The Snow Swept Trilogy

by Derrick Hibbard

  He rolled Sam back onto his belly and patted him on the head.

  "Hang in there buddy," he said.

  Voices carried over from the other side of the bridge. Ryan jumped to his feet, his entire body shaking from the cold, and stumbled as fast as he could through the snow and back to the road.

  One ambulance was parked by his overturned car, paramedics peering inside with several large flashlights. They were talking, but Ryan couldn't hear what they were saying. He called to them.

  "Hey!"

  They turned, surprised.

  "You the driver?" one of the medics asked. He was tall and muscular, his chest one that would give a barrel a run for its money.

  "Yeah," Ryan said. "Listen—"

  "Let me check you out," the medic said, cutting him off with a curt wave of his hand. The medic crossed the road quickly to Ryan, and immediately began feeling along his neck and spine and checking the rest of his body.

  "Listen, man," Ryan said, out of breath. "My partner's alive, over there in the snow. He was thrown from the car."

  "Let's take care of you first, man," the medic said. "You should not be up walking around."

  The medic prodded Ryan, feeling for broken bones, and then returned his attention to the neck and spine.

  "Any soreness there?" the medic asked, feeling along the base of Ryan's skull.

  "Yeah, a little." Ryan shrugged the man's fingers away.

  "We had this guy once, driver like you, and he was ejected like your friend over there. This guy gets up and walks around, talking to the first responders and the other players, and he keeps saying his neck is real sore. He keeps rubbin' the back of his head, and when he bends to sit down, he just drops dead."

  "Yeah?" Ryan asked.

  "Yeah, just like that." The medic pulled out a small flashlight and shone the light into Ryan's eyes. "See, the guy's neck was broken, just snapped right in two, but the spinal cord hadn't been severed yet. So he's up walkin' around with a broken neck, and when he leans down, the weight of his head separates the spine along the break, and cuts the spinal cord right there and wham bam, thank you ma'am, he's a goner."

  "Well, I don't think my neck's broken," Ryan said.

  "Well, you're luckier than the other driver." The medic nodded to the other car, Team Orange, and Ryan felt a sinking in his stomach despite the crippling cold. As much as he loved the game, he hated it when people died.

  "Dead?"

  "Engine block came through the steering column and crushed his lungs. Passenger is okay, physically, but he's a mess. Gonna have a whole basket full of nightmares when this all settles down. But, man, what happened out here?"

  "Collateral," Ryan said, already walking over the bridge. Flashing red and white lights could be seen over the summit, and Ryan wondered if had known the driver. He coughed and felt sick to his stomach. His foot slipped on the black ice as he cleared the bridge and saw what was left of the other car below. Except for the front seating area, the car was demolished. Bits and pieces of metal and engine and glass were strewn out over the ice, currently being covered with snow. Several men were gathering the pieces in large orange bags, and several others were hooking a winch to the largest pieces to pull them up onto the flatbed truck.

  Paramedics milled around two gurneys that lay on the ground. On one, a white sheet had been pulled over the body, with just the heels of the guy's feet sticking out the bottom. Without seeing the face, he knew who the driver was, and the feeling that he was going to throw up swelled. The dead driver's name was Brian Frank, a tall guy with straight blond hair in his twenties. He was from Pennsylvania, if Ryan remembered right, and they'd driven twice together with the Lit Dragons. Ryan wondered if he'd ever broken up with and left the girl he'd been complaining about during their last drive, and for her sake, he hoped so.

  "You the driver of Team Blue?"

  Ryan turned and saw a clean-cut man in a suit and tie. He had a black overcoat pulled around his shoulders, and his face was frozen in a grimace.

  "Yeah."

  "You got it?" the man asked, holding out his hand.

  "Wired?" Ryan said, reaching into his pocket. "All of it?"

  "Of course."

  "And you'll take care of Brian's family. The other driver."

  "Of course."

  Ryan pulled out the flash drive and placed it in the man's hand. As he did, he noticed the stains of red that covered his skin, a dramatic contrast with the other man's designer gloves with rabbit fur linings.

  "And take care of my partner." Ryan motioned with his head back to the other side of the bridge.

  The man nodded as a black town car pulled up. The driver got out of the car and opened the door for Ryan, who slid onto the plush leather seats. There was a change of clothes in the center of the seat with a white envelope balanced on top. The clothes would fit perfectly, as they always did, and the envelope contained a confirmation that the money had been wired to his account.

  He reached into the seatback pocket and pulled out a thick magazine—Esquire—and started thumbing through the pages absently. He would change out of his formal wear in a moment, once his heart had slowed and his freezing limbs had warmed.

  The car pulled through the wreckage and flashing lights, snow flakes falling, though not as hard and fast as before.

  "Where to?" the driver asked, a slight New England accent in his voice.

  "Airport."

  "Headed home?"

  Ryan nodded.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The snow was swirling as Paul trudged down the sidewalk to the entrance of the building where he worked. His feet and toes were wet, and he shivered as he walked, but he was not aware of the cold. As he walked through the drifts of snow on the sidewalk, squinting ahead to keep the frozen bits of water from his eyes, he thought about the woman who'd not shown up that evening.

  She had called him. Not just once, but several times. Even after the first time they had talked, he'd known that she was not calling a random reporter, but that she'd sought him out specifically. The only reason that he could think of as to why she would seek him out was because of the series of articles he'd written about the disaster in Miami. Besides a few outspoken (and possibly insane) bloggers who'd latched onto his ideas, he was the only person that he knew of who hadn't accepted the official response to the explosion and building collapse. It was disturbing, of course, that of all the reporters who'd seen the destruction, some as seasoned as himself, or more so, he was the only one who'd seen something that could not have been an accident.

  But there was no bomb, the other journalists had cried, no incendiary device, and no evidence to speak of. Paul had to admit that he was standing on shaky ground, but at the same time, he'd seen the destruction. The wrecked buildings. The bodies.

  "Hey, watch your step man!" some guy said, and Paul jerked from the daze he was walking in and dodged a man who was hiking through the snow in the opposite direction.

  "Sorry," Paul muttered and nodded toward the man, who carried on with his head burrowed deep into his scarf and coat, his hands shoved deep into his coat. They passed, and Paul returned almost instantly to his dazed thoughts.

  The woman had called him because of what he'd written. She wasn't the first person who'd called him, although others usually wanted to join their ideas into the typical grand conspiracy that the government had been responsible, and was covering its tracks. Like JFK, like 9/11, like Benghazi. The most interesting conspiracy was passed along by one of those crazy bloggers who claimed he'd hacked the computers of a secret organization who called themselves Il Contionum. When Paul had questioned the blogger about what this supposedly secret organization did, the blogger had quickly hung up the phone, and then later sent an email with instructions on how to log into a secure VPN server. Of course, Paul had never logged on. The blogger was just one in a mass of nuts who were chopping at the bit for any way to see conspiracy in the grand scheme of things. Paul was not one of them, and neither was this woman
.

  In fact, each time the woman had called, it had seemed as though she was trying to determine if Paul was a conspiracy nut, or if his ideas were grounded in logic and facts. The logic was there, and what facts he'd managed to assemble over the years were there too, just no evidence. Nothing to prove that the attack in Miami had indeed been an attack.

  Finally, during their last discussion on the telephone, the woman had promised the final piece to the puzzle. She had set up the meeting, giving him the specific bus route and time.

  Then why didn't she show up? The questioned gnawed at his brain as he mulled the facts and his history with the woman, repeatedly going over every word that he could remember. Something must have happened to her, of that he was sure.

  Paul arrived at the entrance to the building where he worked and finally started to feel the cold. He pushed through the revolving doors and nodded at the front desk security guard. The guard looked half asleep, an old black and white monster movie playing on the TV behind his desk.

  Paul rode alone in the elevator to the third floor, which was leased entirely by the Gazette. The receptionist was gone for the day, but a few night owls still sat at their desks, typing away at articles due the next morning. No one noticed him as he walked through the large open room toward his office in the back.

  The lights in his office were turned off, and he didn't bother turning them on when he stepped into the room and sat heavily on the old couch that ran along the wall opposite his desk. Paul wanted a couple shots from the bottle of Wild Turkey he kept in his desk, but the moment he sat on the couch, exhaustion set in. He didn't feel like moving at all, just sitting there in the soft, worn cushions and going to sleep.

  "Paul?" He looked toward the door and saw his assistant. He started to smile, but it turned into a yawn.

  "Tired, eh?" Dennis asked as he came into the room and sat on a chair near the couch.

  "Yeah," Paul said. He couldn't mask the disappointment in his voice. "You should go on home, Dennis."

  "I was planning to, just didn't expect to see you here."

  Paul shrugged, and decided he did have enough energy for a shot of whiskey after all. He got up from the couch and pulled two glasses and a bottle from the drawer, setting them on the desk. He looked up at Dennis, who nodded.

  "Just a little."

  "You got it, pardner," Paul said and filled both glasses nearly halfway.

  "Maybe she'll call tomorrow, let us know what happened tonight." Dennis took the offered glass from Paul.

  "No, I think something happened tonight." Paul sipped, enjoying the warmth that cut against the winter chill. "Something permanent, I think."

  "Like she's dead?"

  "Not necessarily. She was always so afraid of being caught, worried that someone would find out that she'd talked to me, but I think she was a tad bit paranoid. I've decided that anyway."

  Paul took another drink, gulping this time, and it burned hard.

  "You decided?"

  "Yeah, I don't think she was being watched, or followed, or whatever she thought. But I do think that she's done with us. Our contact set up the meeting, and that was after some serious vetting on her part. She wanted to be sure of something before she handed over any information. But the point is, she did make sure before she set up the meeting. She should have been there, and I can think of only a few things that would have stopped her from getting on that bus."

  "So if not dead, then what?"

  "Maybe someone stopped her," Paul said slowly, then took another sip of the whiskey. "She was intensely paranoid, and if her paranoia had any basis in reality, that is a definite possibility."

  "But not what you think," Dennis said.

  "No," Paul said, "her paranoia did play a part, I'm sure. I think she got scared. At the last minute, she decided that she wasn't ready to hand over the information, or that her vetting process was not as thorough as it should have been."

  "Okay, so what do we do?" Dennis took a small drink from his glass and scowled at the taste. He set the glass aside, apparently done with the drink.

  "All we can do is wait."

  "Waiting sucks," Dennis said. He stood up and set the glass of whiskey on Paul's desk.

  "I'm going to get going," he said. "Heather was pissed a couple of hours ago, but I'm sure she's fallen asleep by now, so it's probably safe to go home."

  "Tell her I'm sorry I kept you here," Paul said, and then, after a few seconds, he added, "I don't know how much longer we—I—can deal with this story."

  "We just wait," Dennis said. "Something will come along."

  Paul nodded but didn't respond, letting his office fall silent as Dennis returned to his desk. Somewhere nearby, another night owl was typing furiously at a keyboard, but otherwise, there wasn't any noise inside the office space or out on the quiet city street.

  Paul lifted the glass to his nose and inhaled the woody fumes of the drink before taking another sip. He savored the burn.

  Chapter Eighteen

  They were nearly back to the city, and with each second that passed, the crowds grew closer, and with the crowds, the ability to become invisible. She tried to swallow, but her throat felt like it was lined with cotton and sand. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and tried to calm her thudding heart, tried to regain her composure. No matter what she tried, the panic seemed to stay, pulsing under the surface.

  She tried to concentrate on keeping her mind in the present, tried desperately to keep it from sliding back into the terror of the previous hours. Tears threatened to spill down her cheeks as she realized that there was no going back to the way it was—that she was on a trajectory that couldn’t be stopped, and it would only lead further and further from the life she’d known and loved.

  Maybe they would just forget about her, let her live her life. But she knew that they would never forget, and would never forgive what she’d done. They were hunting her, and they knew she was alive, and they would never stop.

  As if in chorus with her thoughts, a flash of a car’s headlight swept through the bus. Mae turned toward the back window and saw a small hatchback following the bus too closely. She leaned forward, trying to make out who was driving, but the snow was coming down to hard. She did see that the driver wasn’t alone, and that at least two others were in the car, their dark forms large and hulking.

  Mae sank lower in the seat as the car slowed and pulled in close behind the bus.

  “Ah, Miss?” Nick gazed up at her in his rearview mirror. “You see that car back there?”

  “Yeah, I see it,” she said. Up ahead, there was a sign for the Chicago O’Hare International Airport. She stood up and walked to the front of the bus.

  “Can you turn off up there?”

  “The airport?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  He hesitated, fidgeting in his seat. “Listen, Ms. Edwards, I know you’ve got something going on that I can’t understand, and I’m fine with that. But we’re being followed and I recommend that you go to the police."

  “If they catch me, I’ll be dead,” she said, “and I don’t trust the police—especially not in this city.”

  “Well, I guess I can see that,” he said and flexed his fingers. He turned the steering wheel and the bus turned off on the exit that led to the airport.

  “Alls I’m sayin’ is that they’re right behind us, and if you get off the bus, they’re going to know where you are and they goin’ getch ya.”

  “I know, but I think I can blend in enough with the people in the airport, and get out of here.”

  Nick hesitated for a moment, thinking about all the crazies that came out at night in the city. He opened his mouth to say something, but hesitated. He'd been driving the bus for more than a decade now, and he'd seen his fair share of lunatics on the streets.

  “You gotta be careful out there, Ms. Mae,” Nick said, breaking the silence. His voice was soft and far away. “There are lots of bad people out there, just waiting to get a bite outta you.” />
  “I’ll be careful,” Mae said, and made her voice as sincere as possible. Nick meant well, but couldn’t know the full extent of the mess he’d driven into that night. Mae just prayed that it would end without the driver getting hurt.

  They continued in silence for a few moments. Mae looked over her shoulder and saw the car still there, following at a safe distance. She leaned her forehead against the window and watched the street lamps drift by and the snowflakes flutter past the windows like tiny tufts of silk. The cold glass of the window misted with each breath, and she remembered drawing pictures or messages in those misted portions of windows when she was a child.

  She looked up at Nick and saw his kind eyes studying her in the rear view mirror. She had to tell him something, that much she knew. He'd risked his life for her, and he deserved to know something. But aside from all that, if he was ever questioned, she wanted the picture that he had of her in his mind to be that of the helpless victim. No doubt he already saw her as the victim, but she needed it cemented there, so when the question inevitably came, he would not falter in his story.

  She closed her eyes and imagined that time before, like a fairy tale of places and people far away, where memories are light and sweet and airy, and then she spoke, her voice quiet and sad. Exactly how she wanted to sound.

  “My dad was a wonderful father, and he really loved my mom and me. He was always there for my school plays, for the stupid graduations from each grade in elementary school. When I was little, he would always come home for dinner. He would tell me and Mom jokes around the dinner table, or stories about what happened at his work that day, and we were the perfect picture of a happy family. At night, he would sit in his special chair beside my bed and read stories that he’d loved as a kid. He would read a couple of chapters, and I would beg him to read more. Always, even when he was tired, he would read that extra chapter. That was just like him, to keep reading even when he was tired.”