The Snow Swept Trilogy
Page 2
Another bullet pierced her jacket, right above her waist. She jerked to the side and smashed headlong into a tree. She almost fell, but caught her balance and ran.
They were gaining. Mae could hear the hard breathing behind her, and knew that her pursuers were only seconds from catching her. Mae stumbled upon a path that cut through the ice to the trodden earth below. A game trail, she decided quickly, which probably led to the river. She could hear the gurgling water more clearly now, and knew that she was getting close. A split second later, she heard Eddie crash through some brush to the path as well. He was right behind her.
The mental rush grew stronger, and she felt light and airy, despite her screaming muscles. She struggled to get enough air into her lungs, but at the same time, felt strangely at peace.
The path suddenly turned to the left, running along a tall ridge that stuck out of the ground like a wall and bordered the end of a small clearing. The ridge was maybe twenty feet high and was rife with boulders and dirt. It had large, mature trees growing from the top, some of their roots exposed between the rocks, and some reaching the full twenty feet from the top of the ridge to the ground.
The moon was in a perfect position to cast its light on the clearing and the face of the ridge. Had the moonlight not been as bright as it was in that moment, Mae would never have seen it, and she wouldn't have stopped running from Eddie. But when she saw the rock, about four inches in diameter, a dark, charcoal grey, she skidded to a stop.
The rock hung in the air perhaps 30 inches from the ground, rotating slowly in the freezing winter night, the hard surface shining in the moonlight. The rock rolled around and around in the air.
Eddie skidded to a stop behind Mae, his gun raised to his shoulder, and pointed at her back.
"Turn around!" Eddie shouted, but Mae didn't move. She stared at the rock, still feeling the peace and calm and numbness that had accompanied the rush of adrenaline. Even as she stood, she felt the adrenaline withdraw from her mind and body.
"Mae, get your hands up in the air, and maybe we can work something out," Eddie said, but in his voice was a sneering bloodlust. He was taunting her, wanting her to turn around and face her fate. Maybe it wouldn't be death; she was still too valuable for that—but whatever Eddie had in store for her would be worse than death. Mae had seen it in his eyes at the cabin, in the way that he'd looked at her. Before, he'd shown restraint because he had to. But now, after what had happened in the cabin, there was nothing to work out, and there would be no restraint. They were alone in the forest, alone and away from the other two men, and there would be no mercy.
"There's nothing to work out," Mae said, her eyes never leaving the floating rock. Eddie shifted from one foot to another, the ice crunching underfoot. He moved slightly to Mae's left, to get a better look at what she was staring at.
When Eddie saw the rock, he lowered the gun slowly, confused. His eyebrows arched, and he almost asked her if it was some kind of trick, but he never spoke. Eddie's entire body was frozen in place, watching the rock. It began to tremble slightly, vibrating faster and faster as it floated above the ground.
"Paper and ink," Mae said, but knew it was hopeless. The end was already here.
Chapter Two
A few minutes before she saw the floating rock in the middle of the forest, Mae was sitting on a rotting mattress in a dark room on the second level of the decrepit old cabin. The mattress smelled of mold and whatever animal had made its nest there, and the wood-paneled walls were covered with a thin layer of greenish mildew, dead now that the temperature was so cold. The only light in the room came from an LED lantern that sat on a chair with only three legs.
A framed poster hung lopsidedly on one wall, the faded picture depicting an old horror movie from the 50s with a title that Mae couldn't make out, and a picture that she didn't recognize. Something to do with a man-sized rodent carrying an unconscious lady in a bikini. In giant green letters across the poster, it read: IT LIVES!
Of course it lives, Mae thought, and of course it’s a helpless lady with no clothes, who's about to be eaten by the gerbil monster. Mae didn't like movies like this because it was almost always a girl in distress—and not just in the old movies where women were depicted as helpless victims, only to be saved by the big strong men—but even in modern movies, where the victims, and those needing to be saved, were almost always women. It was sickening to her, and secretly, she hoped the gerbil monster would eat the bikini chick for being so stupid as to be caught.
But then again, Mae was currently being held captive. Even though the situation hadn't been her fault, and her captor wasn't a gerbil monster, Mae still felt humiliated to be sitting there. She wondered how the hunters had found them, and how they’d learned about her mom’s contact with the journalist.
Mae studied the rest of the room, her eyes falling on the window on the opposite side of the room. The glass was broken, and several large boards crisscrossed over the opening. The window wasn't especially large, but would be big enough to climb through, given the chance. She shifted slightly on the bed, the rusted springs squeaking. Mae wasn't sure, but it seemed that the window opened onto part of the roof. It was dark but she thought she remembered seeing a large tree by the roof.
"I hope you don't get any crazy ideas," the man said from his seat by the door, his voice thick with a Brooklyn accent. He nodded toward the window and smiled.
"And that would be a bad idea, hate to break it to you." He was leaning back against the wall, the front two legs of his chair propped up into the air. Mae didn't respond at first, but instead studied the man who was her captor, looking for any weaknesses that she could exploit.
His name was Eddie. She knew this not because he'd told her, but because one of the two men on the bottom level of the cabin had called him by name right after Eddie had kicked her to the ground, his foot raised to send his boot into her face. Eddie was afraid of her, even before they'd barged into the cabin, and his first goal had apparently been to put Mae out of commission. To her surprise, the guy who seemed like the leader of their little outfit, smaller than the other two, had stopped Eddie from finishing his kick to her teeth.
"Take her upstairs," the man had said. He knelt beside Mae and stroked her hair. “Little miss April Showers, May Flowers.”
He stood.
"Give us some time with her mom. We need to find out what she’s said to the reporter."
And now they stared at each other. Eddie was still afraid, his eyes flitting from the door to his rifle, which was propped on the wall next to his chair. He was wearing black leather boots, scuffed and dirty from the trek through the dirt and snow to get from their car to the cabin. The boots matched his leather jacket, which was studded with silver inlets and buttons. The butt of a small pistol stuck out from his jacket pocket.
So two guns, Mae thought. The rifle was a .30-06, a powerful weapon with good range and a powerful kick. If she was going to escape, she'd have to run far to be out of range. The butt of his pistol was a matte black, and probably a 9 mm, but she couldn't tell for sure.
She continued to study Eddie, taking in every detail about him. He was thin, but not scrawny, and seemed to be in good physical condition. He wore a silver crucifix around his neck, a stark contrast to the charcoal-colored polo he wore beneath his black jacket. Mae thought that the guy was trying too hard to look like an assassin from any one of a dozen action movies, and Mae would have laughed at him for such an obvious attempt to appear menacing and scary.
But Mae didn't laugh. She wanted to seem like a helpless victim who was too afraid to laugh. Like the girl being carried away by the gerbil monster, she thought, and then had to fight an even stronger urge to chuckle.
Eddie might have been handsome too, under different circumstances, with his jet-black hair, long and parted in the middle. He had more than a day's growth of beard on his face, and the overall effect made him look, aside from the clichéd assassin, like a rugged Italian in a cologne commercial.
Mae and her mom had known that this day was coming, ever since they'd fled Miami. They'd known that they would be found eventually, especially after her mom had started contacting that reporter. They'd known, but Mae never thought it would end like this, out in the woods, alone and cold. If she could get the rifle and then get downstairs to her mom, they might be able to get away. It would be just as before, the two of them, on the run.
"So, you're the girl, huh?" he interrupted her thoughts. "You're the girl of the century. The girl who's caused way more trouble than she's worth." He said this with mocking grandiose. When he grinned, he revealed a set of nearly perfect teeth. She just stared at him, and didn't say anything.
"Needless to say, I've heard a whole lot about you."
Again, she didn't open her mouth, but instead glanced at the window. Mae couldn't see clearly through the glass, but she thought she saw the dark, scraggily branches of a tree, very close to the roof and the window. If she could get out to the roof, she could probably get away. Of course, the rifle was a problem, and what to do when she reached the ground was another.
She needed her bag, which was on the floor of the car that they'd driven to the cabin. She hoped that their attackers had not searched the car and found the bag, but she thought that they hadn't. If they'd recovered that, the evening would have gone much differently. Her mom would already be dead, and Mae would be in their trunk, hooded and cuffed.
So they probably didn't have the device, and her mom was being interrogated. If Mae got the gun, she thought that she'd be able to at least distract them long enough for her mother to escape.
But that wasn't the plan. If she varied from the plan, and they were both caught or killed, then all of their work would be for nothing.
Mae had to get away, even if that meant …
"You get somewhere safe," her mom would say, "you get there, because they will always be hunting, and they will never stop."
Mae had to escape. At the very least, she had to find the reporter and give him the few details he needed to connect the dots. Her mother whimpered from down below, the sound of her crying carrying through the rotted floor boards.
I'm sorry, Mamma, she thought.
"What?" Eddie pulled her from her thoughts. He seemed annoyed that she hadn't responded to him. "Do you even know who you're talking to?"
Mae looked at him for several seconds and then shook her head.
"I don't care who I'm talking to," she said. "You’re the monster."
"The monster." He snickered. "Well, little missy, maybe if you cared a little more about who's on your tail, we wouldn't be in this predicament, now would we?"
He said 'predicament' slowly, emphasizing each syllable as if to taunt her.
"I don't care who you are," she said again.
"You should."
"Well, I don't," Mae said with the hint of a sneer. She had to remind herself not to antagonize the man too much, especially with the possibility of the situation—or predicament, as he'd referred to it—turning sour very quickly. She didn't know what, exactly, was happening downstairs, but it wasn't good. The situation up here could just as easily and quickly turn just as bad, if she wasn't careful.
She felt the tinges of fear again, creeping in her stomach and insides, felt the first hints of panic, but knew that if she gave into those feelings, things would only get worse. She needed to be alert, and ready to escape with only a second's notice.
Mae slid her hands over the fetid mattress, and her fingers touched a long strand of material that had been ripped away from the mattress cover. Slowly, she began to pull on the strand of cloth, measuring its length in her head as she bunched the material into a ball in her fist. The material was soft and pulled away from the mattress easily, hardly a sound.
She kept her eyes on Eddie, who either didn't notice her movement, or didn't care. It was dark in the room, the lantern's light only illuminating so much, and she thought that maybe her motions were masked by the shadows.
"Is it true, what they say?" Eddie said, breaking the silence. "That you killed your dad?"
Mae glared at him, but didn't answer. With that question
I heard you killed your dad?
she felt as though she were in a large cavern, lit only by a single candle flickering before her, keeping the darkness at bay. The shadows danced in the corners and on the walls, threatening to close in and swallow up all the light.
"Paper and ink," she said, with barely any sound at all. It was a habit now, to think about the paper and ink when she was upset or nervous. A little trick she’d learned from her dad, to imagine a world that wasn’t as bad as this one, where she was in control. Paper and ink, and in her mind, the world in her mind would open and she would escape.
But she gritted her teeth and shook her head slightly. She couldn’t escape now, couldn’t withdraw. Not now.
He stared at her with his eyebrow cocked, but continued.
"I heard that when you were done with him, his body was in so many pieces, they couldn't find—"
"Shut up." The darkness in the large cavern grew around her, as if sentient and aware.
Eddie smiled, leaning forward in his chair, the legs of which seemed to bow under his weight. He was pleased to have gotten this reaction out of her.
"So you're still a little sensitive about that, which is different than what I heard. I heard that your heart was cold, and that you could care less about your old man."
She looked away, pulling at the length of material from the mattress. The strand caught on something, and she pulled harder, but it wouldn't budge.
"Too bad your mom's going to die too, if she doesn't talk." His eyes drifted to the closed door, and her gaze followed. She felt that sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach again, and this time, no amount of forcing herself to feel otherwise helped.
"We don't know anything," Mae said.
"That's how it always is, isn't it," Eddie ran his hand through his hair, which had a nice sheen despite the poor lighting in the room. He looked up at the ceiling when he spoke, his tone sounding more like a college professor's than the thug he was trying so hard to be.
"I talk to people about what they know and what they don't know all the time—part of the job, you know. And without fail, people always claim ignorance in the beginning. It just takes a little … prodding, and before long, they're experts on the matter. Take a little sandpaper and vinegar to the skin, you know that area between your fingers, or better yet, get a little intimate with that sandpaper and a douse of vinegar, and you'd be surprised how much a person can know. It won't take long, don't you worry."
Mae felt her heart beat faster in her chest, and she hated this man. He sat there in his chair, leaning against the wall nonchalantly, staring at her with that half smile on his lips, eyes wandering over her body, and she felt sick to her stomach.
"Of course," he continued, "you could save your mom a whole lot of heartache if you'd just tell us where it is—"
"We told you downstairs. We don't know!" Mae interrupted, but he continued, unfazed.
"—that is, unless you don't mind having her blood on your hands too. Think of it, the girl who off-ed both her parents. That'd be a story to send shock waves around the world, if the media ever got hold of it. Of course, not many people outside this cabin will ever know just how cold you are."
The strand of mattress material suddenly loosened. She slid her hands along its length, and found that it was snagged on a broken spring. She touched the rusted and spiraled piece of metal, and ran her fingers around it until reaching the end, which broke off in a sharp point. Eddie watched her, his eyes narrowing at her faint movements. She kept her eyes on his.
"I didn't kill my dad," she said.
"Oh?" His eyebrows raised, and his half smile grew wider. "How do you figure?"
"My dad was—" A scream suddenly broke the silence from below. Both Mae and Eddie startled toward the sound, which startled them both, but Mae had been waiting for any distraction at all.
She leapt to her feet and rushed Eddie. He turned back toward her, his eyes wide and confused. But he recovered quickly, his eyes narrowed and his muscles tensed. As she came at him, he snatched the gun from where it lay against the wall and raised it to his shoulder, much faster than she'd expected. As he swung the barrel toward her, Eddie thumbed the hammer of the big gun.
I'm going to die, she thought, and Eddie pulled the trigger.
Chapter Three
Mae slid to the ground like a baseball player sliding into second, right as the room filled with an echoing BOOM from the rifle. The bullet smashed through the ceiling,
She kicked the leg of the chair, and Eddie toppled to the ground with a crash. His head hit the ground with a solid and crunching THUNK, and his look of shock and surprise suddenly went momentarily blank. He was dazed, and Mae used that fraction of a second, knowing that the guys from downstairs would be up here in short order to see what was going on.
Another scream pierced the cold night air in the cabin, but she ignored it. In a fraction of a second, she straddled Eddie's body and wrapped the strand of mattress around his neck until the jagged piece of spring was pressed into the tender skin beneath his chin. She rolled off him and quickly wound the strand around the bed frame, finishing it off with a tight knot.
She rolled back around and snatched the pistol from his jacket, but she didn't get hold of the rifle before he grabbed it. He thrashed and rocked his body on the floor, reaching for her. Eddie tried to scream, but gasped at the tightening piece of material around his neck instead. She jumped to her feet and kicked him in the groin, hard. She felt something burst when her foot connected with his body, and he was instantly cradling himself in a fetal position. This time, his scream came through, ragged and hoarse.