Deep Winter (19 page)

D
anny's knees trembled and knocked and wanted to buckle under him. He was covered in a warm spray of fresh blood from all the gunfire—Mr. and Mrs. Bennett's, Carl's, the deputy's. He'd never liked the sight of blood, and now it seemed to cover every inch of him. He looked at the mess in front of him—folks he'd known for as long as he could remember. His brain wanted to shut down and make it all go away.

Then Mrs. Bennett let out a small cough on the sofa. Blood leaked from the hole in her shoulder. It seemed to be bleeding pretty bad, coming out in spurts. He didn't know nothing about gunshot wounds, but at least she was still breathing. That had to be good.

He picked her up easily even though she weighed more than a hundred and fifty pounds. Her eyes flickered open for a second, stared up at Danny but didn't really seem to be looking at him, then closed again. Her chest rose and fell slowly, something gurgling
from inside her, but she was still alive. Danny walked up the steps to the second floor and laid her down on a bed in the big bedroom at the top of the stairs. The wallpaper had prints of purple flowers, and the bed was made up all nice and neat. Next to the bed, the nightstand had a vase sitting beside a Bible with a leather cover and a bookmark stuck in the middle of the pages.

Danny covered her up with a blanket and stared down at her. She looked older than usual. “I'll be back with help, Mrs. Bennett. I promise. You're gonna be okay.” His eyes fell on the open wound in her shoulder, and he could see ripped-up flesh and some white bone sticking out. He wondered if it hurt real bad. She coughed again. More gurgling.

“Be back as quick as I can, Mrs. Bennett.”

Danny plodded downstairs and took another look at all the killing. He had never seen so much blood. He walked toward the front door and had to step over Carl's body—the entire back of his head missing. Even though Carl had always been mean to him, Danny felt bad for the man—Carl seemed to be sorry for what he had done to Mindy.

Danny stared at Carl's rifle for a second. Then, without really thinking, he reached down and picked it up. The barrel still felt a little warm and was heavy in his thick hands.

Danny stepped out the door and closed it behind him.

The room was quiet, the grandfather clock finally silent after a hundred years. Then Sokowski shifted from under the pile of glass and wood.

C
harlotte and Queenie had been hard on the scent trail, barking with the excitement of the hunt, but after the shots had sounded, their howling had increased and the boys knew that they were going to be moving faster. Danny couldn't be far off.

Scott and Skeeter hadn't spoken much in the last hour or so because there wasn't much left to say. They had decided on what they intended to do, and there wasn't any turning back.

But Scott was having doubts, thoughts creeping out from where they were supposed to stay hidden. All the quiet had him rehashing ancient history. Tammy would be turning seven years old next month. Every year on her birthday, Scott would end up thinking about the party they should be having for his daughter, watching her tearing open presents, blowing out candles on a big birthday cake, running around with other young'uns. Seven years old. Hard to believe that his own flesh and blood was out there somewhere,
living with a family that wasn't her own or in some kind of institution. He wondered what she looked like now. He wondered what kind of girl she was growing up to be. Probably losing her baby teeth and playing with dolls and pretending she was a princess or some other make-believe character. She was a kid now. A kid who didn't know who her real mother and father were. Although he and his wife didn't ever talk about Tammy—never, not a single word—they were both saddled with the guilt of what they had done.

I abandoned my own baby.

How do you live with something like that? You don't. Not really. He and Paula had just been going through the motions for the last six years.

As one year led to the next, Scott thought about Tammy less and less, but now the thing with Danny got him to thinking about her again. Danny and his daughter were similar in many ways—both had mental limitations, and both were unwanted and treated differently from everybody else. Wasn't their fault they turned out the way they did. Scott never paid Danny much attention around town, but the fact was, Danny lived on his own, and even though he might be quiet and kept to himself, he seemed happy enough. The question that popped into Scott's head while he was hiking through the woods with his brother was the one that he couldn't find an answer to: Were they so different?

I'm so sorry, sweetheart. I wish I could take it back.

Scott looked over at Skeeter and wanted to speak up about something else that nagged at him—that maybe Danny didn't do it. Scott didn't get the chance.

Skeeter saw it first. He saw someone loping along in the woods. Staggering, really. A big figure stumbling through the brush.

“On your left,” Skeeter whispered to his brother.

Scott looked in the direction his brother was motioning and saw someone large and hulking lurching among the trees. They both moved in the same direction with their rifles brought up on the ready. They worked their way through some thick brush, trying their best to make as little noise as possible. When they got within a hundred feet, they saw a large man from the back, partially obscured by low-hanging limbs covered with snow. The man stumbled forward, dropped to the ground, then struggled back to his feet.

Scott shouldered his rifle, got the target in his scope, right in the middle of the broad shoulders. His finger wrapped around the trigger's cold steel.

“I got 'im,” Scott whispered to his brother.

T
he sun had slid behind the clouds, and the temperature dropped fast. It was spitting snow again, and by the looks of the darkening sky it was going to snow for a while.

Danny trudged along in the woods but kept sight of the road to his left. He wanted to keep it in view, knowing that the road would bring him back to town. His arms hung loose at his sides. The stock of the gun was cold as ice, but Danny kept it gripped tightly in his fist. Something told him to. His vision had started to blur before it began to snow, but it was even worse now. The sky, the trees, even his own feet were fuzzy shapes. It was like he was staring through a fogged-up window.

He hurt all over. His fingers and toes were throbbing from frostbite. His head pounding. Every heartbeat sent a shot of pain into his brain. It felt as if his head might split open like an egg dropped onto the floor. He had given up trying to keep his tongue
in his mouth. He let it hang out like a panting dog's on a hot August day. His eyes were heavy. His lids wanted to close and stay closed.

Danny had never felt so tired. The kind of tired that made your body ache everywhere. Maybe he was dying and this is what it felt like. He had always been scared of dying. Of just going away and never coming back. Of having his body being buried under the ground, where the worms and bugs would get to it. He knew that when he died, according to the churchgoing folks in town, he would see his mama and papa again. That would be nice. They were up there with God, but Danny wasn't so sure about God. He was supposed to be the one that made everything and brought everybody up to heaven when they died, but nobody Danny knew had ever actually seen heaven or God. And it seemed like everybody who went to church was afraid of dying, too. That just didn't make sense to Danny. If heaven was so special and God so great, why was everybody afraid of dying?

Danny knew that if he stopped to rest, he might not get back up again. And Mrs. Bennett needed him. If he didn't get help, she might die, and maybe she wasn't ready to go to heaven either. Besides, enough folks had died already because of him, and he didn't want someone else dying because he was too tired or too scared. Mrs. Bennett was nothing but good and kind to him, and he was determined not to let her down.

The sky was getting darker. Danny looked up and hoped that he would make it back to town before dark.

Come this way, Danny.

Danny stopped and looked deeper into the woods. The blurry outline of the three-legged deer stood in between some trees. Its tail twitched, and Danny was pretty sure she was staring at him.

“I don't want to get lost in the woods. The road leads back to town.”

It'll take too long that way, Danny. Besides, there's someone in the woods who can help you.

“Who?”

I'll take you to him.

“Are you sure?”

The three-legged deer didn't answer. She turned and limped deeper into the woods. Danny watched her fuzzy shape disappear behind the trees and wasn't sure what to do. He looked down at his fist that gripped the rifle—it was white-knuckled from holding it for so long and so tight. He switched hands, then began to follow after the deer.

Danny sure hoped that the three-legged deer was right.

It is the right thing, Danny. You know that. Follow the deer. She knows the way.

For the first time, Danny thought the voice in his head kinda sounded like his own.

H
is shirt was pretty well soaked through with sweat, and the wind had him shivering without his jacket. It wasn't just the cold that had him shaking—his body wanted another fix as well. He kept plodding forward, one step at a time. His legs and feet were ready to give out from under him—he'd put some serious mileage on his body for the last few hours. Taggart stared down at his watch—an old Sector watch that the wife had given him on their tenth wedding anniversary. Almost five o'clock. Seven hours without a drink. He knew. He'd been counting the hours.

All he could see were trees in every direction. He swatted at a low-hanging tree limb, and a blanket of snow powder shook off and fell onto his face and neck. As the cold touched his skin, he found that he didn't feel the anger or any form of loathing against the wilderness he stood in anymore. All that hostility got swept away with the wind that just wouldn't let up.

Part of him wanted to sit down and rest; the other part of him wanted to keep walking. With every new step, he felt a little more clarity seeping in. He had probably been walking in circles for the last seven hours. Just like his life for the last twenty years—walking in circles. But all this—the lack of sleep, the hours of hiking, and the absence of booze—had brought with it a distorted sense of lucidity.

The coyote had not only spared his life but had given him something as well. A simple, primitive message. He didn't want to die. Didn't want to give up on this life just yet. Maybe it could be fixed. Others had done it before him, and others would do it after.

He stopped in his tracks as his movement scared up a white-tailed jackrabbit, and the animal bounded up and over drifts of snow and fallen trees with easy grace and little effort. He heard its paws thumping on the snow, and the sound grew softer as the jackrabbit slipped deeper into the trees.

When he started walking again, his boots got tangled up with each other. He stumbled, almost fell, but caught himself against a tree that was as big around as he was. His body craved rest, his mind some sleep, but if he stopped now, he'd never get himself moving again. Can't fall asleep out here. He'd end up sleeping through the night and freezing to death.

Muscles burning and bones aching, Taggart kept forward momentum.

From all his reading over the years, Taggart knew a little bit about Native American vision quests and Inuit peoples participating in sensory-deprivation rituals—long periods of walking in mountainous areas with no food or water, the body needing some sleep. He knew that he still had booze coursing through his system and that his spirituality paled in comparison to most, but somehow he
seemed to be inching his way out from the dark cloud he'd been walking under for far too long.

If he could somehow find his way out of these woods, he convinced himself that he could find his way out of his addiction.

Get me out of these woods and I'll change. I swear I'll change. Just get me out.

S
cott held his breath, tried to check his heart rate. One eye pressed closed, the other shoved to the scope of the rifle. The figure in the snow moved in the opposite direction, getting smaller but still within range. He adjusted his shot, just slightly. Moved the crosshairs right below the man's left shoulder blade—a direct path to the heart.

He heard Skeeter breathing beside him. Smelled the chewing tobacco on his breath.

Snow dropped down more heavily from the gray sky, dangerously close to obscuring the target.

“Want me to take the shot?” Skeeter whispered.

Scott tensed up at the question. His brother didn't mean for it to sound threatening, but Scott knew he had only a few seconds before he lost his shot. He grunted a no and gripped the rifle a little tighter.
His finger tried to ease back the trigger, just like he'd done it a thousand times before—before when he was firing at game.

“Gonna lose him,” Skeeter whispered again.

Scott heard the strap of Skeeter's rifle rattle and knew that his brother was lining up a shot. If he didn't take the shot, Skeeter would do what he couldn't. A few inches lay between fatal and nonfatal. Just a few inches of skin separated vital organs from a flesh wound. He didn't care so much about the ramifications with the law in killing Danny—murder was murder. It was other ramifications he just couldn't wrap his head around—taking a man down.

Skeeter's breath quickened. Scott had only a few seconds to decide.

His extended arm that clutched the forestock of the rifle dipped down an inch or so, and he squeezed the trigger.

H
e heard a
pop,
then felt a sharp sting chew at his side. The force of impact spun him around like a dancer. Blood sprayed against the perfect white, decorating the snow in a perfect circle. Taggart clutched at the wound, felt the warmth spread from inside him, then sank to his knees in the snow and fell face-first onto the ground. The cold felt strangely refreshing on his skin.

The sound of running footsteps drew near. Taggart applied pressure to the hole in his side and waited—waited for help to finally arrive.