Early Thaw (3 page)

To distract herself, she began adding up the hours since the first… first
mumbler
, as Leslie would say. Devin had come back to the visitors’ center at, what, four o’clock? He was laughing about how the crazy old Chinese guy at Prismatic had to be restrained and carted off by his family. That was three days before. So…74 hours?

Jesus
, she thought,
how long will it take for someone to do something?

Above cliffs and trees, the unbroken emptiness of the sky answered her. Kid-picture blue; the brightness almost hurt her eyes. Already, it was starting to get seriously cold— around 40 degrees at night— and this was a winter sky. No clouds, nothing between you and empty space. Glaring sun tilted just a few too many degrees away from the world to make you feel warm: brightness without heat. Light that left you feeling cheated.

As she neared the pass, her abs bucked involuntarily inside her belly. Leslie had guessed right: the way was blocked. Bad. On the right, a Ford hatchback teetered on the warped guardrail, its front half suspended over 300 feet of air. An RV, its windswept decals and
Got Fish?
stickers laughably surreal in the context of the carnage around it, had crashed into the rock face on the opposite side. Daylight peeked out between the two vehicles, but not enough for Val to maneuver in.

She fishtailed to a violent stop. A frustrated college-girl groan gurgled in her throat, as if this latest problem were on par with bad hair or back-to-back midterms. She realized how out of place the sound was now.

Time to make a choice. In another month—shit, maybe another week—she wouldn’t even make it this far; this road would be impassible from snow. And who knew how many more accidents might happen before then? There
had
to be a couple more assholes like her trying to get out of the park…

Like her dad told her when she was learning to drive: “You make a move and you go.”

It took her just a few seconds to devise a plan. Reversing a quarter mile down the road, she lined the Caprice up with the tail end of the hatchback and dropped the car into gear. Then she floored it.

The car roared on a mainline of gasoline. Trees and mountains slid past as the odometer’s needle tickled
55
. Remembering all the UM stories about drunk drivers surviving accidents unscathed, she willed her muscles to go limp in preparation for the crash. She had to make sure only to clip the rear passenger side of the Ford: the wrong angle would make her a permanent installation.

Hours later, when she was pretending to sleep, what happened then would play across her eyelids a few hundred times. In the hatchback, just three feet from where she’d aimed the car, something was moving. A
face
. In the second or two before impact, a tiny
face
floated up into the rear window from under a pile of clothes. It was a woman, and she was crying. Crying, but definitely not mumbling.

Val neglected to apply the brake.

A jolt, the noise of metal ripping, and the Ford spun on its undercarriage and slid from the guardrail, tumbling into nothingness. Val didn’t have much time to reflect on her first murder, though; the Caprice promptly slammed into a pickup thirty feet beyond, providing her with a close-up view of GM steering-wheel design.

All was quiet and motionless for a few seconds, the car’s thin idle threatening to die as she slowly came to. Something high up in her nose had snapped, and warmth was dribbling from both nostrils. No biggie—she’d had bloody noses before. Pain, lots of pain in her forehead and neck, but all the major pieces still seemed to work. She raised her throbbing head, took a deep breath, and surveyed the newest predicament.

She was covered in her own blood: not a ton, but enough to make her gag a little. The windshield was bowed and stippled with tiny checkerboards and spiderwebs, but it hadn’t been smashed out of its frame. Up front, the car had its own Old Faithful now— a plume of steam that shot from under the crumpled hood. But what the hell was making that n…

Oh god.

Why didn’t she think? The vehicles had been part of a de facto corral—one that she’d just burst through. Suddenly, she understood why the accidents had happened in the first place, what the drivers had been trying to avoid.

Ten…fifteen people shambling toward her. Except these weren’t people anymore. A skinny hiker lady dragging her foot behind a broken ankle joint. A 50-something cougar with denim jacket and
Paul
a
sequined whimsically across her Stetson. A tiny boy wearing Spider-Man pajamas, blood coagulated in shiny wads around his mouth—probably a former resident of the RV. All had chunks—pounds— of skin and muscle missing. All were very interested in Val.

They piled on the car, scraping the metal with fingernails and bony nubs. Gobs of saliva trailed from their teeth as they gnashed at her from the other side of the window. There was no formal pattern of attack; they clawed each other to get closer to her, their fingers gouging soft tissue and ripping rotted flesh.

No time for plans. She threw the shifter into R and mashed the pedal. For a few long seconds, nothing happened as the Caprice came to terms with its new, broken self. Then something clanged, and the V8 barked back to life. The car barreled backward toward the hole Val had punched, tossing mumblers like celebratory confetti. Escape.

Almost.

The Caprice’s rear end caught the RV’s bumper and skidded in a perfect crescent toward the guardrail. Val felt the front tire give as the car slumped and slammed into solid metal; her nosebleed splattered the far window as she whipped toward that door. The engine made a funny knocking/revving noise and died. Val was now firmly installed as the gate of Dead Folks’ Corral—a condition she, remembering Ms. Hatchback, resolved to end quickly.

Sliding across the front seat, she pulled the passenger handle and threw her weight against the door. It didn’t move. She reached around the headrest to try the rear handle, hammering a fist against the cheap plastic upholstery. Nada. Both doors were as good as welded in place: the first crash had crimped them shut.

The mumblers were back on the car before she could think. Their aimless slaps echoed inside like a preschool drum lesson. One particularly gruesome fucker—an overweight trucker type whose right arm and shoulder had been completely devoured—discovered the weakened windshield and began pounding it with his good hand. Flakes of glass rained down on Val; each strike brought the windshield closer to collapse.

She twisted the latch on the glove compartment and nearly tore the door off. Her hand dug for something with weight or sharpness, something that could be weaponized. Nothing. She thought momentarily of kicking out the passenger window, then remembered a body she’d seen the first day. Half-eaten, slumped over a window frame. She figured a stray piece of glass to the lungs might cut her escape short, too.

Not that it mattered. One final thump from the mumbler and most of the windshield fell upon her, leaving a row of jagged glass teeth along the frame. Onesie didn’t care—he shredded his good arm reaching for her, but the windshield was now just
shield
, and it did a pretty good job. Val squirmed beneath the laminated glass, maneuvering her upper body away from the fetid pile of pus, beard, and flannel crawling onto the hood. It wasn’t until she reached for the open frame, though, that she noticed her friend had managed to pull himself off the ground.

Oh, you fat, disgusting bastard.

He fell upon her with nearly all his weight, his body slipping against the glass in a blood-greased scramble to reach her. Pinned beneath, she kicked against the seat, curled the passenger side of the windshield up and out. Broken glass tore her body in hundreds of tiny places, but she knew she had just a few seconds to get something done—Onesie was scraping the splintered windshield with his teeth, mincing his nose and lips in the process. Folding the sheet of glass back towards the mumbler, she pushed down hard against him, dragging her legs out from under his immense stomach. Then, crouching in the she small space she created, she planted a foot on his face and launched herself from the car—clearing
Paul
a
’s lacquered claws by inches.

Dead guy taco.

She shot from the ground and lit out in a full run, putting hundreds of feet between her and the mumbler party before feeling safe enough to catch her breath. Her body was raw and red, a map of pain with bloody roads and highways connecting the bruises. Gore had coagulated in and blocked up her nose, and her clothes were soaked through with the stuff.

She allowed herself a look back. Onesie had smashed the passenger window with his head and was thrashing in the frame like a nightmare hunting trophy, but his immense body kept him from going anywhere. Behind, the other mumblers were clambering over the car; several had already dragged themselves past the Caprice. They weren’t fast, though, and they wouldn’t catch her if she kept moving.

Moving. Moving…where?

Fuck.

Defeated, the newest resident of Yellowstone National Park picked up a sharp piece of car, squinted in the gloom of early evening, and started walking.

She reached the trailhead around ten. Leslie was there waiting for her.

***

Lunch was shaping up to be another exercise in gustatory disappointment, so she got busy chopping a couple dried garlic cloves. They ate enough of the stuff to rock some amazing halitosis, but the Lodge Cafeteria’d had piles of it and, sautéed in a little oil, it seemed to make everything taste good. Or at least good enough.

Her fingertips slid across the bulbs as she sliced. Coated in sportscar red polish, they contrasted with the bland surroundings: a pervasive brown of wood and dirt. After months of cabin life, boredom was a constant threat, so, having exhausted the trading store’s supply of novels—including the really bad ones with the two-word, adjective + noun titles— she’d begun painting her nails, doing her hair, exploring all the little details of domesticity that’d escaped her for months. Even wearing makeup— despite the impracticality of trudging home under a pack heaped with cosmetic supplies.

She did little things at first—a spot of eyeliner or foundation—but the cabin was small, and even with the curtain rule instituted, nobody was doing anything in private. Leslie, of course, had immediately taken notice. When he’d stuttered a “Wow, you look great” after coming home from a scouting trip one afternoon, she’d thrown him an over-the top, appalled look that, in her mind, sat somewhere between “you killed my mom” and “you ate my mom.”

He needed to be reminded of the hierarchy from time to time.

Nevertheless, his words scratched at something exciting in her brain. And though she hadn’t originally intended to do much more than avoid a boredom-induced restaging of
Deliverance
, she’d actually started to enjoy being idolized. Suddenly, she had a diversion to fill long days in the cabin. Style, limited as it was, became a determining factor in her wardrobe choices once again; sometimes she’d go through several changes in one day, trying on different looks that might catch one of Leslie’s virtuous eyes. He never said anything, of course, but his heightened uneasiness around her showed he was very much paying attention. Sometimes, when she was feeling particularly wicked, she even “forgot” to turn off her lamp before undressing— she could only imagine the expression of rapt frustration that must’ve followed her silhouette on those nights.

Mornings meant breakfast in a t-shirt that didn’t always cover all her important parts, so—she figured in order to avoid any awkward…explanations—Leslie had started sleeping in his clothes and booking it as soon as the sun was up. She could imagine him flying out of bed as the first ray of light hit his sharp little face, shooting towards the door just as fast as his squirrel legs could take him. If she was feeling exceptionally lively, she tried to intercept him before he left. It was kind of a game.

One time for a bath, she accidently— kinda accidentally— left her change of clothes in the cabin and had to yell for him to bring them.

“Huh?” he’d squeaked from inside, his voice hard shifting to falsetto.

She repeated her request in the most matter-of-fact tone she could marshal—no funny business here—and waited a few motionless seconds for him to act. She could almost hear the concurrent cascades of skepticism and bliss making a mess of his mind, like a puppy who’s finally been given the OK to eat the hotdog. She pushed back the smile curling the ends of her lips.

Gradually, he worked up the resolve to peel back the front door, head turned, and creep gingerly toward the pool. It was painful to watch. When he got close, his mind narrowly winning out against his pants in a spastic attempt not to look, she decided to try something new.

“Toss them over.”

He did— flung them, really, like they’d suddenly burst into flame. They came right to her, but she made sure to catch them high, with a little wiggle jump she figured sufficiently nymph-like.

He was a man of fortitudinous shame, but the act overloaded some circuits. His head swiveled for a half second, snapped back in reflexive piety.

She’d practiced the incredulous double-take in her mind and executed it perfectly. “Jesus, Leslie! Did you try to look
again
? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

That scene alone probably kept him at attention for a few weeks.