by John A. Daly
The beam swept over Sean’s head a few times, never staying in one spot long enough to make him suspect he’d been spotted. When the small red dot of a laser sight accompanied the beam in its search, he held his breath.
“You must be freezing down there, mate!” the man’s voice called out in the thick accent Sean recognized from earlier on the phone. It was barely audible above the weather, but Sean managed to make out what he was saying. “Come on up here and we’ll sort it all out back inside! I’ll throw a billy on the stove!”
Sean held still. His eyes rolled in his head. He knew there was zero chance that Dr. Phil was going to let him live. If he popped his head up, it would be shot off in half a second.
“You’ll die out here, you bloody bastard!” the doctor screamed, his voice raising a couple of octaves. “Don’t be stupid!”
Sean knew the doctor could very well be right. If he didn’t die from being severely underdressed in sub-zero temperatures, covered only in a sweatshirt and jeans, he’d certainly acquire frostbite—the kind people didn’t recover from without losing parts of their limbs.
The doctor was counting on desperation prompting a desperate move, but Sean knew that a slim chance of survival was better than no chance. The one thing he had going for him was that he was sure the doctor wasn’t going to try and come down the hill. The drop-off from the road and the slope below it were terrain that couldn’t be negotiated well with a gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other, especially with the weather. For now, the two were stuck in a stalemate.
Sean gazed hypnotically at the partially lit landscape below him, blowing warm breath into his cupped hands. He made sure to completely trap it with his fingers tight together, aware that the doctor might otherwise see a virtual smoke signal rising from his hiding spot.
Heavy, crowded flakes whipped by almost horizontally between trees and the large, protruding rocks that rested under the frosty white blanket. His mind wandered to the snowstorms that he and his sister used to watch in wonderment as kids from his bedroom window. It was back before his father had left. Seemingly happier times. Simpler times for sure. Snowfall like that would mean a day off from school. Diana and he would spend it building forts in the snow and even the occasional snowman, though Sean always thought they were corny.
Perhaps it was those memories that urged him to believe just for a moment that if he could just last until the morning, everything would somehow be all right. His adult sensibilities quickly kicked in, however, and chased youthful naivety off into the night.
The doctor continued to call for Sean to show himself, shouting above the unrelenting wind. Sean could barely make out what he was saying at times. The doctor’s rants altered between impassioned pleas and angry tirades as his frustration grew. Sean grew confident in his belief that his pursuer was too afraid to come down the hill after him.
A quick flash of light from further down the slope suddenly triggered Sean’s attention. It appeared between two large trees that jetted out from the hillside. Before Sean could make out what it was, it disappeared. It did so in accordance with a change in direction of the doctor’s flashlight, suggesting it was a reflection.
He kept his eyes trained in the direction of the now hidden object and he waited for the flashlight to expose its outline again. When it did, Sean saw what looked like a thin, horizontal metal rod. It was pretty far down the hill, which made it look small, but he was certain that it wasn’t merely part of a fence. It belonged to something larger. A building perhaps. The edge of a rooftop.
He hoped it wasn’t a mirage brought on by wishful thinking, like an imaginary oasis in the middle of a desert as portrayed in cartoons. The doctor either wasn’t interested in it or couldn’t see it through the blowing snow. He kept reflexively pulling his beam away before Sean could get a good look at it. If it was a building, maybe it was a home. Maybe someone lived there—someone with a phone. Maybe even with a gun.
Sean’s instincts told him not to stray far from the road, even with what was happening. If it wasn’t a building below, what would he do then? The road was the only other sign of civilization he had seen since leaving the restaurant. He had no way of knowing how remote of an area he was in, so if he lost track of the road or couldn’t get back to it due to the incline of the hill, he might never find his way out of the area alive. He also thought about the possibility of a snowplow or ranger driving by. He wondered if he could somehow get a driver’s attention, even with Dr. Phil hovering above like a vulture.
“Come on, Sean!” the doctor yelled in anger. “Get your ass up here! You’ll die if you don’t!”
Leaving his hiding spot was a risk, but it was a risk Sean decided he had to take. He waited until the flashlight beam and its laser shadow swung away from his position before making his move. He lunged forward, crawling quickly on his hands and knees through the snow. Lumbering downward at what felt like a sixty-degree grade, his hands soon collapsed in front of him, their numbness making them unwilling partners in his escape. He switched to his elbows.
He scurried around trees and over snow mounds until the hill grew too steep to continue on headfirst. He swung his legs in front of him and began sliding down on his butt.
The glow of the flashlight suddenly whipped onto Sean. When he saw his own shadow cast along a thick tree a few yards in front of him, he knew the doctor would open fire. He snarled and lunged forward, leaping through the air as the shots rang out. They sounded like they came from a cap gun under the brutal wind that pressed against Sean as he dropped back to earth.
When he landed, his momentum put him on spontaneous footing. He did his best to maintain his balance, ducking and weaving around tree after tree to put as many obstacles as possible between him and the doctor.
Shots continued to fire.
Sean heard a couple of bullets split through wood. One sounded like it ricocheted off a rock.
When one of his feet dropped into a patch of unevenly deep snow, he lost control and he went down hard. He tumbled forward, crashing through limbs and bouncing off trunks and rocks. He managed to get an arm up in front of his face to protect it, sparing him some stiff shots that otherwise would have broken his nose or done worse.
He plunged down the slope for what seemed like an eternity until he finally came to a rest on his back along an unexpectedly flat patch of land. He held still for a moment, realizing that he was still alive and in one piece. He lifted his head and carefully looked over his shoulder, scouting for the doctor’s position. The doctor still hadn’t left the ridge. The distant glare of his flashlight swiveled back and forth erratically. He had lost track of his prey.
Sean slowly started to climb to his feet, but a sharp pain jolted up from his side. He winced as he raised his shirt and wiped his sleeve along the tender area to check for blood. It was too dark to tell for sure, but he didn’t see any. He also felt no bulge. It didn’t look as though he’d been shot, but he wondered if he’d suffered a cracked rib from the fall.
Other aches and pains could be felt throughout his body. They would slow him down, but he could walk, and that’s all that seemed to matter now. With his face twisted in discomfort, he surveyed the area and spotted the building he had seen from the hill. It stood just about twenty yards away. It wasn’t someone’s home. Far from it. It
looked to be a small storage shed with thin, weathered walls made of wood and an arched tin roof. A blanket of snow covered the wall that faced the wind. Behind the shed was an open area, perhaps a small meadow for grazing livestock or a patch of land for farming.
He heard a faint buzzing sound in the distance, and when he looked back up at the ridge, the beam from the flashlight was gone. He traced the headlight from the snowmobile for a second as it glided along the ridge, back in the direction from which it had come. It soon disappeared from view. The doctor had left, but Sean doubted he had given up the hunt.
He tugged at his pants, circled around to the opposite side of the shed, and found its door. A faint bulb from a light mounted at its side gave Sean hope that the shelter was equipped with electricity. Unfortunately, a closer look revealed that it was nothing more than a solar-powered landscape light, the kind people bought for a couple of bucks at a hardware store to use as decor in their yards along a pathway or garden. It served as a makeshift porch light, barely bright enough to reveal a padlocked metal door latch at its edge.
A hard boot from Sean made short work of the lock, splintering the frame as the door flung open. He trudged onto plank flooring inside and quickly ran his arm along the wall beside him. His elbow bumped up against some hidden shelving and he knocked small items to the floor as he searched for a light switch. He found none. He stepped back outside just long enough to yank the light from the wall. It came off easy. Pinning it between the palms of his hands because his frozen fingers were having trouble gripping it, he looked around inside.
Being out of the wind let him catch his breath and wipe the tears from his eyes. He was still freezing and shaking uncontrollably, but the elimination of the wind helped him think straight. The light was so dim that he couldn’t make out which items were what in the shed until he was just a few inches from them. He found some grease guns and aerosol cans along the shelves, accompanied by some old rolls of duct tape, twine, and a box of cloth rags. The layer of dust that covered everything suggested that it had been a long time since anyone else had been inside.
He crossed over to the other end of the shed, his shins and knees knocking up against solid metal items that felt like equipment. When he felt the corner of a table press into his side, he twisted his torso in what narrow space he had and found a workbench. There wasn’t much across the top of it. Some small stain cans, a metal coffee can filled with nuts and bolts, and an anchored vice. On the pegboard mounted above it, he found a number of dangling hand tools including a small hammer, and a few wrenches and screwdrivers. There were also a few bungee cords.
He’d hoped to spot a hatchet, a knife, or something else that he could use as an effective weapon if needed, but an oversized, open-ended wrench was the best available. He managed to lift it from its hook and slide it under the waistline of his pants. It dropped down into one of his pant legs.
“Come on,” he grunted, angry that his loose-fitting pants wouldn’t let him store the weapon. He lifted his leg and let the wrench spill out to the floor.
There were some smaller plastic items arranged along the pegboard. A few paint brushes, some zip-ties, and an item that widened Sean’s eyes the moment he realized what it was.
He initially thought it was just another screwdriver, but it was a utility lighter. Mostly made of plastic but with a metal nose, they were built to ignite a small flame at the pull of a trigger. It was the kind people typically used to light outdoor grills, but Sean planned on using it to bring his shivering body some warmth.
He dumped the coffee can upside-down and let all of the nuts and bolts inside fall to the top of the workbench in a loud heap. He then placed the empty can on the floor and filled it with some wadded rags he grabbed off of one of the shelves. He sorted through the collection of aerosol cans until he found some WD-40. He dropped to his knees and depressed the nozzle with the palm of his hand, thoroughly dousing the rags.
Getting the lighter to work was the toughest part. There was barely enough room to squeeze one of his deadened fingers through the trigger. After he finally got it hooked, he cursed as he worked on the complicated safety switch on top. Matching the pulling of the two levers was a challenging task in eighty-degree weather; doing so with numb fingers was nearly impossible. He eventually got his flame and wasted no time holding it to the rags.
The rags lit up like an inferno, nearly knocking him backwards. He leaned forward and held his open hands over the blaze. The fire brightened the inside of the room, its flames casting dancing shadows along the walls. He couldn’t feel its warmth at first, but his hands soon sensed the burn of being thawed out. He held them in front of him for a moment, inspecting, and found no blackness. He breathed a sigh of relief.
The walls of the shed continually creaked from the strong winds outside. There was a decent draft pouring in between the wooden boards and the flapping door where he’d broken off the latch. It wasn’t strong enough to put out the fire, and he hunched over it, greeting the warmth that brushed against his face.
With the inside of the shed now almost entirely illuminated, he raised his head and took stock of the items around him. He found some farming equipment sprawled along the floor, including a walk-behind tractor and a sickle bar mower. They didn’t appear to be there for storage, but rather to be worked on. Both were turned on their sides amidst loose parts. There was thick, coiled rope hanging by a nail in the wall, as well as an old, rusted bow-rake hanging from two nails. A couple of gas cans sat in a corner. A lot of clutter lined a second set of shelves, including random cuts of wood, boxes of nails and screws, and more paint cans.
When Sean saw what appeared to be a blanket or a thick tablecloth hanging off the corner of a shelf, he climbed to his feet. Cringing with each movement, he pulled the cover down and wrapped it around his shoulders before returning to the fire. He added a few more rags to the can and fueled the flames again with more WD-40.
After ten minutes or so, his body stopped shaking and he eyed the large wrench lying on the floor. He climbed to his feet and snagged a bungee cord from the wall. He laced it through his belt loops and hooked the ends together in front of the top button of his jeans. With his pants now snug, he slid the wrench into the back waistline, and this time it stayed in place.
He understood that there was no way he was going to make it back up the hill to the road—not at night in the middle of a snowstorm anyway.
With the meadow outside likely some type of farmland, he wondered if the property’s owner might live somewhere nearby. He had seen no other buildings around, but that didn’t mean one didn’t exist somewhere, hidden among the trees. There at least had to be another road, some way of getting to the meadow and the shed from the outside world.
His thoughts scattered when he heard a distant buzzing sound trickle in from the gusts of wind that howled outside of the shed. He gasped, and then made his way to the door, still wearing the blanket, and poked his head outside. He saw the single headlight of a snowmobile blistering though the snow along the meadow.
“Shit!” he barked.
He plodded back inside, letting the blanket fall from his shoulders as he grabbed the bow-rake from the wall. He kicked over the coffee can, knocking the rags inside it to the floor, and stomped out their flames with his feet. If the doctor hadn’t already seen the light from inside the shed, he
wasn’t going to let him.
He looked outside again and saw that the snowmobile hadn’t grown much closer. It was advancing in the general direction of the shed, but it was moving extremely slowly, possibly even at idle speed. The doctor was being very cautious in his approach.
Sean realized that staying inside a small building with thin walls would make him easy pickings for a man with a gun. He choked up on the rake and exited through the door, slipping around to the opposite side of the shed. Suddenly the front of the building lit up from the vehicle’s headlight.
Shuffling backwards on his feet, Sean gripped the rake as if it was a lifeline. The engine of the vehicle steadily purred without deviation as it grew closer. He watched in confusion as the beam of the light moved on past the shed and began exposing the landscape at the bottom of the hill he’d fallen down. The vehicle came into view, and to Sean’s shock, no one was riding it.
A second beam of light suddenly flared up from directly behind him. He spun around in terror. The dot of a small red laser was pinned directly on his chest.
“Bang!” a man’s voice shouted out from the night, his silhouette unclear from behind the center of the blinding light.
Sean recoiled, anticipating the next sound he heard to be the blast of a gun as a bullet pierced his sternum.
Instead it was the man’s voice again. “Back inside the shack, mate. It’s fucking cold out here.”
Chapter 31
Lumbergh carried the shotgun low as he slowly crept his way up the side of the road. He kept constant surveillance of the land around him as he did. The freezing wind forced fresh tears from his eyes when he faced it. He wiped them away with his shoulder. A Mag light dangled at his side, switched to the off position to avoid detection. The radio in his pocket was powered on, but the volume was set at zero.