Snowblind (15 page)

The VW Bug looked like a lump in the smooth white blanket of the parking lot. Josh trampled across the blanket to his car, giant flakes whirling around him like fluttering moths. The snow was falling as heavy as it had all night; it showed no sign of letting up — whatever the radar had said.

He wiped the snowy windshield clean with a few broad strokes of his arm. Then he climbed into the car, started the engine, and waited for the heat to come on. In three minutes the car would be twenty degrees warmer than that freezing old aircraft hangar.

Josh stared out at the falling snow. Who’s going to go up with me in this shit, he thought. And what good would a spotter be anyway — they wouldn't be able to see anything. They'd be flying blind.

Flying blind.

Suddenly Josh got an idea.

He didn't need a spotter. What he really needed was a
listener
.

*  *  *

Alphonse Turner was giving a lecture on human egg cell fertilization to his freshman biology class when the telephone rang. He turned from the blackboard and saw that all his female students were asleep. The telephone kept ringing. It took him a moment to realize there were no telephones in his classroom — the phone was actually ringing beside his bed.

Mr. Turner had been dreaming.

"Hello?" he mumbled into the phone as he groped for the table lamp.

"Hi, Al? Sorry to bother you — it's Josh. Can you wake up Lorraine? It's very important, I gotta talk to her."

"Yeah... hold on... Babe — it's Josh."

"Josh?" Lorraine took the receiver from her husband. "What the hell you callin' me for this time of night?"

Al turned on the light.

"I need your help," Josh said in a voice crackling with cell phone static.

"Whatever it is," said Lorraine, "the answer is
no
until after ten A.M.! Then — if you apologize for wakin' me up —
maybe
we can talk about it." She leaned over her husband and slammed down the receiver.    Then she flopped back down and yanked the covers over her head.

Al was still sitting up. He looked troubled. He pulled on his wire-rimmed glasses. "Lorraine... I just had a very strange dream."

Lorraine's voice was muffled in her pillow. "Not now, Al."

"Yeah, but... I think it's important."

The phone rang again. Al absently picked up the receiver, passed it to his wife. She reached up and took it without emerging from the blankets.

"I said, wake up somebody else."

"This is an emergency," said Josh.

"What kind of emergency?"

"Andrea and her daughter and Kris Carlson are lost up north in the blizzard. We've got to find them — they're in serious trouble."

"What do you mean, 'we'? I'm not goin' out in this!"

"You don't have to go out. You can sit inside my C.A.P. plane where it's nice and warm."

"Inside your what?"

"My plane. I need you as my spotter."

"Your spotter? This
is
a joke. Have you been drinkin'?"

"Listen, Lorraine. I need someone who can wear earphones and pick up the signal from the radio transmitter in Kris's parka. Your hearing is ten times more acute than the average person's. The blizzard makes it impossible to see. It's the only way."

"Let me get this straight. You want me to go up with you in a plane in the middle of a blizzard to look for some lost girl's coat?

"Please."

"The answer is no! You hear me? That's capital 'N', capital 'O' — NO!"

"...Why?"

"'Cuz I'm afraid of flying, that's why!"

She reached across Al, hung up the phone, and flopped back under the covers.

Al was still thinking about his dream. "Lorraine... you happy with our sex life?"

"Drop it, Al."

The phone rang again.

Kris stepped cautiously out onto the wet stone floor of Curly's cellar. The damp, reeking air seemed to cling to the skin of her face and hands. Three steps in she bumped a small, heavy object on the floor. She reached down to touch it: an engine part, or a part of a stove. She continued on, and knocked into a stack of boxes, tumbling one to the floor. Empty tin cans rattled out; she picked them up, put them back in the box, and set the box on the stairs.

Empty cans make noise, she thought. They might be useful.

Farther out into the evil-smelling room, her hands fell on a mountain of furry hides. The hides lay piled on a long wooden workbench. She groped along the bench, exploring its clutter of tools and supplies: metal shears, saw blades, pliers, a levered vise, glass jars full of wood screws, coffee cans filled with nails, a can of paint, a wood file, a claw hammer. She set the hammer at the front edge of the bench and continued her search.

On the other side of the bench, next to the hides, she found several plastic bottles and metal gallon-size containers. She unscrewed the tops of them and sniffed. Each was filled with a different chemical, with strong odors like paint thinner, gasoline, and kerosene. The fumes from one of the plastic bottles nearly knocked her over. She moved it — and two cans of fuel — next to the hammer.

Stepping along the wall behind the bench, she passed a shovel, a rake, a pickaxe (too heavy, she decided), and a steel drum full of iced-over water. Next to that, she found a tackle box and several fishing rods leaning against the wall. She checked the strength of the nylon lines and selected the rod with the strongest, setting it aside. Then she found the steel traps.

There were three of them, hanging on the wall. She pulled each one down and examined them carefully. Two had double-springs, with a metal pan, and a trigger to release the jagged, snapping jaws. The third was rectangular, with heavy steel rods. She couldn't figure out how to use it, and wondered if it might have been broken. She decided to leave it, took the other two traps and carried them — and the fishing rod — to the bench.

She still hadn't found Curly's guns.

Past the drum of foul water she came on a shelf with canned goods, engine parts, a fan belt, a tire jack — and a pistol!

She pulled it from the shelf. It was curiously shaped — the bore was too wide. Kris realized with some disappointment that the gun was only a flare pistol. But better than nothing, she thought. Feeling about the shelf, she discovered several flare cartridges in a small cardboard box. She stuffed them into her pockets along with the gun.

The smell of rotting flesh seemed to grow worse the farther she moved along the stone wall. The cold, fetid air seeped through her boots, around her neck, and into Erin's loose-fitting coat. Her hands, feeling their way along the wet, ice-coated wall, grew trembly and numb. She almost missed the high ledge that receded into the wall at the corner of the room.

Groping back into the ledge, she touched what felt like a wicker laundry basket with the tip of her fingers. She tried to pull it closer but couldn't reach it. She stepped on something soft, and, moving over, bumped into a huge cylindrical wicker basket. The basket was covered with a round woven lid.

Kris climbed up on the lid and reached back into the ledge to pull down the laundry basket. As she slid the basket off the ledge, she slipped. The giant basket beneath her toppled. Kris fell crashing to the floor, the laundry basket tumbling down on top of her. Something bounced off her back and rolled away across the floor. It sounded like a head of lettuce.

Kris crawled to her knees, her hand on the rim of the huge basket, which lay on its side on the floor. The round lid had fallen off.

She reached inside and felt... clothes. Maybe
this
was the laundry basket.

She pulled out a pair of wool pants, a flannel shirt, a hide coat with a fur ruff, a pair of boots. This wasn't laundry. She reached in farther, ducking her head under the rim.

The putrid stench hit her face like a board. A wilting queasiness welled up from her gut. Slowly, she reached out her trembling hand.

In the mass of severed limbs and bloody flesh, her fingers discerned the distinct shape of a human foot.

Kris snapped back out of the basket.

She couldn't breathe.

She staggered to her feet, and the blood ran out of her head. Doubling over, she toppled against the wall, slid back down to her knees. The acid taste of vomit gurgled into her mouth. She swallowed a gulp of air. With her hand on the wall, she pulled herself back up.

She stood there a moment, trying to catch her breath, trying to ward off the onrush of nausea. Her limbs trembled. Dizzy, disoriented, she slowly felt her way back along the icy wall.

Her right boot brushed an object lying on the floor.

The head of lettuce.

Kris steadied herself against the wall. A fresh wave of nausea surged through her body.

She did not reach down. She did not want to know.

As Al Turner sipped his fresh-brewed coffee the vapors steamed his eyeglasses. It made the headlights pulling up in front of his house bloom like a pair of moons on a foggy night. He set down the mug, stripped off his glasses, and rubbed the lenses clean with the soft white cotton of his T-shirt. By the time he got them back on, Josh Marino had trudged halfway up the driveway.

"He's here, Babe," Al called over his shoulder.

Lorraine shouted from the bedroom, "All right, I'm comin'."

Al opened the front door just as Josh was reaching for the knocker. "Good morning, Josh."

Josh stamped his boots on the mat and stepped inside, peeling off the hood of the faded red sweatshirt he wore under his coat. He looked up apologetically at the lanky 40-year-old black man in his long thermal underwear and wrinkled T-shirt. "Sorry to wake you so early, Al."

"No problem," he said in his resonant voice.

"I can't tell you how grateful I am that Lorraine's volunteered to do this," Josh said.

"'Volunteered' is not exactly how I'd describe it," Al said.

"Well... Let's just say I'm glad she agreed to help." Josh looked down the hall for Lorraine.

Al peered out skeptically at the falling snow. "You sure you can fly in this?"

"We're only going to fly out in it. The storm's already let up further north. We should be back before the next one hits."

"What if you're not?" Al looked directly at him.

Josh started to answer but hesitated. Al's eyes were locked on him.

"Lorraine is through with being a
hero, Josh."

Josh swallowed. He nodded. "I know..."

They looked at each other without speaking.

"All right, let's get this over with," said Lorraine, wrapping a wool scarf around her neck as she came down the hallway. She was bundled in a blue parka, a yellow knit ski cap, and large white mittens.

Josh reached for her arm. "Lorraine..."

She wiped his hand from her sleeve. "I must be crazy goin' up in airplane with you, Marino." She walked past him, opened the front door. "I hope they serve breakfast on this flight."

Josh followed her out, then stopped, turned back to Al, standing at the door.

"I'll bring her back," he said, looking Al square in the eye. "I promise." For a second, he remembered the promise he'd made to Kris. That was less than 24 hours ago.

Al watched them trundle out to the VW.

"Hey, Babe?" he called. Lorraine paused without turning. "Be careful," he said.

Josh opened the car door for her. "Just a minute," she told him. She turned and headed back up to the house.

Al opened the door again as she walked up, her ski cap flaked with snow.

"Baby," she said, "about your dream." She reached out for his hand. "I just want you to know — it's good for me. It's great for me." She lifted her chin up in the way she did when she wanted him to kiss her.

He did so.

Lorraine turned and headed for the car.

Kris tightened the scarf around her neck. She stood inside the cabin door, listening with fear to the howl of the wolves far off in the forest. They sounded the same as they had before, when Erin had gone out after the snowplow. They had been closer to the cabin then, their cries echoing the half-human howl of the killer. Kris did not hear his roaring voice now, but she had the clear feeling — listening to the rabid clamor of the predators — that he was out there with them.

She'd have to hurry to be ready for him. She had hauled up the equipment from the cellar and set it with the weapons on the plank table. Her hands checked over the
arsenal
: harpoon, carving knife, bottle of ammonia, flare pistol, kerosene and gasoline cans, plastic bottle of tanning chemical, fishing rod, bear traps, hammer, spices, wooden matches, tin cans. The trapper's rifles had not been found. Kris was now convinced they had been stolen, or hidden, by the man who had murdered him and stuffed his butchered corpse in the basket.

She punctured holes in the bottoms of the empty cans with a can opener. Then she took the knife, cut a length of line from the fishing reel, and strung the cans to the steel traps.

Her hands were shaking. The fire had long gone out, and the temperature in the cabin had dropped to near zero. Kris knew she could not last long without starting the fire again. But before she dared do that, she had to set the traps.

Satisfied with the noisy clanking of the strung cans, Kris pulled on her ear band headpiece, and carried the two traps to the door. She listened for the barking of the wolves, but could no longer hear them. Had they gone away? The wind had begun to pick up again. A flurry whisked over the snow-covered roof.

Kris took a deep breath, trying to still her fluttering heart. I've got to do it, she thought. I've got to do it while I have the chance. Trembling, she reached up, unlatched the heavy iron bolt, and pulled open the creaking door.

A gust of cold wind blew a tingle of snowflakes against her face. For a moment, she stood still in the doorway, her heart pounding, listening to the sound of her headpiece. The low tones pulsed steady and slow — the trees were far off. The infra-red sensor was dead silent, not a trace of the high beeps. Kris slowly panned her head; the bass tones increased, then decreased, then increased again: it was picking up the two posts that held up the porch roof.

Kris pushed through the drift of snow piled against the door. The tin cans jangled from the traps in her hands. The noise made her more anxious, and her limbs shook in trepidation. She felt her way to the edge of the porch, then reached out her toe for the step. Her foot plunged. She lost her balance, tumbling forward, falling into the snow over the clanging traps.

She sat up and brushed the snow from her face. The saw-tooth claws of a trap had punctured her coat and scraped the skin over her ribs. Rubbing the bruise, she felt blood on her coat. She rose unsteadily to her feet. Disoriented, she turned until she heard the low tones indicate the direction of the cabin. She picked up the clattering traps.

Groping her way along the timbers of the cabin's side wall, she came to the shuttered window. She knelt in the snow and set out one of the traps, carefully opening its massive jaws. The jaws locked into position with a turn of the trigger.

The trap was set. She brushed snow over it, then picked up the other trap and rose to her feet.

A high-pitched beep sounded in her ear.

Kris turned abruptly, staggering back against the wall of the cabin. She listened, pointing her head toward the trees.

She heard nothing but the steady pulse of the low tones. She waited, her blood racing. Was someone out there? She’d definitely heard a beep. Perhaps it was only an animal. A fox, a lynx, even a rabbit might have triggered the infra-red sensor.

She heard no more beeps. But she sensed a presence. Hurriedly, she felt her way along the wall back toward the porch.

*  *  *

From here I spy my prey; my eyes see her from far away. My nostrils taste her blood.

She gropes in the day without light; she staggers like a drunkard. What she does I cannot see, but she knows not the light. She is not acquainted with its ways, and does not stay in its paths. She goes about in sunless gloom, where light is like darkness. Deep darkness is morning to her.

She will be friends with the terrors of darkness. I will teach her its secrets. I will scare her with dreams and terrify her with visions, so that she would choose strangling and death rather than her body. I will pursue her, like God, never satisfied with her flesh.