Dead Of Winter (The Rift Book II) (16 page)

He paused at the door, heard Doug snore, and shook his head. The reason he found the situation so comforting became clear to him – for the first time since they met, Doug hadn’t treated him like an inconvenience. He leaned back and thought about all the times the kid would utter little insults under his breath whenever Horace tried to explain his motives, such as why he wanted to visit Bridgewater, or pilfer medical and research supplies from the Blue Cross/Blue Shield HMO, or why he wouldn’t talk about whatever discoveries he’d made while searching for the answers that seemed to avoid him so deftly. It was as if Doug intentionally needled him.

And yet he and the boy were the only two staying in the lavish upper level of the hotel. The others had decided to take up residence in the staff quarters on the first floor. Perhaps that was because they didn’t want to have to scale forty some-odd steps after downing a gallon of whiskey between them. But why did Doug stay? The blind part of his psyche, the division that feared human interaction, didn’t want to understand. Yet the branch that existed in concrete reality understood perfectly: while the ragtag crew from the diner had taken him in and treated him like a brother, kinship was not what the young soldier wanted.

He wanted to be cared for. He wanted to be guided. He wanted a
father
.

But Doug seemed to fight this every step of the way, as if he was constructed from opposing ideals that constantly butted heads. In some ways Horace was grateful for that. He’d already acted as a patriarchal figure for someone he’d grown to love and in the end he’d lost her. In the world they now found themselves occupying, he didn’t want to risk getting that close with anyone ever again. It had been hard enough dealing with what happened to Kelly. He still wasn’t over it.

He shrugged, waddled down the hall, and entered his room. He eased the door shut behind him. Candles sputtered, casting the objects on his desk in ghostly light. Magnifying glass, slides, test tubes, beakers, Bunsen burner with portable butane canister, battery-powered centrifuge, piles of notebooks and pens. Ghostly was the right word to describe them, all right, for without a subject they were useless, shadows from a nonexistent reality. Just like him.

He thought of his daily treks up and down the mountain, journeys that his old, failing body was in no shape to persevere. He’d found nothing in the few weeks they’d been here. It was as if, after he and Carl’s final confrontation, the mutated masses had gone elsewhere.
Wrathchild
seemed to have been wiped from existence. He hoped that were true, had a moment of doubt, and then glanced at his worthless collection of tools once more.

If the disease went away, what use would he be to anyone? Why was he still alive at all? He tossed those questions aside and told himself he should rest. His dying lungs caused him discomfort. He knew his end would come soon. That idea should have come as a relief.

It wasn’t.

He blew out the candles.

iii

Doug circled the perimeter of the massive concrete wall, rifle pressed firmly against his shoulder. He never took his eyes off the trees. His head throbbed from the previous evening, which was the first time he’d ever consumed more than two alcoholic beverages in one sitting. He paid for it dearly.
Never again
, he thought.

The chill in the air and the sound of his boots as they crunched the snow helped ease his discomfort. These were sounds he knew, experiences he understood,
solid
things he could hold onto. They were welcomed forays into normalcy, a concept that had taken a vacation long ago.

A dark figure darted out from behind a tree. It took him by surprise and he dropped to his belly. He looked through the rifle’s scope but could see nothing. Thinking his eyes might be playing tricks on him he panned from the left to right, but still couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

Probably just snow falling off the branches
, his reason said, but that didn’t seem right. He felt like he was being watched.

He scooted forward on his elbows and cupped his palm over the scope to fend off the late-afternoon sun. “Where are you?” he whispered. “I know you’re here. Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna hurt you.”

The invader revealed itself. A deer – a doe, to be exact – emerged from behind a giant oak tree. Tan hair covered a sleek body held up by long legs. Huge, compassionate black eyes stared at him from either side of its oblong head. It blinked, and there was no fear in its expression. It appeared to sigh, an act that seemed to say,
thank
God it’s only a human
. It poked its shiny nose into the snow again and continued the search for food.

It was the first animal Doug had seen since the world fell apart, a beacon of hope from out of nowhere. He gradually stood up and slid down the hill, moving as quietly as possible. The doe paid him no mind as he crept up from behind; it just kept on wandering, nose fixed on the ground. This was the perfect opportunity to take a shot. It had been a couple years since he’d tasted venison. His mouth watered. He thought of his dad, who’d taken him on a hunting trip for his seventeenth birthday, and his body started to tremble. He bit his lip, grunted, placed the animal in his crosshairs, and tapped the trigger.

“Don’t shoot.”

From his vantage point, it appeared the deer had spoken those words. He lifted his head and squinted. Then the voice came again – “Don’t shoot, leave it be,” – and he spun around. It was the old man. He stood holding a notebook, his glasses slipping down his nose. He wore a winter jacket at least four sizes too large. Specks of ice clung to his gray beard. Doug thought the old timer looked like he should be studying crashed spacecraft in the
Arctic
. That would be better than right here, right now, telling him what to do.

“Why not?” he snapped.

“Because,” the old man replied, “we don’t know why it’s here.”

“Why it’s here? We’re in the fucking woods, man! Where
else
would it be?”

Horace lowered his gaze and pushed up his glasses. “When was the last time you saw a deer, son? When was the last time you saw
anything
alive, other than
ourselves
?”

Doug chewed on his lip. “Two months?” he said.
“Maybe more?”

“Exactly.
This is a groundbreaking moment we have here. We can’t just kill the poor thing. We have to follow it. We have to find out how it survived.”

He nodded. Shame tickled his neck red. “I know,” he said, and glanced over his shoulder. The deer was gone. “Shit.”

“What’s the matter?”

“It ran off.”

“Come now, son,” said Horace. “You’re a Marine, aren’t you? Don’t you know how to track?”

“Yes, sir…but I haven’t done so in a while.”

“Well, let us see how sharp those skills are, then.”

Doug led Horace through the wilderness. He felt a bit silly, seeing as the deer had left an obvious trail of meandering hoof prints in the snow. He found it interesting, however, that never once did those tracks seem to stop, not even where the underbrush had been exposed due to the recent thaw. Strange that the animal hadn’t paused to eat, especially considering that it looked to be starving. Perhaps they’d startled it.

Horace barely kept up with him as he trekked up the mountain. He huffed and puffed the whole time. Doug swore he could hear the old man’s throat whistle with every breath he took. It sounded like air being blown through a pinhole. He started to appreciate the old timer’s drive. The guy was obviously hurting, the incline probably murder on his old joints, but he kept pushing on. Never once did he ask to stop for a rest.

An hour into the journey the tracks took a sharp right turn and disappeared into a cluster of densely packed evergreens. Doug stopped at a spot where broken branches and vines created a prickly tunnel and listened. He heard rustling.

“It’s in there,” he said, pointing.

Horace coughed, sucked snot into his nose, and said, “Then that’s where
we
go.”

Doug stepped into the burrow first, using his knife to clear an easier path for the old man. The passageway itself proved to be much longer than he initially thought. It wasn’t until they’d squeezed through at least two hundred feet of icy vegetation that it ended.

When they emerged on the other side, Doug’s mouth literally dropped open.

They found themselves at the top of a rise that lowered into a clearing at least two football fields long, a hidden world enclosed on all sides by massive evergreens. Animals of every distinction milled about, from deer to raccoons to squirrels, as well as predators such as bears, wolves, and even a mountain lion. Each distinction huddled in their separate areas. They acted as if none of the others were present. The lot of them looked thin to the point of starvation.

Doug spotted their doe, calmly nibbling at an exposed patch of brown grass. Horace whistled from behind him. None of the animals looked up.

“No kidding,” he whispered. “It’s amazing.”

Horace stepped ahead of him and maneuvered his way down the slope. He pulled the notebook from his pocket. Doug watched the old man’s wrinkled fingers move and couldn’t help but be amazed. The retractable pencil in his right hand flew across the page in arcing swirls. He wrote at such great speed that he had to constantly flick the end with his thumb for more graphite.

A famished wolf passed in front of the old man. It glanced once in his direction and then kept on walking. Doug shivered. Horace was a bit too close for comfort. He was sure one would make a go at him if he wasn’t careful.

“Doc!” he whisper-screamed.
“Doc, come back here!”

Horace shook his head. “Don’t worry, son,” he said, not trying to conceal his voice. “I’ll be okay.”

Doug lifted his rifle just in case. He kept a close eye on Horace as he wandered the perimeter of the clearing. None of the animals ran away as he approached them and none attacked, either. After a cursory acknowledgement of his presence they went back about their business, cleaning each other, laying their heads to doze, poking their noses into the ground. They didn’t seem to find him a threat, or a tasty treat.

It was strange.

Horace, still tracing the outskirts, stepped into an area none of the animals occupied. He whirled suddenly, pulled his jacket up over his nose, and waved for him to come. Doug complied, weapon up and ready. He treaded past the wild beasts with trepidation. The air seemed to grow toxic the closer he got until he too felt the urge to cover his face before his gag reflex took over. This was a scent he’d encountered before, back in
Roanoke
, when he and his platoon stumbled upon a barn filled with disease-riddled corpses. It was the smell of rot, the smell of death.

Horace faced the barricade of trees, grabbed hold of an obstructing branch, and pushed it aside. He urged Doug to peek in. He did, and behind the trees he saw another, much smaller clearing. The temperature in this adjacent clearing was much warmer than elsewhere, and there was no snow on the ground. Just like the barn in
Roanoke
it was filled with bodies, only these were the remains of sick animals, not humans. It appeared as if they’d been carefully positioned. Some were ripped limb from limb, some in late stages of putrefaction, while others were mostly intact. Yet even those possessed haunting characteristics he knew all too well; patches of hair falling from their hides, exposed flesh stained black, red, and yellow, faces contorted as if the bones underneath had grown too large for the skin containing them.

These, he realized, were the infected unfortunates, the Wraiths’ bestial foils.

Horace stuffed his notebook in one pocket, removed a plastic bag and scalpel from another, slipped a pair of surgical gloves over his hands, and bent over the nearest carcass. “What’re you doing?” asked Doug. Horace waved him off. He sunk the scalpel’s cutting edge into the creature’s hide, sawed off a square of flesh, zipped it into the bag, and pocketed it. When he turned to face Doug again his expression, with eyes wide and teeth biting his lower lip, was equal parts awed and fearful.