The Snow Swept Trilogy

by Derrick Hibbard

  She felt an explosion of pain at the same time that she heard a cracking of bone. She stumbled, but kept her balance, lunging for the door. She pulled the handle and swung it open, crashing into a security guard who was blocking the doorway.

  The woman was big, not nearly as big as the man, though she had some meat on her. The guard’s eyes widened when she saw Gerti, and her mouth gaped in surprise. Gerti fell forward into the woman’s arms, screaming and crying hysterically. The woman made no effort to hold onto Gerti, and even tried to back away from her, as if she were a crazy woman.

  “He’s going to kill me; we’ve got to get out of here!” Gerti screamed.

  The security guard pushed Gerti back into the room and drew her gun, pointing it at the big man, who was standing by the table and wiping a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. He was breathing heavily, his large chest and shoulders rising slowly with each breath. His eyes fell on the woman’s name badge, which read “Lt. White.”

  “Stop right there!” Lt. White yelled, her service weapon in both hands and trained on the man’s chest. Her eyes darted from the big man to Gerti, and then back again, taking in the situation.

  Oskar sighed as if bored by the whole thing. He set the needle on the table and considered the situation. It was then that he noticed the blood on his shirt. He touched crimson area gingerly and shook his head, as if annoyed.

  “Guess the easy way is out of the question,” he said, sounding disappointed. “She’ll have bruises now, and those will have to be explained. Which is good, because I wasn’t much looking forward to the clean and heroic end that I was ordered to provide for Ms. Pettingale.”

  Gerti backed away from the man who'd tried to kill her. She couldn't stop thinking about the feel of his hands in her hair, and wondered why on earth she’d let it go on for so long. Gerti’s whole body shook as the seconds passed, her heart pounding in her ears.

  The woman stood silently for several more seconds and then lowered her gun, pushing the safety switch to the “on” position. She whistled as she returned the gun to the holster on her hip, clipping the small leather strap over the handle so it would stay in place. Gerti watched this with disbelief and rising fear, praying once again that it was all a dream.

  “Whew-ee, man, you guys scared the livin’ daylights outta me,” she said, her voice loud and obnoxious. The man opened the tiny metal canister and replaced the needle he’d been about to stick into Gerti’s neck.

  “So, what are we—” Lt. White said. She nodded toward the growing splotch of red on his chest and said, “what happened to you? She do this?”

  “I was shot,” he grumbled as he removed another, smaller syringe from inside his jacket.

  “Are you kidding me? How are you up and around?”

  “For one, the bullet passed right through.” He held up the syringe before sticking it in his arm. “And then there’s epinephrine.”

  “I don’t care what ya’ll shooting up in your veins, you need to get off your feet and rest.”

  Oskar cringed at the woman’s loud accent, visibly annoyed.

  “Please stop talking,” Oskar said, his voice lowered. “Any credibility you have as a security guard dies the moment you open your mouth, so please stop talking. Where they find you people, I’ll never know.”

  Gerti’s heart sank as the security guard obeyed him. She felt the blood and built-up adrenaline rush from her face and limbs, and could feel despair creeping in as the realization set.

  “As I said before, the easy way out of this situation is now out of the question.”

  He pulled a gun from a holster at the small of his back and fired two shots into Lt. White. Gerti screamed, sliding up the wall and back into a standing position. Her hands were shaking, her face white. The sound of the gunshots and then Gerti’s screams was deafening in the small room, but even then Oskar didn’t think it would draw anyone’s attention. They were underneath the airport, and with all the commotion topside, no one would be paying attention.

  Gerti watched the man cross the room to the fallen security guard. He pulled a pair of latex gloves from a small leather compartment on Lt. White’s belt and pulled one of the gloves onto his right hand. He took hold of her gun and put it in Lt. White’s hand, aiming the barrel at Gerti.

  “No …” Gerti said, but the gunshot cut off any other sound.

  He watched her fall to the floor with much the same fascination that he had when marveling at the cold, dry air that parched his lips. Gerti Pettingale, so alive the moment before, but weak and unwilling to survive.

  Oskar stood and pulled his phone from his front pocket. He found the correct app on the touch screen and waited a few seconds for it to load while he knelt beside Gerti’s lifeless body. Once the software was ready for input, he took Gerti’s hand and was about to place her four fingers on the screen, when he paused. Blood dripped from the middle two fingers. He sighed and removed a handkerchief from his coat pocket, which he used to clean the blood as best he could. He put the handkerchief back in his pocket and placed her four fingers on the screen of his phone. A green grid lit the screen for several seconds, capturing her prints. He dropped her hand and punched a few keys buttons. There was a soft beeping sound and the word “Transmitting …” appeared on the screen. He dialed a telephone number and held the phone to his ear. He heard a connecting click and began speaking without waiting for a greeting.

  “Transmitting prints now. Assign the prints to the Morales shooting earlier this evening. Subject is dead, along with a field tech, a Lt. White. Subject was travelling abroad, not currently married. Establish a story about a possible drug connection in Europe and leak it to the media.”

  “Lt. White is dead?” the man on the other end sounded young. “She was assigned as backup.”

  “She’s dead because too many people are involved,” Oskar said. “Run the story of the police shooting tonight and direct all attention away from the escapee.”

  “Did you get any leads regarding her whereabouts?”

  “We know she used Gerti Pettingale’s name to purchase the tickets. If you run a cross check on the passengers who departed, we’ll find her. Doesn’t matter how many tickets she bought, she could only use one.”

  “I’ll run the search now, and it should only take a few moments, if you’d like to wait.”

  Oskar did not respond, only stood and stepped over Lt. White to leave the room. He thought briefly about any fingerprints that he’d left behind, but his fingerprints would yield nothing in an investigation. He was a ghost. Anonymous.

  “We have a Gertrude Pettingale who departed on Flight 191 to Hartford, Connecticut.”

  “That’s her. Has her plane landed?” Oskar turned down a side hall and used an access card to pass through a set of heavy doors marked “Security Personnel Only.”

  “Lands in twenty minutes.”

  “Send a bulletin to that airplane only, have them check passports and tickets before they land. She’ll use her stolen identity, of course, and it will give her the false sense of security that her trail is cold. She’ll have no idea that we know exactly where she is.”

  “But sir, after landing, she can go anywhere.”

  “Not anywhere.” Oskar said. He couldn’t help but smile a little as he climbed into the security elevator that would take him topside to the airport. Just before the signal cut out from his phone, he finished.

  “She’s going home.”

  He put the phone into his pocket. He would follow Mae, but first he had some unfinished business.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Paper and ink, and tall trees towered over the forest floor, which was blanketed with fallen autumn leaves. The white and grey branches were almost bare but still had bunches of red and orange and yellow leaves. An occasional breeze would whip through the branches and rustle the leaves, causing some to float downward, while others clung stubbornly.

  The air was cold and biting, but not so cold that it smelled of snow, and it
had the spicy scent of smoke wafting from fireplaces not far off.

  He took her by the hand and together they walked along the winding trail through the trees and fallen leaves. Logs lay on the ground, and some jutted out over the pathway, with darkening green moss growing on the damp, dead wood. The smell was earthy and inviting, a comforting smell for a reason she couldn’t place.

  Mae remembered the sounds of their feet crossing through the leaves, the whisp, whisp, whisp as they walked, the crackle of autumn breeze through leaves and nearly bare branches, the trickling of a stream.

  Beneath those sounds of October, there was faint music. Mae turned toward the sound and listened. The music was unmistakable, but too soft and quiet to make out any melody. Yet it harmonized with the natural sounds, and the kaleidoscope of color all around.

  The colors were like a melting box of crayons. She looked up through the trees and saw the clear azure sky overhead, the crisp autumn blue. Thin tendrils of brilliant white clouds reached across the sky, and a raven lifted on a gust of wind and glided away.

  They came to a ridge that opened up over the valley, and as far she could see were rolling waves of mist and color.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said and he squeezed her hand. A small red leaf with tiny splotches of yellow lifted up off the forest floor. The leaf floated and stood in place several inches in the air before being swept away by the cool autumn breeze.

  “Do you think the others will be along soon?” she asked. They turned and saw the trail behind them empty. They could see several hundred meters behind them through the quiet trees and meadows.

  “I think we have a few moments,” he said and pulled her along the pathway. She took off running, kicking up black dirt and leaves in her wake, laughing. He ran after her, and when they got to the clearing, she turned and wrapped both arms around his neck. He leaned forward and kissed her gently on the lips. When he pulled away, she looked up at him with her big green eyes and smiled. They heard the sounds of laughter and talking as the rest of their group made their way to the trail. The oohs and aahs followed next, as the group stood on the ridge that overlooked the rolling hills.

  “We don’t have much time,” he whispered and kissed her again on the corner of her mouth. They tightened their embrace, not wanting the moment to end. Another leaf, this one a rusted orange color, lifted up in the windless air and fluttered. Three more leaves followed, like droplets of water trickling over the edge of a dried waterfall, but in this case, with the droplets falling up, rather than down. If the girl had been paying attention to the woods and the floating leaves, she would have smelled and recognized a faint electric odor to the air, like the static smell of air in a clothes dryer. But she didn’t notice, wouldn’t have noticed any smells but the smell of him and his face, and the taste of his kiss.

  As the kiss grew deeper and their embrace tighter, more leaves lifted and swirled, no longer fluttering and floating, but whirling around the couple in a warm cyclone. The soft music swelled in the distance as rocks and twigs lifted and trees swayed, but neither noticed anything but the taste of each other on their lips and the smell of her hair and the feel of his hands against the back of her neck, their bodies close. The trees creaked and groaned as the cyclone of swirling leaves and forest expanded outward for several meters, whirling through the branches and boulders. In the wooded canyon below, the thatches of fog and mist began to lift upward in droves, like rain falling to the sky.

  She pulled away first, looking up into his eyes and then snuggling into the crook of his shoulder. They stood and held each other until the trees and leaves began to fade and the smell of the cool autumn air and the blue sky melted into the past. The feeling of his embrace was the last to go, the tender touch of his lips on hers.

  And then she was in the dark, dank cabin in the woods, the dirty snow in drifts against the outside walls, the dead trees creaking and groaning in the brisk winter wind. The chair was leaning backward over the bathtub and she was choking, dying. The rope cut into her wrists as she struggled to get free.

  Then the gunshot, so loud and final, blasted through the cabin, and she was running through the forest. The crack of the ice underfoot, the freezing water. But he still followed—right behind her and breathing down her neck. She tried to get away, but his fingers grasped at her hair and pulled her to the ground. And then he was standing over her like a black specter.

  The grey wolf.

  He lifted his boot and placed it on her throat and she could feel the mud and dirt caked into its sole as he pressed harder and harder on her neck. She couldn’t breathe, and she struggled to get away, writhing beneath this man’s weight and choking for air.

  The expression on his face was wild and dirty, a thin hint of a smile on his lips as he pressed his boot down, down into her neck, the police officer named Morales.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Mae sat back in her chair with a gasp, waking from the memory dream with a start. She touched a painful line on the side of her face and felt the indent from where she’d been leaning against the window.

  His name was Adam, and she hadn't thought about him for a very long time, so she was surprised that her dreams had wandered back to him. Adam was the boy she'd first loved growing up, the boy who'd first held her hand, the first boy she'd kissed. She remembered that mountain ridge, overlooking October. The same butterflies she felt when their lips had touched, when she'd tasted and smelled him, fluttered now.

  His boot on her throat.

  The dream was tainted and dark. The feeling of first loves faded, replaced with the dark memories of that night.

  “You alright?” the guy sitting next to her asked. She looked over, startled to see someone there. When she’d fallen asleep, the plane was still almost completely empty and they’d been parked next to the airport. Now, she felt the faint vibrations of the airplane as it cut through the sky. The seats were filled with people reading, watching movies on their tiny screens, or sleeping. One of the men sleeping, his head leaned back against the seat and his mouth gaping, looked as though he'd just stepped out of a board meeting. His white shirt was clean and pressed, his tie was straight and perfectly dimpled, and he was still wearing his suit coat. The contrast between what he was wearing and his slack jaw caused Mae's eyes to linger a moment too long, and the guy sitting next to her chuckled.

  "He was drooling earlier, and talking in his sleep," the guy said. "If I'd known that you were so entertained by sleeping businessmen, I would have woken you up."

  Mae chuckled, but then realized that she may have been drooling herself. She instinctively touched the corners of her mouth and was dismayed to feel a bit of moisture there. She wiped at her cheek and neck, suddenly very embarrassed to be sitting next to this guy. He noticed her movements and laughed.

  "Don't worry, you didn't drool that much." He reached over and pulled a few strands of hair away from her cheek. "Looks like you did get a little in your hair though," he said and then whispered, "and I promise not to tell anyone what you told me while you were sleeping."

  She looked away and blushed. Mae probably should have been worried about anything she might have said in her sleep, even though she was pretty sure that the guy was joking, but she was more embarrassed by the drool than anything. She glanced back at the guy and saw that he was cute, maybe a little older than her, but cute nonetheless.

  “How long was I asleep?” Mae asked finally, after a few seconds. She ran her hand through her hair and rubbed at the sleep mark on her forehead.

  “Well, you were asleep when I got on, and I'd say that we're going to land pretty soon,” he said. "You must have been really tired, because the take off was a little rough, and they've been blaring on and on over the plane's PA system about the bad weather and how we need to be in our seats, blah, blah, blah."

  “Can I get you anything, Miss?” The steward stood in the aisle and smiled patiently. The name tag on the lapel of his blue vest said that his name was Lenny. His smile was kind, bu
t had that faint undertone of someone who’d been wearing the smile for a bit too long. Even the blonde highlights in his spiked hair looked tired.

  “Um, no,” Mae said, still trying to clear the sleepy cobwebs from her head. The steward nodded and went back to his seat in the forward cabin.

  “Nice customer service,” Mae muttered and reached into her bag for a mint or a stick of gum. When she remembered that she had next to nothing in her bag, except for a stolen passport and credit card, she sat back, a little embarrassed.

  “Yeah, the airlines like to at least pretend that they’re interested in the customers in first class, so they can charge up the wazoo.” The guy rolled his eyes and turned back to the magazine in his hands.

  Oh right, I bought first class, Mae remembered and felt a tinge of guilt for spending so much on Ms. Pettingale’s credit card. It was a multi-destination ticket, with the first stop in Hartford, Connecticut, and then flights to Boston, and New York City, even though she had no plans to continue flying. She thought it was a clever ruse at first, but anyone who’d caught onto the fact that she’d borrowed Gertrude Pettingale’s identity would also see whether she’d checked into each of her flights. Still, it was enough to muddy the waters—hopefully long enough to disappear completely.

  Gotta dump the card and passport, though, in a place where they will never be found. It would not be good to be caught with something that would surely draw attention to her. Even the passport and card, if found, would probably point them in the right direction.