Snowblind (3 page)

He hopped up on the sill and glanced back over his shoulder. The others were heading in his direction with their rifles at port arms. He imagined he wore the same conflicting expressions of fear and determination on his face. It was one thing stalking elk through the forest with a warm belly full of whiskey, but going after a bear large enough and strong enough to go through the side of a house to attack a wounded man…one that had now tasted human flesh and blood…

That was another thing entirely.

Coburn raised his Remington and dropped down into a waist-deep drift. Even after a few minutes by the fire, the shock of the cold was paralyzing. He bared his teeth and struggled away from the window into snow that was barely six inches deep. The crimson amoebae of Vigil’s blood had lightened in color as the accumulation continued to amass on top of it. The edges of the drag marks were now barely discernible as the wind did its best to erase all signs of passage. Even the prints had been reduced to vague ovular impressions that weren’t even clear enough to confirm quadripedal locomotion, let alone betray the species of animal. It wouldn’t be long before there would be nothing left to follow.

They had to hurry.

Coburn charged toward the edge of the forest. The branches of the evergreens and aspens would trap most of the snow overhead, which meant that he would be able to move faster under the canopy. Unfortunately, it also meant that the tracks would be nearly impossible to follow on the moldering detritus.

He was nearly to the tree line and searching for the path of least resistance when a gust of wind made the shadows shift.

Coburn stopped so quickly that his feet slid out from beneath him. He scrabbled back to his feet, rifle at his shoulder, never once taking his eyes off of the forest through the swirling snow.

“Hurry up!” Baumann shouted as he charged past Coburn on his left. He barely had time to reach out and grab Todd by the back of the jacket. “What the hell are you—?”

Baumann’s rifle was seated against his shoulder in a heartbeat. It shook in his grasp. His eyes were impossibly wide. He took an involuntary step backward.

“Oh, God,” Shore said from behind them.

Coburn didn’t dare look away.

“Help me get him down from there,” Coburn said.

“A bear wouldn’t do something like that,” Shore said.

“Just help me get him down!”

Coburn walked cautiously, one step at a time, sweeping his rifle across the tree line a mere twenty feet away. The Remington was a powerful rifle that could drop a bull at three hundred yards like it was a point-blank shot, but at such close range, the scope was not only useless, it was in the way. The load didn’t scatter like buckshot from a shotgun; there was one bullet that was less than half an inch in diameter. And if he missed it would take him nearly two whole seconds to draw back the bolt, eject the spent casing, chamber another, slam the bolt home again, and pull the trigger. Based on the evidence around him, Coburn was certain that he wouldn’t have that kind of time. He’d once read that a grizzly bear could run at speeds of up to thirty miles an hour. At that rate, it would be upon him in half a second.

He halved the distance and stopped ten feet from the wall of pine trees. The wind was blowing so hard that it was snowing sideways. The flakes flew past so quickly that even standing still felt like he was moving to his right, but he could clearly see Vigil’s silhouette against the dark shadows lurking under the canopy. He’d been somehow suspended upside down from the skeletal branches of an aspen, his arms dangling toward the ground. He bounced gently up and down from the bough as he swayed in the wind. It was obvious he’d been stripped to the bare skin…and then gutted.

“No bear could do that,” Shore repeated.

“Yeah…” Coburn said. The telltale scent of evisceration, of warm blood and lacerated bowels, found him on the screaming wind. “I think you might be right…”

Movement in the shadows to his left.

“Back to the cabin,” Coburn said. More movement drew his attention to the right. “Get back to the cabin!”

He turned and ran as fast as he could, lifting his feet high to clear the accumulation. Shore was an indistinct blur ahead of him against the smoky light of the window. He heard Baumann shouting from somewhere behind him. Shore plowed into the drift against the house first and kicked at the planks until he managed to haul himself over the sill. Coburn spun and covered the edge of the forest while Baumann leapt up and scrambled through the window.

There was no sign of pursuit.

“Come on, Will!”

“Hurry up!”

Coburn turned, climbed through the open window, and fell down to the muddy ground beside the fire.

* * *

“I’m telling you, bears don’t do that kind of thing!” Shore’s voice carried from the main room. “They
can’t
do that kind of thing!”

“What else could have done it then?” Baumann said. He was sitting in the slanted doorway between rooms, where he could see both the front door and the side window. “I can’t think of anything that could have done that.”

“That’s exactly my point!”

“Men,” Coburn said without taking his eyes from the window, where he focused on the stretch of white that separated him from the forest, despite the snow blowing directly into his face. “Only men are capable of doing something like that.”

The silence was interrupted only by the wail of the wind. When it paused to draw a breath, he could see Vigil’s outline, still dangling from the trees. Every few minutes, he was convinced he caught movement in the shadows, in a slightly different location each time. Someone or something was still out there. Watching them.

Waiting.

A shiver rippled up his spine.

“What are we going to do?” Shore said, barely loud enough to be heard.

Coburn didn’t have the slightest clue. They had no idea who or what was out there, or how many of them there were. Until they did and had a solid plan of action, running blindly into the forest and the storm was suicide.

They had already barricaded the front door as well as they could. It had been unnerving how easily the pile of debris just inside the front door had slid into place against it. The only other window, on the front of the house, was still boarded and reinforced with broken lengths of ceiling joists. Where the wooden walls appeared most vulnerable, there were already stacks of stones and logs. None of them vocalized what they were all thinking.

They weren’t the first to find themselves in this position.

Coburn tried not to think about the hole in the ground in the main room or how long it must have taken to dig if the ground was as cold and hard as it was now. Had an animal dug it as he at first thought, or had it been a man trying to tunnel under the wall or just find a place to hide? If that were the case, then how long had he been trapped in here?

The wind shifted again and Coburn’s breath caught in his chest.

His pulse thumped in his temples, causing the edges of his vision to throb as he scanned the tree line. Each breath came faster and harder and he had to consciously ease the pressure of his finger on the trigger before he squeezed off a panicked round.

Vigil’s body…

It was gone.

* * *

“It must have fallen from the tree,” Baumann said. He’d switched spots with Coburn and was scanning the forest floor through his rifle scope. “It could already be buried with as hard as it’s snowing.”

“We should still be able to see something,” Coburn said.

“Not necessarily. Are you sure you didn’t see anyone drag it down? I mean, how closely were you watching?”

“I was watching that area the entire time.”

“You sure you didn’t maybe close your eyes for a few—”

“Tell me you could sleep right now, Todd.”

“Nothing personal, man. We have to consider every possibility.”

“Guys,” Shore said from the adjacent room.

“I didn’t close my eyes and I didn’t look away. I was staring right at it the entire time, but the snow…”

“Guys.”

“I’m looking right at the forest now and I can barely see the trees,” Baumann said.

“So you see what I’m saying. Someone could have waited for a big gust and—”

“Guys!” Shore shouted.

Coburn whirled to face Shore, who had crept closer to the barricade against the front door. His head was cocked toward a gap between a weathered board and a chunk of granite. His eyes were so wide that the whites stood out against the darkness.

“There’s something out there,” he whispered.

Coburn glanced back at Baumann, who waved him on and turned his attention back to his rifle and the night. Shore stepped back from the door to make room for Coburn beside the barricade.

“I don’t hear—”

“Shh!”

Coburn pressed his hand over his opposite ear—

A scratching sound on the other side of the door. Faint…almost like an animal clawing at the wood. Or maybe a branch had blown up against the door. It was impossible to tell.

Coburn eased up against the wall next to the barricade and tried to peer between the slats, but couldn’t see a blasted thing.

“Keep your rifle trained on the door,” he whispered to Shore, then ran into the other room to join Baumann at the window.

“What’s out there?” Baumann whispered.

“I can’t tell. Could be nothing.”

“Could be something.”

“Right.”

“Which means…”

“I’m going to need you to watch my back,” Coburn said. “I’m going out there.”

* * *

Coburn sat on the windowsill, his heart pounding, his frozen breath racing back over his shoulder, while he scrutinized the tree line through his scope. It was impossible to tell if there was anything out there. The snow obscured all but the most generalized details. Even the trees themselves now supported so much accumulation they were nearly indistinguishable from the storm.

He had to do this before he lost his nerve.

Coburn took a deep breath, held his rifle across his chest, and dropped down into the drift, which had already nearly resumed its original form. The moment he found his balance, he was moving at a crouch toward the corner of the house, the stock of his rifle flush against his shoulder. He pressed his back against the boards and listened, but he couldn’t hear a blasted thing over the wind. He glanced back at Baumann, who gave him a reassuring nod over the barrel of his rifle.

When he rounded the corner, the wind would be at his back, giving him an advantage in visibility over whoever or whatever was at the front door. If anything was there at all. Of course, his scent would also carry downwind…

He focused on his breathing to keep from hyperventilating.

In one swift motion, he swung around the side of the building and leveled his rifle at the area in front of the door.

Nothing or no one there.

He started forward. Slowly. Cautiously. One careful step at a time. He scanned the ring of forest to his left and directly ahead of him past the house. No movement. At least none that he could discern. The motion of the snow seemed to animate everything, lending life to the inanimate.

He heard the scratching sound as he neared the front door, but still couldn’t see anything. Maybe a hint of motion from beyond the wooden frame. A shifting of shadows within shadows. The door was recessed deeply enough to hide a man, especially if he pressed his back to the door. There was only one way for him to find out for sure what was back there in the darkness.

He held his breath and listened for the sound of breathing.

Again, nothing but that monotonous scratching.

He peeked around the corner and then ducked back.

No one there.

A sense of relief washed over him like a physical wave.

Thank God. It had to just be a branch.

Coburn crept closer, prepared to grab the branch, toss it away from the house, and sprint back toward the open window. He had already loosened his grip on the rifle when his brain caught up with his eyes.

It wasn’t a branch.

It was a hand.

A human hand at the end of a severed forearm.

Tied to a bent, rusted nail in the door by a tendon.

Swinging gently back and forth at the behest of the wind.

The curled fingers raking the wood.

Scratch
.

Scratch
.

Scratch
.

* * *

Coburn whirled around and sighted down the forest along the length of his trembling barrel. He was breathing too fast to catch his breath. His pulse was pounding so hard in his ears that it was all he could hear. The hackles on his neck prickled under the weight of unseen eyes. It was snowing so hard that he could barely see the outlines of the trees forty feet away. How hard was the wind blowing? Even at such a short distance it would alter the trajectory of his bullet. He might have the opportunity to chamber another if he missed.