Dead of Winter (12 page)

“What do you make of this, Lieutenant?”

“Some kind of totem. Probably to ward off evil spirits. The French trappers are a superstitious lot.”

“But this looks as if it’s part of the priest’s altar.”

What had Father Jacques been doing down here? The barricaded door and empty food tins suggested he had been hiding down in the cellar. Zoé must have been with him. Had they been hiding from one of the others? Between fifteen and twenty people had lived at Manitou Outpost. Thus far only two had been found, both dead. Zoé made three. That left too many inhabitants unaccounted for. But where were they?

A cry from the darkness seized his breath. Across the cellar there was a commotion among the soldiers. “Oh, Jesus!” One of them vomited. Another soldier came running with a lantern. “Lieutenant! Inspector!” The soldier’s face had turned bleached white. “Pembrook’s dead!”

37

Outside, the thing in the white squall howled, its hellish shriek startling Chris Hatcher’s heart. He pointed. “Anika!”

The shape charged behind her. The native woman spun just as her horse whinnied and reared up on its hind legs. One of the hooves struck Anika in the head, and she went down. The snowstorm engulfed her and whirled toward the fort.

Beyond the wall of snow, the charging thing roared. The horses bumped one another, running in circles.

Private Wallace raised his rifle and fired into the mist as it swallowed him. There was a loud scream. The soldier flew out and smashed against the stockade.

The white shape turned, lumbering toward Chris just beyond the storm’s veil. He tried to gain control of his horse, but it galloped frantically into the woods. Branches scraped his face and shoulders. He ducked, wrapping his arms around the palomino’s throat for dear life.

His horse turned too quickly. Chris slid off. Smacked the ground, landing on his side. His pistol flew into a mound.

“Jesus!” He plunged his hands into the freezing snow, digging.

Endless sleet turned the world into a blinding white hell. Grabbing the pistol, he crawled into a thicket.

Something roared like an enraged bear.

Chris wailed a cry of panic. He rubbed his eyes with frozen fingers, trying to get his vision back. Above the raging wind echoed the crunching footsteps of a predator circling him. The ground shook with each approaching step.

Chris held the pistol, hyperventilating.

Somebody please come help me!

Chris felt like a ten-year old boy again, afraid of the boogeyman. He wished his father were here to chase it away. Tell him such evils didn’t exist. But this time the beast of Chris’ childhood nightmares was real. And now as his vision came back into sharp focus, he saw a horrific face peering through the branches. And it was grinning.

38

Gun barrels aimed, Tom, Lt. Hysmith, and three soldiers walked side by side across the cellar. Gray light poured in through shattered windows, casting a legion of shadows among the barrels and crates. Storm winds whistled through the portals. Tom’s gut burned with regret. They had stayed here too long. Private Pembrook had been found dead. But only his severed legs had been discovered. The rest of the soldier had been dragged off.

The basement stretched half the length of the lodge. At the midway point lay a trail of blood. Ropy intestines disappeared into a gleaming red hole in a log wall. Scattered across the ground were piles of bones from both animals and humans.

What kind of beast…

Tom said, “Let’s leave quick.”

“The hell we are,” Lt. Hysmith said. “Whoever killed my soldier is still here.”

The soldiers exchanged nervous glances then stared back at the hole. A sound issued from it that Tom wasn’t expecting. A woman sobbing.

Lt. Hysmith stuck his light inside the portal. In the next chamber, a woman hovered in a corner. She was naked, all the bones of her spine and ribs pressing outward against blue-veined skin.

“Ma’am, are you okay?”

The woman whirled, remaining crouched. Long, black hair hung over her face. Shriveled breasts flopped on her frail chest. Her bloated stomach sagged against grossly protruding pelvic bones. Tom had seen hunger victims before, but none this skeletal.

Hysmith said, “Dear God that’s Wenonah…” The lieutenant froze,, as feral eyes gleamed in the lantern glow, reflecting like a nocturnal animal. Her face was greased with red muck. She gnawed on a severed arm.

One of the soldiers yelled.

The woman loped towards the opening, half-crouched, and released a guttural snarl that reverberated around the cellar.

Tom raised his pistol. “Back away, everyone.”

Before the men could raise their rifles, Wenonah lurched out of the hole with the speed of a wolf and pinned a screaming soldier to the ground. She wrenched her head, ripping out the private’s throat. His screaming ended with a wet, gurgling gasp. Tom, Hysmith, and the other soldiers fired, knocking her back. As they quickly reloaded, the white ghoul rose, standing a head taller than all of them. Her stick-like limbs were too long for her body. A hunk of red flesh dangled from her lips. Her face remained in the shadows between the halos of light from two lanterns.

Lt. Hysmith fired his shotgun, blowing off her lower jaw. Wenonah screamed like a banshee, her bloody tongue dangling from the roof of her mouth. She lunged at the lieutenant, daggered nails slashing down, gripping his rifle. He and Tom blasted holes into her chest point blank. The Ojibwa woman flew backward, rolling across the floor and landing in a twisted heap against the back wall.

Cursing, the soldiers fired at her skull until there was nothing left of her head. Her decapitated skeleton kept moving. They fired again and again until her clawing hands finally went limp.

Tom’s arms trembled.
We just killed Zoé’s mother.

The cellar began spinning. Tom grabbed hold of a post to keep from collapsing.

More gunshots fired. This time from outside. Everyone turned toward the windows. Some kind of beast roared, and a boy screamed.

Tom’s blood ran cold.

39

“Chris!” Tom stumbled out the front door.

His heart hammered. He waded through the snow.

Sleet blurred his vision.

Outside the gate, he slipped through the entrails of a gutted horse. “No.”

At the fence lay a soldier who was bloody and broken, his head twisted in the wrong direction. Anika lay facedown in the snow. Lt. Hysmith rolled her over. “She’s alive.”

Chris was nowhere in sight.

“Son!” Tom followed bloody tracks along the stockade.

His throat clenched. He struggled to breathe.

He raced into the woods. Branches clawing. Trees spinning. Bloody footprints everywhere. “Chris!”

The trail ended at a snow mound with red blotches.

Tom fell to his knees, digging.

He dug up a hand, an arm, a shoulder, blond hair. So much blood. When he uncovered what was left of his son’s face, Tom fell back against a tree and wailed.

Part Four

Outbreak

40

The patrol of six riders returned to Fort Pendleton that evening. In the cemetery, the soldiers dug graves as a crowd of mournful villagers watched. Avery Pendleton stood among them in utter shock. Four bodies lay bundled in blankets on the snowy ground. Their boots were the only part exposed.

The mission to Manitou Outpost had brought about horrifying news and more deaths. The French Canadian fur trappers he had employed were all gone. They apparently ran out of food and cannibalized one another for survival. Pendleton had heard of such atrocities happening during the long winters, usually among the Indians. He never imagined cannibalism would happen among his own workers. The chief factor, Master Pierre Lamothe, was never found. His daughter Zoé seemed to be the only survivor. The sick girl was still tied to her bed at Hospital House, recovering from pneumonia.

The news that stabbed into Pendleton’s heart like a knife was the loss of Chris Hatcher. Pendleton had encouraged Tom to move his son out to the fort, a refuge far away from Montréal where they could start a new life. Now, two weeks later, Tom Hatcher’s boy was dead.

As the soldiers began digging four graves, the inspector and Brother Andre watched with solemn faces. The Jesuit missionary had his bible open and mouthed a silent prayer. Tom just stood there, his eyes bloodshot.

Pendleton offered a sympathetic look, but Tom kept his gaze on his son’s covered body.

The soldiers rammed their shovels against the ground. After they removed the two-foot layer of snow, the black earth underneath was hard as slate. They were making very little progress. One of the soldiers rested on his shovel.

“Keep digging,” Lt. Hysmith ordered.

“Ground’s frozen solid, sir.”

“Put some more muscle into it!”

The soldiers continued to chip at the ground. After a few more strikes of the spades without so much as an inch of depth, Sgt. Cox turned to his lieutenant. “Sir, looks like we gotta store the bodies till next thaw.”

Lt. Hysmith nodded. “All right, get some sheets.”

“No.” Inspector Hatcher grabbed a shovel and started hacking at the frozen soil. He grunted as he struggled to dig his son’s grave. The shovel handle snapped. He cursed and hurled the broken pieces. He fell to his knees, his hands shaking.

Pendleton put a hand on the inspector’s shoulder. “Tom, I’m sorry. We’re going to have to store them for now. We’ll give him a proper burial at first thaw. Andre, see to it he gets home.”

As the Jesuit escorted Tom away, Pendleton gazed down at the four bodies that were wrapped like mummies. He nodded toward the soldiers. “Okay, men, store them in the Dead House.”

41

Tom slammed open the door of his cabin and went straight for a bottle of whiskey. He unplugged the cork and drank from the bottle. Coughing, he took a seat at the table and swigged again.

Andre stood inside the den. “Maybe you shouldn’t drink so much.”

Tom didn’t answer, just kept gulping and coughing.

Andre sat down at the table and motioned toward the bottle. Tom slid it across the table into Andre’s hand. Together the two men drank, sinking deeper into their own misery.

42

Ojibwa Village

Midnight

Kunetayyyyyyy.

Kunetay Timberwolf awoke to the calling of his name. With a violent jerk, he sat up in his bedding, the buffalo hide bunched around his legs. Sweat drenched his face. Fever burned beneath his skin, but far deeper, at the center of his chest, ached a painful coldness, as if his heart had turned to ice.

Bad dreams.

The Indian rubbed his damp face and got his bearings. The small hut was filled with the soft sounds of his wife and children sleeping at the far end. He could smell their skin, their hair, the moon time blood of his wife. Kunetay’s belly ached with hunger. He crawled out of bed and crouched in the orange glow from the cooking pit. He rummaged through the food, gnawing on a piece of deer jerky. He devoured all the salted venison, but it wasn’t enough. Outside, there came a distant howling. Kunetay jerked his head. The wind raked its nails across the birch bark walls. “
Kunetayyyyyyy.”

The
wiitigos
had tracked him.

Somehow the trapper did not feel fear
.
At the doorway, the deerskin flap flew upward. The freezing gale entered his home. It whirled around him in a frosty embrace, merged with the cold in his chest. It spread to his loins, causing his member to grow stiff. He had visions of mutilated bodies. Blood on the walls. Blood on him. Voices whispered inside Kunetay’s head. He grabbed a knife and approached the bed.

His wife sat up. Mumbled something about the cold.

He threw more wood on the fire. His wife buried herself beneath the fur blankets. He stood over her. One of the children got up and stared at his father with sleepy eyes.

Kunetay froze. “Go back to sleep, Little Elk.” The small boy climbed back in bed with his mother.

Kunetay glared at the knife in his hand. What was he about to do?

The voices returned, whispering in his head.

“No, not them,” he said.

Fully naked, the Indian stepped out into the night. He welcomed the frosty air. His bare feet stepped through the snow. His dogs barked. He opened the pen, and they backed to the corner, showing their fangs. He grabbed the closest dog by the nape and dragged it out. Behind the hut, the trees swayed, the branches clacking. The night shape-shifted into many animal forms. One towered above all the others. Kunetay craned his neck, staring upward. The full moon outlined a head with broad antlers, a long snout. The beast’s fangs glistened with frozen drool as it released a breath that smelled like carrion. The thing growled. Kunetay felt his own cravings for meat as he crouched behind his dog and dragged the knife across its throat.

43

The entire fort colony—over forty men, women, and children—gathered inside the chapel for the funeral service. Wearing a black mink coat and matching hat, Willow Pendleton cried. They all hung their heads as Brother Andre gave his eulogy.

“Dear God in heaven, we are gathered here today to pay respects to those we’ve lost.” The Jesuit lit candles at an altar that displayed oval photos of Chris Hatcher and Sakari Kennicot, as well as trinkets belonging to the victims who had died within the past three months. A flask, a comb, and a few uniform buttons represented the three soldiers who had been slain yesterday. Also on the altar was Father Jacques’ rosary and bible.

The congregation stood in the nave and sang hymns. Willow stared numbly at Tom Hatcher, sitting in the front pew, stoic beside a teary-eyed Percy Kennicot. Tom’s red eyes gazed at his son’s photo. Willow wished she could take away Tom’s pain. Seeing him lose his only child made her heart ache.

Sniffling, Willow pressed a handkerchief to her nose. Her husband Avery gripped her other hand. She searched the faces of the crowd. Lt. Hysmith stood in his red uniform along with his soldiers. Behind the garrison stood Anika Moonblood. She wasn’t singing. A bandage covered part of her forehead. Willow glowered at the Ojibwa woman. Rumor was she was supposed to be protecting Chris yesterday. She probably wanted the boy to die like the others.