Snowblind (10 page)

“Keep moving forward,” he whispered. Fresh blood seeped through his cracked lips.

He placed one foot in front of the other. Repeated the process. Again. Again. Again-again. Again-again. Again-again-again-again-again-again.

The forest closed in from his left. The drop-off to his right grew so steep he could have stepped off the path and onto the treetops. He imagined a stream somewhere below the clouds; a crystal clear ribbon of water so cold in the summer that only the rainbow trout could tolerate it for more than a few seconds. He tried to picture it as it must be now, buried underneath inches of ice and feet of snow. Was it the stream Vigil had fallen into which felt like a lifetime ago now? Nothing around him looked familiar, and yet at the same time looked exactly like every other stretch of wilderness.

Down
.

He needed to focus on the plan. He didn’t need to know exactly where he was going, only the direction that would eventually guide him to help.

The wind screamed through the valley, beneath the sound of which he thought he heard a distant bass rumble.

He picked up his pace; faster and faster until he was running, lifting his knees high, snow flying from his feet. Distance. He needed to create distance between himself and his pursuit; a gap too wide to close, miles of virgin white snow already absolved of his footprints.

Pine branches overburdened by accumulation sagged across the path in front of him. He held his rifle up, closed his eyes, and plowed straight through. The snow hit him in the face like an icy fist. He opened his eyes and let out an involuntary shout.

There was someone on the path, staring directly at him.

He tried to stop his momentum, but his feet slid out from beneath him, depositing him on his rear end. His Remington fell from his grasp and disappeared into the snow. He lunged to the side, thrust his hands into the snow, and grabbed his rifle. He brought it to his shoulder and aimed at his attacker—

“No…” he whispered.

He hadn’t recognized the face with the hair covered with white and the ice that had formed in patches on the blue skin and in the brows, lashes, and beard. But the eyes were unmistakable.

They were Baumann’s eyes.

Todd’s head had been raggedly severed from his neck at roughly the fourth cervical vertebra and impaled upon a crooked pike still ridged with bark. It had been staked into the accumulation, right in the middle of the path. There wasn’t so much as the hint of a footprint leading up to it. Beyond his old friend’s head, there was nothing but clouds and snow. The trail wound tightly to the left around another vertical stone embankment, to the right of which was a deadfall straight into the bottom of the valley, so far down he couldn’t see it through the storm.

Another bass rumble. More distinct this time. Closer. It echoed from the opposite mountainside, making its origin impossible to divine.

They were coming.

“
rrrRRaaAHHhrrr!
”

A guttural roar. Closer still.

He fished the snow out of his barrel with his index finger and directed his rifle toward the forest uphill from him.

Crashing sounds.

The treetops shook and snow fell from the branches at the crest of the second rise.

It was too soon. They couldn’t have seen through his ruse yet. It was too soon!

“Umph. Umph. Umph.”

Grunting sounds from the woods.

Closing in.

“
rrrrrrRRRRRaaaaaAAAAHHHHHhhhhrrrrrrr!
”

A roar grumbled through the valley behind him, from one side to the other, like a semi speeding past on a highway.

He glanced left. His tracks vanished into the trees, beyond which the only path led back across the treacherous scree-lined escarpment and ultimately to the house itself.

He glanced right. The trail narrowed to such a degree that he would have sought an alternate route even under ideal weather conditions.

Behind him was another sheer granite formation. The upper canopy of the massive pines far below was barely visible.

And his hunters were streaking straight down the hillside through the forest.

Directly at him.

“Umph. Umph.”

More grunting.

“
rrrRRaaAHHhrrr!
”

He retreated a step and tried to locate movement between the tree trunks.

A glance back over his shoulder.

He was on a stone point with no escape and nothing but open air behind and beneath him.

“
Umph. Umph
.”

Another step backward.

“
rrrRRaaAHHhrrr!
”

The ground trembled underfoot.

Dear God, how many of them were there?

More crashing. Branches snapped. Clumps of snow fell.

Closer.

Closer.

Another step back—

He bumped into something and nearly crawled right out of his skin. He whirled in time to see the pike topple over. Baumann’s lifeless face stared up at him from the snow, his nose pointing off to the side. The tattered skin on his neck was ridged with teeth marks. The impressions on the bottom of C-4 where the marrow had been gnawed out were so perfect they could have been used to cast a mold of the front six teeth on both the upper and lower rows.

“
rrrRRaaAHHhrrr!
”

“
Umph, umph
,” from just ahead and to the left.

More grunts from the thicket off to his right.

The ground positively bucked beneath him.

He turned to his left. No way he’d ever reach the path.

To his right. Not a chance.

Behind him. A pitfall into the forest below.

Baumann’s face. Blindly looking straight through him. Four bloodless lacerations through his eyebrows and up his forehead past his hairline. One on his left temple. Whatever staked his head to the post had palmed it like a basketball. The hand itself had to be a good sixteen inches from the base of the palm to the tip of the middle finger. Maybe more. Mother of God…

“
Umph, umph. Umph, umph. Umph, umph
.”

Crashing. Pounding.

Thundering footsteps, beating a drumroll on the frozen earth.

“
rrrRRaaAHHhrrr!
”

Left? No.

Right? No, damn it.

Bushes shivering in front of him. Tree branches breaking.

“
Umph-umph. Umph-umph
.”

Coburn fired into the brush. Snow and wood splinters flew. The stock kicked. The report crashed.

Pull-jack-chamber-slam.

“
Umph-umph-umph-umph
.”

The wind shrieked through the canyon, buffeting him to the side.

“
rrrRRaaAHHhrrr!
”

He shot at the sound, the shaking branches. The rifle bucked. The bullet sailed wide through the thicket.

“
Umph-umph-umph-umph-umph-umph
.”

Pull-jack-chamber-slam.

Twenty feet to the border of the forest. A quarter of a second to reach him from the moment they broke cover.

One shot.

No chance to reload.

If he missed, he was dead.

Even if he hit, there was no chance of survival.

Baumann’s horrible screams in his head.

Shore’s warm blood spattering his face.

Vigil’s head screwed into his savaged pelvis.

“
Umph-umph-umph-umph-umph-umph-umph-umph-umph-umph
.”

The trees shivered a mere twenty feet away.

Dark shapes through the blowing flakes.

The thunder of footsteps.

“
rrrRRaaAHHhrrr!
”

Coburn couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow. He readjusted his grip on the Remington. Tried to hold the barrel steady.

Sudden and abrupt silence.

The movement in the shadows ceased. The trees slowly resumed a natural swaying motion in time with the wind, which carried that vile musky stench to him. Snowflakes swirled around him as if uncertain which way to go before being swept away from right to left.

In his ears:
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump
.

There was no motion from behind the tree line. No sound.

He retreated another step.

What were they waiting for?

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump
.

Left and right. No movement in either direction.

Straight ahead. Nothing. Just a wall of snow-blanketed pines standing shoulder-to-shoulder, skirted by skeletal clusters of scrub oak and evergreen shrubs.

Another step in reverse.

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump
.

One shot.

Make it count.

Distance. Another step backward. Baumann’s head against his left calf.

Steady the rifle. Steady…

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump
.

His nerves frayed, then snapped.

“What are you waiting for?” he shouted, spittle spraying from his bloody lips. “Show yourselves!”

His voice echoed back at him from the canyon behind him before the wind obliterated it with a scream.

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump
.

Movement. Slow. Silent.

A mere bending of branches, at odds with the motion of the wind in the boughs.

Coburn raised his head and tilted the barrel to better see past his useless scope.

One shot.

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump
.

One…

“
Umph
.”

Movement.

THUMP-thump-THUMP-thump-THUMP-thump.

“
Umph
.”

The source of motion, just to the left of the broad trunk of a pine tree, behind a juniper bush, right where a drift of snow had formed against—

That wasn’t a drift of snow.

It rose up from the ground, a hunched shape seemingly molded from the snow.

THUMP-thump-THUMP-thump-THUMP-thump.

“
Umph
.”

It reached out with two long arms, parted the bushes, and lumbered cautiously out into the open. It moved like a gorilla, one fist down in the accumulation, its haunches low to the ground. Its long hair was stark white and blew sideways on the wind, replicating the movement of the snow. Had he not actually watched it emerge from the forest, Coburn could have stared right at it and never seen it. As it was, it started to blend into the scenery before his very eyes, save for the crimson streaks clumped into its hair from its chin down to the center of its chest.

“
Umph. Umph
.”

Its chest compressed and its shoulders flinched when it made the sounds.

THUMP-thump-THUMP-thump-THUMP-thump.

Its body was more slender than a gorilla’s, although it was difficult to truly tell with all of the hair. And the shape of its face was different. The short forehead sloped backward toward the hairline from an upturned pug nose, but the jaws didn’t protrude to nearly the extent of any simian. And the skin was pale, nearly translucent. It looked almost like Caucasoid skin over Negroid bone structure with an ape’s nose. It looked almost…human.

“
Umph
.”

THUMP-thump-THUMP-thump-THUMP-thump.

“Come on!” Coburn yelled.

It leaned forward, stabbed its balled fist into the snow, and moved closer. One lumbering step, then another.

Coburn aligned the barrel of his rifle with its broad chest. From this range, he could blow a hole the size of a baseball straight through it. Maybe even through the tree behind it, too.

It stopped where it was, as though sensing his thoughts.

Why was it just crouching there? Like it was daring him to take a shot?

“
Umph. Umph
.”

THUMP-thump-THUMP-thump-THUMP-thump.

It was as though it wanted Coburn to destroy it, but that made no sense. Why would it draw his attention to it, let him sight it down, when—?