Blizzard of Souls

by Michael McBride

  Had he lingered outside the doorway instead of heading straight for the stairwell he might have heard a gasp for air or maybe the scuffing sound of clothes scraping linoleum. Perhaps he would have noticed a groan or a meek sobbing.

  Maybe he should have checked for a pulse.

  VI

  The Great Salt Lake

  SNOW FLEW FROM THE RUNNERS AS THEY SPED ACROSS THE INTERMINABLE whiteness, crusted with ridges as though the lake had frozen with the waves precisely as they had been when the storm descended. Smooth rock formations passed to either side, former islands now landlocked by the rapidly accumulating snow. They traveled in a wide V formation like migrating geese, spreading their weight as far apart as possible. So far, not a single section had threatened to collapse and whatever qualms they had once shared were now completely gone. Richard felt a certain sense of invincibility, a growing power that radiated from every pore.

  He had underestimated the size of the lake. It was more of an inland sea, isolated from the oceans as they retreated from the shifting continents. It had taken nearly half a day to drive around by highway and easily as long on the snowmobiles, though they cut straight across. They would have wasted nearly an entire day had they tried to follow the shoreline. He didn’t know how much farther it would be to the western coast, but the ride had afforded him plenty of time alone with his thoughts to formulate a plan. They could easily just walk into their encampment and slaughter the others, take the boy, and be following their tracks back across the lake fifteen minutes later, but Richard knew that this was the perfect opportunity to write his own legend. He pondered what a Caesar would do. Lao Tzu had called war an art, and as such, Richard had a masterpiece to create. He needed to be seen by his followers as larger than life, feared and respected, his intellect and will unquestioned.

  And he knew exactly what to do.

  Scanning the horizon, he watched for the distinctive profile of the rock formation that he had seen from the opposite side when it had been an island. From the western shore looking to the east, it had reminded him of a great sea monster, its humped back cresting the surface before lowering toward the water and rising again like a sinewy tail. How much different could it possibly look from the other side? They couldn’t afford to overshoot their mark or they would soar right out into the open and give up the element of surprise. Approaching the rock from behind would allow them the time they needed to ready themselves for the confrontation, and he knew with the utmost confidence that there would indeed be one. Only it would be on his terms in a situation where he could control all of the variables.

  The snowflakes had grown so large and the wind so violent that visibility was essentially nil, the horizon appearing only momentarily while the wind drew a deep breath to blow again in another direction. Without the sun, there was no way of accurately estimating the time, but Richard suspected they were coming upon midday. By nightfall they would have the boy and would return to a hero’s welcome the following morning. If Garret had done his job as he had promised he would, the hotel would be a venerable fortress with heat and electricity and armed guards on duty around the clock. They would be ready to withstand an army, and with Jake by his side he would be able to predict when the showdown would come. Everything was falling into place precisely as he had envisioned it. His followers would coronate him their king and worship him as a prophet, blindly follow him as their leader and fear him as their ruler. He would have everything he had ever dreamed of.

  He would be a god.

  Through the curtain of snow he thought he saw another of those white falcons, but when he turned it was gone. He debated heading back to see if it had left tracks in the snow, standing there in the middle of icy nowhere, but he was too eager to reach the island. There was a part of him that wanted more than anything to kill another one of those birds. The words formed by the last one’s drizzling blood must have been an illusion, a random pattern of dots rationalized by his brain into a coherent form, but it had appeared clear as day, as though written by an invisible hand. But he had kicked snow over it as a knee-jerk reaction so that none of the others would see. If he could just kill another one, he could prove that theory, if only to himself. The thought of being sent a message—especially one so contradictory to his well-calculated plans—in the blood of a dead animal was absurd. Turn back? There was no way he would even consider that option. After working his entire life toward a goal that was now just outside of his reach, he would sooner die than allow it to slip through his fingers.

  With a howl, the wind shifted again, battering him from the left so hard that he could feel the snowmobile slide sideways. Tightening his grip, he drove into it to straighten his path, looking ahead through the windshield—

  There it was. He was sure of it.

  It looked like the sea monster was swimming in the opposite direction, but its silhouette against the gray sky was exactly how he remembered it. Speeding up, he passed by Bruce to his left to attract his attention, signaling for him to slow. The others veered in from the flanks, just close enough to be able to communicate without amassing their considerable weight on one section of ice.

  “That’s where we’re going,” Richard said, pointing at the rocky island, which was immediately consumed by the storm.

  “What’s the plan then?” Bruce asked.

  “We come upon it slowly to quiet our engines and moor the snowmobiles on the eastern edge.”

  “You heard the man,” Bruce called to the others, again heading forward into the snow, though at a dramatically reduced speed.

  The noise was still too loud for Richard, but there was nothing they could do about it shy of abandoning their sole mode of transportation, which was completely unacceptable. When the time came to leave, they would need to do so in a hurry. He giggled at the thought. That little albino freak who had opposed him and divided them would never even see it coming. Unless he were truly psychic as the others claimed… Then he would surely be nowhere within a thousand miles.

  The shadow of the island took form through the snow, rising steadily until it towered over them. The ages had buffed the stone round and smooth, like staring at a cluster of mushroom caps. It was far larger than it had looked from the western coast, close to a hundred feet in height with various levels and roughly half a mile long, surpassing even his wildest expectations. From afar it had resembled a single mound of rock, but in actuality it was a large spiral-shaped cluster of stones of various sizes.

  He killed the engine and coasted to a halt with the front runner abutting the rock. Climbing off, he hopped up on the lowest level, a long slanting section that led away from the lake and up to the right behind the larger section that eclipsed it. The others ascended the stone, allowing Richard to lead them along a winding course until they reached the pinnacle, lowering themselves to their bellies to crawl far enough forward to be able to see the opposite shore.

  It was barely visible through the storm, but there was no mistaking it. A sheer face of stone lined the entire beach, fading intermittently at the behest of the savage assault of snowflakes. He couldn’t see any of them out there, though from this distance he was sure he wouldn’t have been able to regardless of the smothering storm.

  “That’s it all right,” one of the men said. “So what’s the plan from here?”

  Richard looked past him to where a large clump of dead shrubbery grew from the cracks between rocks, filled with sticks and straw from whatever birds nested there in the spring and summer.

  “We announce our presence,” Richard said.

  “I thought we wanted the element of surprise.”

  “We have it.”

  “Then I don’t understand. If they don’t know we’re here, why would we want to give up that advantage? We could just cross the ice and take the kid back from right under their noses.”

  “Then we’d be just like them. Sneaking into their midst to steal a child. That was what was wrong with the world. Armies fighting undeclared wars. Terrorists hija
cking planes full of civilians to crash into buildings and fashioning dirty bombs to leave in markets or send into an elementary school in their own kid’s backpack. We started it all. While the British formed battle lines, we picked them off from the trees. We invented guerilla warfare and cried about it when others used our own cowardly tactics against us. Vietnam. Iraq. They were direct consequences of our own actions. If we’ve been given the chance to begin anew, then we need to do so like men. We need to declare our intentions so that we leave no doubt as to what is to follow.”

  “But then they’ll know we’re coming. You said you wanted to use the cover of night and the storm to hide our advance so we could catch them by surprise.”

  “And we have. Right now, they have no idea what we intend to do. They can’t see us from all the way over there and couldn’t possibly have heard our snowmobiles. We have surprise on our side, but it’s only a tool. Fear, on the other hand, fear is a weapon. Fear breeds chaos and dissention. That, my friends, is what we need to capitalize upon.”

  Richard rolled onto his side and craned his neck to see around the man to where Bruce lay on his stomach, using the rifle’s sight to view the far shore more clearly.

  “Bruce,” Richard said, drawing the man’s eye from the scope. “Feel up to a hike?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” He stood and slung the rifle back over his shoulder.

  “Tell them they can either send the boy back with you or be prepared to negotiate their surrender.”

  “And if they don’t want to play your game?”

  “They will.”

  “But if they don’t?”

  “We’ll come running at the first sound of gunfire.”

  Bruce nodded. That was all he really needed to know.

  He followed the cut back down to the snowmobiles and began his trek around the island.

  “What’s there to negotiate?” one of the men asked Richard. “I thought we were here to get the kid back…whatever the cost.”

  Richard smiled. “We’re negotiating how many of them will die.”

  The wind screamed and pelted them with snow, silencing any further questions. Bruce appeared on the frozen lake off to the left, walking due west. Richard watched him growing smaller and smaller until he was nearly out of sight.

  “Go get me one of the gas cans,” he said to no one in particular.

  The men only stared at him quizzically.

  “Now!” he shouted and three of them leapt to their feet.

  Richard knew the timing would need to be precise, so he borrowed a rifle from one of the others to use the scope and marked Bruce’s progress. When Bruce finally disappeared completely, he couldn’t have been more than a hundred yards from the bank.

  “Here,” a voice said from behind Richard, panting from the exertion. He shook the can for effect.

  “Thank you,” Richard said, setting down the rifle and taking the plastic container from him. Walking over to the clump of dead shrubbery, he opened the spigot and doused the sticks, the snow melting away at first contact.

  “What are you doing?” one of the others asked, but Richard had no time for asinine questions.

  He unzipped his coat and reached into the pocket of the jacket beneath, producing the flare gun and cracking it in half to open the chamber. Pulling one of the silver canisters from the pouch, he pressed it into the gun and with a flick of his wrist, sealed the chamber. Pointing it into the glistening collection of branches, he pulled the trigger and launched a ball of fire into the shrubs.

  Deep black smoke gushed from the small flames, growing larger as they burned through the gasoline and into the wood, the blaze soon rising above his head.

  “We’re going to need more gas,” Richard said, walking past the dumbfounded men to assume his post on the ledge, staring across the lake through the crosshairs.

  Waiting.

  VII

  Mormon Tears

  JAKE CONTINUED SCREAMING UNTIL HE WAS FINALLY ABLE TO RATIONALIZE his surroundings. He had woken everyone around the fire, and it felt as though they were all standing over him, so close that he was suffocating. His eyes shot from face to face, not recognizing any of them at first, half-expecting to see his mother’s loving smile, to see her reach down for him and cradle him to her bosom. But that was impossible, he knew. She was dead, and that thought allowed reality to bludgeon him back to his senses.

  “They’re here,” he whispered, tears pouring down his cheeks. “They’ve come for me.”

  Gray dropped to his knees in front of him and wiped the dampness from his cheeks. He hesitated, as though debating whether or not to hold him to try to comfort him. Jake settled the inner dilemma for him, leaping to his feet and throwing his arms around the surprised man’s neck.

  “You’re safe,” Gray said. “No one’s going to take you anywhere. I promise.”

  He looked back over his shoulder to Adam, who was still rubbing his chin from where Evelyn’s forehead had slammed into it when the screaming had roused her. With a nod of understanding, Adam headed back across the cavern toward the stone stairs and ascended with Norman right at his heels and the others following behind.

  “Wait!” Phoenix called, bounding up the stairs to catch up with Adam before he could head into the tunnel.

  Adam turned and waited, his pulse thundering in his temples.

  “Are you ready?” Phoenix asked. “This is where it all starts.”

  “You’ve seen this in a vision?”

  “Parts.”

  Adam waited for him to elaborate, but when Phoenix offered nothing more, he had to ask. “Anything you’d like to share?”

  Phoenix looked nervously at Norman, and then back to Adam. “No.”

  “Thanks, kid,” Adam said, turning to head into the dark tunnel. “You’ve been a big help.”

  “There are things I can’t tell you or they won’t come to pass. Your decisions—all of our decisions—can’t be influenced if we are to stand a chance. Our greatness will be defined by moments, foresight can only lead to hesitation and we may miss those moments.”

  Adam continued walking, trying to comprehend Phoenix’s words. They made sense, obviously, but he didn’t like the idea of walking blindly to his fate if there was information that could prove invaluable. He didn’t know what precisely was awaiting him out there in the storm, only that something definitely was.

  Bracing for the cold, he passed through the cave and trudged into the snow. He had barely reached the middle of the beach when there was a flash of light on the horizon. As he watched, it grew in size, billowing a pillar of black smoke before the wind chased it away.

  “Oh, God,” he whispered, a lump rising in his throat. His first thought was of the sheer terror in Jill’s eyes as she had described her vision.

  A figure appeared from the snow, the shadow of a man walking toward them through the blizzard. What looked like a long pole pointed diagonally from the right shoulder of the silhouette, but Adam quickly recognized it as the barrel of a rifle.

  The specter stopped at the edge of the lake, inspecting the dike they had built to fend off attack. He climbed over it and slid down the back side, stopping a dozen paces from Adam, behind whom all of the others gathered.

  Adam looked to his right to find Norman standing at his side, biting his lip nervously.

  “We’ve come for the child!” the man shouted, his voice echoing from the face of the cliff.

  “You can’t have him!” Gray yelled from behind Adam, who tried to calm him by holding up his hand.

  “Who are you?” Adam asked, trying to keep his tone as level and non-threatening as possible. His eyes flicked from the man to the fire on the island and then back again. He shuddered at the thought of Jill’s words.

  Cooking flesh.

  “My name is Bruce.” The man took several strong strides forward until Adam could have reached out and touched him. “I’m here to give you just one chance to hand over the boy.”

  Adam could barely keep
his feet planted in the snow against the urge to retreat from the man’s advance.

  “You aren’t coming anywhere near—!”

  “Gray!” Adam shouted, silencing him before he could finish his epithet. He kept his eyes focused on the other man’s, the fur framing the hood around Bruce’s head making him look like a wild beast. “The child’s safe with us. You can rest assured that no harm will befall him.”

  Bruce laughed, a deep guttural sound prematurely silenced by his bared teeth.

  “I don’t believe you understand me correctly,” Bruce said, his eyes wide and unblinking. “This isn’t a visit from child welfare. We’re taking the boy with us. Period.”

  “And if we refuse?”

  “Personally, I’m hoping you do.” He grabbed the rifle strap across his chest. “I’d like nothing more than to find out how fast I can reload this thing.”

  “Is that a threat?” Norman said.

  “I thought it was clearly stated.”

  “If you had wanted to use that rifle, you could have easily already done so,” Adam said. “What is it you really want?”

  “I’ve been instructed to offer you one chance to send the boy with me. If you decide not to, you’ll be given the opportunity to negotiate the terms of your surrender, and I promise you that one of them will be that you turn the boy over to us. Either way, we’re taking that kid where you won’t ever be able to hurt him.”

  “Hurt him?” Adam said. “What would lead you to believe that—?”

  “Shut up!” Bruce bellowed, startling Adam so much that he flinched. Richard had been right about fear. They were terrified of him, even standing alone against all of them. “Am I to assume that you’re declining to send him with me willingly?”

  Adam looked back over his shoulder to the others before replying.

  “Yeah,” he said, matching stares with Bruce. “He isn’t going anywhere.”

  “Good,” Bruce said with a smirk. “I was hoping we could do this the hard way.”