by Неизвестный
She couldn’t stop until she got out of the pass, until she dropped into a valley with trees where she could build a fire. Without warmth, she would die if she stopped moving. How many miles had she walked up and down Ben’s hill the night before, trying to keep warm before she gave up and went back to the cabin? One—maybe two? And she hadn’t had a pack or snowshoes. But then, she’d had a choice of jail or death by exposure. Now, she didn’t even have that.
Kris didn’t notice when the ground started sloping away, the change was too slight when she crossed over the pass. She just trudged on. Every mile or two, she’d stop and dig her socks out of the shoepacks and pull them back up her legs; her feet were loose in the boots and the socks worked their way around her heel and bunched up at her toes. Her nose ran, a steady trickle of clear fluid which she wiped on the back of her mittens, until they were coated with an ice sheet of frozen snot, which she’d rub against her pants to scour off.
Maybe an hour, maybe two hours later, the parka zipped to the end of the hood now, her body too exhausted to warm itself even as she walked, the tip of a snowshoe stepped into silver light. Kris took several more steps before faltering to a stop. In front of her, through the tiny opening of her hood, the snow sparkled as if dusted with diamonds. She circled at the waist, moving the hood, and found a break in the mountains overlooking a valley; and floating over the distant horizon below her was the moon. Its light shone up the valley and into the pass, reflecting off the snow crystals and casting her shadow so far into the depths behind her that it merged with the night.
Bright and full, it felt, for a moment, like a friend who’d come to walk by her; to accompany her over the snow and through the darkness. But as she watched, the horizon bit into its lower edge, and she knew that it would leave her; that it shone for other reasons and not for her. Unbidden, the memory of Justin’s touch, of his finger on her cheek, suddenly came to her, and, like the moon, it lifted her for an instant, as if she weren’t alone, and then she remembered how she’d turned away from it and the feeling vanished. Cold, exhausted, uncertain of the miles she had yet to go, she dropped her head, lifted a foot, and continued on.
Hours later, Kris noticed that her snowshoes sank deeper with each step and that more snow tumbled on top of them before she lifted her foot to move it forward. She kept moving, too weary to turn and see how far she’d dropped out of the pass. After another mile, she walked through the leafless tips of willow bushes sticking out of the snow. She trudged on, her feet falling forward, helped by the steeper slope. She passed more brush, then a warped and barkless tree; and then scattered trees, all stunted, half buried in the snow, and she walked faster, trying to outrun her exhaustion.
The frozen stream began in a shallow, narrow chasm that she couldn’t get through. She hiked a ways up the side of the mountain, her snowshoes slipping on the slope, and paralleled the stream until the stream bottom below widened out. Standing in the small patches of level ground bordering the snow-covered stream were a few wind-twisted spruce; enough for firewood.
Too tired to be careful, she skidded down the slope until she reached the stream bottom. In the starlight, she found a tree whose lower limbs had shed the snow out from its trunk, making a deep well under it. She tugged at the buckle on the pack’s waist belt, but her fingers were too weak with cold to pull it open. Frantic with frustration, she tore at it with both hands, then gave up and walked into the tree, branches breaking against her face, and, hugging the skinny trunk, pressed the buckle against it and twisted her hips to snag it open. The full weight of the pack fell on her shoulders. She shrugged it off, letting it fall behind her in the snow.
Shaking now, she broke dead branches off the spruce, dropped them onto the pack, and then snowshoed to the surrounding trees for more. The snowshoe bindings were frozen; she knew she wouldn’t be able to get them off until she had warmed her hands. Moving fast, she scraped the snow out from around the tree with the snowshoes still on her feet and, kneeling awkwardly in them, built a fire. She’d put one of the lighters in an unzipped pocket so she could get to it with cold hands. She pulled it out, dropped the mitten, and sucked her thumb to warm it, counting to sixty, then took it out of her mouth and spun the wheel; it flamed.
And again she cursed Ringer. When she pushed the lighter under the pile of twigs, the flame curled up and seared her thumb. Ignoring the pain, she forced the flame under the kindling, feeling her skin blister, smelling, just before the spruce caught, burning flesh.
Wednesday, November 25
Barrett didn’t have a pistol to check, and when he approached the security post he tossed the package of slugs into a trash can.
So who screwed who last night?
The attendant took his boarding pass and he stepped down the jet way to the plane.
Had she manipulated him from the start? She couldn’t fake those juices; but if she came last night, she kept it to herself, as if it was war and she wasn’t going to give him anything.
He showed the steward his seat assignment and was pointed down the aisle.
She hadn’t let him on top, and he’d humored her, thinking he’d have her in cuffs in the morning and Lambale’s disappearance solved. Instead she had played him.
Got too cocky on that one, grunt.
He squeezed into the center seat; two big people surged over the armrests on either side of him. So he’d have to share his seat; his penance for buying a ticket at the last minute.
So she killed Lambale; she wouldn’t have run otherwise. He’d been operating on suspicions when he followed her north. He’d had no evidence: no weapon, no means, no body, and until she’d fired at him, he’d had nothing to write a warrant on. Now he had a charge: assault with a dangerous weapon, and it was the troopers’ problem to track her out of the bush. Better their budget than his, although it would have been fun to tag along since they wouldn’t take her seriously until she’d made fools of them once or twice.
The jet rolled down the taxiway, accelerated into the turn onto the runway, and powered into the dark sky. Barrett sat back, his arms forced into his lap by the riot of flesh on either side of him. If the guy in the window seat gets up to take a leak it’ll upset the plane’s trim.
It was impressive how she’d disappeared. They had flown the river at treetop down to Allakaket. It was possible she got there before they did, but no one in the village saw her come in. He’d talked to the VSPO and alerted the air services, warning them to notify the troopers if she tried to book a flight out. He’d also found the kid who’d taken her up river and told him to let the VSPO know if she contacted him. There was no possibility that Kris could get into or out of Allakaket without Barrett finding out about it.
But something nagged him. Like gristle stuck between his teeth. It nagged him all the way to Juneau, and it wasn’t until the plane made its dogleg turn over Spuhn Island that he admitted it to himself. Kris Gabriel wasn’t going to walk into any trap. She’d outsmarted him every step of the way.
And she’d do it again.
__________
She was shivering. Most of the night she’d only been able to doze, waking every twenty or thirty minutes in a chilly stupor, to shift a hip, an elbow, or a foot that the cold had gripped through the sleeping bag. Where she touched the ground she was always cold, and, for most of the night, she’d slept shivering on her forearms and knees, her forehead cradled in her hands. The little energy she’d put back into her body before collapsing the night before had leaked into the darkness and now her body no longer had the strength to warm the bag.
She needed hot water and hot food and the longer she waited, the colder she would get and the harder it would be to make her hands and feet work building the fire. But the semi-cold inside the bag was heaven to the bone-crunching cold on the other side of it and she coiled into a knot, fighting the warning voice in her head, until blindly, without thinking, she pulled down the zipper and rolled out. She groped in the tangled fabric for her boots, which she’d slept with
so they wouldn’t freeze, and pushed her feet into them, lacing them quickly, her fingers already numbing.
It was darker than she’d remembered it being coming over the pass and she couldn’t make out the branches of the tree she’d slept under. She hunted with her feet for the path through the snow to the tree where she’d cooked dinner the night before and hurried over to it. Working quickly, she found the kindling and the pile of sticks she’d saved for the morning, started a fire, and stuffed her cup with snow. While the snow melted, she collected another armful of wood and then organized the Ziplocs of instant coffee, oatmeal, and powdered milk. The raisins were gone; she’d finished them crossing the pass. The honey was as hard as concrete and Kris put the plastic container in the heating water to thaw.
The sky was starting to gray when she repacked the pack and put out the fire. Both water bottles were full and hot, the one inside her parka flooding it with warmth. The oatmeal felt solid and bulky in her stomach, and the sky was clouding over. Clouds meant it would warm up and most likely snow, which would make it harder going, but would cover her tracks over the pass.
The little stream she’d camped by entered the Sixtymile after an hour’s snowshoe. It was a difficult hour, her muscles were stiff and crippling sore, her scorched thumb throbbed, and the tendons up the back of her ankles burned like they were on fire. The Sixtymile was narrower than the Mettenpherg and it fell faster. Kris often had to climb around rocks and hike up the hillside to circle around sections of the stream squeezed by rocky walls. There were many overflows; slushy water invisibly sandwiched between the river ice and the snow. Twice water welled up between the lacings of her snowshoes. She’d jumped backwards, but the slush froze immediately to the frame and rawhide lacings, doubling their weight. No amount of hacking with Ringer’s knife would get all the ice off and she just had to lift the extra load.
But she made good time. Her muscles warmed, and the soreness she’d awakened with, eased, the snowshoes worked better for her, and she was going downstream, and she knew she would survive. Even if it were eight days to Bettles, she’d get there. She looked up from her feet more frequently as she walked, watching the peaks of the mountains to the north shine in the light of the sun, which was hidden behind the ridge on her right, and she scanned the trees on either side of the stream hoping to spot Ezekiel’s cabin. If he had food cached there, she could burrow in for a couple of weeks until Barrett figured she was dead. All she needed was snow to cover her tracks and no one would suspect that she’d hiked across the pass.
The valley widened and the frozen surface of the stream smoothed, making the walking easier. Overhead, the clouds thickened and the temperature warmed, and Kris opened her parka. Her mind began to clear, but as it relaxed, the screams and shots of the night down at Thane crept in. Barrett was wrong about the rape; Lambale had denied everything else, but not the rape.
But if not him, who’d killed Evie?
It was in the afternoon, the invisible winter sun no longer shone on the peaks, when she heard the airplane. Its drone snuck up on her, inserting itself into her world before she was aware of it. Without thinking, without turning to look, she picked her feet up high and ran as fast as she could toward the trees, the pack beating hard against her back. She was in them when the plane banked in a sudden burst of noise around the curve in the stream behind her and flew past at the treetops.
She flattened herself against a tree and listened to the engine. It faded, then grew again. Looking up through the trees, she watched it approach. It found the spot where Kris had cut for the woods and began circling. The center of its circle drifted toward her as it followed her tracks; it was a trooper plane; AST was written on the fuselage.
The woods were too thin and the branches tucked too close to the trunks to hide her. And what the hell, who else would be out on the river at this time of year? She broke cover and hiked back to the stream. It was too narrow and rock-strewn for the plane to land; with any luck it would have to land on the John, and by the time she reached the larger river, it would be dark. She paid no attention to it, not even looking up, and kept moving downstream.
The plane circled overhead several more times and then headed off toward the John. Kris stopped to listen. Its drone diminished steadily, then rose in pitch and intensity and suddenly went silent. It had landed. Kris surveyed the trees. She couldn’t hide; they’d just follow her tracks. And with the pack, she couldn’t outrun them. If she went back upstream, all she had to do was stay in front of them until dark; it wasn’t likely that they were set up for a night chase through the bush.
But Kris wasn’t going back. It’d taken too much to get this far, and she wasn’t going to do it twice. She cut into the woods, hiking away from the river until the ground began to rise and the trees stopped; this far north, trees only grew in the stream bottoms; the mountainsides were bare. At the edge of the trees, she turned and paralleled the stream, hiking toward the John. It wasn’t easy walking. The snow was uneven and the tips of her snowshoes caught branches and brush buried in the snow. The Sixtymile was about a hundred feet away, but the woods were so thin, she could see big patches of it through the trees.
After she’d walked for half an hour, she slowed and moved more cautiously, dodging from tree to tree only when she was certain no one was watching. It was another fifteen minutes before she saw the first trooper, pressed close to the far bank, searching the trees methodically every few steps he took. He wore a blue parka, with the hood up, mittens that reached to his elbows and white bunny boots lashed into metal snowshoes. In one hand, he held a rifle.
She was being hunted.
She scooped out a hole in the snow and buried her pack. Then, crawling under a tree with branches low to the snow, she dug out a second hole and squatted in it. A few minutes later another trooper, with only his head showing above the bank, crept past on her side of the stream. He moved cautiously, always keeping in cover. Every few steps, he searched the trees, scanning carefully. He didn’t see Kris. She waited five minutes, in case more were following, before slinging the pack onto her shoulders, and, as silently as she could, continuing downstream through the uneven snow. The valley began to widen and she left the edge of the trees, cutting closer to the stream to keep it in sight; she didn’t want to miss the plane.
Had they reached the spot where she’d cut into the woods yet? If they guessed what she was going to do, they’d be back this way fast. Slowly, she crept to the bank and looked upstream. Two lines of snowshoe prints followed each bank until they disappeared around a bend. No one was in sight. Turning downstream, Kris saw the plane. It pointed away from her at the end of a parallel set of ski tracks. There was no movement; it looked deserted, but if anyone were there, they’d be inside and out of sight.
Moving fast, Kris slid down the bank and jogged awkwardly downstream, picking up the plane’s tracks since she could move faster on the packed snow. Ten feet from its tail, she dropped her pack and snuck up along the left side. She stood still, listening. Cooling metal tinked, it was the only sound. Pressing against the side of the fuselage, delicately stepping over each snowshoe so she wouldn’t trip, she crept forward to the side window. Its bottom edge was above her head. She crouched below and looked up. Nothing. She rose slowly, keeping her eyes fastened on the inside of the cabin. Still nothing. When she stood on her tiptoes, she still could not see fully into the cabin; someone could be slumped over sleeping.
Screw it. She reached up to the handle and threw the door open, tensed to run. The plane was empty. She pulled herself sideways into the pilot’s seat, her feet dangled outside, the snowshoes knocking against the hull. She scanned the instrument panel. What did she need to do to keep this thing from flying? The panel looked similar to Jen’s, though not as new, and it amazed her there were so many gauges and buttons.
“Holy shit,” she spoke out loud. The keys were in the ignition switch.
She pulled them out and wrapped her mitten around them. If she dropped them in the sno
w they’d never find them. She hesitated. It couldn’t be that easy; they probably had a spare set or could hot-wire it or something. While she searched again for a way to disable the plane, an idea bloomed in her head. What did it take to drive one of these things? Just to move it. She had the key in her hand, the steering wheel in front of her, and the throttle in the center of the panel was even labeled.
Excitement grew in her.
She dropped out of the plane, ran back for her pack, dragged it through the snow, and shoved it behind the pilot’s seat. Then she unhooked the bungees holding the engine cover to the wing struts, ripped the Velcro closures open, pulling the cover off the cowling, and threw it into the cabin. She peeled off her mittens and knelt to unfasten the snowshoes. For a second she hesitated. If this didn’t work, they’d grab her before she could get the shoes back on and out of there. “It’s do or die, girl,” she whispered. She unbuckled the lashings and pushed the snowshoes behind the seat. Before climbing into the plane, she ducked her head under the wing and looked back upstream. No sign of them yet, but they’d be on her trail in the woods by now, they knew which direction she was headed and they might be getting worried. She hauled herself in and slammed the door.
The ignition lock had “Left,” “Off,” “Right” and “Both” written around it. It made no sense; the plane had only one engine. She pushed the key in and twisted it to the “Both” setting. Two green lights blinked on. Nothing else happened. Maybe it needed gas. She turned the key to “Off” and pulled the throttle out a few inches. She turned the key to “Both” then to “Right” and then to “Left.” Nothing.