The Winter People (6 page)

Nick stopped and
stared at Hayden.  He wanted to be sure that what he was saying was getting
through to him.  This was an emergency.  Hayden simply stared at the road and
nodded, his jaw tightening and relaxing as he was clenching his teeth.  Nick
felt that he understood.

"It doesn't
sound good, that's for sure."

"Something
else Hayden, they were, are. . .  They're both strong guys.  Taylor lifts
weights and works out, and does all kinds of sports.  And Marty is real
athletic, and big!  He cycles, swims, runs and hikes . . . ," Nick's mind
was muddled and confused.  He wasn't sure which tense to use, somehow, either
way of talking about them seemed wrong.  He finally just stopped trying
altogether and looked over at Mike.  Mike was looking back sympathetically, and
then they both lowered their heads.

***

Nothing more was
said as the three men drove on in silence, broken only by the rhythmic thumping
of the snow chains.  Its noise mixed with that of the wind to produce an eerie
symphony of sounds that induced anxiety.  The closer they came to a point of
light in the void before them, the more apprehensive they became.  Even
Hayden's stoicism seemed feigned.

The Suburban
crested the last hill and came upon the Jeep.  Hayden's eyes widened, Mike and
Nick were sullen.  Hayden maneuvered the vehicle so that its headlight
illuminated as much of the other as possible, parking about twenty feet away. 
He looked over and found the other two staring at him intently, probingly.  He
flashed them a hard scowl.

"You two stay
here.  I'm going to take a look."  Hayden didn't wait for a reply or
argument.  And from the looks on their faces, they understood.  He zipped up
his parka and donned a face mask, then pulled the hood of his coat over his
head.  Lastly, he grabbed the large flashlight off of the seat next to him and
opened his door.

A blast of Arctic
air rushed in and nearly pulled the door from his grasp like a living thing
trying to open the door for him.  Its cold bit through his clothing in places
and he could feel it on his skin.  He stepped down and slammed his door shut
against the protest of the northern current.  Hayden knew that it was damned
cold out here and he couldn't stay out for long.  He turned on the light in his
left hand and began to walk quickly towards the Jeep.

As he reached the
overturned vehicle, it had the image of a dinosaur that had died and fallen,
becoming a part of the land around it.  It eventually became the tank of gas he
had put in his truck this morning.  The blowing snow had begun to form drifts
against the hood and top, covering over any traces of blood that Nick had said
he'd seen.  There was, however, the frozen rivulets if blood on the hood.  And
their position was consistent with what Nick had surmised in his recounting of
the story.

Hayden looked down
and saw the tuft of hair and scalp caught on the jag of glass.  It wavered
frenzied and maniacal in the gusts assailing it.  His breath caught in his
throat for a moment, and then he took a deep breath that made his lungs ache. 
He stepped closer to see onto the side of the vehicle, now facing up, to get a
look at the driver side door area.  Its hinges were twisted and bent and jagged
pieces of metal were all that remained of the door.  He shone his light to the
latch and could see a bright reflection from the recently scored metal
surface.  Its catch mechanism was pulled and bent outward, a bit of cloth
snagged and torn on it waved like a flag in a warm summer breeze.

It did indeed look
like the door had been ripped off its hinges.  He scanned the field around him
with the flashlight but could see nothing.  Shadows and lumps and
irregularities in the surface were completely incomprehensible in the
flashlight beam.  He looked at the door frame again and slowly shook his head. 
This not only didn't look good, it looked very, very bad.

Hayden bent down
into a crouch and peered into the Jeep.  It was a shambles.  He looked down at
the passenger door window and saw the pool of blood already coated with frost. 
His stomach turned once, partly in revulsion to the entire scene, partly in
dread.  As he turned to move away from it his light flashed off something and
he caught a glimpse of it from the corner of his eye.  He jerked back to locate
the brief glimmer, and then found it.

The closer he
looked the more he saw.  Mixed in with the fragmented glass were spent
casings.  He'd almost missed them, he wasn't prepared for them.  He reached
into the opened window frame and picked one out of the rubble.  He turned it
over in his gloved hand and decided that it was a 9mm shell.  He held it up to
his face mask and breathed deeply.  The frigid air burned his nostrils, but
there was the strong acrid scent of gunpowder on the brass object.  This had
been fired very recently, he decided.

This excited
Hayden momentarily.  Almost with enthusiasm, he sifted through the broken glass
and came up with thirteen more.  He searched harder still, determined.  Then,
behind the passenger seat and lodged in the jumble of skis and other equipment,
he found the gun.  He immediately saw that the slide was opened, indicating
that it had been fired until it was emptied.  As he held it in his hand and
inspected it, he also found that the grip and part of the barrel was bathed in
now frozen blood.

A lump caught in
his throat and he had to swallow hard.  Hayden fell to one knee and grabbed
onto the window frame for support.  His hand barely missed the hair fluttering
in the wind.  He stared at it hard, but it wouldn't come into focus and he had
to quell the desire to vomit.  The whole grisly scene had drudged up an old
memory that he had not thought about for years.  That he had in fact purposely
forgotten, until now.

Near the end of
the Viet Nam War Hayden had been drafted in to the army, along with several of
his buddies.  Two of them, Tom Jenkins and Malvin McDee had gone to Nam.  Tom
had been killed his second day there and Malvin had been paralyzed by a
sniper's bullet a few months later.  Hayden hadn't seen him since.  He and
Lloyd Gates had been allowed to stay together though, and ended up in the
Aleutian Islands.

“A great place to
fight the Viet Cong from,” Hayden thought sarcastically.  He and Lloyd and a
few of the others they had met up there had become pretty good friends.  There
wasn't a whole hell of a lot to do up there, so they spent a good deal of time
together.  One fine spring day, when it had warmed up to about five degrees,
Billy Barton had an idea.

Billy was a fairly
wild young man from somewhere in Montana.  Hayden couldn't remember exactly
where, or if he ever really knew.  Billy always bragged of killing a Grizzly
bear, or hunting a Grizzly bear, or doing something with a Grizzly bear.  But,
that was old news.  So he thought it would be great fun to go after a Kodiak. 
He'd heard somewhere that they were the meanest, biggest, ugliest bears alive. 
And, they just happened to be right up here where they were.

So Billy had
talked a couple of the others into going on a bear hunt with him, Lloyd
included.  Four of them left that morning in a Jeep, all carrying automatic
weapons and sack lunches.  About the time it had begun to get dark and they
hadn't returned Hayden had become worried.  He went to the C.O. and told him
what they'd done.  Captain Stillman ordered up a search party with Hayden
heading it.

They had searched
most of that night before the cold made them quit, then continued the next
day.  At about half past one on the following day, just two miles from camp,
they found the Jeep that Billy Barton had been driving.  It was turned upside
down on a flat trail near the mountains.  They found all four sub-machine guns
too, emptied.  Spent shell casings and empty clips were scattered over a fifty
foot radius.  The stock on one rifle had been shattered and its barrel was bent
nearly forty degrees.  And caught between the trigger and the guard was a
finger, torn off of the hand from the second knuckle down.

There had been
bear tracks in the snow all around the Jeep and blood was spattered
everywhere.  It was as if someone had slung red paint around with a bucket. 
They continued to search until it was well into the night and found nothing. 
The bear tracks and it looked like only one set, headed off into the woods
towards the ragged peaks where the Jeep had been headed.  But they soon lost
them as blowing snow had devoured any evidence of their passing.

For three full
days they searched for the missing men but they were never found.  And so went
the only casualties of the Viet Nam War in the Aleutian Islands.  Lloyd Gates,
Billy Barton, Fred Preston, and Tim Gassman had found their bear.

The numbness in
Hayden's knee was giving way to a burning pain.  He blinked several times,
shook his head, and looked down.  Its contact with the pavement had allowed the
bitter cold to seep in.  He sniffed in a deep breath, exhaled, and then put the
gun in his coat pocket.  He stood and walked around behind the Jeep, his
flashlight guiding him.  There seemed to be nothing more.  Almost as an
afterthought, he ran the beam down the side of the car.

On the back rear
quarter panel above the wheel well, was a scratch.  Four deep grooves about two
inches apart ran up the side from the wheel well to the side window frame.  Not
just gouges either, Hayden thought.  They literally ripped the metal, parted it
like a large nail split old dried wood.  Hayden trembled in a wave that lasted
only seconds, but he would feel cold for a long time.

Hayden had seen
enough, and though he was certain he knew what had happened here, it didn't
make him feel any better.  Somehow, he knew it wasn't over.  He knew, in fact,
that this was only the beginning.  At least that's what his gut was telling him,
and he'd learned to listen to it in the last sixty years.  He turned and headed
back to the Suburban.

On his way there,
Hayden noticed the sky.  The front was nearly upon them and he could actually
feel the wall of snow that connected the clouds to the land, out before him. 
Though it was too dark to see detail, he knew that it was there.  And the
clouds were somehow different as well, preternatural.  He could feel something
in the storm that was moving to envelope them, malevolence.  It was evil.

He looked up at
the surreal darkness that was blotting out the sky and the stars and all that
was rational, and he shivered.  Hayden didn't have the slightest idea why, but
he was afraid.  This storm would be like no other he had ever seen.  This would
be a storm he would not forget.  He jogged back to the Suburban and climbed
inside, risking one last glance at the sky before he closed the door.  Evil.

***

Nick and Mike
watched the sheriff intently.  He had found something in the Jeep that had made
him excited but they couldn't see what it was.  Then he looked like he was
going to be sick.  Next, he had slipped something into his pocket.  He had just
stayed there for a long time and Nick had nearly gotten out.  But the thought
of seeing that scene again prevented him from doing anything.  He simply looked
at Mike, who was looking back at him.

Finally the
sheriff had finished with his investigation and headed back to where they were
waiting.  On the way he paused to look at the sky.  This in turn, caused Nick
and Mike to look out the windows as well.

"Jesus Nick! 
Would you look at that?  That's a hell of a storm coming in, isn't it?"
Mike's eyes widened as he looked up at the dark mass in the heavens.

Nick felt that it
was more than a storm, he could sense it.  "Yeah," his voice was barely
a squeak.  His throat was dry and his tongue felt thick and heavy. 
"Yeah," he repeated.

The driver door
opened and they were assaulted by a biting gale.  They jerked around,
startled.  Climbing into the cab was Hayden, fighting to close the door against
the pull of the wind.  Nick instantly noticed the small bulge in his coat
pocket and could stand it no longer.  But Mike had beaten him to it.

"What'd you
find?!" Mike blurted out.

Hayden ignored the
question with a question of his own.  Pulling down his hood he asked, "Did
either of your two friends own a gun?"  He could see that both men were
taken aback.

"What gun?"
Mike asked, puzzled.

"Yeah,
Marty's got a couple…a shotgun, a rifle, and a hand gun.  Why?" Nick
offered.

Hayden pulled the
gun from his pocket and showed it to them, "Is this the hand gun?"

Neither on said
anything, Nick only nodded.  Their eyes focused on the weapon.  After a moment
Hayden put it back in his pocket.  He could see that they were visibly shaken
and said no more so that they could accept what was happening.  He released the
Velcro of his face mask and pulled it off.  His face was flushed and wet where
the mask had been.  He unzipped his coat as well, Hayden was beginning to
sweat.

He turned the key
in the ignition and the truck's engine turned over reluctantly, slowed by the
cold.  It finally caught and grumbled to life.  Hayden began to turn the car
around when Mike repeated his question, nearly yelling this time.

"What the
hell did you find sheriff?  What happened to them?"  Mikes eyes were wild
and flashing.  He was near to panic.  Nick placed a hand on his shoulder and
Mike quickly shook it off.

"Calm down
Mike, he'll tell us," Nick urged.

"You calm
down!  This asshole found something and he won't tell us what it is!  Country
ass fuck!"  Mike stared at Hayden steely eyed and his mouth was a thin
level line.  He looked right at Hayden then lowered his voice and drew out each
syllable to emphasize it, "What - the - hell - did - you - find?"

Hayden didn't stop
the car or change his expression.  He began driving back down the road towards
the Ranger Station.  He reached into his pocket and pulled the gun back out,
dropping it into Mike's lap.  "I think they're both dead."  His face
was grim and his voice was flat, "I found that in the Jeep, empty.  Spent
shells were all over the place.  Something dragged them out of there all
right.  Turned the Jeep over too!  Looks like a rogue bear, a real big
one."  Then he added, "I've seen it happen before."