She wasn’t sure she should ask the next question, but she had to know: “Who’s Sandra?” she asked.
He turned to her and stared a long time. “What do you know about her? Why are you asking?”
“You yelled her name last night…in your sleep…more than once.”
“What did I say?”
“Most of it was incomprehensible.”
He turned away.
“I was just wondering who she is, that’s all.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
He didn’t answer.
Of course he wouldn’t answer. He had just killed three and possibly four men. The reasons why and the circumstances didn’t matter. Yeah, he had saved her, but for all she knew, it could all be because he was the craziest man in these hills and crazier than any of the Bradys.
He looked in her direction, again, but he was looking at Whoops. His preoccupation with her sister was another reason to leave.
He got more agitated than ever when she got up, laid Whoops on the floor, and began to pack the bag. He seemed like he wanted to do something but had become aimless. He opened and closed his hands several times and took deep breaths. She began to think he might force her to stay. She tried to remain calm.
She put some of the makeshift diapers, some peanut butter, and a loaf of homemade bread in the sack. She was surprised at how little she was going to be able to carry. They’d have to get a ride the first day or die.
He took something out of his jacket pocket and threw it at her. She picked it up. It was a small plastic bag. Inside were a butane lighter and some heavy twine.
“The string was soaked in paraffin,” he said. “It makes a good way to start a fire.”
She nodded and put the bag into the sack.
He went to one of the other rooms and returned with a sling. As he came out he slammed the door behind him and shook the A-frame.
“You can carry your baby in this,” he said.
She took it, put Whoops in it, and slung her up on her back.
“I’m ready,” she said.
His agitation heightened. She just wanted to get out the door.
Δ Δ Δ
The dog was outside waiting as they went out and he began hopping around in the new snow cover the moment he saw them. The falling snow was light, but the flakes were big and drifted down like angels in parachutes.
Zach put his skis on and looked at her to see if she was ready. She nodded.
They trekked through the woods. She wondered why he took a new path each time he left or returned.
He skied ahead while she carried Whoops and the dog seemed to find many things to investigate in the forest.
Again, she was surprised when they reached the road. But she was disheartened to see it was covered with a blanket of unblemished snow. There had been no traffic since the day before.
Zach listened, but with the snow muffling all the sounds, you wouldn’t have heard a tank until it rolled into sight.
Finally, he skied down onto the road and she followed.
“Okay,” he said. “Wait here. You’ll get a ride.”
“I know,” she said as she set the bag down in the snow.
“I want to thank you,” she said and she felt unexpectedly scared to be being set on the road this time.
He looked at her, reached in a pocket, took out his ski mask, and put it on.
He turned and skied back across the road.
“Your dog,” she yelled.
He stopped. The malamute stood in the road next to Danielle.
“What about your dog?” she asked.
“I told you, it’s not mine.” With that he disappeared into the woods.
The dog seemed uncertain. He paced back and forth for several seconds until he finally sat on his haunches, next to her, in the snow. He really was hers, now.
She looked up at the clouds and hoped the snow wouldn’t get heavier.
“That mean old man is gone, forever,” she confided to Whoops. But fear was setting in. No matter how much she disliked him, they’d been safe with him…so far.
The unbroken snow on the road didn’t bode well for them, and she knew it. It was deep enough to make walking uncomfortable. So she waited and hoped the traffic would come to her. But when her feet started to get cold, she knew she had to walk. So she did.
The dog prowled around the fringes of the forest as they headed south on the 101. On one of his trips back to her side she asked him, “Have you got a name?”
His ears perked up.
“What do they call you? Spot?…Rover?…Duke?…Doggy?…Stupid?…”
His ears perked up, again.
“Is that really it? Stupid?” She laughed. “So Stupid it is. Come on, Stupid.” And the three of them headed south on the 101.
Every now and then she stopped to look back. She figured the dog was likely to hear traffic before she did. Sometimes she’d think about the desperate straits she and her sister were cast into. She was free, but she was also lonelier than she’d ever been in her life.
She had to stop frequently to rest. The bag was heavy. Her sister was heavy. She’d look back and all she’d see behind her were their tracks—hers and the dog’s—and she’d feel even more depressed. Because Whoops fussed, she eventually took her out of the sling and carried her in her arms. It was less convenient, but they both felt closer this way.
After about an hour, the dog stopped and started barking menacingly. Something lurked in the trees.
She froze. She had no defense against animals or anything else. Panic rose in her throat. She hoped the dog could protect her and her sister.
When he came down out of the trees wearing that damned ski mask, she was relieved and angry with him at the same time. But she wasn’t going with him again. He was scaring her again.
“Get lost,” she said.
He crossed the road on his skis.
“What do you want? I don’t want you here,” she said. “Go home.”
Without a word, he wrested Whoops from her arms.
“No,” she yelled. “Give her back to me.”
When she tried to grab Whoops out of his arms, he pushed her down in the snow and started skiing away.
This was something he hadn’t done before. She started crying, again. She expected him to fade into the trees, and there was no way she’d catch up with him. Her sister would be gone forever. But he stopped. He was waiting on the other side.
She looked for a rock or something to pick up and throw at him, but everything was covered with snow. She grabbed a jar of peanut butter from the sack and threw it at him. He caught it one-handed. She threw a can of corned beef hash, but he’d dropped the jar and caught that, too.
“Give her back to me,” she screamed.
She wasn’t going to move, but he had Whoops and he started skiing away, again. She had to follow.
She grabbed the sack, picked up the peanut butter and corned beef hash they’d need on the road, and back through the woods they went.
“Give her back,” she kept calling, sometimes screaming.
Several times she fell trying to catch him.
And he’d stop occasionally to see her progress. But he stayed ahead of her.
“Keep up,” he commanded once.
“Yeah, if I had a pair of skis like you’ve got…” She couldn’t finish her sentence. She was too frustrated.
He stopped and looked back. “Do you know how to ski?”
“No,” she cried.
He shook his head and moved on.
All the way back to the cabin she cried. When they got there, he waited for her by the front door. He pushed the door open, stepped aside, and let her in first. He followed and, before taking off his winter gear he placed Whoops on the chair.
He heard something behind him and turned just in time to see Danielle coming at him with the fireplace poker in both hands. She swung hard and he managed to get his arm up but it glanced off his hand and caught him in the face.
“Don’t you ever take my sister from me again!” she screamed. “Do you hear me, you motherfucker?
“Don’t you…fuckin’ ever…take my sister…away from me again!” she yelled as she swung back and forth with a two-handed grip and, though stunned, he was out of range—until the wall prevented further retreat.
She wound up one more time, as if wielding a baseball bat, then lunged closer and murderously swung again. He ducked under it and it slipped out of her hands and crashed into a glass picture frame on the wall. Glass fell to the floor in a tingling crescendo. But she came at him swinging her fists and kicking with her knees.
He couldn’t believe her rage. With his right hand cupped he swung around and caught her on the side of the head and she fell to the floor. She lay on her back stunned for a moment.
He stepped away in horror. Blood was pouring out of the cut she’d opened up with the poker.
She started to move and got up on her knees holding her face in her hands. “You keep your miserable hands off my baby sister, do you understand?” She was crying again, and almost too weak to get up. “Don’t…you…ever…touch…her…again.”
“Why are you doing this?” he asked.
“Keep your hands off Whoops! I don’t ever want you to take her away from me again.”
“But…”
“She’s all I’ve got! Keep your hands off of her!”
“But I’m trying to help you.”
“You bastard, you’re throwing us out in the snow, that’s what you’re doing…and don’t get me wrong, we want to go. I don’t want to be in this miserable cabin with you. I hate you. My sister hates you. I should have shot you when I had the chance.”
He went to a mirror near the kitchen sink and looked at the gash. He grabbed a towel and used it to stanch the flow. When he looked back at the girl, she was sitting in the chair clutching the baby.
He was confused. “What happened to you back at that farm?” When he looked back at her, he saw she wasn’t going to answer. “What’d they do to you?”
“I don’t want to talk about those miserable cocksuckers,” she said decisively. “And you’re just like them.”
He turned back to the mirror and shrugged.
“She’s your sister?” he suddenly asked.
There was a long pause. “Yeah.
“Does it matter?” she asked when he said nothing.
“Should it?” he asked.
“We’ve got to get out of this madhouse,” she said. She was talking to Whoops, now, but she didn’t care if he heard.
He examined his cut in the mirror again as if he was still amazed it was there.
“I want to leave,” she said. “But you’re not taking us back to the road. We’re leaving alone. We’ll find our own way. I’m never coming back here.”
With that he approached her and shouted, “What are you going to do for your sister? You’re going to kill her out on that road, you cunt!”
“What?” she screamed. She put the baby down and ran at him.
He grabbed her arms as she tried to claw him.
“Don’t you be calling me a cunt, you fucking psycho!”
“What can you do for her?” he yelled.
“What can you do? She needs baby food. She can’t be eating all this shit. She needs better food!” she cried. “She needs diapers, decent clothes to keep warm. She’s going to die here.”
He flinched when she said that.
“And she needs to be away from you! I need to be away from you! Are you listening?” she screamed.
For a second it seemed as though he wasn’t sure what he was going to do. Then he abruptly released her arms and went to the middle of the room. He kicked the throw rug back.
He turned and pointed to the chair where Whoops lay, and commanded, “Sit down!”
She gladly went to the chair, picked Whoops up, and buried her face into her sister as she cried. He bent over and grabbed a large ring up from a recess in the floor. Pulling the ring he opened a trapdoor. Turning his back to the hole, he climbed down a ladder that led to a cellar below. He was down there for just a few seconds before he partially reemerged. He placed two boxes on the floor and, with one good shove, sent them both sliding toward her. He watched her for a few seconds, to make sure she stayed a respectable distance from the trapdoor, then descended again and returned with more.
When he was done, he closed the trapdoor, kicked the rug back into place, and crossed the room to her. He placed the other boxes on the floor next to the chair where she held Whoops and cried. Then he returned to the couch. He kept dabbing at the cut and examining the towel to see if the bleeding had stopped.
For a while she didn’t care what was in the boxes. But when she finally looked she saw: Baby food, jars of fruits, vegetables, and boxes of cereal. There was dry milk.
With shaking hands, she took a jar of pureed peaches and opened it. It popped when she broke the seal. She smelled it.
She leaped out of the chair with Whoops in her arms and got a spoon from one of the drawers. She returned to the chair and sat down again and started to feed her sister.
With the first spoonful of peaches, Whoops had a look of amazement on her face. A true ice age baby, she’d never tasted peaches before. She stared wide-eyed at Danielle as she shoveled the peaches into her mouth, and she helped to make room for more by greedily swallowing each spoonful. It was as if she’d been transported to a new planet, and she liked it.
“Why didn’t you tell me you had this stuff?” she asked accusingly.
“I forgot…there’s more down there. You can take all you can carry.”
Back to the road? She glared at him. He dragged her off the road and now he was going to drag her back? He was crazy.
She fed her sister until, suddenly, she stopped and tried some herself, but ate it so fast she started to choke.
She grabbed another jar and opened it. Some for the baby; some for her. Then she stopped. She started to feel guilty. She didn’t eat anymore; she just fed Whoops.
He watched them.
“Stop looking at me,” she said.
He kept staring until he got up and kicked the rug back again and opened the trapdoor once more. Back down he went down. When he reemerged, he approached her and handed her a fifteen-ounce can of cling peaches.
She stared at it in her hand and started shaking. She started crying again and couldn’t stop.
He went to a drawer near the sink and came back with a can opener.
Then he went back to the couch.
“When will you let me go back to the road?”
“When the snow stops.”
“Thank you.”
“Can you promise not to try to kill me between now and then?”
“Can you keep your hands off me and my sister?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, again…and we’ll be okay. Next time you take us out to the road, I want you to leave us there. Do you understand? We’ll make out.”
He didn’t reply. He was lost somewhere deep in his own thoughts. “I can’t save the world,” he suddenly said for what appeared to be no reason at all.
“God, you sound like my father,” she said derisively. “He said he couldn’t save the world, but now, if he’s still alive, he’s begging the world to save him.”
“It won’t.”
“I know it won’t.”
“Where is your family?” he asked.
“I don’t know. For all I know, they’re dead.”
“How did you wind up with those guys in the field? Did they pull you in off the road?”
She didn’t answer.
“Are you going to tell me? Did they pull you and your sister off the road?”
“What do you think?”
“What did they do to you at the ranch?”
“What do you think?” she screamed and Whoops flinched.
He didn’t respond.
“I have a question for you,” she said angrily and, putting
Whoops down on the chair, she got up.
He jumped up when she got up.
But she went to the drawer, opened it, took out the photo, and brought it to him.
“Why won’t you tell me who the woman and the kids that are in the picture are?”
“Put it back,” he said bitterly.
“Who’s the woman?” she asked, nodding toward the photograph.
Zach ignored her as if her question would go away, but neither she nor her question were going to go away.
“Who’s the woman?” she repeated.
“My wife.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s not here.”
“Those your kids?” she demanded.
He nodded.
“Where are they?”
“They’re with their mom.”
“Where’s she?
He didn’t answer.
“I thought you said you’re gay,” she said sarcastically.
“When I said it, you had a gun pointed at my head, remember? I thought it was the appropriate thing to say. Or do you think I’m as stupid as I look?”
“Are you going to go see your kids again?”
“No.”
“Don’t you miss them? Where are they now?”
He didn’t answer.
“Did she leave you?”
“Will you shut the hell up?” he said.
“I’m just asking. For all I know, you murdered them.”
She never saw the punch coming. It knocked her out.
Chapter 17
August 30
On the other side of the continent, a man stood at a window. Just four years earlier, such a day in late August would have been called “unseasonably cold.” But given the weather of late, it was actually a pretty nice day despite the patches of new snow that lay on the grounds. The sky above was so clear that the sun shown over the landscape sharp enough to hurt his eyes.
“Sir?” a voice deferentially asked. “They’re expecting a reply.”
The man at the window didn’t immediately respond. He knew what the man who had entered his office wanted.
The other man continued, “Hawaii just announced it has seceded. The military needs direction.”
An unsettling silence followed. Finally, the man at the window said “I’ve been kind of expecting this for the last year or so.”
Danielle Kidnapped: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Ice Age Page 18