Trapped with the Blizzard (Tellure Hollow Book 4)

by Adele Huxley

  “Hmmm, I remember,” I muttered.

  “Or that the coffin would come floating up to the surface.”

  “He loved the water,” I repeated as I lifted my hand to Jack’s head. If I can just touch him…

  Richards’ voice hardened, his eyes focusing on me intently. “He hated water.”

  I blinked a few times. “Of course he did. I meant he…” Shit, I’m losing him. I tilted my head and pressed my lips together in a sympathetic smile. The room was so smoky now, I could only peripherally make out Bryan’s legs. “He always loved the snow.”

  Richards took a step back from me, his black eyes growing wide and crazed. It was that moment he looked most like the Noah I remembered. “He hated the cold. He begged me not to buy this shit hole, pleaded for us to stay in LA. If I’d listened to him, he’d still be here.”

  “Sir, please…”

  “You little cunt. You were the one who killed him. You killed my boy!”

  Without another moment to spare, Bryan’s hands shot out and grabbed Richards by each ankle. With as much strength as he could muster, he yanked them forward, the soles of his boots finding no traction on the bloody concrete. As if in slow motion, I watched as Jack rolled from his crooked arm. I dove to catch him, landing hard on my knee as I thrust my arms out. A searing pain ripped through my arm, but I gritted my teeth and focused on securing my baby.

  With him clutched to my chest, I scrambled towards the corner, trying my best to keep low to the ground. He was screaming now, his wails matching the shouts echoing from above.

  Bryan didn’t hesitate this time. Leaning on one hand, he lifted the gun and fired off three rounds point-blank at Richards’ face. His body slumped against the wall and slid to the floor, joining his hitman in death.

  I wasted no time in scanning Jack for any injuries. He seemed untouched, but with the way my ears were ringing, I worried what this incident might’ve done to his hearing. I held him close, thankful to be able to kiss his wet little cheeks. Worry about his hearing later. You still have to get out of here first.

  Bryan met my gaze, his hazel eyes dark with rage and concern.

  “Are you two okay? Liz, your arm,” he shouted, nodding to my elbow.

  I looked down to see blood seeping from under my shirt. “We’re okay.”

  He spoke to me in a calm, direct voice. “You and Jack need to get out of here.”

  “Not without you, Marsh,” I replied. “Think you can walk?”

  He winced as he felt down his calf to the bullet wound. “I think it went through the muscle.” He pushed himself up and tested a bit of weight on his leg. “The bone isn’t broken.” He held up a hand, and I pulled him with all my strength. I shouldered his weight and carefully helped him to the door.

  The thick smoke choked my lungs. The screams upstairs sounded distant through the ringing in my ears, but there was an urgency and fear that made me panicky. We needed to get out and fast…

  Bryan held the flashlight as we ambled down the hall as quickly as we could. Propping him against the wall, I tested the outside exit and was surprised to find it unlocked. I lunged at it, thinking I’d have to force my way through a few feet of snow like when I’d come out to check on the generators. The door swung open freely, and I nearly toppled over onto a cleared path, catching myself at the last second.

  It was too easy.

  Taking a few deep breaths of sweet, fresh air, I dove back into the thick smoke to retrieve Bryan.

  “Where’s Chris?” I panted. I was waiting for him to jump out somewhere, launch an attack when he saw us leaving the basement and not Richards. “He was the one who attacked Miah, you know.”

  “I don’t know what the hell I know right now,” Bryan replied through gritted teeth.

  I decided to keep my mouth shut and concentrate on getting to safety. We rounded the corner and headed towards the front of the lodge. The shouts grew louder the closer we stumbled. The height of the snow above our heads didn’t help my nerves. Every time we had to stop and wait for Bryan to catch his breath, I expected an ambush. I felt exposed and trapped all at once, like Chris was waiting for us around every corner and crevice. It was with an inhuman strength, both physically and mentally, I carried my two men into the open.

  People rushed from the building, pouring out of the open front doors, black smoke rolling above their heads. Eyes wide and terrified, the evacuation was a controlled sort of chaos. Following the exodus to the parking lot, we spotted Walt slouched on the ground with Dusty wrapping his head. When the old man saw us approach, his normally stoic expression shattered.

  “Oh, thank God! Oh my God, you’re okay.” He openly wept, climbing to his feet and rushing to embrace us. “She found you. I’m so sorry, Liz, I would never deliberately…” He squeezed us again, threatening to topple us all over. He pulled back and stroked Jack’s head. “She found you.”

  Bryan fell to the ground and waved Dusty over, telling him in a low whisper about the bullet wound. He was in good hands. It was Walt’s behavior that concerned me.

  “What do you mean she found us? Who?”

  Walt blinked a few times, looking to the lodge and then to me. “Dani. When they took Jack from me and the doors were locked…” He winced and touched his head, aware he wasn’t making much sense. “Where is she? Have you seen Dani since before the fire?”

  We both looked back to the lodge, the building now fully engulfed. The flood of people escaping was now more of a trickle. When I spotted Miah walking down the steps alone, my heart sank. It only took a few seconds for him to confirm the worst fear. I took two steps towards him, and his eyes lifted. Relief visibly eased his posture when he saw me with the baby. But when he didn’t spot Dani with us, he froze.

  In one swift movement, he turned on his heel and sprinted back into the burning building.

  Death doesn’t scare me now. It’s no different than drifting off to sleep. When I was little, I used to lay in bed waiting for the exact moment I went from awake to asleep, as if I’d be able to pinpoint the precise second. Every morning I would wake up upset at yet another failure. Like sleep, death doesn’t need your conscious participation. It comes, whether you’re ready for it or not.

  I don’t remember Miah lifting me. There’s no memory of him screaming my name, scrambling to find me in the inky darkness of the smoke. I only know it happened because he described it after the fact. However, I have a faint wisp of an image from when he carried me outside. The shock or heat had my nerve endings all misfiring. When the snowflakes melted on my face, they felt hot. I tried to bat them away, thinking they were burning embers falling from the rafters above. I opened my eyes just enough to see Miah’s steely expression. In his arms, I floated through the valley of snow.

  “I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” he whispered as he gasped at the air. His frozen breath drifted away, and I gave over to the encroaching darkness.

  When I awoke next, I wasn’t gifted that blissful state of detachment. My head pounded, my lungs burned. My body ached as if I’d been pulled through a mosh pit by my toes. My eyes fluttered open to see Miah above me, looking sadly and intently into the distance. Unnatural light flitted across his face. I struggled to remember, struggling to push away the fog. It was a whiff of smoke that brought it crashing down.

  There was a fire… a BIG fire. I was trying to help, looking for…

  “Jack,” I tried to cry out. My throat screamed in pain, the name coming out less than a whisper. I bucked in his arms, fighting to get free. I have to find Jack.

  “Hey! Hey,” he hushed. “You’re okay.”

  I looked up at him with wide, panicked eyes. “The baby. Is he…”

  Miah brushed my hair back and glanced behind. “Guys? She’s waking up.”

  Liz fell to the ground beside me, grabbing my hand between her icy fingers. “Thank God,” she whispered.

  I couldn’t put the clues together. We were all out. We were safe. Liz wasn’t in tears, so Jack must’ve been safe,
but I needed to hear it. My head rolled to the side and I fought to stay awake. “Jack?”

  “He’s perfect. He’s with Bryan, warm and safe.”

  I smiled weakly, closed my eyes, and gave into the darkness once more.

  For nearly an hour, we watched the lodge burn. The snow finally stopped, but as a last dying breath, the wind picked up just before dawn. It took a lot longer than I thought it would for the structure to go up in flames, but once it did, it became a thing of terrible beauty. Rivers of melting snow flowed down the path into the parking lot where we stood. Even from a distance, the overwhelming heat of the blaze warmed us. Towering flames whipped back and forth in the wind, soaring thirty feet into the dark air.

  Dusty and Melinda buzzed around the crowd. As far as we could tell, apart from some bumps, burns, and a couple broken bones, everyone had escaped unscathed. Although horrified at the injury, Melinda wrapped Bryan’s left leg without a question. And despite telling him to stay off it, Bryan was already on the case, trying to figure out how we were going to get the town sheltered safely.

  A haunting silence fell over the crowd as the main structure started to crack and crumble. Just as the first few beams of sunlight began to stream from behind the mountain, the center of the lodge collapsed. Watching the bizarre scene created a swirl of vastly polarized emotions within me. Though I tried to show no sign of it outwardly, and no one was any wiser, it was with glee I imagined the bodies of Chris and his father burning inside. In so many ways, this was a cleansing fire, stripping away the old to make way for the new. We had insurance and rebuilding went without question, so to see the last part of my past life turn to ash was healing in a way.

  The sun gave us a false hope that we’d managed to survive the storm. With a beautiful cloudless blue sky growing brighter above, it felt like the worst was behind us. And for a few moments, we forgot we were still literally left in the cold without any real refuge. Well, everyone but Bryan forgot. He had everything under control.

  Having the snowcats fueled and poised at the edge of the parking lot was a brilliant stroke of luck. I stopped Bryan just as he started to climb into one.

  “Babe, your leg.”

  He paused, his hand resting on the handle of the door as the giant machine idled beside us. “There’s no way I’m walking with the rest of you,” he replied calmly. “Why don’t you give me Jack? I can settle him beside me in the cab. It’s warm and you’ll be free to help anyone who needs it.”

  I burst into tears, surprising the both of us. I flung myself into his chest with enough force to knock him back. I’d hit my breaking point. This man had been shot, nearly killed, and had spent the last three days doing nothing but selflessly looking out for everyone else. And now, even with a bleeding bullet wound in his leg, he kept going.

  “Christ, I love you so much,” I said, muffled into his chest.

  He chuckled as he nuzzled into my hair. “I love you, too, crazy woman.”

  It was hard for me to let go of Jack, but without any winter clothes, he was safest in the heated cab. Like a flood of refugees, we followed the packed path the groomers created as Bryan and the other drivers led us away from the lodge. It was slow going. The snowcats weren’t designed to clear and smooth such a huge volume of snow. In a long train, we walked behind the four massive machines as they cut and pressed the snow pack.

  Those who could, helped those who couldn’t. When we passed a house close enough to the road with a large gap between the trees to accommodate the snowcat, Bryan would flatten a path to the front door. The neediest in the group would peel away. Breaking down doors, shattering windows, forcing themselves inside to wait for rescue. Thirty, forty people packed into a house but it didn’t matter. After what we’d been through, it’d feel like a vacation.

  Miah dragged Dani in a sled. She was awake, but the damage to her lungs left her too weak to walk for long. With the bandage still wrapped tightly around his head, the tough kid would leave her with me for a moment to help others get situated before coming back to continue our march. Marie and her parents begged him to come with them when they could no longer carry on, but he refused to leave Dani’s side. Walt stepped in and said he’d keep them company.

  We stuck it out to the bitter end, until the last of the town had found refuge in their neighbor’s houses. I gingerly climbed up into the cab to talk with Bryan.

  “The house is only around the corner. Do you think…”

  Bryan looked at me as if he were about to deliver bad news. “Liz, you need to prepare yourself for the very real idea that it’s gone. You think they didn’t burn it down?”

  I nodded and gazed down the hill. “I know. We could just go look, right? If it’s still there, we get to be home for the night. If it isn’t, we turn around and come back here.” He chewed the inside of his cheek and before he could protest, I jumped in with a plea I knew he couldn’t deny. “Please? It’s all I want for Christmas.”

  “Santa already gave you his present,” he replied dryly. I think it was less him trying to protect me and more that he didn’t want to face the truth himself. I gave him a moment to mull it over before he finally nodded. “It’ll be faster if you get everyone in here.”

  Miah climbed in first and pulled Dani in after, settling her onto his lap. I held Jack in mine and pressed against Bryan, careful not to nudge his leg. It took nearly a half an hour of slowly clearing, reversing, clearing, reversing to crawl around the bend in the road. I strained to see through the trees and where I expected a pile of charred rubble, stood our home. Our perfect, beautiful house nestled in the forest, intact and untouched.

  I’d managed to hold it together for days but for the second time, I burst into tears. I’d fully prepared myself for the worst, but watching that house come into view was one of the most beautiful sights I’d ever seen. Our beds, our clothes, wood stacked for the fire, Jack’s crib and toys, the tree… we were home. Home.

  Dani patted my leg as I sniffled and tried to get a grip. When I flashed her a smile, she snorted a quick laugh. “Of course, you do realize you packed the entire pantry when we went up to the lodge. The five of us are gonna have to live off a sleeve of crackers and rancid eggnog.”

  “You’re probably right,” I laughed. “And it’ll be freakin’ delicious.”

  The moment we walked into the house, I was hit with a burst of energy. I settled Bryan on the sofa, insisting he keep his leg elevated and stationary like Dusty had instructed. Miah got the fire going while I inspected the generator, which kicked on fine. I’m not ashamed to admit I did a little happy dance when it turned on. We had plenty of diesel to see us through a day, maybe two if we conserved. If help hadn’t arrived by then, we still had nearly a full cord of wood in the back. I’d just have to go all pioneer woman and cook by flame.

  I flew around the house, multi-tasking like a motherfucker… at least, that’s what I said to myself. I found a fresh change of clothes for Bryan and Miah, the first aid kit, and set up Jack’s camping crib by the sofa. After getting oatmeal cooking on the stove, I boiled water for tea and began defrosting a mystery piece of meat I’d managed to dig up from the bottom of the chest freezer.

  Bryan grabbed my wrist as I set down a cup of tea and a bowl of oatmeal. “Stop. Liz, sit here for a second and…”

  “I’ll be right back, I just have to…”

  His grip tightened and I had no choice. With a huff and roll of the eyes that would’ve rivaled any of Dani’s, I sat on the coffee table. “What?”

  “Your arm,” he whispered as he leaned forward.

  I’d hoped he’d forgotten about it. The damn thing pulsed with pain every time it moved. When no one was looking, I had to slip it into my shirt as a makeshift sling just to keep it stabilized. With Bryan out of commission, I didn’t want him worrying about me. Once we were safe and settled, I’d worry about it. Unfortunately, I knew that look and I wasn’t going to get away.

  “I’m fine, seriously.”

  “Can I just check?
”

  He felt along my arm from the shoulder down. I tried to hide my grimace when he reached my elbow, but he knew me too well for that. Plus, the shirt was torn and caked with dried blood from the impact.

  “You broke your elbow,” he said simply. “Why didn’t you tell Dusty or Melinda?”

  “Because there’s nothing they can do,” I said, pulling away. My secret injury out in the open, I was free to tuck my arm into my shirt for support, but I wasn’t about to slow down. “Considering the alternative to what could’ve happened, I would’ve gladly broken both.”

  We both looked to Jack who was happily sleeping in the cot, wrapped in fresh clean clothes and blissfully unaware of the danger he’d just escaped. I wanted to hold him close to me, check his hearing, but thought food and rest were more important.

  I glanced over to the stove where the oatmeal was steaming and bubbling. “We’re all starving. Am I free to go, Doctor?” I asked with a half-smile.

  Bryan slipped his hand behind my head and brought my forehead down to his mouth. “I love you.”

  I kissed his cheek before pulling away, the bristles of his beard scratching my skin. “I love you, too.”

  It wasn’t the cold that kept the four of us together in the living room. After so many days trapped inside with so many people, it felt unnatural to be alone. I’m sure a psychologist would have a term or syndrome to describe it, but we needed to decompress together. The things we’d been through were too much for a person to try to understand on their own. We read, talked here and there, but I think we craved the normality so we could slide back into our lives again. To be honest, it was simply a relief to worry about only five people, not fifty.

  Hours later, Miah stood to stoke the fire. “That’s the last log,” he whispered, glancing at Bryan asleep behind me on the sofa. I set my book down and moved to stand up. “No, please. Just tell me where the wood is and I’ll get it.”

  “I’ve been reading the same page for the last ten minutes,” I quietly protested.