Chapter Thirty-Seven
Following the tracks of the group’s vehicle leads them at first in a mazy dance across the residential areas of town, weaving through a warren of abandoned vehicles and other blockages, before continuing on a more direct route on the main road out towards the west of Newmarket, and on into the surrounding countryside. Here and there they come across cars that have been shifted to the side of the road, along with fresh tracks to indicate they have been moved recently. The extra day of rest has done wonders for Venus, who now no longer lags behind, but rather scurries industriously, ranging across the street ahead of Lowell with a practiced gait, always in motion, that seems to allow her to skip across the top of the snow with ease. Lowell is not finding it so easy. For him, even though he continues to follow the path of the snow compacted by the vehicle; it is all he can do to place one foot in front of the other. In the sub-zero conditions, it is not long before his lack of energy begins to catch up with him. With the exception of the one emergency meal that he managed to keep down, he has survived for over a week now on less than a can of food a day, and the folly of attempting such a journey in his condition is becoming rapidly clearer to him by the minute. Only the terrible thought of Walter steadily moving further and further away spurs him on, and allows him to continue in spite of his overwhelming exhaustion.
It does not take long for him to realize that he might be in real trouble as, despite his exertion and his extra layers of clothing, his body temperature begins to drop alarmingly, and it is not long before he begins to shiver and curse himself for not making more of an effort to find a way to get his car on the road. Every now and again, he looks across just in time to see Venus dig through the snow, thrust her snout into the hole, and then quickly gulp down some morsel she has extracted from within. Each time, he struggles to get over to her in time to see what she is eating, but upon his approach she frantically guzzles whatever she has found and jumps away guiltily, leaving him with nothing more than a small pile of disturbed earth by the time he finally reaches her position. After several such forays, he stops trying to catch her in the act, deciding that whatever it is that she is getting, he is unlikely to want it for himself anyway, but determining to give her a smaller share of the food when they next stop.
*****
Back on the outskirts of town, at the point where Lowell and Venus had set off in pursuit of the group several hours earlier, all is quiet. For a long time, nothing stirs and then, from out of the nearest alleyway, comes the distant sound of a terrible barking and wailing, rapidly increasing in volume. After a minute, a rat appears, running at full speed. Without pausing, it leaps straight up and over a low wall that leads on to the street, and scampers desperately away from the pack that pursues it from behind. As it reaches the middle of the street, it stops suddenly, drops into the cover provided by one of Lowell’s footprints, peeks back out along the way it had come, and then launches itself out and on over the road as it sees the pack careering wildly out of the alleyway and on after it. Against all protocol, the two Dobermans - the newest members of the pack - come first, narrowly followed by the Alpha, who barks angrily at the affront to his leadership even as he struggles to catch up. The other dogs follow close behind in their usual order; the Lab narrowly outrunning the Bernese, she also snapping with displeasure, and then, many seconds later, a light scampering and irritated yapping as the Shih Tzu finally emerges panting with exhaustion, only in time to see the other dogs’ frustration as they come up against a chain-link fence across the street through which the rat has made its escape. For a minute more, the pack bark and howl at the fence, and then turn to head back to the town center. Halfway across the street, the Alpha pauses, his great head drops to the ground and he sniffs thoughtfully at the prints in the snow that lead out of town. With growing excitement, he paces up and down the trail several times, occasionally burying his nose fully in the snow as he catches a strong whiff of a familiar scent, and then he lifts his head up, barks for his pack to follow, and paces purposefully on up the trail towards the road out of town.
*****
As the hours push on, and the weak sun eventually begins its early descent, Lowell’s pace continues to slow to a crawl, until eventually, he gives in and drops forward onto his hands to lie panting, motionless in the snow. After a moment, as Venus finally trots over to see what the hold up is, and stares at him quizzically, Lowell begins to wonder whether they have any chance of catching up with their prey. In a whole day of walking, he estimates that they have travelled less than ten miles out of town, and the knowledge that Walter will with each minute be continuing to widen the distance between them consumes him with a maddening anxiety. With this thought once again spurring him on, and staggering unsteadily to his feet, Lowell dusts the covering of white powder of the front of his trousers and jacket, takes a determined step forward, and then immediately his shoulders sag back down as looking up in the air he sees the first fat flakes of a new snowfall flutter through the air.
Within five minutes, the initial light flurry has magnified into a full on snowstorm; a downpour that quickly devours all traces of the vehicle’s tracks before his despairing eyes. For several minutes more, Lowell remains rooted in place, as he stares out at the ever-deepening blanket of white, and weighs his dwindling options. All of his instincts tell him to press on and, despite the risk, in all likelihood he would have if it were not for the fact that from the first moment he turned around he had completely lost his bearing. He no longer has any notion of where the road even lies, let alone which direction he has come from or is headed. With a great sense of reluctance, he admits defeat, and accepts that he will have to find somewhere to hole up until the worst of the storm has passed. Less than an hour earlier, they had passed a remote farmhouse, and with the burden of hindsight, Lowell bitterly regrets his decision to blindly press on into the unknown. So engrossed is he in his despair, that it is several minutes more before he looks around him and realizes with a start that Venus is nowhere to be seen.
The awareness that he has lost his companion is the last straw - breaking the last of his fragile resistance and sapping what remains of his will to struggle on. Tossing his pack to one side, he allows himself to drop into the snow and then lie still. No sooner has he made the mental decision to surrender, than he feels his body relax, his shivering cease, and an intense, delicious numbing chill begin to spread slowly upwards from his feet, up through his legs, torso and on towards his head. All of a sudden, he is sure that this is the end, and as he closes his eyes for the last time he sees the face of his wife in front of him, her emerald green eyes boring into his. For a moment he feels a deep contentment as he sees within them the devoted, unconditional love that he has lost, only for his happiness to drain away once more as Beth’s eyes are replaced by the face of his nemesis, Walter; his piercing blue eyes radiating the same unbearable dumb amity Lowell had witnessed in the photograph. As Lowell’s mind slowly drifts away into blankness, a final unexpected thought surfaces with a startling clarity. Lowell’s heart sinks, and he lets out a desperate wail as at last, when all is lost, he realizes the unbearable truth.
As his mind gradually drifts away into darkness, he sees clearly the face of Walter’s daughter, Bea, sees her intelligent brown eyes, the fierce determination in her stare, and in his mind Lowell sees a ghost materialize alongside her. The girl is the same age as Bea, with Lowell’s dark hair and thin facial features but Beth’s intelligent eyes and patient smile. Anna. That was the name they had chosen. Lowell smiles sadly, his frozen lip twitching upwards, as he sees the two girls, growing together in the rubble of civilization, as close as sisters, twinned and then separated by fate and human frailty. In an instant, all of Lowell’s hatred for Walter drifts away, and he discovers in that moment how much of himself he has invested into hatred. Without enmity, and rage, and blame he is a hollow shell, cold and alone. As the snow continues to fall, and he looks around to find himself completely entombed in a thick white blanket,
he stifles a mad, hysterical laugh at the thought that having survived so many years of mind-numbing semi-existence he is now going to die just as he has found a reason to live. Forgiveness.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
As his internal temperature continues to steadily drop, and his mental processes slow to a sluggish crawl, Lowell wonders at the curious illusion of warmth that he can feel beginning to slowly spread throughout his body. The last remnants of his resistance have fallen away now, and he finds himself willing on the welcome release into a final, eternal sleep. Only a slight, infuriating, rhythmic twitching in his left eye holds him precariously to consciousness now. With every fiber of his being, he wills himself to ignore the sensation and surrender to the void, but try as he might he cannot. After another minute, his irritation boils over, bringing him careening back to the present, and with a great effort he opens his twitching eye just in time to see Venus’s tongue, up close, swooping in for another lick that wrenches his eyelid open the remainder of the way. As his sight clears, he sees the source of the strange warmth, that he had imagined was a symptom of his demise, is in fact Venus, lying over his chest, her head stretched upwards towards his own, as she frantically licks his face with huge, whole-hearted wet swipes in an attempt to get some small response.
No sooner has he opened his eye, than she leaps off him, barks loudly in his face, gently grips the sleeve of his left arm, tugs it meaningfully, and then bounds off into the snow, stopping a few feet away with an expectant expression. As the warmth she has provided floods away from his midriff to leave a damp chill in its place, Lowell weakly lifts his legs to pull his knees in towards his chest, and then raises his arm lethargically to wave her away. Venus watches him for another few seconds, barks forcefully again, and then lunges forwards to grip hold of his sleeve once more, this time pulling insistently until both of Lowell’s eyes snap open for a second and he summons the strength to pull his arm back close to his body. For the next few minutes, they engage in a repetitive battle, with Lowell struggling to fend her off and then return to sleep and Venus refusing to let him. No matter how firmly Lowell shoos her away, she comes back a moment later, alternating between barking, licking and pulling with an unstoppable tenacity, that drives him to distraction until, finally, Lowell sits up in exasperation, staring madly at Venus with a wild and unstable fury. No sooner has he risen though, than his anger quickly dissolves into a spontaneous, exasperated smile as he sees her standing tall, staring at him defiantly with a combination of tender concern and fierce determination that fills him with a sudden and unanticipated delight.
A short while later, when Lowell has finally managed to stand after many painful aborted efforts, they are moving. He has no idea where they are going, and is unable to see more than a few feet ahead through the whiteout, but somehow Venus seems to manage to keep her bearing. Every few minutes she disappears into the white void, and Lowell freezes in place, terrified to lose her again, but each time she emerges a moment later, barking shrilly to urge him onwards and then surges ahead once again. For Lowell, every step is a laborious hell; as each movement sends one foot sinking deeply into the soft snow, he is forced to pause, lean forward, drag the other foot out from behind him, and then gather his strength to repeat the whole draining process, but with Venus’s encouragement he somehow manages to press on. Finally, after what seems an age, Lowell stops suddenly as he thinks he sees something looming faintly through the snow ahead of him and then, a few steps further on, his chest flutters with excitement as he begins to make out more definitely the outline of a small building ahead. As he draws nearer he hears another eager bark and, squinting, he sees Venus leaping up and down excitedly outside of the door to what he can now see is a small wooden lodge. Falling forward with exhaustion, he grips hold of the door handle, lets out a silent prayer, twists his hand and exhales with relief as the door flies open and he staggers forward and then falls gratefully onto the hard wooden floor, laughing with delight and relief as Venus leapt over and buries her head snugly into his chest.
If Lowell had been happy to get in from the cold, within a few minutes he is in raptures, as his eyes adjust to the gloom of the cabin and he makes out the interior it is clear that they have hit the jackpot. Evidently, it had once been a winter shelter for outdoor workers of some sort, most likely employees of the parks department, and it is immediately evident that he and Venus are the first to have visited the building since the outbreak; an amazingly rare find these days. Looking around in mute awe, Lowell finds everything that they could possibly desire and more; a wood burner with plenty of fuel piled high one in corner, decent, thick winter clothing hanging on hooks by the door, two rifles and ammunition in a gun rack on another wall, two full canisters of diesel, and, last but by no means least, a trunk filled half full of emergency rations, canned food, and packets of freeze-dried coffee. This unexpected bonanza leaves Lowell in a decidedly strange state of mind. In the space of just over a day, he has been forced to deal with so much. The idea that Walter is deserving of his compassion, and the opportunity to find redemption through the protection of his daughter is surprisingly easy for Lowell to adjust to, but the idea that he himself is worthy of the same is still beyond him.
He sees now that he has betrayed Beth - abused her memory by endowing it with a pointless narrative of revenge and fantastical vengeance. On top of this, he had then come closer to death than at any point in his life, and the sudden juxtaposition of all of that horror with his newfound comfort is almost too much for him to take, too much for him to deal with in his condition, and so he makes no attempt to. Operating on autopilot, he starts a fire in the wood burner, helps himself to some thick galoshes, a sweater, gloves and hat from the supply of clothing, and then prepares a hearty meal of beans and hot dogs for himself and Venus from the selection in the trunk, the first hot meal he has eaten in weeks. Once they have eaten, he hangs his wet clothes and bedding out to dry by the fire, adds a few of the larger logs to keep it going long into the night, takes down the rest of the spare clothing and then prepares a snug cocoon on the floor. Lying down, he lifts the topmost blanket up, motions to Venus to join him, and then falls backwards, exhausted, with one arm draped protectively over her flank and sinks immediately into a deep, dreamless sleep.
For the next three days, they remain in the cabin, as the blizzard continues to rage relentlessly without. There are no windows to check on the weather, and each time that Lowell opens the door to see if the storm has abated he experiences the same complicated, mixed uncertainty as to what he wants to see when he does so. Lowell has lived with himself, and his deep hatred of Walter, for long enough – for far too long – to trust how he will react when he finally sees him again. He is scared, of himself, of Walter, and the chance that he might reject Lowell, or misinterpret his intentions, and also of the knowledge that he might just be too late. Already at least five members of the group have succumbed to the illness, and there can be no certainty that the others made it out in time.
On the fourth day though, Lowell opens the door in the morning to a still, pristinely white landscape. For the first time since they arrived, he is able to see more than six feet in front of the cabin, and he is able to see immediately how the cabin has managed to escape detection in all the years since the outbreak. A long, almost unbroken line of trees is visible twenty feet ahead that stretch away in the distance to east and west and, he assumes, mark the boundary between road and countryside. To anyone travelling on the road there would be no indication that the building was there at all. He marvels at the fact that Venus had managed to locate it at all in the midst of the terrible blizzard, let alone then retrace her steps to find Lowell and lead him back here. Looking down, he sees her standing vigilantly next to him, and feels an instant surge of pride. After three days of rest, warmth, and plentiful food, she is looking healthier than he has ever seen her. Her wound is as good as healed now, and any lingering vestiges of her previously pronounced limp are gone with it. Lowell can tell t
hat she is itching to move on, and indeed on several occasions during their stay in the hut he had opened the door for her to go out and relieve herself, only to see her instantly sprint off into the blinding snow and away into the distance. Each time she stayed out for hours before returning, eagerly scratching and barking at the door to announce her arrival. On two of those occasions he had gingerly opened the door, only for her to burst in past him and then race around the inside of the lodge triumphantly before sitting herself down with an excitable expression on her face, and a liberal covering of blood around her mouth that announced that she had had a successful hunt. When this happened Lowell was reminded that despite their close relationship and the ease with which she had settled into their cozy domesticity she was above all else a wild animal, and he would then recall the first time he had set eyes on her, as she had sunk her teeth into the flesh of a marmot and he had cowered in the undergrowth at the sight of such savagery.
The Darkness and Dogs Page 18