“You want to discuss that block of hot ice you’re sitting on? I mean, you might have picked a better time to bitch. I’m a little busy here trying to save our asses.”
“A better time? You just spent three days fucking me. I figured that might put you into the proper disposition to discuss what’s happening with us. But your loving Andrea has her pot roast waiting back home for you in the ‘fridge, doesn’t she? It’s all about you again, isn’t it? I don’t even ski, and I hate snow. Damn, you can be such a prick!”
“That’s cold, Sharon. That’s just plain cold.”
Frosty pellets smacked the Trail Blazer like buckshot. Caked with compacted ice, the wiper’s blades slapped uselessly across the smeared glass, reducing visibility to near zero. The headlights revealed a billion dense flakes filling the world.
Sharon rubbed a circle on the windshield. “The defroster isn’t doing anything. Maybe you were right about stopping. Maybe we should pull over, wait this out. ”
“Yeah. Then, when someone comes along, wham! There’s no visibility, in case you haven’t noticed. A Snowcat rounding a curve could turn this vehicle into a waffle. Good plan. Stick to selling your condos, sweetheart.”
“It was your fucking idea! Would you rather we spin off this godforsaken road where no one will find us until the spring thaw?”
Matthew pounded the steering wheel. “Shit! Piss! Fuck!” He breathed hard, managing to reign himself in. “Let’s not do this, okay? Let’s –”
. . . and then he shut up fast.
He noticed the charcoal eyes first. Sharon leaned forward, again swiping the windshield while squinting to see through the glass. Matthew turned on the brights. Illuminating mostly the flying snow, the fog lamps reflected off something in the road directly in front of them, some living creature hidden amid the snow bursts.
“Look out!!”
Matthew pumped the brake while the Trail Blazer veered crazily. It struck the creature dead on with a sickening crack as if they had collided into solid ice. The vehicle spun out, its steering impossible to steady. The SUV thumped sideways into a deep ravine, plummeting down the slippery slope like a wild amusement park ride. It came to rest in a snow bank, rear wheels still spinning in the drift.
Unfastening his seat belt, Matthew reached for Sharon. “You okay?”
For one awful moment she didn’t respond. Then, “I think so . . . a little shaken. No bones broken, no teeth missing. Look . . .” She indicated the steam hissing from the section of crumpled hood not buried in the snow. “What was that thing we hit? Sasquatch?”
Matthew turned the key, but the engine only sputtered. “Don’t know. It’s too dark. It could have been an elk or stag. Maybe a big horn sheep.”
“Those eyes were looking down on us, not up.”
“I don’t give a shit if it was Frosty The Snowman. In case you haven’t noticed we’ve got a problem here.” He reached for his cellular, punched an emergency number. The screen indicated no signal.
Sharon thumbed the keys of her cell and shook her head. Matthew tried the ignition again but the vehicle gave only a dull click. The head lamps flickered like an old-time movie, then went dark. The battery had shorted out, and no engine running meant no heat. Frigid mountain air was one merciless bitch, and it would take only hours before her pals frostbite and hypothermia visited to claim a few fingers or toes.
“You’re a writer, Matthew. How would you write a character out of this mess?”
“I’m a sports writer. Ask me why the Nuggets suck this season.”
Sharon tried to smile but gave it up. “Will anyone find us here?”
Matthew knew the snow could completely bury their vehicle in only a few hours, but someone would find them, all right – in April or May, when all that survived of their sorry asses were two piles of skeletal remains. Assuming the wolves didn’t find them first.
“By morning, maybe the storm will clear. We can go for help. I have supplies back here. A kit. Emergency stuff like blankets and flash lights, matches. There’s a tow rope, too, in case another car comes by, or a Snowcat. And there’s some peanut butter and crackers. Water bottles, even some beer left in the cooler. We’ll be okay, Sharon. Really. We’ll be okay.”
He hoped he sounded convincing. A cold beer wasn’t exactly the ticket in sub-zero temperatures, and they weren’t going to build a camp fire inside the car. He handed Sharon a thick blanket and took one for himself. They huddled close in the darkness, so close Matthew felt unsure whether his shivering was his own or an extension of Sharon’s.
In a long silence they waited.
“It’s still out there, isn’t it?” she asked. “That thing.”
“I don’t know. Maybe we killed it, or hurt it. Don’t fall asleep. Body temperature drops when you sleep. We have to stay awake to keep warm, okay?”
“I’m not warm. I’m nowhere near warm. I can’t feel my legs.”
He pulled her closer. “We’ll be okay,” he said again.
She looked at him. “Or maybe we’ll die.”
Something thumped hard against the rear bumper. Matthew grabbed one of the flashlights. The high powered beam scanned the white landscape, but he saw only a galaxy of flakes swirling in the light. Whatever had been there had gone.
Sharon clung to him. “An animal maybe?”
“Had to be. Christ knows what.”
“Maybe it’s that thing we hit.”
“I didn’t see it clearly. All kinds of creatures live in these mountains.”
“Hungry creatures? Bears?”
“Bears would be hibernating. But food is scarce during the winter. Just about everything wandering around here is hungry.”
“I didn’t need to hear that.”
The quiet returned and stayed, an uneasy stillness not to be trusted. Matthew inspected the terrain, what the high powered lamp could see of it. Nothing stirred, but he couldn’t shake the feeling they were being watched. Several times he shook Sharon to keep her from dozing off. The snow had not let up and the cold seemed much worse.
By 2:00 a.m., he realized they could not remain much longer where they were. If he could climb the slope back to the road, he might get some reception on his cellular. Considering they had little choice before the blowing snow obstructed the vehicle’s doors, the idea seemed worth a shot.
“Stay here. I’ll see if I can get a signal from the road, maybe find a passing Snowcat.”
“I’m not staying here alone.”
“It could be dangerous. Something is out there.”
“I’m not staying here!”
That ended the discussion. She managed to get the door opened enough to squeeze through, sinking into snow waist deep. Slipping on his back pack of supplies, Matthew pulled her out. Together, they’d slogged maybe fifty feet when a sloshing sound came from behind, a thick dripping noise like saturated trees following a heavy rain. Matthew aimed his beam back toward the Trail Blazer, the lonely beacon exploring an Arctic world drained of color.
Something was there, all right. Matthew recognized those dark eyes. Caught in the lamp’s glare, the creature seemed the size of the Trail Blazer itself, as if some mammoth ice sculpture had badly melted. It turned to avoid the harsh wash of light, a sopping glob of frozen liquid that impossibly breathed with life.
“That thing,” he whispered. “Jesus, it’s . . . it’s ice.”
“It doesn’t like the light. Let’s go, Matthew. Let’s go right now!”
Running, even moving at all, seemed impossible. They did not look behind, just kept pushing through the snow as best they could. Twice, Sharon disappeared into drifts. Matthew pulled her out, feeling his lungs might explode. Eventually exhaustion overtook them. Soaked, their breaths heavy, they found no place even to collapse. When Sharon finally managed to speak, her words seemed the ramblings of a fevered mind.
“Tell me you love me, Matthew. Tell me you love me enough to die for me.”
“What?”
“Say it. You never
really told me in so many words. I need to hear you say it.”
“Jesus, Sharon . . .”
“Please . . . please . . .”
The thick white pines rustled. Matthew aimed the lamp towards the cluster of trees. Concealed in darkness, lacking even shadows, the creature had overtaken them. Now it stood dripping in ambush only paces away, a monstrous Hollywood special effect chiseled in ice. Close up, its mouth appeared the size of a coffin, revealing misshapen teeth that hung from its maw like thick icicles.
No, that wasn’t correct . . .
Its teeth were icicles!
Matthew pulled at Sharon’s arm but she wouldn’t move. Maybe she couldn’t move. He kept the lamp on the creature’s eyes, hoping to blind it long enough for them to get away.
“We can’t stay, Sharon. We can’t –”
She wouldn’t budge. Her lips formed unintelligible gibberish while a whisper escaped her throat. The predator shambled through the drifts toward them, cavernous mouth opening wide, black eyes fixed on its quarry.
“ . . . love . . . you . . .”
“Sharon, come on, dammit! We have to - - I can’t . . .”
She seemed a dead weight immersed in the snow, impossible to extract. Matthew left her there, panicked flight propelling him through the thick snow. Behind him, Sharon shrieked. Slamming fists to his ears did not deafen the sound reverberating inside his head. He turned, aimed the high intensity light.
The creature must have seen him but selected the easier prey, spilling over Sharon like some cascading polar waterfall. Icy mandibles punctured her throat, reducing her screams to weak gurgles. She was a fighter, Matthew always knew that about her. Her arms flailed and her legs kicked, but she proved no match for this thing. She had fallen into some mutating frozen pond that kept reshaping and moving around her, swallowing her whole. In the wash of light, Matthew saw Sharon’s flesh go blue, as if she had been refrigerated inside her own casket. Masticated in thick blood-drenched clumps, her flesh shredded like slabs of raw meat inside a blender.
Matthew fled. His lungs felt about to blow a hole through his chest, but he would not stop until he found a way out of here or until he was dead. If the road had not become completely hidden beneath the snow he knew it lay somewhere ahead. He slogged through the freezing drifts for what seemed hours, but it could have been only minutes. Matthew no longer could tell.
He heard the familiar sound before he noticed the lights. There was no mistaking the thick growl of that machine. A Snowcat was plowing its way just up the ridge from where he stood. He climbed towards the road and snapped on the high beam of his lamp, swinging it wildly over his head. The bright lamps of the Snowcat illuminated the landscape like a Christmas tree, and the tank-like behemoth came to a squealing stop.
“Had an accident?” the bearded man shouted from behind the large wheel. “You’re not the first tonight. Been picking up stranded folks all around here the past twelve hours.”
A man half conscious, Matthew climbed on board. He pulled off his wet gloves, wiped thick chunks of ice from his face. He warmed his hands near the blowing defroster.
“People, they get lost in these parts every winter,” the driver said. “Blizzards, they just sneak up on folks all the time. Hell, you’re one of the lucky ones. Sometimes we never find ‘em.”
“Thank Christ you’re here. I thought I was a dead man for sure.”
“Anyone else in your party?”
The question came like a sucker punch. Matthew managed to feign a momentary disorientation that fortunately required little acting.
“No . . . Just me. I was headed home to my wife. My SUV ran off the road.”
The bearded man started the Snowcat moving. “Here’s not a real good place to be wandering alone at this hour in this mess, let me tell you. I’ll get you to the lodge at Hagerman Pass. In the morning, if this bastard storm lets up, you can call for a tow for your car. It’s maybe an hour down the ridge.”
The driver’s attention remained focused on the road.
That was good.
* * *
Later, in a room at the lodge, Matthew lit a fire and sat by it, his mind racing. Then he made the call.
“Andrea? Sorry, honey, I didn’t mean to wake you. Listen, I had a little accident coming back. No, nothing serious, but I have to be here in the morning to find a tow and I may have to stay a few days. I’ll call tomorrow when everything’s a little more settled, okay? No, I’m not hurt, just tired. Go back to bed. Love you.”
He did love Andrea, he loved her very much, and Sharon must have known that. But he always tried to be fair with Sharon, had even tried loving her. What happened tonight was terrible, but it was over. Now he needed to get a grip, he had to think. There was Andrea to consider now.
Tomorrow, he would retrieve Sharon’s bag from the SUV, then burn everything. It might be touch and go for a while, a hairy situation when Sharon did not show up and the media posted her photo everywhere. If he were somehow linked to her, people would have questions. But they had covered their tracks for months, telling nobody about their stolen weekends.
In a few days, he would go to his office at the Denver Post. He would pour himself a hot cup of coffee, then phone to arrange the Carmelo Anthony interview, ask the Nuggets’ offensive how Rick Camela managed to wipe the court with him for 33 points when his team played Minnesota. Business as usual, no hurt, no foul.
He could get through this because he loved Andrea, beautiful, loving Andrea, the mother of his child.
The wife of his bosom.
The cunt.
His wife had spent this entire weekend without him, never once complaining. She didn’t protest the other weekends when he had decided to pick up and go skiing, or fishing, or whatever other horse crap he told her. She was the ideal wife who never nagged or bitched. Who said nothing when he left her alone for days with the baby, while he was off plowing Sharon six ways from Sunday. Normally, a man would think that was strange, but Matthew didn’t consider it strange at all.
. . . not since the night last winter when he’d stolen a peek at his wife’s e-mail and discovered that his good neighbor and golfing buddy, Dick Habersham, had been fucking Andrea’s eyeballs out for months. The bastard even wrote something about wanting to stick it into her ass their next time together. Andrea probably had been riding Habersham’s cock this entire weekend while Derek slept in his crib in the next room.
Thinking more clearly now, Matthew smiled. Suddenly the night’s events made perfect sense. Even an ice monster roaming Fossil Lake’s snow covered woods made sense, an insatiably hungry beast hunting those poor fools who found themselves lost among the fir trees and white pines on a cold and blustery winter’s night. Those lost souls must have proved such easy prey.
“Easy prey.” Matthew said the words aloud.
[“Sometimes we never find ‘em.”]
He stoked the fire, sipped his coffee.
He would wait a respectable amount of time. Maybe a month or two, when questions regarding Sharon had died down and the media moved on to other stories. Plenty of winter remained, and the mountains along Fossil Lake got hit with blizzards well into the spring.
“The iceman cometh,” he muttered.
He climbed into the bed, pulling blankets over him and savoring their warmth. Speaking to Andrea had cleared his head. His world again had righted itself, again had meaning. He understood what to do now. Tonight he would sleep well after all.
Because there was no telling when another blizzard might hit these Rocky Mountains.
And because he knew that, unlike Sharon, his wife Andrea loved to ski.
WHAT’S YOUR BEEF?
Mark Orr
It wasn’t the first ride Bert Granchi took in a car trunk, but it was the longest.
The car bounced, driving the rim of the flat spare tire into his ribs. Bert grunted behind the duct tape gag. How far out into the country was the asshat going to take him before turning him loose and letting him walk back
to town? They must be halfway to Fossil Lake by now, if not beyond it.
That she-male bitch Connie Maxon! This was all her fault!
So he sent her a few e-mails calling her a cunt for her bad reviews of the stories he scattered online like brilliant, beautiful stars across the skies. So he posted nasty things about her and her sicko lesbian lovers all over his blogs. So he called her house and cussed her out, and her asshole mother, too.
So what? She didn’t have to go and sic her uncle-fucking brother on him –
A sharp turn rammed Bert’s head into the tire well. He tugged at the ropes holding his hands behind his back and lashed to his ankles. No use. Jerry Maxon must have been a fucking Boy Scout. Bert usually got loose before getting dumped in the fucking middle of nowhere, but not this time. It would serve Maxon right to have to lift him bodily out of the trunk before cutting him free.
From the sound transmitted through the tires to the chassis, they were on gravel now. Bert didn’t know there were still roads left in Illinois that weren’t paved. Maybe they were in Indiana, or Michigan, or even Wisconsin. How would he get back from there? He thrashed around, but only tightened the knots.
Even the gravel gave out eventually, and dust from a dirt road drifted into the trunk. Bert sneezed, and waited. There was nothing else to do, except plan the story he would write about redneck cock-suckers who kidnapped darkly Gothic writers for ridiculously long joyrides.
He would call it “The Dark Ride,” and have Jerry Maxon get devoured by a creature from the Outer Darkness. Or maybe have him swallowed whole by the huge cunt of his lesbian sister. Then she would drink bleach and die, and Bert’s revenge would be complete. He would publish it in one of the fifty or sixty blogs and online journals he kept, and his fans would know of the horrors inflicted upon him by his enemies. That would be a sweet revenge, indeed.
Let her give that story a bad review, if she dared. He would show her he was capable of writing a truly frightening tale, worthy of his literary heroes. Not even Lovecraft or Poe could describe such a horrifying end for the asshat and the cunt.
Fossil Lake: An Anthology of the Aberrant Page 5
