“Ain’t that in there? Hell I don’t know the words.” She starts it up again and Aileen joins in half heartedly. I jump in on merrily, and then there we are–a choir of three–the Snowstorm Trio.
The snow is deep enough now that I don’t even know if we are still on the road. We keep moving and singing–we’ve shifted on to something more inspiring–99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall–for probably fifteen minutes when suddenly it occurs to me that I don’t even know if we’re still going in the right direction. I think about the fight and try to remember if I paid attention to the direction we were heading when we started out again, or did we just link up and start walking in whatever direction I ended up facing? I know I didn’t consciously think about it, but did my subconscious take over and head us in the right direction? I have no idea. There’s no way, outside of going back, to know for sure. In light of Tanya’s unpredictable, shifting personality, I don’t want to bring it up, so we press forward, or what is forward in my mind, until we drop into a shallow gully. I know now we are not on the road. Now we have to trust in my instincts and hope we run into the fence. We struggle up the other side of the gully and keep on going.
At 76 bottles of beer on the wall, the pressure in my chest flares once again.
“Stop!” I yell. There’s no point in keeping it from them any longer. We have to become one, more now than ever. “Something is about to happen. I can feel it.”
“I haven’t felt anything,” Aileen says.
“What do you mean you haven’t felt anything?” Tanya says.
“Aileen and I have the same ability,” I tell her. “Mine is just more so.”
“Shit!” Tanya tries to jerk away again. “No wonder you two get along so well. You’re exactly alike.”
“Tanya! Stop it! You can beat up on us later, but right now we need to stand still, be alert and stay together. Maybe we can beat this one. I’ve never been in a position where it was possible.”
“All right!”
“Aileen?”
“Yeah, okay. What are we supposed to do? Just stand here and wait for them?”
“Yes. If you see them, give them your face. As a matter-of-fact make a face at them. Maybe we could even growl.”
“I don’t know about that. That’d be challenging them. I don’t think I want to play chicken with a sabre-toothed cat.”
“Fine. Just make a good face.”
“My face is covered with snow,” Tanya says. “Let me wipe it.”
“Good idea.” I ease up on the grip. “Wipe your faces and then let’s tighten up. Pull your hood back, Tanya.”
And so, there we are–a triangle of red and frozen faces–three people who, if they survive, will probably be without some of their toes, fingers or ears for the rest of their lives. The other thought is that instead of freezing to death, which has been on my mind all too much in the last little while, we could go quickly with a bite from one of our four-legged escorts. I dump that thought away, at least for the time being, and focus on the rumbling pressure inside of me and the yet shapeless dark just beyond the falling snow. “Do you see anything?”
“No.”
“No, and can we keep moving, even a little?” Aileen begs. “I’m freezing just standing here. The sooner we can find the fence, the sooner I can do something before I get frostbit.”
“I agree,” Tanya says.
“Okay. But stay alert.” The intensity of the pressure has not diminished.
We start moving again.
I don’t know which is worse, the ruts and ice of the road we were on, or the bushes and small trees we now deal with, hidden under the snow that has suddenly gotten worse, if that’s possible. I’m thinking that the fence is close, like right in front of me. I peer intently at the black wall, looking for the shape of chain link to appear when suddenly a sabre-toothed cat looms at me, mouth open, hissing. His head is covered with snow. I can barely see his ears, but his eyes–his eyes–are huge, the size of my hand. His sabre teeth are the size of my arm–maybe I exaggerate a little but maybe not. I freeze for a second in awe and fear and then open my mouth as far as I can and make my biggest ugly face. I’m afraid I may be showing him my fear instead. He disappears.
“Eeeeee!” Tanya is pushing against us.
“Give him your ugly face,” I try to say calmly, but I don’t think it’s coming out that way. “Don’t show him your fear.”
Suddenly Aileen is pushing and grunting, and there is another cat, a different one, lunging toward me. “This is it,” I stammer. “They’re challenging us from all sides, trying to break us apart.”
“Oh, God!” Aileen cries.
“Make the face! Keep making the faces!” I can feel the women wiggling and pushing against me while trying to suppress their frightful mutterings. “It’s working!” I have no idea if it’s true.
The cats keep lunging in, hissing and making their own faces.
Tanya screams and shoves against me, driving me into a mound of snow which turns into a low bush. My feet tangle. I start to fall. Tanya shoves again, even harder. “Stop!” I yell, but she keeps screaming and pushing. I’m going down face-first and my instincts are to catch myself with my hands, but I must not allow us to break apart. Even as I think that my arms are trying to get free in response to my forward, falling momentum. They are trapped, and Tanya keeps pushing and screaming.
“Tanya! Stop!” Aileen screams.
It’s slow motion in my mind although I am sure it’s happening in a matter of a second or two. I slowly lay on top of the bush, first my legs, and then my body, and then my head as I penetrate the layer of snow face first. Tanya’s full weight is on my back, pressing me down. They are both screaming but I cannot make out words. Something pokes me in the mouth and in my eye. Despite the numbness of my face, I feel the pain, and then I see red and hear a lot more screaming; one scream sounds very much like my own. And then there is black, and then nothing.
Chapter 31
“The sabre-tooth does not wrestle with its victim; rather it wraps its huge jaws around the animal’s throat, rips out the jugular and awaits a quick death.”
–from the journals of Zechariah Price
Pain!
My face is one big throbbing mass of pain. No particular place, just every square centimeter of skin, all the way to the center of my brain. I open my eyes, but only one responds. There is snow, lots and lots of snow and nothing else. I remember Tanya screaming and then everything before that comes back quickly. Where are they? Where am I?
I think I see a leg in front of me but I’m not sure as it’s covered with snow. It could be a tree root. The other leg is probably underneath me, cramped and frozen in position. My arms are still linked to someone or something behind me. Maybe the women tied me to a tree and escaped on their own, leaving me as cat meat.
The pressure in my chest is gone.
I try to rotate my head with no success, at least not without red-hot spikes shooting into the core of my pain center. I stop any attempt at motion and focus on controlling my breathing until the pain subsides to a level I can withstand without blacking out. When things settle I gently move my head again, a fraction of an inch. It’s not as bad this time. I move the other way, and then down and up. I relax and then do it again, a little further. For several minutes I go through this routine until it seems I have reasonable motion, at least a couple degrees, with only minor pain.
I flex my fingers, I think. I cannot feel them so if they move I have no idea. Next are my hands at the wrist. I can feel that. And then my arms. I try to move them.
“Zach?”
“Tanya!” I attempt to say but only, “aaach,” comes out, accompanied by pain. There is something wrong with my tongue, my lips, my teeth.
“Don’t try to talk. You injured your mouth when you fell. Do you understand me?”
I grunt and then cough something up that tastes like blood. I try to swallow and pain flairs. Now I am worried–more than worried. My face is disfigured and ma
y never be the same. I can see out of only one eye. What happened to the other? Is it swollen shut or is it gone entirely.
“You probably want to know what happened,” Tanya says. Her voice is slow, tired. “We need to get you up . . . walking or we’ll die right here. I don’t fancy the idea of freezing to death . . . we’re awfully close. I’ve been sitting here a long time hoping you’d wake up. I don’t know if I can move, or if you can move for that matter.”
She shifts against my back. I wonder where Aileen is.
“Move your right arm if you understand me.”
I think for a moment about which is my right, and then pull with my arm.
“Good. I haven’t seen a cat for awhile. I think maybe they gave up on us . . . have gone off to their den or whatever. I would guess it’s been about a half hour since one of them . . .” There is a pause and then a cough. “. . . carried Aileen away.”
There is a long silence, maybe some sobbing going on behind my back.
“Just like she was a rag doll, Zach.” She cries and sniffles. “He picked her up and disappeared into the snow storm.”
More sobbing, and then a deep breath.
“I didn’t want to take a chance and leave this position until you were ready, if ever.” She’s talking faster now, clearer. “I wasn’t going to abandon you. I thought about it, that’s for sure. I figured if they were back in their den I could probably make it out of here. I even thought about going back to the barn, but I have no idea which way back is. For that matter I don’t know which way anything is. Maybe that’s why I waited . . . because you might know.”
She actually would have left me. I would have never left her, wouldn’t have even considered it.
“I also feel very guilty.”
Guilt! Maybe we’re even now.
“It was because I panicked that you ended up like you are.”
Like I am? I pull on her arm.
“Are you ready to try and get up?”
No. I pull on her arm.
“I think we’re going to have to hope they’re not watching because I don’t think there’s any way we can walk out of here back to back. We’re going to have to get to the fence as fast as we can and I hope to hell you know which direction that is.”
How the hell am I supposed to know? Only one eye seems to work and it hurts my brain to think.
“I’m going to let loose of your arms. We’re leaning against each other so when I move you might fall over. Can you hold yourself up?”
I don’t know. I pull on her arm.
“Okay.”
She slips her arms out from around mine and then I feel the release of her pressure against me. I don’t move; don’t know if I can. She appears in front of me on her knees. I can barely see her face with the snow and streaks of ice on her cheeks.
“Move your arms,” she says.
I do. There is stiffness and pain but nothing such as when I first tried to move my head. I flex them in front of me and direct my thoughts to getting my legs worked out. I was right. The one I am sitting on is not so cooperative. The other one moves fine.
“What can I do to help?” Tanya says.
I just look at her.
“Stupid question since you can’t answer me. Take my hand.”
What do I look like that it’s so obvious that I can’t talk? What did I fall into? I grasp her hand and then pull myself up enough to get the under-leg out. I relax and flex that a number of times.
“Are you ready to stand?”
I’m as ready as I’ll ever get. I squeeze her hand.
“You can’t nod?”
Not unless you want me to black out again. I squeeze her hand.
“Go ahead and stand up. You can lean on me.”
With her help I get to my knees. It takes way too long as I try to figure out how to move my legs without moving my head. I had no idea they were that closely connected. Twice I see red and have to stop.
“Do you want to rest?” she asks once I’m kneeling. I don’t know how to say no. She figures that out anyway. “Squeeze my hand when you’re ready to go on.”
I bring my breathing under control and then signal I’m ready. She gets under my elbow and lifts. I get one foot planted and then before I’m ready to move on she forces me to my feet. I close my eye against the flare of daggers in and around my head. When I open it again she is staring at me with her mouth hanging open. I wait for her to say, “God you look awful,” or some such thing, but she says nothing. She just stares. That really scares me.
I turn around slowly and spot the place into which I fell. It’s covered with snow through which sharp sticks protrude. Impaled on one such stick is something so grotesque and so personal I’d scream if I could. I choke and gag instead and turn from the sight. I raise my hand to feel my face. Tanya catches my arm and shakes her head. I blink my only remaining eye and drop my hand.
“We have to get moving,” she says.
I find the tracks from where we came, shuffle a full circle and then take an educated wild guess and point. Tanya takes my hand and we head off.
We make only a little faster progress than earlier with the three of us hooked together. The snow is deeper and harder to push. I find I do not have the energy to lift my feet so I shuffle until I hit a hidden object. The first couple of times I nearly fall, something I don’t at all relish. I then start shuffling with much greater caution. Tanya tries her best to direct us around things.
When is daylight? What time is it? Why aren’t we being attacked by the sabres? Maybe the storm is too much for them. Any animal in their right mind would not be out in this. We’re obviously not in our right mind. What was going on in my twisted mind to suggest escaping? We don’t even know for sure what we were escaping from.
“We’ve made it!” Her shrill voice breaks my thoughts.
Made what, where? She is not holding on to me. Her voice is far away, yelling. I stop and turn, but she is nowhere. When did she leave me?
“The fence is just ahead!” she yells excitedly, appearing out of the falling snow. She grabs my arm.
You left me, I scold. Why did you leave me? Why didn’t you tell me you were going to leave? Did you plan on coming back?
“Come on!”
I shuffle forward with her holding my arm, over the tracks she has already made. It’s five minutes before we come to the fence. At least, it feels like that long. Was it that long that I was alone and I didn’t know it? She left me and she wasn’t coming back. She found the fence and discovered it was too high. She needs me to get over it.
“It’s awfully high.” She’s looking up at it. I dare not try looking up. She takes off her coat and I realize it’s the one that Aileen shed in the fight. She still has her other coat on underneath. “I’ll go up and throw this over the barbed wire. Will you be able to climb?”
I don’t give her an answer. I want to believe I can but deep down I have serious doubt.
She sticks her hand though one sleeve and lets the coat dangle. “I’ll be right back,” she says and then starts up.
I watch until her feet disappear and then I back up a little to be able to see higher. It’s no use. I lose her in the dark and the falling snow. I can hardly believe she went up, and rather fast at that. She did it without the bale hook. Aileen had the bale hook. Maybe it won’t be all that hard. I step up to the fence and grasp as high as I can with both hands, and then hook one foot, push and pull.
I’m on the fence, at least a foot off the ground.
“I don’t know if we can do this,” she hollers from somewhere over my head.
I raise my other foot, push and pull. I’m now nearly two feet off the ground.
“I’m going to try and get the coat over the barbwire.” Her voice is like an invisible angel on estrogen. Something hits me in the face, followed by a flash of pain. “Shit! lost my glove.”
The pain eases and I reach for another hand hold.
“I can’t . . . shit . . . there’s a damned wire in t
he way. Why the hell is that there when you have four rows of barbwire already.”
Don’t touch it, my mind screams. Why would they electrify the inside of the fence? But, her gloves should insulate her. Just as I come to the realization that one glove is lying in the snow below me, she screams. The fence rocks and I have to grip with everything I have to keep from falling. In doing so some part of my face rubs the fence and red-hot streaks flash just inside my inner-eye. I have everything I can do to keep from passing out.
Eventually the pain retreats, leaving me only with a head full of pulsing spikes. I’ve been told I have a high pain tolerance. It certainly is being tested.
I listen for Tanya’s voice and wait for the sense of her moving on the fence. There is nothing. I pull myself up another foot or so, relax and listen, and then pull again. How long can I do this? How high is this fence? Fifteen feet is what I guessed. It could be twenty, or only ten, or any number in between. Of that I’m not a great judge. I’m sure it’s higher than the inner fence which is certainly ten feet. I find a new hand grip and toehold and then lift once more.
My foot slips and I grasp with my frozen fingers while trying to keep my face away from the heavy gage mesh wire. Minutes click by as I wonder how long I can just hang here. I consider letting myself go. It wouldn’t be a bad fall into a foot or two of soft snow. Tanya can go on, save herself. She can move faster without me. She’s smart enough to figure her way out of this.
Why haven’t I heard her? Maybe she has already gone on without me.
I locate my foothold again, get my mind organized as best I can and continue my assent. Lift and rest, one after another.
Something touches my head. I ease down one level and try to look up. I cannot without considerable pain. To my right I see only the curl of barbwire just before it disappears into the storm. I try slowly rotating my head within its newly defined constraints in an attempt to stretch the boundaries. It’s not quite enough. I work my way a few feet to my left and then look again. This time I see what it is; it’s the coat Tanya was to throw over the barbed wire.
Sabre-Toothed Cat Trilogy Page 27