I roll away, wondering what else is under the snow that I’m not going to see, what else is going to send me flying straight out to land flat on my face again.
“Too late, Bitch.” Sheriff Dan has closed to within ten feet, normally an easy kill for him, I’m sure, but now he sways, the gun barrel pointing directly at me only occasionally. Somehow that doesn’t make me feel better.
“You’ve been a pain in my ass, Miss Price, and now I’m going to end it.”
I move sideways on my hands and knees, looking for something, like a rock under the snow I could throw at him, or a stick I could attack him with. Maybe his gun is out of bullets having emptied it on Vadik, or maybe as he sways and his gun swings away, I could rush him . . . anything but crouch here in the snow waiting for my death.
“And then, after I clean up this mess, I’m going to go down and help Mick find your old man, and then I’m going to kill him, and your little sister, too, maybe even your aunt.”
I continue to search below the snow, trying not to think about the words coming out of his mouth. I liked him better when he was silent.
“I’ll just wipe the Price family from this earth.”
I want to tell him that Aunt Suzie is not a Price, but somehow or other I don’t think he’d care. He is so right, though. I have no Price cousins, no Price grandparents. Dad was an only child. I remember when I was thirteen, Dad talking about the fact that because he had no sons the Price line would end with him. I also remember feeling guilty because I wasn’t a boy and then being angry because he had said it. Funny. If I were a boy, it would still end right here.
My hand hits something that moves.
“Prepare to die now,” he says and pulls the trigger.
The one-second explosion from the gun hurts my ears, but that is all. I open my eyes and find him looking down at the automatic weapon as though trying to understand how he missed. It is obvious that he swayed just before pulling the trigger and then the kick pulled him off even further. I doubt very much he’ll make that mistake a second time. Before he is able to bring it back I pick up the object I found in the snow and point it at him. His grin disappears.
“That was your only chance, Sheriff. My turn.” I pray that Sarge’s gun works, and pull the trigger. The next thing I know I’m lying on my back firing straight into the air. I release the trigger and raise my head.
Sheriff Dan is gone.
Chapter 58
Did I get knocked unconscious long enough for him to run and hide? Why didn’t he just shoot me first? But I didn’t get knocked unconscious. I just fell backwards.
I scramble to my feet, the gun at the ready, and look at where Sheriff Dan was standing. He is now splayed out on his back in the snow, a line of small holes running diagonally up his coat. There is very little blood. I don’t need to touch him to know he is dead. I shot the sheriff runs through my mind for some crazy reason, and then I notice that it has stopped snowing. I look up. Is that God’s way of saying that it’s over, that the storm has passed? Maybe, but I still have to get us, Matt especially, out of here.
I drop the gun and make a wide berth around the late Sheriff, knowing I’ll have nightmares about this later, will likely have to see a shrink. His sat-phone is not on his belt—unless it is at his back and I’m not about to go looking—so I figure I’ll find one in the cavern. I step in that direction and see the flare gun peaking out of the snow, still loaded with the last flare. I pick it up as it may come in handy when rescuers start looking for us.
I stop and kneel next to Vadik. He is dead now, the snow around him melted from his blood. I remove my glove and run my hand across his brow. “Why did you and Roma, and the rest, give your lives for me? Who am I?” I’m sure that question will haunt me for a very long time. “I’m sorry.” I’m sure those words will be on my mind and pass my lips for a very long time as well. I stand and continue my way into the mountain entrance.
Gosha lies on top of Deputy Dog, actual name Eddy. Their bloods mix, pooled onto the rock and dirt of the cavern floor. I look about the pigsty of the men’s camp. It stinks from the fawn that has been hanging here for days, the heat of the camp fire adding to the speed of its decomposition. I spot a sat-phone lying on a sleeping bag well away from the rotting animal. I fetch it and walk back outside.
The temperature is dropping along with the daylight. I’m sure there is no way a rescue can be made tonight. I stare at the phone and try to figure out who to call. 911? Does that work on sat-phones? If so, what do I say? The sheriff went berserk so I killed him? And then I get to spend the rest of my life in jail. That thought deflates my energy; suddenly all I want to do is lie down and sleep . . . or die.
Instead I dial the number I know the best. It rings four times, and when I’m sure I’m going to get his voice mail I hear, “This is Zack.”
“Daddy!”
“Rebecca!”
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes . . . no. I’m not hurt if that’s what you mean. It’s just that . . .” What do I tell my father over a sat-phone? Can it be picked up by anyone else? “There are a lot of dead men up here. Matt has been shot and needs to get to a hospital, soon.”
“Are you safe, Rebecca?”
“Yes. It’s over.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m at the cavern where Mom . . . I have coordinates.”
“I know where it is. I’ll be there in a few hours. I’m in Kalispell now.”
“You are!” Just that thought makes it feel like everything will be fine. My dad will fix it. But . . . “Where’s Christi and Aunt Suzie? There might still be a guy after them.”
“They’re here too. I’m not bringing them up there with me.”
“The hell you’re not!” Aunt Suzie’s strident voice sounds like angels in the background.
“I second that,” Christi says, another angel.
“Hold on,” Dad says and covers the phone. It seems like forever before he finally comes back on. “Okay. We’re all coming.”
Good for you, Aunt Suzie.
“I’ll call the authorities right now.”
“Dad.”
“Yeah.”
“The sheriff is dead.”
There is a long, scary silence before he says anything. “I’ve got someone I can call. You just hang on.”
“I will. Also, Dad, it’s been snowing for about ten hours. It might be tough getting in here.”
“I’ll get there. Don’t you worry about it.”
We disconnect and I stand for a long time staring at the bits of Gosha and Lester’s bodies that I can see through the trees. My dad didn’t yell at me. Before I dialed his number I was actually considering running away, to Canada or somewhere, away from the law, away from prison. Except that Matt still needs my help, I probably would have. Now my dad is coming and it will be better. He said a couple of hours, but with this snow I know he won’t be here until daylight. Still, my dad is coming.
My dad will fix it.
I don’t know how long I have been standing here, my mind blanked out, the cold sapping warmth from the layer of sweat I had developed in the confrontations. I shiver and remember that I have to get up to the cavern lake and let Sharon know that help is on its way, that it is all over. I turn around in time to see a big snow-covered fist coming at me. My lightning fast feline reflexes have been dampened significantly by exhaustion and lack of substance. “DAMN!” is all I manage to say as the fist strikes me in the chest, dead center, and flings me onto my back. Before I can recover, before I can even get the breath that was punched out of me, the owner of the fist is sitting on me, my arms trapped against the ground under his weight. Snow covers my face and I cannot see. I finally manage to get a breath, only to suck snow into my lungs, sending me into a coughing fit. When I am able to recover from that long enough to shake my head of snow and look up, I find Chet’s grinning and snarling face under the hood of Baritone’s coat.
“Surpris
e!” he says, dragging out the last syllable like a crazed axe murderer. “Bet you wish you had killed me. I’ve come back to fulfill my promise.”
I struggle against him, but he is like a mountain. “What promise?”
“I told you that if you touched me with that knee one more time I’d kill you then fuck your lifeless body and leave you for the animals. Well, guess what? I’m back!” That crazed voice again, dragging out the last word like it is supposed to scare me. I’m surprisingly not scared. I accept the fact that he is much bigger, more powerful than me and that there is nothing I can do. In a way I knew this was how it would end, that I would die, and that I would join my mother. I hope that help gets here before he can get to Mandi and Sharon and Matt, that he doesn’t stick around to hurt my father, sister and aunt. I do wish I could have been around long enough to tell them all how sorry I am, to ask for their forgiveness.
He lets loose of my arms and puts his hands around my neck. I beat at him but I might as well be trying to fight off a grizzly bear. He bangs my head against the ground, my strong neck muscles probably the only thing that keeps him from breaking my neck. In the middle of the increasing blackness grows a tightness in my center, a psychic rise of vision, but before I am able to see what the vision is of, what death I am about to foresee—though probably my own— my breath ends and blackness finishes closing in, and then there is nothing.
The nothing explodes into a brightness so white and pure that I know I am at the gateway to Heaven, though I don’t know why it isn’t Hell. Someone takes my hand and then suddenly, I am looking into sad eyes ringed by a beautiful face. Mom! I have missed her so much.
Why are you sad?
Because you have come to me too soon, my daughter.
Just as you left me too soon.
I left you so that you may live. I made that choice.
I . . .
Hush, my dear child.
I’m not going to hush, mother. I had no choice.
Yes you did, and you chose to give up.
No! I didn’t!
There is another and if he kills your sister, you’ll have her blood on your hands.
How can I have blood on my hands? I’m dead.
Her head turns and she looks off into the bright light at something that I cannot see. When she turns back she says, No, you are not. Once again you have been saved. Go save your sister. Her eyes are brighter, and she is smiling. She starts fading away. Be careful of the other.
Mom? Mom! She is gone.
And then the lights go out and again, there is nothing.
Chapter 59
I am cold and wet, and something like sandpaper dipped in warm water is trying to rip the skin off my nose and cheeks. I am sucking air for everything I’ve got, my larynx almost crushed closed.
“Stop!” I try to yell but the effort hurts my throat, while the attack on my face whips my head back and forth, inflaming the pain in my neck even more. I try to open my eyes to see what he is doing, to see why he has stopped trying to strangle me, but the sandpaper makes it impossible.
“Stop!” This time I make a sound, and the attack stops. I open my eyes to a very blurry, shadowy silhouette sitting on me. I raise my arm and drag a snow-covered sleeve across my eyes—not too much better than the sandpaper effect from a few seconds earlier—and then look again. Two feet from me is a sabre-toothed face, a small sabre-toothed face. It belongs to one of the kittens that is sprawled partially on my torso. I slowly, gently, turn my head. Edik is looking at me. I don’t see Chubby, decide not to ask.
The kitten puts its weight on my chest and drags a sandpaper tongue across my face. “Oow!” I push the cat away and off of me, and then roll over and up to my knees.
With my bare hands I massage my throat and neck. Nothing appears to be permanently damaged, but I think I’m going to be eating only soup for a while. Do the bad guys have soup in their kitchen? I have to let Sharon know all is well first, and then I can search for food. I start to stand.
Be careful of the other.
I stop cold and look around. Did I say that? Did my psychic side say that? Maybe the sabre-tooth goddess said it. All I know for sure is that it came from inside me. So what does it mean?
Myself is not responding to myself, so I finish straightening and stretch out the kinks.
Be careful of the other.
What other? I wait for something, but there is nothing more. I sidle up to Edik and rub his forehead. “Thank you. Why did you come? You’re not supposed to be here.” I sense a feline sadness over the death of his brothers. I’d tell him they died for a good cause, but I don’t know what that would be. Is saving my life a good cause? Over half their race has been wiped out to save one single human. It doesn’t seem fair.
The kitten that wasn’t trying to lick me back to consciousness is about twenty feet away, gnawing on . . . Chubby’s arm! No! Get away! He gives me a look, and then tosses up a fog of snow in a dash over to his, or her twin. I’d laugh at their cuteness, except this isn’t a laughing time.
I make a wide berth around Chubby’s body and walk into the mountain entrance. Both kittens and Edik come with me. The kittens are learning to obey me, or else they are obeying Edik and the timing makes it seem like they’re responding to me. I walk around Gosha and Deputy Dog—the stink of flares, orange smoke, and dead deer, cat, and human hangs heavy—and go directly to the lake. Sharon is nowhere to be seen. I walk along the edge making myself very visible until she finally appears from hiding. We meet each other across the twenty-foot wide gap through which the lake departs the mountain and I yell over the roar of the waterfall. “It’s over. They are all dead.”
Her response is to turn her head and look out at the darkening sky. She is glad that it is over, but she is not happy that so many men have died, and for no other reason than greed. Her eyes come back to me. “The sheriff?”
I nod. “He gave me no choice. He went crazy and tried to kill me. I shot him with one of their own guns.”
“Good! That’s the way he killed my husband.”
Sheriff Dan did not kill her husband, but now was not the time to remind her of that. The men who killed him were themselves killed last summer. Still, it was Sheriff Dan’s action that brought the men who shot her husband to death. Directly or indirectly responsible, he was a symbol of it all, and now, in a way, she can rest, her husband’s death avenged. Her sole drive now is to save her son’s life.
“I’ve called for help. It may be morning before anyone gets here because of the storm. How is he doing?”
“He’s alert. We need to get him out.”
“I know.” There’s nothing more to say. “I’ll get you some food.”
“Thanks.”
It is turning dark. While I was up talking to Sharon, the kittens pulled the deer carcass down and are having a tug-of-war with it. I shoo them away and then drag the carcass out and dump it into the snow where they attack it again. I poke around the hot coals in the campfire, add some wood and get the fire blazing, providing a light that allows me to see anything I need to see, even things I don’t want to see. I throw a sleeping bag over Deputy Dog and then open the same cooler where I found the Snapple. There is only a half bottle left, along with two beers. I probably shouldn’t, but what the hell. I’ve killed a man. I deserve a beer. I open one, take a gulp, and carry it around while I look for food. It tastes just as bad as the one other time I had tasted it, at a party after a swim meet in Houston. I take another gulp.
There are a half dozen backpacks lying about. I open each one and pull out whatever foodstuffs they’d packed in. When I have a neat pile of beef jerky, barbeque chips, canned cashews, bottled water, bottled flavored water, soda, soup—4 cans, yes—and a variety of candy bars, I empty one pack and throw all but the soups and some bottled water and candy into it, add the other beer, and carry it up to where Sharon waits. She steps aside as I launch the pack well past her. She follows it with her flashlight.
“Who did you call?” she ask
s after she picks it up.
“My dad.”
“Your dad? I . . .”
“He flew up today. He and my sister and aunt are in Kalispell right now. He said he had someone he could call. Don’t know who. They’ll be here in the morning.” She looks at the can of beer in my hand. I hold it up. “What you going to do, lecture me?”
She shakes her head. “No. I want to know where mine is.”
I point. “In the pack. There were only two.” I don’t mention the bottle of whiskey I found. I figure we don’t need that. We stare at each other until I have an idea. “Do you think Matt is strong enough to ride Edik back across this?” I point to the barrier of rushing water between us. She shakes her head without thinking about it. “The only other way out is up onto the ledge and over the top. That won’t be easy for him in or out of a stretcher. If there is any way, we have to get him on this side.”
She thinks for a minute. “Let me get some food and fluids into him, see how he feels in an hour or two. Why Edik? He’s injured. What about one of the others?”
I force my voice to go flat, afraid that it will break. “They’re all dead.” Still, I have to gulp something back. “All that is left is Edik and the two kittens.”
Sharon is almost as upset with that as with her son being shot. She seems rather lost at what to do, what to say. She turns away and then back. “I’ll . . . I’ll let you know how he’s doing in a while. Will you be right here?”
“Yes.”
Without another word she walks away, her flashlight guiding her across the rough terrain. I go back down to the camp and find a blanket, along with a camping chair that the sheriff or one of his men had hauled in. I set them in place where I can watch for Sharon and then become painfully aware that I haven’t eaten yet. Fifteen minutes later, after a search for a can opener and then not finding a pot, I remove a hot can of soup from where it sits on a rock in the middle of the fire and carry it up to the chair. Before an hour is out I’m sitting in a litter of soup cans, water bottles, candy wrappers, and one beer can. Now I’m wishing I hadn’t given Sharon everything else. All I have left is one can of soup and I’m considering eating that as well, but that would mean getting up again. I’m way too settled in the chair, and way too tired.
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