Snowblind (20 page)

Limp with exhaustion, faint from the steady loss of blood, Kris slogged through yet another endless tangle of bristling brushwood — and suddenly the low tones went silent. Gliding forward without obstruction, she sighed in weary relief — she had escaped the woods.

Behind her, back in the thick snarl of trees, the hunters howled in hot pursuit. Kris pushed ahead onto a broad plain of snow, hoping for a downward slope to aid her escape.

She would not be disappointed.

The silence before her was not a broad plain of snow at all, but a sheer cliff, with a vertical drop to an uncertain depth. She had to look nearly straight down to register even the faintest tone!

Poised precariously at the windy brink, a sudden, uninvited vision filled her mind: the cracking timbers of the wooden bridge, the windshield pitching forward into the astonished air, her father's face smashing through the glass, the buckled crust of ice sweeping toward her, the crashing plunge into blinding water—

Kris shuddered, drew back trembling from the edge. The wind howled, and a bottomless abyss seemed to open around her. She exhaled, tottered on her skis, and fainted dizzily forward, collapsing with a soft crush into the downy snow.

The familiar darkness beckoned. The voice of her father called out her name. Pauly appeared, crawling through the snow, a grin on his face like a rose-cheeked cherub. Strong hands lifted him high in the air, giggling into the great blue bubble of the sky. Bright sun warmed Kris's face, stung her eyes. Tears of happiness tickled down her cheeks.

The sunlight faded with the closing of her eyes — yellow... pink... crimson... blue. The darkness returned. The deep darkness, the eternal night, the shadowless gloom of a stone-blind girl. Out of the gloom came the breathing of wolves, panting, breathless, hissing with hunger.

Kris felt the cold snow pressed to her face. As she raised her head, her ears filled with a bracing alarm of high-pitched beeps.

The wolves were all around her, on every side, steaming the air with their breathing. She slowly pushed herself out of the snow, rose warily to her feet. The simmering predators, strangely quiet, snarled, circling her, creeping closer. Kris quivered, reeling with terror.

She reached over her shoulder, carefully slipped off her backpack. Feeling inside, she slowly drew out the long-bladed knife. She gripped the bone handle tightly in her right fist. Then she raised the blade before her, and stepped toward the precipice.

Her knee brushed a growling wolf. Another snarled and yapped. Kris held out the blade, and took one more step.

A man's hand grabbed her wrist. Kris gasped.

Frosty's powerful grip pulled her firmly toward him. All sound seemed to fade but the guttural rasp of his breathing. He squeezed her wrist to the breaking point. Her fingers opened like a flower, offering up the blade. He took it from her, tipped the point to the hollow of her throat. Kris trembled, the sharp point pricking her flesh. Around her, the wolves snarled hungrily.

"Please..." she stammered.

He opened her coat.

Kris quivered, tried to speak, her voice a tremulous whimper. "Please..."

The blade split her skin. Warm blood trickled down her heaving chest.

Kris raised her hand before her, reaching wordlessly into the dark. Her trembling fingers touched his blistering cheek. Charred skin, cracked, scabrous, cold. His mouth an open wound, lips scars across his teeth. His nose damp holes of mucosal flesh. His eyes covered with a soft band of skin. Slits for him to see her.

Kris withdrew her hand.

The cold edge of the steel blade pressed into her skin.

Kris trembled.
"Why?"
she asked, her voice quavering. A whisper came from deep in his throat:
"I have made a covenant with my eyes. The eye that beholds me will see no more."

Kris strained to speak, the blade cutting into her throat. "But... I am blind..."

"Yes..."

The knife pulled away. Kris exhaled, swallowed dryly.

"Yet you cling to the light in fear,"
he said.
"I rebel against the light. I do not stay in its paths. I am friends with the terrors of deep darkness."

Kris shuddered. She felt the razor edge of the blade sliding toward her eye.
"I will open the doors of your face. I will reveal the gates of deep darkness. I will reveal the gates of death."

"No..." she whimpered.

The killer bent closer. He whispered in her ear.
"In your flesh I shall see God."

Kris let out a squeaking cry.

His teeth bore into her neck.

"NO!" she screamed. She ripped the sealskin band from his eyes. The killer howled, blinded by the daylight.

Kris pushed away.

He groped for her, grabbed her hair. Tore off her headpiece.

She stumbled back into the wolves, lost in a whirl of gnashing teeth. She fell, crashing into a tumult of furry bodies. The snarling predators tore at her flesh. Kris fought through their slashing fangs. Frosty roared, groping blindly, scattering the wolves. Kris scrambled back, barely slipping out from the killer's reach.

Abruptly she came to the edge of the cliff. She paused at the brink.

Frosty howled and reached—

Kris pushed off into the airy abyss.

For a long terrifying moment, she fell through open sky, dropping like a stone in the frail air. She smashed with a jolt into deep-sloping powder. Her skis dug deep, tumbling her down the near vertical drop. She lost her pole, rolled to a ledge, grabbed the branch of a clinging alder — halting her descent. Her skis dangled on straps from her ankles. Perched precariously on the wind-swept ledge, she struggled with the bindings, finally snapping her heels back in.

She heard the killer skiing down after her. And something else... faint, growing louder. A deep, thunderous, earth-shaking rumble.

An avalanche!

Kris gasped with stunned disbelief. She turned, faced the downward slope. No tones to tell her what lay below. Her heart raced. She rose up on her skis.

"Oh please, God—"

Kris launched herself down the hill. The wind roared in her face as she streaked down the pitched slope, crouched low over her skis, flying with reckless abandon. Behind her roared the rolling thunder, with Frosty at her heels.

The earth dropped out beneath her.

Kris soared out screaming into the open air. Frosty howled as he flew out behind her.

They fell together tumbling into the bottomless abyss.

As the JetRanger lifted off the swirling surface of the frozen lake, Josh picked up his microphone and radioed the tower.

"Fairbanks Tower, this is Chopper 2, do you copy, over."

Stanton must have been waiting for him. "Chopper 2, this is Fairbanks Tower, we read you, over."

"I'm afraid we have bad news, Mr. Stanton." Josh gave him the coordinates of the downed DC-3. He told him the pilot and the copilot were dead. He also told him he'd found Erin's body. He said she'd been murdered, but gave no details.

There was a pause before Dean Stanton spoke. From the quaver in the old man's voice, Josh could tell he'd been shaken. "We... appreciate the information," he said. "We'll... notify their families as soon as possible."  He paused again. "Josh, you've done all you can do out there. I insist..." He paused. "I strongly suggest you high-tail it back home as quickly as possible. That blizzard's been building up steam over the Endicott Mountains. It's going to come down on you any second now, and it's going to come down hard."

Josh glanced at Lorraine, then looked out at the chaotic swirl of falling snow. If this wasn't even the main body of the blizzard, they were in for real trouble.

"We're going to make one more pass," he told Stanton. "After what I've just seen down there... I think we've got to take the chance."

He signed off. He turned to Lorraine. She hadn't spoken since he'd told her about Erin.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

She nodded. "How much time you think we got?"

Josh stared into the snow. They were sweeping back over the ghostly Kanuti River. "I think we can make one more pass around the mountain. If I fly low enough, we might be able to spot her."

"I ain't gonna be much help in that department."

"Oh yes you are," he said. He pushed forward on the stick; the chopper started down. "You're gonna keep us from running into the mountain."

"What're you talkin' about?!"

"Back at the station I attached one of my ear band sensors to the nose of this chopper." He reached over, flipped a switch on Lorraine's headphones. "If we're heading into a bluff, you'll hear it long before I can see it."

Lorraine's jaw dropped. "Now wait just a minute, Josh..."

Josh dropped the Ranger down to barely forty feet. "Hang on, Lorraine," he said. "We'll make a copilot out of you yet."

Her father would be waiting at the bottom. He always waited there.

The banner over the finish line rippled in the breeze. Sunlight glared off the snow. She floated past the Timer, she heard his stopwatch click. The spectators cheered. Kris stood tall, poles at her sides, gliding effortlessly to a stop. Her eyes searched the crowd for a glimpse of her dad.

He stood with Pauly behind the rope, beaming with pride. She hurried over to him, ducked under the rope, flew into his arms. Laughing, he lifted her up off the ground, hugging her tight. He kissed her rosy cheek.

And then he was gone.

Deafening silence. Burning cold.  Blinding darkness.

Had she passed through the gates of death?

An infinite weight seemed to press down upon her. She could not move. Her arms were folded in front of her face, her knees pulled up to her chest. She drew her breath from a small cold chamber of air. The air was getting thinner. The numbness in her feet and hands was crawling up her body.

Kris lay curled like an embryo deep in a womb of snow.

*  *  *

Is my soul consumed? Do I dwell in the Pit? Are the gates closed?

What is this place? Truly the thing that I fear comes upon me. What I most dread befalls me —

That I will be consumed in the belly of the Father. The Father who slowly devoured my mother. Who fed me the scraps of his unborn daughter. Who looked at me with eyes of a desperate hunger.

Ice is given by the breath of God, hard as a molten mirror. No one can look on the light. The eye that dwells in my flesh has darkened. All that is left is the terror before me.

My fear is great. My cry is empty. My grave is ice.

I must not die in the teeth of the Father. I must escape to hunt my prey.

Hunt, or die. Eat, or be eaten.

The helicopter swept over the ridgeline, dropping two-hundred feet into a spruce-covered gully of rocky terraces and riverine bluffs. Josh gulped, his eyes scanning through the snow at the fast-changing terrain.

"Talk to me, Lorraine."

"I don't hear anything... uh... wait a minute. Something's coming. Fast!"

Josh hauled back on the collective, wheeling up and to the right.

"Wrong way!" shouted Lorraine.

He whipped the cyclic left. The chopper tilted crazily, climbing up to graze past a granite cliff that suddenly loomed out of the snow to the right.

Josh breathed a sigh of relief, glanced at Lorraine. She sat frozen still, clutching her seat.

"Can I open my eyes now?" she asked.

Josh almost laughed, but his smile quickly faded when he looked back out the windshield.

Lorraine heard more tones. "Something's coming..."

"I got it."

He swept up another steep ridgeline, climbing rapidly toward the crest, then crossed over, plunging into a gulf of snow-swirling sky. The chopper bumped hard on the wind, then dropped altitude and hugged a snow-covered sweep of alpine tundra.

Lorraine held her seat. "You see anything?"

"Not yet," he said.

*  *  *

The hum emerged imperceptibly, like a slowly rolling wave on an ocean of silence. Kris stirred, gasped for breath. The vibrant hum grew louder. She thrust her right arm into the snow. She pushed her legs with all her strength. She moved.

The sound grew louder. It was coming from
below
her — what she had thought was below her! She wormed her way toward the sound, digging, scratching, pushing through the powder. She gasped for air, dug madly upward, clawing her way toward the surface.

Her arm broke free. Her head emerged into the bracing air. She filled her lungs. Falling snowflakes cooled her tongue.

The helicopter thundered overhead.

Kris burrowed free, dug the flare pistol out of her pocket. She knocked off the snow, plugged a cartridge into the barrel. Aiming it frantically toward the roaring sound, she squeezed the trigger.

*  *  *

Josh nearly jumped out of his seat as the brilliant comet of light soared through the air before him.

"A flare! Lorraine — a flare!"

"Yes!"

Josh grabbed the stick, whirled the chopper back along the narrow floor of the frozen river valley. He dropped down, cruising forty feet over the base of the steep-sloping bluffs.

"What do you see?" asked Lorraine.

"Nothing," he said. "The snowfall's too heavy. I can't fly low enough — it's too dangerous. I'm going to have to set her down and take a look on the ground."

The pulsing rotor echoed off the bluffs as the helicopter descended, the sound oddly muffled by the blustering wind, thick with snow. Kris, lost in a spinning delirium of fatigue and hypothermal shock, tried to move toward the sound, down the sloping debris of the avalanche. Crawling, sliding over the broken, boulder-like blocks of frozen snow, her arms and legs were swallowed in soft gaps of plunging powder. Her right leg, with a deep and burning gash across her inner thigh, was caked with frozen blood; she had no feeling from her knee to her torn ankle. She dragged the leg, struggling painfully down the slope, her injured shoulder aching with every move.

Through blasting gusts of wind, she heard the rotors slowing as the chopper set down on the valley floor. Then she grew dizzy, and the sound faded. She fell, tumbling down into a shallow crevice, landing on her broken collarbone. A flash of bright light flared in her mind as a sharp spasm of pain shot through her body. She tried to focus on the pain to keep from passing out.

But once again, the darkness beckoned. She let herself drift, the pain subsided, and the soft sound of fluttering wings seemed to carry her away.

A warm breath of wind blew across her face. She heard the dreamy lure of a whispery voice as she floated off into the dark.
"I will reveal the gates of deep darkness. I will reveal the gates of death."

*  *  *

The storage compartment behind the three-seat rear bench of the helicopter was cluttered with flight gear and ENG equipment, including a camera tripod, a fire extinguisher, an emergency kit, and a battered steel toolbox. Behind a rolled wool blanket, Josh spotted what he was looking for: a pair of rawhide snowshoes. He pulled them out and began strapping them to his boots.

"These should make it easier," he told Lorraine, recalling the difficulty of his trek to find Erin.

Lorraine had been silent. Josh knew what was troubling her. She finally turned and shouted back to him over the noise of the idling engine and the whirling rotor blades.

"How do we know Kris or Andrea sent up that flare?"

Josh stood up and tested the bindings. "We don't know," he told her, trying his best to sound inapprehensive. "But the place we found Erin wasn't far from here. This is a tributary of the same river. If the three of them were together, maybe Kris and Andrea escaped, and ended up here."

"Maybe," shouted Lorraine. "But I don't hear anybody running out to greet us."

"They may be hurt," said Josh. "I've got to hurry." He pushed open the rear side door. A furious wind blew into the chopper. "I won't be long," he shouted. "They can't be too far."

He crouched down and stepped out onto the snow-covered surface of the frozen stream. He checked the landing gear; the aluminum-alloy tubular skids had sunk deep into the drifting snow. He slammed the door shut, then moved off carefully, crouching low beneath the whirling blades.

The wind roared through the steep-walled canyon, sweeping with it a thick swirl of blinding snow. Josh couldn't see more than twenty or thirty feet. He knew if he didn't hurry they might all be lost — in minutes the blizzard would be hitting them full on.

He padded off onto the shore in his snowshoes, pushing through the pelting wind toward the unseen bluffs. He had spotted the flare while flying over this curving section of the frozen river; judging by the angle of the flare's ascent, he assumed it had come from this side of the canyon. Perhaps Kris and Andrea had sought shelter from the storm, and moved closer to the base of the cliffs, away from the open sweep of the canyon floor.

"Kris!" he shouted. "Andrea! Where are you?"

His call dissolved in the howling wind. He trudged on, peering ahead through the blowing snow.

Lorraine's question began to haunt him. Why hadn't they come out when the chopper landed? Were they injured and unable to move? Or were they afraid — were they hiding from the killer?

Perhaps Frosty had already found them.

Josh walked into the swirling whiteness, recalling the vision of Kris from his nightmare, her tortured body frozen in the snow. Erin's eyeless face appeared in his mind. Had the head on the pike been a warning, an omen to those who came after? Or just a savage token of triumph?

Josh felt a jittery fear creep through his body. The cannibal Frosty could be out here, he thought. He could be watching me now...

Josh turned suddenly, glancing behind him. A sound, a presence, something had made him turn. For a fleeting moment he thought he saw a dark form moving through the swirling snow. "Kris?" he called. "Andrea?"

He stared into the whiteness. The chopper had disappeared, he could barely hear its throbbing rotor through the whipping whoosh of the wind.

Fear, he thought, was playing tricks on him. He turned and continued on, plowing ahead until at last the cliffs emerged from the veil of falling snow.

He quickly recognized that an avalanche had occurred — a massive slope had piled up at the broad base of the bluffs. The crusty jagged jumble of the cascade had not yet been softened by the wind and falling snow. Josh peered up at the steep cliffs, wondering in horror if the noise of the helicopter had somehow triggered the collapse. Climbing over the rubble of snow he realized this was not the case — the fallen chunks had already collected an inch or two of fresh-fallen flakes. The avalanche had happened at least an hour or two before the chopper had descended. Whoever fired the flare must have managed to survive the cascade.

Josh searched along the bottom edge of the slope, shouting up into the wind. "Kris! Andrea!" His eyes scanned the ragged white surface, shimmery with blowing snow. He walked a hundred yards along the break of the avalanche, listening to the wind, poring over the snow for footprints, scouting the cliffs for a glimpse of his friends.

"Kris! Andrea!"

The wind whipped a cloud of snow across his path. Josh saw something through it. Buried in the avalanche.

The tip of a ski.

He scrambled up the slope to the ski. The curved pointed tip jutted out — the rest was buried. Josh hurriedly dug at the snow, pulled the ski free.

It was an old, wooden backcountry ski, long and heavy, with huge bindings. The straps of the bindings had been torn loose — in the tumble of the avalanche, Josh imagined.

Had Frosty worn the ski?  It was certainly big enough. He wondered if the giant were buried in the snow beneath his feet. Or if he had already clawed his way out.

Josh peered into the whiteness around him. He saw nothing, heard nothing. An ominous dread overcame him. He moved down the slope and walked cautiously onward through the blizzard.

Then he came to a sudden stop — a dark form was slowly taking shape before him. Emerging out of the whiteness.

Josh swallowed, trembling with fear. He peered ahead into the swirling snow.

His heart soared.

"Kris!"

Josh raced toward her, padding over the snow in his cumbersome snowshoes. He slowed as he came closer, the smile fading from his face.

Kris stood tottering in the knee-deep powder, staring out of her hood like a bloody ghost. Her frozen face was scarred, lacerated from clawing branches; her vacant eyes were dark and haunted. Her pale pink jacket, ripped by the wolves, was soaked in blood. She was slowly raising her arm toward him—

Josh caught her as she reeled forward. He held her, tears filling his eyes. "Oh, God, Kris." She hung delirious in his arms. He saw the bloody tooth-rips in the shoulder of her coat. "You're all right now," he told her. "You're all right. I'm taking you home." Then he saw the crimson cut along her throat, blood in a wash down her neck.

Josh swallowed, looked around him, squinting into the wind. "Kris... is Andrea here?"

She stammered inaudibly.

He looked into her face. "Kris, is Andrea... is Andrea alive?"

"No," she whispered.

Josh closed his eyes a moment.

Kris spoke again, her voice weak and indecipherable.

"What is it?" Josh asked.

Again she whispered, he could not hear her.

"I'm going to carry you back to the helicopter," he told her. "Your leg is bleeding."

"No..." she whispered faintly. "He's..." Her voice faded and she collapsed in his arms.

Josh slipped his arm under her knees and picked her up. "You've got to stay awake," he told her breathlessly. He carried her tortured body away from the avalanche and back toward the stream. "I'm taking you home, Kris. Your mother... she's waiting for you. I promised..."

Tears streamed down Josh's face, dripping on the body draped in his arms. Nothing would stop him now, he swore to himself. He'd never rest till she was safe.