Exile Hunter

by Preston Fleming

  Though the guard’s conclusion was repugnant, Linder had to admit that his premise was sound. The cold was clearly on the side of the camp administration. As the prisoners weakened, they lost their fear of beatings, of lengthened sentences, even of death itself. One by one, the nobler emotions of love, friendship, compassion, and pity wasted away, leaving only the baser ones. And then, even fear, mistrust, resentment, and hatred withered and died. In their place remained nothing but utter indifference. Only the quest for warmth and food kept them going.

  Linder held onto this thought during the final quarter mile of the hike to the worksite that morning. As his fellow prisoners prepared to take their places on the icy rock shelf for another day of work, each man’s physical and mental condition was plain to see. One man would wrap his scarf more tightly against the cold and stamp his feet in nervous agitation while another would bow his head calmly in prayer, and still another would curse and elbow his way to his favored spot. When the hike ended, the strongest needed no prompting to find their way forward, while the others merely followed the herd.

  Linder’s way of evading the harsh attentions of the guards was to remain in the middle of the pack and avoid standing out in any way. At the same time, he derived some small satisfaction from not being the elbowing type. At least for the moment, the individual exertion of free will that separated man from the lower animals remained more powerful than the baser instinct for survival.

  At the back of his mind lurked the idea that he could end his life at any time if he found himself losing his humanity. Yet, despite his occasional wavering, Linder did not feel ready to die. He would perish someday, of course, but not here, not under the scornful gaze of the guards and in the company of beaten men willing to trade their souls for an extra ration of bread.

  As he stood beside the fire at midday for his five minutes of life-saving warmth, Linder watched the cold red sun hanging low on the horizon, barely above the jagged peaks of the mountains to the south. He felt a strong wind rising at his back and noticed that the wispy clouds at sunrise had thickened and would soon obscure the sun. The last time this had happened a blizzard had followed within hours.

  Ninety minutes later, the thing he had so greatly feared came upon him, as a fleet of leaden clouds sailed in from the northwest, sending stinging gusts of wind ahead of them. Then the snow began to fall, slowly at first, with a sparse scattering of oversized flakes, and increasing steadily, until the rock pile where Linder loaded his hod became hidden under a snowy blanket. Before long, he could barely see his way between rock pile and dump.

  Linder slowed his pace to cast a sidelong glance at the nearest guard. With visibility so poor, the guards would have difficulty spotting the slackers and spurring them on. This meant that he could load his sledge with smaller rocks and leave the larger ones behind. His primary worry now was getting back to camp safely. What if the trucks failed to make it through the snow?

  Linder saw a bulky figure in a dark fur hat and a sheepskin overcoat approach a nearby guard who warmed his hands at a blazing oil-drum fire. They had a brief exchange, too muffled for Linder to hear, and then the figure moved on. A moment later, the guard blew his whistle, a rare event that usually signaled an escape attempt or a fatality.

  “Roll call! Stop what you’re doing and bring your tools back to the depot! Double-time!”

  Linder emptied his hod onto the ground and headed back down the hill, joining others until they formed a slow-moving column following each other’s tracks through the snow. It seemed inconceivable to him that one of these zombies could have dared to escape. A death, he thought, or perhaps several of them, was more likely.

  When the men had checked in their tools at the supply depot and formed ranks, the roll call began. The guards seemed agitated and were quick to lash out at anyone who stepped out of line. Linder held his breath, fearing the brutal crackdown they would inflict on the unit if anyone had actually escaped. At last, the orderly with the clipboard completed his tally.

  “All accounted for, Captain Holzer.”

  Linder took a deep breath, then stomped his feet and rubbed his hands to stay warm while he waited in the queue. By now, his fingers and toes were beyond aching and nearly vibrated with pain. Barely ten meters away, Holzer emerged from the command hut. He held a steaming mug in one hand and a portable bullhorn in the other while talking to Sergeant Rivera, a guard whom Linder recognized from the logging site. Terminating the conversation with an abrupt nod to Rivera, Holzer emptied his mug absently into the snow. Then the Captain advanced toward the gathered prisoners to address them through his bullhorn.

  “Prisoners! Listen up! I have a proposition for any of you who want to earn some extra rations. A survey team has failed to return to Logging Site D from their remote site. Sergeant Rivera here needs some volunteers to go out and retrieve them. We need men who’ve worked the logging sites before and know their way around. Who’s interested in two days’ extra rations?”

  Though two day’s rations represented a fortune to men at the edge of starvation, no one spoke or raised a hand. Snow was falling so hard now that Linder had difficulty discerning the outline of Holzer’s body only a few steps away. Nearly a foot of snow had fallen since the blizzard started. To go out in search of the missing survey team would be onerous work, even for a trained search-and-rescue team. For someone beyond the point of exhaustion, it was next to suicidal.

  “Really?” Holzer taunted. “I’m surprised at you. Don’t you men have any compassion at all for fellow human beings in distress?”

  No answer.

  “Not even for your fellow prisoners? I’m told that one of your team leaders, Charlie Yost, is among the missing. Any friends of Yost among you?”

  Still no response. Holzer and Rivera put their heads together to confer. Holzer tried again.

  “Okay, I’ll raise the stakes. Two days’ rations and two days off your time at the Point. Who’s in?”

  “Why us?” a voice shot out from the back. It was the Giant, a towering former Special Forces sergeant, reputed to be indestructible, and known to be a thorn in the camp administration’s side. “Why not send the loggers?”

  “Because we’re closer to the survey site,” Holzer responded. “And because, unlike you, the loggers produce something of value and might be missed. So I ask again, who wants to earn two days’ extra rations and a reduction in sentence?”

  “We’d need a guarantee on the extra rations; we should get them whether we find the surveyors or not,” the Giant countered. “And if we bring any of them back alive, we want a week of double rations and two days in sick bay to recover. If that’s the deal, I’m in,” the Giant declared.

  Rhee’s voice chimed in next. “Count me in, too.”

  Linder was amazed to see Rhee raise his hand, having presumed him dead earlier in the week. But it was just like Rhee to do something as crazy as this. It brought joy to Linder’s heart to see the young Korean miraculously brought back to life, even though Rhee probably still hated him. He wondered if Rhee knew that Linder had tried to revive him. And had the chest compressions truly restarted his heart, or had he simply failed to detect Rhee’s faint pulse? Linder longed to ask Rhee in person if the latter would be willing to speak to him.

  “Okay, I’ll meet those terms,” Holzer answered the Giant. “But not for you and Rhee. You’re disqualified because you’ve both attempted escape before. Now, who else wants to accept the new offer?”

  Rhee and the Giant looked back at Holzer in mute fury.

  “I’ll go,” Linder said, raising his hand and stepping forward. Though he acted on impulse, a similar decision had been taking shape in his mind for days as a kind of compromise between the fear of losing his humanity and his scruples against suicide. The choice seemed acceptable because, while his chances of surviving the rescue were slim, they were not so small that the mission represented wanton self-destruction. Thus, to risk his life to save another would not be an affront to life but an affirmation of
it, a sort of grand gamble.

  While Holzer recorded Linder’s name, another volunteer’s hand shot up, then two more from a pair of young ex-soldiers, and another two from middle-aged men whom Linder had noticed praying together over their food at lunch.

  In less than a minute, Holzer had recruited six men to accompany Rivera, a second dog handler and two riflemen on the mission. When the volunteers’ names were recorded, Holzer briefed the men about the missing survey team, their last known location, and their expected route back to the logging site.

  Sergeant Rivera then distributed a fresh battery-powered headlamp to each man, handed each a half dozen meal bars, and poured each a fresh mug of coffee before leading them along a forest path with his mixed-breed husky blazing the trail. Linder went next, followed by the other prisoners and the riflemen, while the second dog handler, Corporal Gallo, brought up the rear. Each man was careful to follow the fixed guide rope stretched along the right side of the path in case he lost sight of the man ahead. When they reached the logging road, Rivera’s dog rooted around in the snow and soon picked up the scent of the survey team, although the falling snow had obliterated their day-old tracks.

  “Should we rope in?” one of the younger prisoners asked Rivera.

  “Not feasible. Just stick close together. If anybody gets separated, stay put, and the dogs will find you. Now let’s get going.”

  Rivera’s husky leaped forward and the team trudged on through snow that was a foot deep and growing deeper by the minute. Before long, Linder found it impossible to keep up with Rivera and the dog, who were now barely visible as dark blurs behind a curtain of white. One by one, the other prisoners and the riflemen passed him, except for Gallo and his dog, whom he presumed were still behind him. Although Logging Site D was close to where Linder had felled timber for the new barracks, he no longer recognized the landscape.

  Linder called out for the others to stop and wait but heard no reply. The blizzard swallowed up sound so completely that he doubted his voice could be heard more than ten meters away. There was nothing else to do but keep moving in the team’s tracks, but even these proved unreliable, as gusts of wind quickly erased them. Linder’s anxiety mounted as the light from his headlamp failed to penetrate the whiteout and the footprints before him grew indistinct. Then a wave of dread hit him when he realized that he had not looked behind him for nearly a quarter of an hour. He stopped and turned around. There was no sign of the Gallo or his dog. He was alone.

  Linder waited quietly for a minute, then two, listening for any signs that others were nearby. Moments later, panic set in. How had he allowed himself to get lost so quickly? Why hadn’t the guards forced him to keep up? And why was it so difficult to think of what to do next? The lethargy that weighed down his limbs and the absence of any adrenalin-fueled rush of panic offered a clue. He had reached his physical limit. His body could no longer offer his brain the support it needed to function. If he didn’t find his way back quickly, doubtless he would pass out and freeze before anyone could find him.

  Linder looked around him carefully to identify any familiar landmarks but, finding none, tried again to retrace his footprints back to the Point. But the further he went, the fainter the footprints became, until he found himself wandering aimlessly among the trees, unable to see more than a few feet ahead and without any sense of where he was or what direction he should take.

  At last, Linder decided to stop and began digging a snow cave behind the overturned stump of a fallen tree. He remembered the old adage that it’s the wind that kills, not the cold, and burrowed deeply into the compacted snow, more out of training and habit than any yearning to survive. As he lay there, his mind drifted in and out consciousness, and as darkness closed in, he sensed that he was not alone. From time to time, he would feel something brush against his half-numbed legs, then against his shoulders, then the back of his head. He opened his eyes and saw moving images in the darkness that he recalled dimly having seen before.

  Then he remembered. It had been many weeks since his last nightmare, but the worst of them had started like this. What he saw were the spirits that had tormented his sleep and driven him to drink. Though he had expected to drift into a tranquil oblivion this time, the deceased targets of his renditions and assassinations were still lying in wait for him. And now he had no means to elude them.

  A surge of dread energized him but he found himself unable to shake himself out of the dream. In an instant the snow and ice were gone and he was in some dark, dank, and musty place, like a cellar or a cave but without any perceptible walls. The nudges and shoves came more frequently now and were more powerful. He heard muffled laughter just beyond his reach.

  His dread blossomed into terror. This was all wrong, he thought. He had quit the Agency and had been on the verge of leaving the DSS rather than continue to persecute the regime’s political opponents. He had offered to help Philip Eaton and had lost everything by it. And now he was an exhausted wretch dying alone in the Yukon. Hadn’t he suffered enough?

  He felt sharp teeth suddenly sink into his calf and the pain was beyond anything he thought possible. He kicked the creature with his free leg but it clung more tightly than ever. To his surprise, it was no hairy beast but an unclothed, greasy-skinned human being. It lunged forward and bit a chunk out of his thigh, which gave Linder an opening to pull the creature away and send it sprawling with a powerful blow from his knee.

  In that instant, Linder knew that more creatures surrounded him than he could fight and, in his pain, fear, and rage, raised his voice and called on God and Jesus and all the saints in heaven to save him. To his surprise, the creatures raised an earsplitting howl but approached no closer. As if waking from one dream into another, he blinked and found himself in a pine forest, much like the Yukon but without snow and not nearly as cold. In the distance and across a rocky stream, he spotted a group of people waving and calling to him. Somehow, he sensed that these were his friends and could be trusted, but in the dim light he could not distinguish any of their faces.

  As he drew closer to the stream, a large dog broke free from the group and bounded across the stream, swimming through the deep water at midstream and regaining its footing on some flat rocks. To Linder’s utter surprise, the dog bore a strong resemblance to his boyhood dog, Violet, a black-and-tan German Shepherd. Violet had been dead for more than twenty years, but when this dog finally reached Linder, it ran around him in tight circles as Violet used to do before rubbing her head against his thigh to beg for a hug or a treat. What a deep-chested bark Violet had, Linder thought, as he sank his hands into the thick fur of the animal’s neck and shoulders. And this dog’s bark seemed just as deep and heartfelt as Violet’s.

  But the bark Linder heard was not that of his boyhood pet. It was the same bark that had reached Charlie Yost in his snow cave some thirty meters away. Yost crawled out into the open and heard it again, a sharp, insistent signaling bark, not the snarling bark of a wolf on the attack.

  Yost probed in the mound next to his and tugged at Will Browning’s sleeve.

  “Do you hear that?” Yost asked.

  “That sounds like Gallo’s dog,” Browning replied. “I’ll bet it’s me he’s after. That mutt hates my guts.”

  “What do you say we go find him?” Yost proposed.

  “Sure. But you go first in case he remembers me,” Browning answered as they set off in the direction of the barking.

  Across a clearing that on second glance turned out to be the logging road, Yost and Browning found Gallo’s Malamute mix sniffing at Warren Linder’s head and licking his frostbitten nose and cheeks, having tunneled into the snow to find him. A thirty-foot leash dragged from the dog’s harness.

  “You stay here and see if you can revive him,” Yost ordered. “I’ll go back and see if there are others. By God, that dog had better know where he’s going.”

  “Shhh, not so loud, Charlie,” Browning replied with a gleam in his eye. "You don’t want to risk insulting a dog
who’s that damned smart... ”

  S11

  With lies, one can only move forward; there is no going back. Russian Proverb

  LATE JANUARY, CAMP N-320, YUKON

  Warren Linder opened his eyes to find himself in a hospital bed laid with clean white sheets and a double layer of heavy wool blankets. The room held two dozen beds in rows facing each other across a central corridor. High windows let in the low oblique rays of the winter sun. Linder looked once to either side and raised himself slowly to a sitting position.

  An orderly, who was stripping a bed across the hall, noticed Linder looking at him.

  “Might as well get on your feet now,” the man suggested without stopping his work remaking the bed. “The toilet is down the hall on the right. You’re rated as able-bodied so you’re going to have to take care of yourself around here. Don’t expect anybody to hold your hand.”

  The orderly, a compact man with pug nose and a Boston accent, approached the foot of Linder’s bed and took up the clipboard hanging there, which Linder assumed contained his medical charts.

  “You have three days until discharge,” he said, reading from the clipboard. “Enjoy it while it lasts.”

  “Thanks, got it,” Linder replied before swinging his legs over the side of the bed, sliding carefully onto the floor and plodding off down the hall in his aching bare feet.

  Once the lavatory door closed behind him, Linder stepped up to a sink and viewed himself in the mirror. He barely recognized the image as his own. The scraggly beard, matted hair streaked with gray, the sallow cheeks and forehead, the white patches of frostbitten skin at the tip of his nose and chin, the dark bags under his eyes, all made him look at least a decade older than his thirty-eight years. On impulse, he stripped out of the threadbare cotton pajamas and examined his torso in the mirror. The physical decline distressed him: the once-rippling muscles now shrunken to stringy bundles of sinew under translucent skin, the livid scars from recent logging injuries, the hunched posture brought about by chronic pain in his lower back and hips.