Snowblind

by McBride, Michael

  He swatted his friend’s hand away and peered around the tree. Baumann’s footprints terminated about five paces ahead, where he had ducked from the path to the right, behind a juniper bush. Coburn followed Baumann’s sightline deeper into the forest—

  He ducked back behind the trunk and pressed his back against the bark. His breath blossomed in rapid clouds from his chapped lips.

  Had he really seen…?

  No.

  No. He couldn’t have…could he?

  His pulse thudding in his ears, Coburn lowered himself to his knees, leaned around the tree, and sighted down the dark path. There. About fifty feet away along a rare straight stretch, where the dense forest absorbed the snow-blanketed trail, was what he had at first mistaken with his bare eyes for a man kneeling on the ground.

  The rifle trembled in his grasp.

  Two femora, the upper leg bones, had been staked into the snow, mid-thigh-deep. They had been stripped of the muscle and fat, clear down to the knots of tendons and connective tissue over the trochanters and femoral necks, where the bones still articulated with the acetabula of the hip bones. The northern sides of the bones were rimed with ice, while the remainder was crusted black and brown. The viscera had been removed from the lower abdomen and the brim of the pelvis tipped at such an angle that it functioned like the seat of a chair. And there…sitting on that seat…was Vigil’s head.

  * * *

  Snow had accumulated on his ebon hair, which was crusted to his forehead by a brick-red smear of blood. The tips of his ears and nose were black with frostbite, his ordinarily caramel-colored skin faded to a pallid bluish-white. His eyes were dark recesses, save for the lower crescents of the sclera beneath his eyelids. His lips were plump and purple, his jaw askew like he was attempting a conspiratorial wink. The severed tendons and vessels from his throat dangled through the outlet of the pelvis, into which the circumference of his neck had been fitted like a collar.

  The macabre tableau was just sitting there in the middle of the path, on a pristine sheet of white snow, without a single footprint leading up to it. Put on display with the sole intention of being viewed from this exact point. Staked into the ground where they would have missed it entirely had they chosen any other path. Placed where whoever had done this knew they would eventually end up.

  They were being hunted.

  And if whoever was out there had enough foresight to recognize that they would attempt to flee on the same trail they had used before, then it stood to reason that they would already be moving into place to cut off their—

  “We should have stayed in the cabin,” Shore whispered. “I told you…we should never have tried to leave.”

  “Shh!” Baumann hissed.

  A sudden strong stench. Body odor?

  Coburn reached for Shore’s backpack. He needed to silence his old friend and buy them some time to think things through. But Shore easily avoided his grasp and darted back down the path toward the homestead.

  “No!” Coburn pushed himself away from the tree and made a desperate lunge for Shore, who shoved through the dense thicket ahead of him, just out of reach. “That’s exactly what they want us to do! They’re flanking us, Blaine! They’re already behind—!”

  Warmth on his face. Wet heat. In his eyes. His mouth.

  He couldn’t see. Stopped in his tracks. Wiped his eyes.

  The taste. Salty. Metallic.

  Cooling on his skin.

  A tug on his pack from behind and he fell backward into the snow. Being dragged in reverse. His legs trailing him through the snow. The crimson-spattered snow. Red on the trees. Melting through the accumulation. Dripping from the branches.

  Blood.

  He gagged at the realization.

  Shore’s blood. Freezing into his lashes, the stubble on his cheeks. On his tongue. Trickling down his throat.

  The movement stopped and his field of view lolled upward, granting him a view of the canopy.

  Baumann kneeled over him, his rifle directed back down the path.

  Shouting.

  “Get up, Will! For Christ’s sake! Snap out of it and get the hell up!”

  Coburn found his grip on his Remington. Sat up. Raised the rifle to his shoulder.

  “Shore…” he said. “I tried to stop him…tried—”

  “He’s dead, damn it! And we will be too, if you don’t snap out of it!”

  Baumann’s words cut through the disorientation and brought home the reality of the situation.

  Coburn turned around and knelt behind Baumann to cover the forest behind them.

  He tried not to look at Vigil, who stared through him with sightless eyes, or at the shadows beneath the trees that appeared to roil with life.

  He tried not to taste the finality of Shore’s death.

  Or think about the fact that there were only two of them left now, no one knew exactly where they were, and they were being stalked like animals.

  * * *

  Coburn struggled to keep his teeth from chattering. He was shaking so badly that the barrel of his rifle jittered against the forest, all but guaranteeing a missed shot. There was no choice but to let his nose run down his upper lip for fear of making even the slightest noise. His breath formed a frozen fog in front of him. The skin on his face and lips tightened against the cold, and already he could feel it starting to split.

  He had no idea how long they’d been kneeling there in the woods, terrified to make a move, waiting for what was beginning to feel like the inevitable. The wind cut through their clothing and made it sound as though the entire forest was alive with movement. Their tracks had nearly vanished. Vigil’s hair was now completely white, his skin was crusted with ice, and, mercifully, his eye sockets had filled with snow. Every few minutes, Coburn was sure he saw motion in the distance, but it could have been clumps of snow falling from the trees or the dancing snowflakes shifting on the breeze.

  “We can’t stay here any longer,” he finally whispered, barely loud enough to be heard.

  When there was no immediate answer from behind him, he repeated his statement.

  “Where do you propose we go?” Baumann whispered.

  “Anywhere but here. They know where we are.”

  “They’ve known exactly what we were going to do every step of the way.”

  “Then we need to do the opposite. Something they won’t be expecting.”

  “And just what would that be?”

  “Do you think they’re watching us right now?”

  “I’m not sure, but we should assume they are.”

  “Then we’ve probably lulled them to sleep with how long we’ve been sitting here.”

  “So they won’t anticipate sudden movement.”

  “What will they be expecting then?”

  “The way I see it, we have four options. We can press on and try to backtrack to our camp. We can head uphill and hope to eventually find the trail, or at least get out of the valley. We can head downhill and follow the topography wherever it takes us. Or we can head back in the direction we came from.”

  “I think our best choice would be to break away from the established trail and try to reach the camp on our own.”

  “Then we obviously can’t do that.”

  “Agreed.” Coburn paused and held his breath. He was positive he detected movement at the furthest reaches of his vision. “So what’s our least appealing option?”

  “Heading back to the cabin.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I know.”

  They sat in silence for several minutes. Returning to the cabin was a stall tactic at best, but at least it would be a defensible position. Out here, the enemy could come from any number of directions. And who knew? Maybe they would be able to wait out their hunters. And the storm. Once the snow cleared, they’d be unencumbered by the deep accumulation and the poor visibility. The biggest challenge would be surviving the interim.

  “No time like the present,” Baumann whispered.

  “We
need a distraction to buy ourselves some time.”

  “I say we fire two shots each. You shoot straight along the path like you’re trying to clear the way and I’ll shoot uphill into the trees. We agreed that those were the two most likely routes. If they’re out there—”

  “They’re out there.”

  “—they’ll be waiting for us to come right at them. And they’ll be wary we might shoot again. That ought to at least give us a head start.”

  “That’s all I’m going to need,” Coburn whispered. “I don’t need to worry about outrunning them as long as I can outrun you.”

  Baumann glanced back over his shoulder and Coburn smirked.

  “I guess we’ll see about that.”

  “I guess we will.”

  “On my count?”

  “You’ll need whatever lead you can get.”

  “Awfully cocky for a man facing the wrong direction,” Baumann whispered. “Make sure you hit something or they might see through our ruse too soon.”

  “I’m not the one you need to worry about.”

  “See you on the other side, Will.”

  “Not if I see you first.”

  “One…”

  The wind arose with a howl, shaking the treetops and loosing a cascade of glittering snow all around them.

  “Two…”

  Coburn sighted down a knot on the trunk of a pine near where he last saw movement. He swallowed hard and breathed out slowly through his mouth.

  “Three!”

  * * *

  Coburn squeezed the trigger and took the recoil against his shoulder. He thought he heard the crack of splintering wood over the ringing in his ears.

  Jerk back the bolt.

  Eject the spent casing.

  Slam home another.

  He didn’t even aim the second shot. He just pulled the trigger, whirled, and leapt to his feet.

  Baumann was already crashing through the brush ahead of him, his rifle held out to part the branches. Coburn churned through the deep snow and the shivering boughs in Todd’s wake. There was no sign of Shore. No blood on the branches or spattered on the snow. No bones. No body. Not even a single track in the snow. And then they were past where their friend had fallen and barreling through the forest, following a path that had already rid itself of any hint of their passage.

  The ringing in his ears toyed with his balance. His legs were stiff from the cold, his feet blocks of ice in his boots. His own heavy breathing was deafening in the confines of his skull, which throbbed in time with his thundering pulse. He ducked and dodged and plowed straight through pine limbs and aspen branches that lacerated his cheeks and forced him to close his eyes. He burst from the forest before he even saw the meadow. The wind greeted him with a shriek and nearly knocked him off his feet. Baumann was maybe three paces ahead of him, charging across the perfect whiteness toward the dark shape of the house, which faded in and out of the blizzard.

  Forty feet.

  Thirty.

  Coburn overtook Baumann with twenty feet to go. His lungs filled with fire and each step sent a painful jolt straight up his legs, but he didn’t dare slow. Not when he reached the house. Not as he passed the front door. Not until he rounded the far end of the house and took up position against the wall to cover Baumann.

  Their tracks drew crooked lines across the meadow to the point where they merged and vanished into the trees. The storm was already filling them in and smoothing them over.

  He was expecting to see several silhouettes streaking toward them through the snow, but instead he saw…

  Nothing.

  There was no one in the field.

  Coburn nearly sobbed out loud in relief.

  “Come on!” Baumann shouted, his voice made hollow by the acoustics inside the old house.

  Coburn scanned the tree line one last time, then turned and ran for the window. The second he was close enough, he jumped up onto the sill and tumbled into the decrepit ruins once more.

  * * *

  The fire had nearly exhausted itself in their absence, waning to glowing embers that produced little more light than heat. Letting it die was just about the most painful thing Coburn had ever endured. As the glow petered, the cold seeped through the walls, rose from the floor, and blew through the holes in the roof with handfuls of snow that accumulated in deepening patches. But they had no other option. If they were to rekindle the flames, they would be sending a giant smoke signal into the sky that would point right back down at them. Assuming they had indeed fooled their pursuit, it would draw them to the homestead like iron filings to a magnet.

  The blizzard had obliterated their footprints and leveled the snow, but showed no indication of slowing. The wind still screamed and the wooden planks still rattled against their rusted moorings. Maybe it had warmed a few degrees, although when nightfall descended, they would have no further protection from the plummeting temperatures. Coburn fought the urge to stomp the feeling back into his feet and instead paced the room, peering out through the thin gaps in his wooden prison while Baumann shivered near the window. Todd stood sentry five feet back, nearly in the dying fire, where he couldn’t be separated from the shadows at a distance. He rubbed his cheeks against his shoulders to break up the ice in his burgeoning beard, only to have it reform within minutes as the damp clouds of his exhalations froze to his face.

  Coburn could feel the same thing happening to him, but at least his position afforded him a respite from the wind. Unfortunately, it also forced him to look at the points where the walls had been reinforced from within and the deep hole had been exhumed. He tried not to contemplate the circumstances of their creation, for there was a large part of him that wanted nothing more than to crawl into the pit, drag some debris down on himself, and embrace the darkness.

  He shook his head to chase that thought away. He couldn’t allow himself to think that way, not if he hoped to survive. Better to focus his mind on keeping himself—keeping both of them—alive.

  “We need to find some food,” Coburn whispered.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Neither am I, but we have to eat. Lord only knows how long we might have to hole up in here.”

  “There’s a cheery thought.”

  “You know what I mean. What do you have on you?”

  “A couple candy bars. Maybe a handful of Skittles. I think anyway. You?”

  “Some trail mix. Not a lot else. But I remember seeing some canned food in the dry storage room that could still be edible. Possibly.”

  “Probably growing enough botulism to start a Botox clinic.”

  “Could be tins of spam.”

  “Who would have thought that processed pig snout and hooves would ever sound appealing?”

  “You got the window?”

  “I don’t have any other pressing engagements at the moment. Just make it quick, okay?”

  Coburn shed his backpack, removed a baggie with little more than crumbs at the bottom, and fished around until he found his camp stove lighter. He clicked the trigger several times until a small flame bloomed from the long silver shaft, then ducked through the doorway at the back of the room. The tiny fire flickered in the draft, throwing shifting shadows from the skeletal saplings growing from the floor and reflecting from the glass shards in the snow. He cupped the flame and hurried under the ragged hole in the tin roof and knelt before the stack of cans. They were bereft of labels and shaped so as not to betray the identity of the contents. The rims were rusted together and the metal was the color of burnished brass, but none of them bulged with toxic byproducts, so he shoved them into his pockets and decided to check in cold storage, just in case.

  He lowered himself to all fours and crawled through the tiny opening into the stone-lined chamber. It smelled of earth and rot, not unlike a horrific stench he recalled from his youth, of peeling a dead prairie dog from the side of the road. He had barely taken the time to peek inside earlier, what with all the spider webs and the whole death-reek thing, but he
figured his survival was worth a few potentially wasted seconds.

  He reached inside, brushed the webs out of his way, and crawled in behind the flame, which chased the crinkling strands back up to the earthen roof and made the rifle casings sparkle. The long clumps of desiccated fur were white and gray, and reminded him of a husky or a wolf. The air had to be well below freezing, causing his breath to form almost palpable clouds and the stones to be rimed with frost. He crawled deeper, following the flame, which barely cast a golden aura on the uneven walls. The shadows of the rocks moved with the light as though with peristaltic motion.

  The cubby was actually larger than he had at first thought. As he neared the middle, his flame bent back toward him. Another few feet and he could clearly feel the movement of air, like an exhalation from within the mountain itself. He held the lighter up to the rear wall and—

  Darkness.

  Click.

  Click.

  Click.

  He sighed in relief when the flame blossomed again. Yeah, there was definitely a source of airflow back there.

  Shielding the lighter with his gloved hand, he studied the crevices around the stones. There. While most were mortared with crumbling dirt and a webwork of roots, there was a section that appeared to be composed of two large stones merely fitted together and framed by darkness.

  Coburn held the lighter off to the side, slid his fingers over the top edge of the upper rock, and pulled it toward him. A cold breeze blew into his face as the stone clattered to the frozen ground. He leaned closer and…

  A broad smile spread across his face. There was a backpack behind the rock. A tattered camouflaged number, ripped along the side, its contents spilled out onto the dirt. There had to be a half-dozen Slim Jim beef sticks, a cracked plastic jar of bouillon cubes, and four sealed plastic bottles of what looked like water amid threadbare clothes that had absorbed the color of the earth under them. He chiseled the food out of the dirt, shoveled it into the backpack again, and tried to pull it out of the wall, but it was frozen to the ground. He balled his fist into the stiff fabric and gave another sharp tug. The bag came away abruptly with a tearing sound and nearly sent him sprawling. He barely managed to keep from knocking himself unconscious against the low ceiling of the hollow, which, he could now see, was more than just a cubby carved into the hillside. With the backpack out of the way, he found himself staring into a tunnel that sloped upward into the darkness. It was barely wide enough to squeeze his shoulders through. Probably dug by whatever animal had shed the fur. But why would an animal tunnel into the cellar through the mountain…?