Yeah…” Coburn said. The telltale scent of evisceration, of warm blood and lacerated bowels, found him on the screaming wind. “I think you might be right…”
Movement in the shadows to his left.
“Back to the cabin,” Coburn said. More movement drew his attention to the right. “Get back to the cabin!”
He turned and ran as fast as he could, lifting his feet high to clear the accumulation. Shore was an indistinct blur ahead of him against the smoky light of the window. He heard Baumann shouting from somewhere behind him. Shore plowed into the drift against the house first and kicked at the planks until he managed to haul himself over the sill. Coburn spun and covered the edge of the forest while Baumann leapt up and scrambled through the window.
There was no sign of pursuit.
“Come on, Will!”
“Hurry up!”
Coburn turned, climbed through the open window, and fell down to the muddy ground beside the fire.
* * *
“I’m telling you, bears don’t do that kind of thing!” Shore’s voice carried from the main room. “They can’t do that kind of thing!”
“What else could have done it then?” Baumann said. He was sitting in the slanted doorway between rooms, where he could see both the front door and the side window. “I can’t think of anything that could have done that.”
“That’s exactly my point!”
“Men,” Coburn said without taking his eyes from the window, where he focused on the stretch of white that separated him from the forest, despite the snow blowing directly into his face. “Only men are capable of doing something like that.”
The silence was interrupted only by the wail of the wind. When it paused to draw a breath, he could see Vigil’s outline, still dangling from the trees. Every few minutes, he was convinced he caught movement in the shadows, in a slightly different location each time. Someone or something was still out there. Watching them.
Waiting.
A shiver rippled up his spine.
“What are we going to do?” Shore said, barely loud enough to be heard.
Coburn didn’t have the slightest clue. They had no idea who or what was out there, or how many of them there were. Until they did and had a solid plan of action, running blindly into the forest and the storm was suicide.
They had already barricaded the front door as well as they could. It had been unnerving how easily the pile of debris just inside the front door had slid into place against it. The only other window, on the front of the house, was still boarded and reinforced with broken lengths of ceiling joists. Where the wooden walls appeared most vulnerable, there were already stacks of stones and logs. None of them vocalized what they were all thinking.
They weren’t the first to find themselves in this position.
Coburn tried not to think about the hole in the ground in the main room or how long it must have taken to dig if the ground was as cold and hard as it was now. Had an animal dug it as he at first thought, or had it been a man trying to tunnel under the wall or just find a place to hide? If that were the case, then how long had he been trapped in here?
The wind shifted again and Coburn’s breath caught in his chest.
His pulse thumped in his temples, causing the edges of his vision to throb as he scanned the tree line. Each breath came faster and harder and he had to consciously ease the pressure of his finger on the trigger before he squeezed off a panicked round.
Vigil’s body…
It was gone.
* * *
“It must have fallen from the tree,” Baumann said. He’d switched spots with Coburn and was scanning the forest floor through his rifle scope. “It could already be buried with as hard as it’s snowing.”
“We should still be able to see something,” Coburn said.
“Not necessarily. Are you sure you didn’t see anyone drag it down? I mean, how closely were you watching?”
“I was watching that area the entire time.”
“You sure you didn’t maybe close your eyes for a few—”
“Tell me you could sleep right now, Todd.”
“Nothing personal, man. We have to consider every possibility.”
“Guys,” Shore said from the adjacent room.
“I didn’t close my eyes and I didn’t look away. I was staring right at it the entire time, but the snow…”
“Guys.”
“I’m looking right at the forest now and I can barely see the trees,” Baumann said.
“So you see what I’m saying. Someone could have waited for a big gust and—”
“Guys!” Shore shouted.
Coburn whirled to face Shore, who had crept closer to the barricade against the front door. His head was cocked toward a gap between a weathered board and a chunk of granite. His eyes were so wide that the whites stood out against the darkness.
“There’s something out there,” he whispered.
Coburn glanced back at Baumann, who waved him on and turned his attention back to his rifle and the night. Shore stepped back from the door to make room for Coburn beside the barricade.
“I don’t hear—”
“Shh!”
Coburn pressed his hand over his opposite ear—
A scratching sound on the other side of the door. Faint…almost like an animal clawing at the wood. Or maybe a branch had blown up against the door. It was impossible to tell.
Coburn eased up against the wall next to the barricade and tried to peer between the slats, but couldn’t see a blasted thing.
“Keep your rifle trained on the door,” he whispered to Shore, then ran into the other room to join Baumann at the window.
“What’s out there?” Baumann whispered.
“I can’t tell. Could be nothing.”
“Could be something.”
“Right.”
“Which means…”
“I’m going to need you to watch my back,” Coburn said. “I’m going out there.”
* * *
Coburn sat on the windowsill, his heart pounding, his frozen breath racing back over his shoulder, while he scrutinized the tree line through his scope. It was impossible to tell if there was anything out there. The snow obscured all but the most generalized details. Even the trees themselves now supported so much accumulation they were nearly indistinguishable from the storm.
Snowblind Page 2
