by K. M. Fawkes
He doubted it. Those men might hate Harrington. But they didn’t think much of Pete and Marie, either.
“We’ll start shooting again!” the same man shouted.
Pressed against the wall next to the window, Pete made his decision. “You can have him!”
“What?” Harrington cried. “You can’t mean it.”
The convicts went quiet, and then the one who seemed to be in charge of the merry band of shitheads said, “What do you want in return?”
Pete wasn’t surprised by the man’s response. Everything in these guys’ lives was about tit for tat.
“I want safe passage for myself and my traveling companion,” he called back. “You can have the cabin. There’s fresh meat in the shed out back.”
And I hope a bear eats you for the trouble.
It wasn’t ideal. He’d been hoping to stay here until it was warmer out. At least until Marie’s leg had healed. But now that the convicts knew about the cabin, it wouldn’t be safe. Even if the convicts got the doctor, they’d come back.
He and Marie had to blow this joint. And the best way to do that was to convince the prisoners to leave them alone for long enough to get away.
He dared a glance out the window and saw a few of the convicts conferring while the rest stood guard, weapons pointed at the cabin.
“You’re not really going to give me to them, are you?” Harrington asked. “You’ve got a trick up your sleeve, right?”
Pete didn’t answer.
“You’ve got a deal!” the leader shouted.
In a low voice, Marie called to Pete from the bedroom door. “None of them are posted out back,” she said. “I’ve got the window open. We can escape.”
Harrington’s eyes told Pete that he knew where he stood, and he opened his mouth. “They’re—”
Pete had no intention of allowing Harrington to finish that sentence. In a flash, he was beside Harrington, and clocked him in the head with the butt of the rifle. One blow was all it took to knock the man unconscious.
With a nod to Marie, Pete grabbed Marie’s boots from beside the front door and tossed them to her.
To stall for time, he went to the window again and called out, “How’s it going to work? What’s the plan?”
The convicts began to confer again, while Marie hurried to get her boots on.
“The three of you come out the front door with your hands up,” the man said. “We’ll take Harrington and the cabin and let you leave.”
“I’m ready when you are,” Marie whispered.
Pete jammed his rifle through the window and began to fire, this time trying to make every bullet count. He wanted the convicts in complete disarray.
One of the men outside went down with a shout and began to moan. Others scrambled for cover. A bullet winged off the window frame, and Pete ducked and moved to the other side of the window, firing several more shots, one of which blew the rifle right out of a convict’s hands. It would have been better to have killed him, but a tree was in the way.
When the clip was empty, Pete shouldered the gun, grabbed the two sets of snowshoes, and dashed toward the bedroom.
Halfway there, he dropped one of the snowshoes and had to scramble back to retrieve it—which turned out to be lucky, because he saw the axe resting next to the fireplace. He grabbed that as well and, with the snowshoes firmly in hand, ran.
Marie had the window open and had already knocked the screen out of the frame.
“The shooting was so noisy, they couldn’t have heard,” she said, and handed him his pack. She had a new one she must have found in one of the cupboards, which she tossed out the window.
“It’ll seem stressful,” Pete said in a soft voice. “But as soon as you’re out the window, stop and put the snowshoes on. They don’t have any on, so we’ll be able to move faster than them.”
Marie nodded. “I grabbed the clean hats and gloves. They’re better than what we were using.”
Pete shoved the cap she handed him on his head and wrapped a scarf around his neck. “Quiet as possible,” he said.
The convicts began shooting again. As soon as they realized there was no return fire from the ranger station, they’d be on the move.
With his help, Marie got herself onto the window ledge and dropped down to the ground outside. Pete passed her the snowshoes and she began strapping on the smaller pair. The men out front were still firing.
How long before they realize we’re gone? Pete wondered. Because they needed to be in the trees before that happened.
Pete climbed through the window, flashing back to the window at Mueller and the insane drop. This, thankfully, was less hazardous. His knees absorbed the drop without complaint, and he hurried to get his snowshoes on, the skin on the back of his neck tight with the fear that a bullet was about to rip him open.
For a split second, he considered opening the shed to grab some of the meat. But it would take too much time. Instead, he hurried over and picked up the bloody blanket they’d used to drag the deer carcass.
“Let’s go,” he said softly.
They got moving, trying to be as quiet as possible while still hurrying. Pete glanced back once, when the tingle at the back of his head became too much to bear, wondering whether he should have tried harder to maintain possession of the cabin.
“There were too many of them, with too many guns,” Marie said, as though she knew what he’d been thinking.
“Too late now, regardless,” Pete answered. “Get to the trees. They’re our best shot at hiding.”
They sped away from the ranger station, their steps quick but not graceful as they flew over the snow. At least they’d had plenty to eat before this happened. More calories meant a better chance at survival.
“Did you get anything out of Harrington about the warehouse?” Marie said.
“Only that it’s close to Merrill Field.”
Suddenly, Pete wondered if she’d left him alone with Harrington on purpose. So he could torture him. It was a chilling idea, but also justified, considering what he’d done to Warden Andersen to get answers. He flashed back to sticking a knife in the bottom of Andersen’s foot. There were so many nerves in a person’s foot. He’d known how to get the warden to talk.
It didn’t mean he’d liked it.
A drawn-out howl of agony came suddenly from the direction of the ranger station, and Pete and Marie both increased their pace.
“I guess they found Harrington,” Pete said, wincing.
“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.” Marie’s eyes were diamond-hard. For a woman who always seemed to want to think the best of everyone, she was vicious once she decided to write someone off.
“Remind me never to get on your bad side,” Pete said, and came to a stop. He slung the backpack over both shoulders. “What’s in here, anyway?”
“Water. Military rations. A few medical supplies.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No, I’m not kidding,” Marie answered. “What did you think I was doing while you were getting shot at?”
Pete grabbed her and hugged her—which was awkward while wearing snowshoes. “You may have just saved our lives.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’m going to tie the blanket around your waist. It’ll drag behind you and maybe obscure our trail a bit.”
“Won’t that be heavy? Can’t you do it?” Marie had the good grace to look sheepish.
“Breaking the trail is harder work, but if you want to get in front…”
“Sorry,” Marie said. “I’m not usually so whiny. Go ahead.”
Pete tied the blanket so that it would drag behind Marie like a long cape and she took a few steps forward.
“Does it feel heavy?” he asked. “Because it’s not doing as much as I wanted it to when it comes to covering the trail.”
“We can leave it for now,” she replied. “If it becomes too much, I’ll let you know.”
They tied their scarves around the lower ha
lves of their faces and got moving again, Pete clinging to the hope that the prisoners would be too busy with Harrington to come after them. Besides, they’d held up their end of the bargain: Harrington in exchange for Pete and Marie’s escape.
Once again, he regretted surrendering the cabin. The shelter it offered, as well as the supplies, to say nothing of the psychological comfort that came from having four solid walls and a roof over your head.
“The more I think about it,” Pete said—then paused, wondering if he was looking at the situation clearly.
“What?”
In for a penny… “Even if Clyde’s stash is bullshit, we’ll have a better chance of survival in Anchorage.”
“I’m surprised to hear you say so.” Marie met his eyes. “I thought you were operating on the idea that everything was going to unfold like a post-apocalypse movie. Nothing but psychos, etcetera.”
“You have to admit, so far I’ve been right.”
“True. We have met our fair share of lunatics.” Then Marie tipped her head, her brow creasing.
Pete thought he’d heard it too—another shriek of pain, floating through the clear Alaskan air.
He put it out of his mind. Whatever was going on back there in the cabin, it wasn’t his problem.
“There are always going to be crazies and assholes,” Marie said. “But I want to believe that in the end, people are mostly good. Also, in a bigger city, there’s a better chance of some kind of law enforcement or makeshift government forming.”
Was she still thinking about things like the Pulitzer Prize?
“I never thought I’d miss law and order so much,” Pete said, stretching his neck from side to side. “Toward the end there with the National Guard, I came to associate rank and file with fuckups like Sadler. Men who had no idea what they were doing and didn’t give a shit about the men serving under them. The ones who had to pay the price for their decisions. And it only got worse the higher up the chain of command you went.”
“I think when we’re young, we have an idealized sense of the way things are supposed to work,” Marie responded. “Then as we get older, and spend some time living, we learn the truth. Nothing works the way you thought it would. But there’s still good in the world.”
They fell silent and continued the difficult journey through the snow. Fatigue was starting to set in now, though, and Pete reminded himself to stay alert. Now that they were in the woods, there were other things to worry about. The convicts might still come after them—or they might run into wolves, moose, or bears. At least he had the rifle. No more frigging around with that damned crossbow.
“Time to put this blanket away,” Marie said abruptly.
Pete untied it from around her waist, folded it, and shoved it into his pack, which was now too full to zip all the way closed. He smiled to let her know that it wasn’t a big deal, then busied his mind, thinking about the next steps and what it was going to take for them to continue to survive. It beat contemplating how tired he felt and asking where his earlier energy had gone.
Then big, fluffy snowflakes began to fall, and wasn’t that just the most fucked-up timing ever.
He immediately started wishing for heat again—a fire, or at least walls to keep out the cold—and that brought him right to the idea of getting to Anchorage. Would there be heat there? A fire, at least? More? If the radio broadcast that Bahar had told him about in Mueller had somehow been overblown, then he and Marie might make it to Anchorage and be greeted by heat and light and supermarkets.
If that was true, then they could tell whoever was in charge about what had happened and move on with their lives.
Of course, they’d have to live long enough to get to Anchorage, and Mother Nature seemed hell-bent on preventing that.
The snowfall thickened, moving toward a freeze-your-balls-off blizzard. By Pete’s reckoning, there was still an hour of daylight left, but the heavy sky made it seem like sunset had arrived early.
They were going to need to find some shelter before dark fell. They’d be dead in an hour if they stayed out in the open.
“Is it just me, or has it gotten colder?” Marie asked.
He could hear her teeth chattering. Hear how hard she was working to keep her voice steady. “It’s not just you.”
“Do you know why snow makes that sound when you step on it?” she asked, and he knew just what she was doing: trying to keep her mind off the cold by setting it to work on something else.
He wholeheartedly agreed with the direction of her thinking. He was ready to think about anything other than the fact that he could no longer feel his toes—or his nose, or his fingers.
“No, why?”
“When the crystalline structures of the frozen water compress under our feet, they break, and it makes noise.”
“So, it’s the death screams of snowflakes?” he said.
She punched him half-heartedly, looking as exhausted as he felt.
Swish, crunch. Swish, crunch. The noise became hypnotic, and lulled Pete into a mindless state in which he could continue to move forward even while he was engulfed in suffering. He could persevere, though nonstop physical work had worn him down as much as the unending need to remain focused and on guard. Then, with a curse under his breath, he realized how spaced-out he’d become, and wondered if he’d guided them off course.
He glanced down at his watch, quickly sliding the outer casing to expose the compass, and breathed a sigh of relief. He had only a rough idea of where Anchorage was from here, but it looked like they were still going in the right direction.
Roughly.
That wasn’t going to solve the problem of night very definitively falling, though. And long before they’d found any shelter.
“We’re going to have to stop,” he said. “We need to find a place to spend the night. Hopefully, it won’t be snowing in the morning. If we keep moving now, we’re going to wind up lost. Or dead.”
Chapter 10
“Shelter?” Marie’s face was pinched with fatigue and cold. “Where are we going to find shelter?”
“Look for a fallen tree. I can build a lean-to. It won’t be much, but it’ll keep us out of the snow.”
They separated, though not by much, and tromped around, looking for a likely spot while the snow continued to fall.
Then Pete found a place where a large tree had fallen and come to rest against another tree. It was almost too perfect to be true, and for a moment he felt… hope.
“Marie!” he hissed, afraid of making too much noise in the near-dark of an unknown forest.
She hustled over, but looked at the spot with less enthusiasm than he’d hoped for.
“Kind of small, isn’t it?” she asked. “We’re going to have to sit awfully close to each other.”
“The better to keep us warm, my dear,” he muttered.
Marie nodded. “So what’s next?”
“If you can clear the snow from underneath, I’ll go cut some branches.” He took off his pack and the rifle and set them next to the tree.
“So just clear it away?” she asked, removing her pack.
“If you want to build a sort of low perimeter wall, that will help, too. Think igloo. The more airtight a structure is, the warmer it will be.”
“Do you want the blanket draped over the tree?” she said.
“We’ll use that to make ourselves a cocoon inside.”
Marie began clearing away the snow, pushing it to the sides, and Pete’s eyes went to the forest around them. He needed branches, and he needed them quickly. For shelter—and for a fire, if he thought he could manage it. Things would be a whole lot warmer if they could actually have a flame.
There was a likely-looking balsam fir, dense with branches, nearby. He grabbed the axe, went to it, and got on the ground, hoping to be able to chop up from underneath, but the branches were too dense.
He grumbled and got to his feet, and found a lodgepole pine nearby. This one had more well-spaced branches, and it took him only
moments to chop the bottom two off and start to make a pile. When he’d accumulated a good start, he loaded up his arms and carried his haul back to the fallen tree.
Marie had already created a two-person-sized depression under the fallen tree and was in the process of spreading the blanket over the space, with edges folded inward because it was larger than the space where they’d lie. Pete got to work, placing the evergreen branches against what would be the backside of the shelter until his supply of branches was gone.
“What next?” Marie asked.
“Build a layer of snow up over the branches,” he responded, and went to cut some more.
“Mother Nature is doing her level best to bury everything in snow,” Marie said, but got to work.
The shelter came together slowly, but they worked at it until they’d built a den of sorts, with a layer of snow several inches thick and a narrow opening at one end. The structure wouldn’t allow for a fire, but Pete thought they should be relatively protected inside.
He was just going to have to hope it was enough.
He looked up at the sky, trying to calculate how much longer they had until they were in real trouble. “We’re going to lose the light soon.” He brushed snow from his coat, and then from Marie’s. “We need to be strategic about getting inside. The more times we go in and out, the colder we’ll be in there. If you have to go, go now.”
Marie went off into the trees. “No peeking!”
“Back at ya,” Pete said.
When that had been taken care of, they stood in front of the opening.
“Let’s take out food and water now,” Pete said. “We’ll use the packs as pillows at the other end.”
“Don’t we want our heads near the opening?”
“It’ll be colder.”
“What about the rifle?”
“I’m going to load it right now.”
“Leave the snowshoes outside, or bring them in?” Marie said, releasing the straps on hers.
“Everything in,” Pete said, and removed his snowshoes as well.
Marie took two ration bars and two bottles of water from the packs and handed them to Pete. Then she dropped to her belly and scooted through the opening. Once she was inside, she told Pete to pass her the food. Pete did, and when she was ready, he slid the packs in through the opening so she could place them at the far end.