The Snow Swept Trilogy

by Derrick Hibbard

  Mae stepped over him again and pressed her knee into the mattress spring, which stuck in his neck. She stayed there, hovering over him without pressing too hard on the spring. Even then, the tip pierced his skin and a trickle of blood ran down and round his neck, dripping to the floor.

  "If you move, if you call for help, if you try and knock me off you, I'll stick this all the way in. I'll twist it into your neck so deep that you'll lose a whole lot more blood than just this trickle," she whispered.

  From down below, the screams were fading—but she couldn't think of that now. She was no use to her mother if she were dead. And if Eddie got free, she was dead. No matter what the men were looking for, no matter what they needed from her, Eddie would kill her if he got loose, she was sure of it.

  But the gunshot—the two men downstairs would have undoubtedly heard the gunshot, and would likely come to investigate. If they did, she was dead, unless she could get out onto the roof and down the tree fast enough.

  As if to answer her thoughts and spoil her plans, one of the men called up. His accent was thick and hard to understand, and she pegged him as the largest of the men—a behemoth compared to the smaller leader of the pack.

  "Eddie, you okay up there?"

  Mae leaned so close to Eddie's face that she could smell the spearmint gum he was chewing to mask the underlying stench of whiskey.

  "If you call for help, so much as a peep, I'll open your neck." She was surprised at the intensity in her own voice. "If your friend comes into this room, you're dead."

  Eddie hesitated only a moment before yelling, "All's good, man."

  "'Cause if you're gettin' beat up by the girl, I could always give you hand," the big man called up.

  Eddie glowered.

  "Under control!" Eddie said, seething. Mae smiled at him sweetly, and pulled away from him.

  She stayed in that hovering position and pulled the strand of mattress material tight around the bed post, and then made sure it was snug against his neck. Mae held Eddie’s pistol up to the light and examined the barrel before shoving it into her own pocket. She leaned close enough to smell his cologne and the tobacco on his breath. He stared up at her with wide, hateful eyes, and kept his lips mashed together in rage. His breathing was hard, and his chest heaved with each breath.

  "I didn't kill my dad," she whispered. "But I could kill you right now."

  He opened his mouth to say something, his whole body seething with rage.

  "Don't," she said, leaning harder on the rusted mattress spring. The jagged point sunk a quarter of an inch into his neck, and that did the trick. He clenched his jaw, but didn't say anything.

  Mae groped down his body, until she came to his belt buckle. She undid the belt, never taking her eyes off him. She pulled the belt out from his pants, made a loop through the buckle. The whole time, they kept their eyes locked, his afraid and full of rage, and hers just full of rage.

  She swiveled her weight off the rusty spring, and looped the belt over one of his feet, cinching it tight. She stood up and pulled on the belt, dragging his body an inch at a time until the strand of mattress material was taut, the metal spring on the verge of sliding deeper into his neck. She lifted a corner of the rotting dresser and slid the end of his leather strap beneath its frame. When she was done, she stood up and admired her contraption.

  At the same time, Eddie seemed to get a better idea of his predicament. If he moved away from the bed without untangling his neck from the strand of mattress, the spiraled spring would slit his jugular. Even with his hands free, it would take him several moments to untangle himself, so as not to accidently end his own life.

  She pulled the strand of mattress tighter around the tender skin beneath his jaw, careful not to stick him harder with the metal spring. She pulled the material tight, until it cut off his oxygen. His eyes bulged as he tried to inhale, but couldn't get enough air into his lungs. He thrashed his arms, but she kept her body weight on his chest and shoulders, and his range of motion was limited.

  He opened his mouth to inhale, a last ditch effort, and Mae knew that darkness was clawing its way into his vision. She leaned closer again, until her nose was almost touching his ear.

  "I didn't kill my dad," she said again, and pulled the strand tighter. He gasped, thrashing about on the floor, and she watched the conscious awareness drift from his eyes. He stared up at her, and she back at him until his eyes closed. She waited a few seconds and then loosed the material around his neck. She stood up, watching his chest and waiting for the oxygen to drift its way back into his lungs, sparking the instinct to draw breath. When she saw the faint rise and fall on his charcoal sweater, she darted to the other end of the room. He was still unconscious, but not for long. When he woke, it would not take long before he loosened the band around his neck. Mae didn't think he would call for help, at least not right away. If he called for help, the others would know that she'd bested him—that the girl of the century would keep right on being that girl.

  Mae snatched the rifle from the floor and darted to the window at the other end of the room. She kicked the boards that crossed over the opening. Luckily for her, the wood was just as rotten as most of the cabin, and the boards broke away easily. In just a few seconds, she had cleared a space large enough to climb through.

  Eddie stirred behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder. He was moving, but was still groggy and his eyes were only half-opened. She paused long enough to listen to the noises from down below. She heard talking, and was relieved that there weren't any more screams. If they were talking, her mom must still be alive.

  But she had to move. Mae thrust her body through the rotted wood and wriggled out of the room and onto the icy roof. She gasped when her bare hands plunged into a drift of snow and ice, chunks of it cutting into her palms and wrists. The moon shone brightly in the cloudy sky, illuminating the dark, wooden shingles and the sheets of ice that covered the roof. Down below, the ground was frozen. If she fell, it would hurt, and may even break bones.

  She was on her chest and stomach, pulling her legs through when he grabbed her foot. She screamed, more startled than anything, and kicked hard with her other foot, connecting with Eddie's jaw—at least she assumed it was Eddie, but how had he gotten free so quickly?

  He let go of her foot for a split second and she yanked her legs through the window.

  A piece of rotted wood snagged the rifle, and she tugged, but it wouldn't break free. Eddie reappeared in the window, reaching for her, his fingers inches from her legs and feet. She slid down the roof, pulling her body along the shingles toward the tree. She'd have to leave the gun, which meant that she had only seconds now, before he had it in his hands and ready to fire.

  The tree was only a few feet away, but the ice enveloped the roof. She couldn't stop from sliding toward the edge. No matter what she grabbed, she kept sliding with both of her hands outstretched in front of her, and the other clawing at the ice and trying to slow her descent. Suddenly, the hand below her struck the steel gutter and stopped her slide. Her body came to rest at the edge, close enough to see the ground below, which was only dirt, gravel, and ice. She winced at the thought of falling, closed her eyes and exhaled.

  The sound she heard was distinct and familiar. Eddie had cocked the rifle, and though she couldn't see him, she knew it was pulled to his shoulder and aimed at her back.

  "Don't move," he said through clenched teeth, his voice hoarse from nearly being strangled.

  Mae gripped the gutter and flung her body into the cold night air. The rifle cracked, and splinters of wood and ice exploded from the roof, but Mae was falling towards the ground. It happened too fast to be completely prepared, the moonlit ground coming at her with lightning speed.

  Hit and roll! She thought as she fell, but the angle at which she fell was too awkward.

  When Mae struck the frozen ground, her outstretched arms took the brunt of the fall and buckled, her shoulder and the side of her head hitting next, the rest of her bo
dy collapsing in on top of itself. Pain exploded in her head and shoulder, a flash of light so bright that she almost passed out. When her vision cleared, stars hung around her. She was dazed and rattled, but pushed to her hands and knees. She couldn’t feel any broken bones as she crawled to all fours and got as close to the house, and as far out of Eddie's sight, as she could. Mae stood up on her knees with her back pressed against the outside of the cabin and breathed deeply.

  The voices inside had stopped. The men inside had no doubt heard the gunshot and the struggle on the roof, and were listening. Mae could only imagine her mother there, alone with the two men, listening for her daughter as well, hoping against hope that the bullet had missed.

  "Eddie?" one of them called, but got no response. Mae was not alone, she was sure that Eddie was watching for any movement on which to train his gun. She held her breath and inched along the wall toward the window that opened into the front room. A gnarly bush, covered in tiny buds of ice, snagged at her coat; she slid behind it and peered into the window. Her mother was kneeling in the center of the room next to a florescent lantern on a woven rug that was tattered and moth-eaten. The two men had their backs to the window, one of them staring up the stairs while the other stood close to her mother. Both men carried guns in their hands, pointed at the ground, their fingers on the triggers. Mae turned away and looked at the dirty snow. She felt a lump rising in her throat. If she went through the front door, one of them would surely shoot her. Maybe not a killing shot, but it would be enough to take her down, and then there would be no stopping them.

  But how had they found them here at the cabin in the first place? Mae thought of everything they'd done to keep their trail cold, to stay two steps ahead of those who pursued them, those that hunted them.

  "They're everywhere, and they will never stop," her mom would always say. Even when she was a little girl, as far back as she could remember, she would lie in her bed with her head cradled in her mom's lap, and her mom would brush and braid her hair while telling her about the people in the shadows. Together, they would read from an old and tattered copy of Grimm's Fairytales, but always, her mother would talk about those people without faces and names. They read stories of princes and princesses, of fantastical lands, talking animals, hunters and prey.

  "They will hunt you," her mom would say, "and you must never let them find you, because if they do, they will end you. They’ll put you back in the tank, and they won’t ever let you go."

  And then her mother would whisper goodnight, and kiss her on the forehead or cheek, and whisper in Mae's ear that she loved her.

  "I love you, Mama," Mae whispered, her breath misting the dirty window pane. The men inside were shouting to one another, and Mae realized that her mom was right. These people were hunters tracking their prey, hounds with a scent to follow and an insatiable blood lust, and they would never stop. The cabin was in the middle of nowhere, and they should never have found them out here—it defied all logic, yet here they were.

  And her mom was caught, her arms tied behind her back, her hair matted with blood. Her piercing blue-grey eyes were swollen, her cheeks bruised.

  Mae peered through the dirty window to the room where her mother knelt. She allowed the tears to come, but stuck her fist in her mouth to stifle the cries. She could see that her mom's eyes were wet too, and Mae wanted to let her know that she was okay, that everything would be okay. Mae wanted to knock on the window, to tap the glass with her fingernail just enough to get her attention, but she knew that if she did that, and the men heard, everything her and her mom had done to escape would be for naught. Seconds ticked by, the chance of her getting away growing slimmer. But she couldn't look away, she couldn't leave her mom here to die without knowing that her daughter was safe.

  Finally, she tapped, just enough to make a sound, and hoped that the men inside would not notice the faint tapping. They didn't, but her mom's eyes instantly went to the window, searching the darkness beyond.

  When their eyes connected that last time, Mae felt a flood of emotion and cried harder. Her mom straightened up, her hands tied behind her back, with the rope looped around her neck, her shoulders jutting proudly forward. She smiled at Mae, and in that smile was hope and relief and more love than Mae could comprehend. They stared at each other for only a few seconds, but for Mae, no matter how long they looked at each other, tears streaming down their cheeks in ruddy lines, it would never be enough.

  "Go," her mom mouthed, and then, "I love you."

  Mae whispered it back, and touched the icy glass with the tips of her fingers, longing to hold her mom and be held by her, longing to be cradled in her arms.

  The man at the stairs turned back to her mom, so their eyes stayed locked for only a split second longer. The smile on her mom's face transformed into a determined grin, and when the man was close enough, she rolled to ground and kicked out with her feet toward the man.

  "Run!" her mom shouted. It might be the last thing she ever said to Mae, and Mae ran. She bolted from under the awning of the house and around the back side, to where Eddie would have no clear shot. She ran to the car that she and her mother had driven to the cabin. It was parked in the clearing, just behind the cabin, in the shadows. Because the car was parked in the dark, the men had missed her bag when they'd searched the car. And she was lucky, because the bag had her entire life inside, and if she was to survive the night, she needed everything in that bag.

  Mae threw open the rear passenger door and snatched the backpack from the floor. It was wedged up underneath the seat, and the color was a dirty grey, blending with the color of the old carpet in the car. With the shadows and the night, the bag was almost impossible to see, and anyone looking for it would have needed a flashlight, unless they happened to feel the bag while searching on the floor. Either way, she was lucky—

  The roar of a rifle behind her and the instant shattering of glass that followed caught her off guard, and she screamed, falling to her knees. She scrambled around the back side of the car as two more bullets were fired into the side of the car.

  Where was Eddie? Or was it one of the other two men from downstairs? She didn't think that there was more than one rifle among them, but she couldn't remember exactly—Eddie's kick to the gut had pretty much fogged up her memory of those few moments when she'd seen all three of them together.

  She had to get out of the clearing and away from the house. It was her only chance to stay alive, and if she remained in the clearing, she'd not only be in Eddie's sights, but the other two men would be out here looking for her as soon as her mom was taken care of. Her heart ached at the thought of her mom, but they'd rehearsed this scenario so many times that it was almost second nature. If anything like this ever happened, and they couldn't immediately escape together, they'd split up and be on their own. All that they had done would be wasted if they both died, or were captured. Of course, Mae and her mom hadn't discussed the practical, emotional side of leaving the other behind. They hadn't talked about how hard—impossible even—their plan would be to follow. They'd never discussed the pain and the guilt that came when leaving the other behind. They'd been together all Mae's life, always running, always dodging the hunters.

  A bullet struck the frozen ground to her left, cracking the ice and spraying dirt and grit. She glanced up and saw the flash of gunfire from a window opposite the side of the cabin from which she'd climbed. Eddie had seen her move out of his sights, so he'd crossed to the other side of the cabin, opting not to follow her to the ground, but to stay on the second floor where he would have a higher ground and a better view of where she was hiding. Another flash, and the crack of the bullet, when it bullet struck the side of the car with a metallic PING!

  She rolled to her side and began crawling to the cover of the forest beyond. Bullets sprayed in a random pattern all around, opening up black holes in the sheet of ice that covered the ground. She was glad that he was firing blindly and didn't have a good idea of where she was.

  A
head of her, the clearing abruptly ended against a thick snarl of trees, underbrush and drifted snow. She looked for a small area that she could climb through, a hole in the wall of blackness into which she could disappear, but she couldn't see anything that would allow her to pass. A tangled web of branches blocked her escape.

  Mae froze as she realized that the bullets had stopped firing. She looked over her shoulder at the cabin. She couldn't see the window where she thought Eddie was perched, but she was sure he was there, somewhere, watching and waiting for her.

  Probably waiting for her to make the move to the forest, she thought. From where he was sitting, he likely had a better idea of just how impregnable the tree line actually was, and when she made a run for it, it'd be like shooting fish in a barrel.

  She lay on the ground, the cold seeping through her clothes and onto her skin, and she wished that she was on a sunny beach, away from this mess.

  Mae and her mom had often talked about going to a beach—any beach would have been perfect—but the beach she wanted most to visit was in the south of France. She'd never been to France, but she could almost smell the faint aroma of orange blossoms on the salty breeze, away from guns and knives and men who wanted to use her and kill her.

  But she was here and now.

  In the cold.

  Sounds came from inside the cabin, screams and scuffles and struggling, but Mae knew it was only a matter of time before the two men overpowered her mom. She didn't know if her mom would be killed or bound tightly for enhanced interrogation later, but it didn't matter. The two men were larger than her, and she didn't stand a chance.

  Mae had only seconds to get away from the cabin, seconds before the men would come barging out the front door, seconds before Eddie got sick of waiting on the roof and came down to find her. If he trapped her here, nothing else would matter. There was nowhere to run, at least not on this side of the cabin.