Snowblind Read online

  There was no sign of anything out there.

  The lighter flagged when a gust of wind battered the weathered wall in the adjacent room. A clump of snow fell through the rusted tin roof and nearly scared him to death when it hit the ground in front of him.

  He brought the flame closer to his face and reveled in the momentary warmth on his bare skin. The time had come to make a decision.

  Live or die. It was as simple as that.

  And Coburn chose to live.

  He steeled his resolve and made a decision.

  He couldn’t stay here any longer. It was time to go.

  Better to take his chances out there in the blizzard than to wait for them to return to finish him. He couldn’t hold them off forever. Out there, he at least had a sporting chance. He just needed to break the situation down to its most simplified components and formulate a plan.

  First decision…There were two possible initial moves: one doorway led back into the house, the other into a tunnel that obviously opened somewhere higher up the mountainside. If he chose the house, he would then have a choice of three possible exits: the front door, the window, or the hole in the roof, all of which gave upon an open field with direct access to roughly two-hundred-seventy degrees of untamed forest and countless paths that led in any number of unknown directions. If he chose the tunnel, he would be slithering into a confined space without the ability to turn around quickly if he needed to. He would be crawling through his friend’s frozen blood in complete darkness without the slightest clue as to where he would come out. The former gave him seemingly limitless options; the latter only one, not to mention the fact that the prospect of choosing it was positively mortifying.

  One was without a doubt a better option than the other.

  His hunters had known exactly what they would do before they even knew themselves.

  If these animals were utilizing their higher faculties to outsmart him, then maybe he could use his baser instincts to outmaneuver them.

  Boil it down to the essentials. Don’t overthink it. Don’t strategize.

  What was his ultimate goal?

  Survival.

  How was that achieved?

  Escape.

  How was that accomplished?

  By distancing himself from his hunters.

  How did he do that?

  By placing one foot in front of the other and establishing forward momentum.

  But in which direction?

  His bearings were skewed and he didn’t have a compass. He was roughly eleven thousand feet above sea level. The only answer that made any kind of sense wasn’t a cardinal direction. He needed to descend in altitude.

  Keep it simple.

  He needed to go down.

  And from there?

  He needed to find help.

  There. He had a plan. An elementary plan that required no thought, no strategy.

  Keep moving forward.

  Continue heading down.

  Find help.

  Basic. The kind of directions a dog could be trained to follow.

  But even that plan still required that he make a crucial decision. Right here and now.

  Into the tunnel or into the house?

  Left or right?

  Push aside all conscious thought.

  Trust his animal instincts.

  Coburn closed his eyes and nodded to himself.

  Decision made.

  There was just one thing he needed to do first.

  One very important task, in case he failed.

  He rummaged around in his backpack until he found his skinning knife, held up the lighter so he could better see, and set to work.

  * * *

  Coburn tucked the dulled skinning knife into the inner breast pocket of his jacket and brushed the wood shavings into a pile. He lit them with the dying lighter and leaned close to the diminutive flames. The small blaze barely produced any heat at all, but he savored every sweet second of it. He had a feeling it would be a long time before he experienced anything even remotely resembling warmth again. He appraised his work in the waning glow.

  Like those who had passed before him, he had reinforced the importance of the message by going over the letters again, widening them as he went.

  THEY COME AT NIGHT.

  Then he added four names to the roll call of the dead, and, in doing so, consigned himself to his fate.

  JOEL VIGIL

  BLAINE SHORE

  TODD BAUMANN

  WILLIAM COBURN

  NOVEMBER 20, 2012

  He had cried the entire time, purging himself of all of the pain and the fear and the doubt. Everything but his instincts and his resolve.

  The frozen tears glistened on his cheeks as the flame gave up the ghost and darkness swarmed in to fill the void.

  Coburn slid the dulled knife back into its scabbord and tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket.

  It was time.

  He was going to have to move fast, which meant he needed to travel light. Everything he absolutely had to have from his backpack was stowed in one pocket or other, including half of the remaining food. He left the rest, along with all of the collected canned goods, in his pack, which he tucked into the corner against the wall for whoever had the misfortune of coming next. He wouldn’t be walling it up in the tunnel considering he wouldn’t be able to turn around to do so once he was inside. That in itself bolstered his confidence in his decision.

  Coburn drew a deep breath and exhaled it slowly.

  Keep moving forward.

  Continue heading down.

  Find help.

  He thrust his Remington into the hole and shimmied in behind it. The smell immediately struck him, but he forced it aside. He concentrated on pushing his rifle ahead of him and then wriggling to catch up with it. Baumann’s blood had hardened to an icy crust on the dirt, making traction tenuous at best. The flow of air against his face metamorphosed from a gentle breath to a frigid gust. He braced his knees and elbows against the sides for leverage and kicked with his feet. It wasn’t long before the tunnel widened enough for him to crawl. It grew steeper and steeper, all the while the darkness faded away until it revealed a drift of snow that had formed over the mouth of the tunnel, directly overhead. Flakes had accumulated on the bloody swath where Baumann had been hauled out into the open, but had merely whitened the deep red to a washed-out pink.

  Coburn shoved aside the snow and broke through the crimson ice. He widened the egress just enough to propel himself through with his arms over his head. The wind hit him like a truck, pelting him from the side with such force that the snowflakes nearly beat him back to the ground. He crouched with his rifle at port arms and surveyed his surroundings.

  He was on an exposed face of the mountain, roughly thirty feet uphill from the house, which would have been indistinguishable from the surrounding field from his vantage point were it not for the holes in its roof. The forest beyond had been swallowed by the blizzard to such a degree that he couldn’t see a single tree, which meant that anything lurking beneath them wouldn’t be able to see him either. Beside him was a boulder with less accumulated snow on it than its surroundings, presumably because it had been rolled away from the mouth of the tunnel. A sheer granite escarpment rose toward the sky behind him, at the top of which was a crown of ponderosa pines that speared the belly of the storm. Loose talus covered the steep ground, making every step a challenge as he negotiated a trail, of sorts, that would make a mountain goat think twice. He stayed low and hugged the rock formation to keep from both being seen and being thrown down the slope by the wind. Each gust cut through his clothing and seemed to peel off increasingly deeper layers of his bare skin. He could already feel the ice freezing in his beard.

  The cliff at his back grew shorter until it melded into the forest. The path widened slightly and veered to the left, tracing the topography of the mountain into a deep valley, across which he could barely see the opposite forested slope through the snow. A twinge of panic
momentarily paralyzed him as he rounded the bend and the house disappeared into the blizzard behind him. With the homestead gone, his bearings would be completely shot. It wouldn’t be long before he wouldn’t be able to find his way back again. The wind was already erasing his tracks. He had abandoned the only known shelter from the elements and forsaken it for the unknown.

  He closed his eyes and focused on his breathing.

  No, he had left the house behind in order to embark upon a trek that led to salvation. This was what he had to do. This was his only hope for survival.

  “Keep moving forward,” he whispered. Fresh blood seeped through his cracked lips.

  He placed one foot in front of the other. Repeated the process. Again. Again. Again-again. Again-again. Again-again-again-again-again-again.

  The forest closed in from his left. The drop-off to his right grew so steep he could have stepped off the path and onto the treetops. He imagined a stream somewhere below the clouds; a crystal clear ribbon of water so cold in the summer that only the rainbow trout could tolerate it for more than a few seconds. He tried to picture it as it must be now, buried underneath inches of ice and feet of snow. Was it the stream Vigil had fallen into which felt like a lifetime ago now? Nothing around him looked familiar, and yet at the same time looked exactly like every other stretch of wilderness.

  Down.

  He needed to focus on the plan. He didn’t need to know exactly where he was going, only the direction that would eventually guide him to help.

  The wind screamed through the valley, beneath the sound of which he thought he heard a distant bass rumble.

  He picked up his pace; faster and faster until he was running, lifting his knees high, snow flying from his feet. Distance. He needed to create distance between himself and his pursuit; a gap too wide to close, miles of virgin white snow already absolved of his footprints.

  Pine branches overburdened by accumulation sagged across the path in front of him. He held his rifle up, closed his eyes, and plowed straight through. The snow hit him in the face like an icy fist. He opened his eyes and let out an involuntary shout.

  There was someone on the path, staring directly at him.

  He tried to stop his momentum, but his feet slid out from beneath him, depositing him on his rear end. His Remington fell from his grasp and disappeared into the snow. He lunged to the side, thrust his hands into the snow, and grabbed his rifle. He brought it to his shoulder and aimed at his attacker—

  “No…” he whispered.

  He hadn’t recognized the face with the hair covered with white and the ice that had formed in patches on the blue skin and in the brows, lashes, and beard. But the eyes were unmistakable.

  They were Baumann’s eyes.

  Todd’s head had been raggedly severed from his neck at roughly the fourth cervical vertebra and impaled upon a crooked pike still ridged with bark. It had been staked into the accumulation, right in the middle of the path. There wasn’t so much as the hint of a footprint leading up to it. Beyond his old friend’s head, there was nothing but clouds and snow. The trail wound tightly to the left around another vertical stone embankment, to the right of which was a deadfall straight into the bottom of the valley, so far down he couldn’t see it through the storm.

  Another bass rumble. More distinct this time. Closer. It echoed from the opposite mountainside, making its origin impossible to divine.

  They were coming.

  “rrrRRaaAHHhrrr!”

  A guttural roar. Closer still.

  He fished the snow out of his barrel with his index finger and directed his rifle toward the forest uphill from him.

  Crashing sounds.

  The treetops shook and snow fell from the branches at the crest of the second rise.

  It was too soon. They couldn’t have seen through his ruse yet. It was too soon!

  “Umph. Umph. Umph.”

  Grunting sounds from the woods.

  Closing in.

  “rrrrrrRRRRRaaaaaAAAAHHHHHhhhhrrrrrrr!”

  A roar grumbled through the valley behind him, from one side to the other, like a semi speeding past on a highway.

  He glanced left. His tracks vanished into the trees, beyond which the only path led back across the treacherous scree-lined escarpment and ultimately to the house itself.

  He glanced right. The trail narrowed to such a degree that he would have sought an alternate route even under ideal weather conditions.

  Behind him was another sheer granite formation. The upper canopy of the massive pines far below was barely visible.

  And his hunters were streaking straight down the hillside through the forest.

  Directly at him.

  “Umph. Umph.”

  More grunting.

  “rrrRRaaAHHhrrr!”

  He retreated a step and tried to locate movement between the tree trunks.

  A glance back over his shoulder.

  He was on a stone point with no escape and nothing but open air behind and beneath him.

  “Umph. Umph.”

  Another step backward.

  “rrrRRaaAHHhrrr!”

  The ground trembled underfoot.

  Dear God, how many of them were there?

  More crashing. Branches snapped. Clumps of snow fell.

  Closer.

  Closer.

  Another step back—

  He bumped into something and nearly crawled right out of his skin. He whirled in time to see the pike topple over. Baumann’s lifeless face stared up at him from the snow, his nose pointing off to the side. The tattered skin on his neck was ridged with teeth marks. The impressions on the bottom of C-4 where the marrow had been gnawed out were so perfect they could have been used to cast a mold of the front six teeth on both the upper and lower rows.

  “rrrRRaaAHHhrrr!”

  “Umph, umph,” from just ahead and to the left.

  More grunts from the thicket off to his right.

  The ground positively bucked beneath him.

  He turned to his left. No way he’d ever reach the path.

  To his right. Not a chance.

  Behind him. A pitfall into the forest below.

  Baumann’s face. Blindly looking straight through him. Four bloodless lacerations through his eyebrows and up his forehead past his hairline. One on his left temple. Whatever staked his head to the post had palmed it like a basketball. The hand itself had to be a good sixteen inches from the base of the palm to the tip of the middle finger. Maybe more. Mother of God…

  “Umph, umph. Umph, umph. Umph, umph.”

  Crashing. Pounding.

  Thundering footsteps, beating a drumroll on the frozen earth.

  “rrrRRaaAHHhrrr!”

  Left? No.

  Right? No, damn it.

  Bushes shivering in front of him. Tree branches breaking.

  “Umph-umph. Umph-umph.”

  Coburn fired into the brush. Snow and wood splinters flew. The stock kicked. The report crashed.

  Pull-jack-chamber-slam.

  “Umph-umph-umph-umph.”

  The wind shrieked through the canyon, buffeting him to the side.

  “rrrRRaaAHHhrrr!”

  He shot at the sound, the shaking branches. The rifle bucked. The bullet sailed wide through the thicket.

  “Umph-umph-umph-umph-umph-umph.”

  Pull-jack-chamber-slam.

  Twenty feet to the border of the forest. A quarter of a second to reach him from the moment they broke cover.

  One shot.

  No chance to reload.

  If he missed, he was dead.

  Even if he hit, there was no chance of survival.

  Baumann’s horrible screams in his head.

  Shore’s warm blood spattering his face.

  Vigil’s head screwed into his savaged pelvis.

  “Umph-umph-umph-umph-umph-umph-umph-umph-umph-umph.”

  The trees shivered a mere twenty feet away.

  Dark shapes through the blowing flakes.

  T
he thunder of footsteps.

  “rrrRRaaAHHhrrr!”

  Coburn couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow. He readjusted his grip on the Remington. Tried to hold the barrel steady.

  Sudden and abrupt silence.

  The movement in the shadows ceased. The trees slowly resumed a natural swaying motion in time with the wind, which carried that vile musky stench to him. Snowflakes swirled around him as if uncertain which way to go before being swept away from right to left.

  In his ears: Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.

  There was no motion from behind the tree line. No sound.

  He retreated another step.

  What were they waiting for?

  Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.

  Left and right. No movement in either direction.

  Straight ahead. Nothing. Just a wall of snow-blanketed pines standing shoulder-to-shoulder, skirted by skeletal clusters of scrub oak and evergreen shrubs.

  Another step in reverse.

  Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.

  One shot.

  Make it count.

  Distance. Another step backward. Baumann’s head against his left calf.

  Steady the rifle. Steady…

  Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.

  His nerves frayed, then snapped.

  “What are you waiting for?” he shouted, spittle spraying from his bloody lips. “Show yourselves!”

  His voice echoed back at him from the canyon behind him before the wind obliterated it with a scream.

  Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.

  Movement. Slow. Silent.

  A mere bending of branches, at odds with the motion of the wind in the boughs.

  Coburn raised his head and tilted the barrel to better see past his useless scope.

  One shot.

  Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.

  One…

  “Umph.”

  Movement.

  THUMP-thump-THUMP-thump-THUMP-thump.

  “Umph.”

  The source of motion, just to the left of the broad trunk of a pine tree, behind a juniper bush, right where a drift of snow had formed against—