Snowblind (9 page)

Erin stepped into the cabin carrying three pairs of cross-country skis from the car.

"You can set them over there against the wall," her mother said. She was bent over the wood stove, feeding a stick of cordwood to the fire. Her enormous shadow loomed high up on the wall and ceiling behind her.

"This place gives me the creeps," Erin said. She dropped the skis in the corner with a loud crash.

"Careful, Erin," her mother said.

Erin sniffed the air. "Eew! What's that smell?"

"It's probably the furs in the basement."

"Smells like something died," Erin said.

"Maybe the animals who were wearing the furs," said Kris. She had stepped through the door with a sleeping bag and a backpack in her arms.

"Just set those down to your right, Kris, thank you."

Erin looked over the shelves with the Inuit artifacts. She picked up a tiny polar bear amulet, carved from white bone, that hung from a leather necklace. As she turned the figure over in her fingers she considered pocketing it, but decided to wait till they were ready to leave. She set the necklace back on the shelf, then noticed the snow-shoe hare dangling from the wire on the wall.

"Oh, gross!"

"What is it?" said Kris. She was standing beside Andrea, warming her hands at the stove.

"He kills a rabbit and hangs it on the wall."

"He's a trapper," said Andrea, standing up, brushing off her hands. "It's what he does for a living."

"It's sick."

"Where do you think that fur ruff on your parka came from?"

"Duh. Eddie Bauer, Mom. Hey, it's freezing in here."

"The fire was almost out," said Andrea. "It should warm up now." She carried a bag of groceries to the cooking stove. "I'm sure glad we stopped at the market before we headed up. If we end up spending the weekend here, we'll need every bit of this food."

"Oh, God, I hope we're outta here before then," said Erin.

"Is there enough firewood," asked Kris.

"There's just a little left in here, but I think I saw a pile outside. Erin, why don't you go out and get us some more before it's all buried in snow."

"I'm too cold," said Erin.

"You'll really be cold if this fire goes out, now go ahead. Kris, you can give her a hand."

Erin stopped at the door. "What help is she gonna be?"

"She's got her headpiece. She'll be just fine, right, Kris?"

"I can help," said Kris, fumbling for the ear band in her pocket.

Erin gave her mother a look. "Mom..."

"Go ahead, honey. Take the lantern, the fire's enough light in here. If I can find a pan I'm going to heat up some soup on this stove."

Erin lifted the lantern off the wood bench. She opened the door, turned to Kris. "You comin' or not?"

Kris slipped on her ear band. "I'm coming." She followed Erin out the door.

*  *  *

The wind whipped snow against the front porch of the cabin. Kris closed the door behind her, then adjusted the volume on the ear band's infra-red detector. She could follow Erin by listening to the sound of the high-pitched beeps; it had worked well before, when they'd brought things in from the car.

Erin walked ahead without a word. Kris stumbled on the first step down off the porch, then followed Erin's "beeps" around the side of the cabin. Below the high beeps came the softer low tones, increasing as she approached what must have been the wood pile. She heard Erin stacking an armload of logs.

Then the high beeps headed off.

"Hey, wait for me," said Kris.

Erin stopped. "What's the matter? I thought you could almost see with that thing."

"Well, I — "

"I've got to get inside — I'm freezing."

The beeps quickly grew faint. Kris turned up the volume, but the sound disappeared altogether.

Then she heard the cabin door slam.

Snow was blowing in her face. She wiped the cold flakes from her eyelashes and adjusted the ear band on her head. Kneeling down at the edge of the log pile, she gathered six quarter-pieces in her arms.

When she rose to her feet, she thought she heard the beeping sound.

"Erin?"

A gust of wind blew through her hair. She slowly turned her head away from the cabin. The bass tones came in softly, indicating the woods were perhaps forty or fifty feet away, across the road at the bottom of the sloping hill.

Then, above the low tones, she began discerning high beeps, pulsing slowly, faintly. Kris listened intently, turning to face directly toward the sound. The high beeps grew faster and louder. Her heart pounded. Something was coming toward her.

She turned and hurried toward the front of the cabin, plunging through the deep snow. The bass tones suddenly thundered in her ears — she crashed into something. A tree? A post? She hadn't noticed it before. A wave of panic swept over her — where was she? She turned till she heard the bass tones again — the cabin — and hurried toward it. The tone grew louder as she approached, finally reaching the snowy wall. But it wasn't the cabin — it was hard and smooth... the pick-up truck!

Kris spun around — and froze. The high beeps blared in her ears. She ran to her right, tripped on something, fell face first into the snow, spilling the logs. She scrambled to her feet, hurried toward what she hoped was the cabin — the low tones growing louder and louder.

The stairs knocked her to her knees. She cried out in pain, crawling frantically up onto the porch. She rose to her feet, searched for the door. The high beeps screamed in her ears. At last she found the handle, tugged it. The door flung open. Kris ducked inside.

She slammed the door shut, searched for the bolt lock.

"Kris...? What is it?" Andrea's voice.

Kris found the heavy bolt and shoved it into the slot. She backed away from the door.

"Are you all right, honey?"

"Where's the wood?" Erin asked.

Kris was trembling. "Someone... or something..."

"What's the matter, sweetheart?"

"She got scared," Erin said.

"It was... coming from the woods..."

Andrea put her hands on Kris's shoulders, guided her into the room. "It's all right, Krissy. You found us now."

"Probably a moose," Erin said. She was eating something.

Andrea sat Kris down at the bench. "I told Erin to go back out for you."

"I told
you
she shouldn't have gone out in the first place."

"That's enough, Erin."

Kris was still shaking, staring at the door.

"Well, it's the truth," said Erin, her mouth full of bread.

"I don't care," said her mother.

"You're always treating your students like they're normal."

"All right, Missy! That's—"

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

Kris jumped.

Andrea and Erin froze, turned to the door.

Silence.

"He's here..." said Kris in a trembling voice.

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM! The heavy door timbers shook.

"Oh, God," Erin said.

Andrea stepped closer to the lantern on the bench. The light shown up in her face. "It's all right..." she said in a broken voice. She picked up the lantern and moved toward the door.

"Mom..."

"It's all right, Erin..."

"No, Mom..."

Andrea walked to the door.

"MOM!"

She stopped, raised the lantern. "Who... who's there?" she called tremulously.

—BOOM BOOM BOOM! The pounding jolted her.

"Mom, please, don't."

Andrea put her hand on the bolt.

Erin slinked back against the wall. Kris didn't move.

The bolt slid out of the lock. The screechy metal sound sent a tremor up Kris's spine.

Andrea pulled open the massive door.

Silence.

"Ma'am?"

"Oh," sighed Andrea.

"Ranger Tom with the Forest Service. Hope I didn't scare you."

"Oh, thank God," said Andrea. "Oh, please, no, please, come in."

He was tall, weathered, with sandy-gray hair — looked to be in his early sixties. He wore a tan Forest Service parka and a fur-lined cap with a shiny metal insignia. He had strong, handsome features, and clear blue eyes. As she watched him crumble crackers in his second bowl of soup, Andrea realized the forest ranger had worked up quite an appetite.

"You didn't walk all the way here, did you?"

He chuckled. "No, ma'am. I left my snowmobile up on the fire service road, quarter mile up the hill. I come down through the trees on the snowshoes. Woods are too thick for the vehicle. It's kind of a short-cut. Curly showed it to me."

"Curly. He's the trapper?"

"Yes, ma'am.

"Well, I hope we get a chance to thank him. I can't imagine what we'd have done if we hadn't found this place."

The girls sat silently at the table, in rapt attention to the husky-voiced stranger. After the scare, the warm presence of the fatherly man was a welcome reassurance.

"You said you're looking for a downed plane?" asked Andrea.

"Yes, ma'am. A cargo plane was reported down somewhere in these parts. Weather's so bad they can't go looking from the air. I just wanted to check in with Curly, see if he'd seen or heard anything."

The ranger tore off a piece of bread from the hard loaf of sourdough on the table. He seemed to be troubled over something. "When you folks arrived, you say you found the door was unlocked?"

"Yes," said Andrea. "Is that unusual? It seems so isolated out here — who would rob you?"

"Curly always kept this place locked up tighter than a bank vault. He's got that big old bolt on the door, and—" he pointed his piece of bread toward the wall "—you see the window?"

Andrea and Erin turned and looked behind them. Cut in the middle of the wall facing the road, the shuttered window had iron bars bolted across the frame.

The ranger looked obligingly at Kris, who continued to stare blankly toward him. "Uh... there's bars on the window," he told her. "They're for security."

"What on earth for?" asked Andrea.

"To keep out the bears."

"Oh my."

"Big old boar grizzly bust in through the window once. Curly was out on his trap lines. When he came back, he opened the door and tripped right over the fella — sleeping on the floor!" The ranger laughed, dipped his bread in his soup and took another bite. He shook his head, looked down at the giant bear rug spread over the floor. "That ol’ grizzly made a real mess of things, let me tell you."

Andrea and Erin stared down at the rug, their mouths agape.

"Are there wolves around here?" Kris asked. She was nervously fingering the metal insignia of the hat he'd set on the table.

Ranger Tom looked curiously into her gray-blue eyes. "Why yes, ma'am, I'm afraid there are. I suggest you ladies stay close to the cabin, go out as little as possible till daylight. Snowplows ought to be out by then, you all can be on your way."

The ranger wiped his chin with the back of his hand and pushed himself away from the table. "Thanks for the grub, folks, I sure do appreciate it. But I got myself a twenty-mile ride back to the station." He stood up.

Andrea grew anxious at the thought of him leaving. "Do you think something could have happened to Curly?" she asked.

The ranger put on his coat and picked up his hat. "Not likely, ma'am. Curly's six-foot-seven. He makes a hornet look cuddly. Took out that there grizzly with a Bowie knife single-handed."

Andrea did not find this altogether reassuring. She followed him to the door. "Do you think he'll be back soon?"

"He left the lantern out and the stove burning. Can't have gone too far. I'm sure he'll be back tonight." Tom picked up his snowshoes and opened the door. "Tell him I stopped by and said he was lucky to have such nice folks taking care of his cabin."

The ranger put on his hat and stepped out into the cold. Andrea and Erin stood squinting into the blowing snow, watching him slip into his snowshoes.

"I'll call your husband soon as I get back to the station, let him know you're all right."

"Thanks so much," said Andrea as he headed off into the blizzard. "And please be careful!"

He waved. Within seconds, Ranger Tom had vanished in the snow.

Josh Marino wasn't the only pilot waiting to fly out of the Fairbanks Airport. Two dozen men and four women were waiting in the pilot's lounge of the terminal building, pacing the floor, staring out at the snow, shaking their heads, listening to weather reports, making anxious phone calls to family and friends up north. It was looking more and more like they were going to be there for a while; the plows were working constantly to keep the runways clear, but the snow continued falling heavily and the winds were blowing strong. More than a few of the pilots had given up and were ordering drinks from the bar.

With little to do but wait, Josh decided to call Linda Carlson. Perhaps she'd heard something from Kris; if not, he felt he should at least let her know what was going on. After all, he had been the one who had finally convinced her daughter to make the trip. The thought of that nagged at him now.

He looked through his flight bag and realized he must have left his cell phone in the Volkswagen. Probably dropped between the seats, he thought. For a second he remembered the wolf in his headlights. He wondered if he was wrong about them not liking bad weather. For all he knew, the blizzard might be driving them out. Come to think of it, hadn't he read somewhere that they thrived in snowy conditions?

He thought of Kris again.

The phones in the pilot's lounge were all being used. Josh went out into the main terminal to find another place to call. The gate lounges were littered with stranded travelers; the Christmas rush had been shut down before it even had a chance to get started. To judge by their dress, most of the airline passengers were heading to points south — far south. At one American gate, a large group of middle-aged husbands and wives were wearing Hawaiian shirts and straw hats. They were camped out, sleeping, reading, playing cards, hunkering down for the long wait.

Josh found a bank of telephones by the restrooms. A tall uniformed policeman was on the phone in the booth next to him.  Josh dialed information and got Linda Carlson's number in Healy. He used his phone card to call her; Linda answered on the first ring. She was glad to hear from him, but it turned out she had already called Myron at the condo — she'd been worried the moment she'd heard the weather had turned. Myron still had no word from them, but had promised to call as soon as he did. Linda sounded anxious, and a little bit guilty.

"Kris didn't want to go," she said. "I'm afraid I kind of pushed her into it."

"No, it's my fault," Josh said. "I got her excited about the new headpiece, then dangled it in front of her like a carrot."

"Josh... The headpiece is great, but I don't think that's what she was excited about."

Josh didn't say anything for a moment. "Kris is... She's a terrific girl, Mrs. Carlson. It's driving me crazy not knowing if she's okay."

"Me too, Josh. Me too."

Josh told her about the radio receiver in Kris's parka, and about his plan to go on an air search as soon as the runways opened. Linda was grateful, and even a little relieved, but when Josh hung up, he felt even more troubled than he had before he'd called.

Kris went on the trip because she wanted to see me, he thought. He felt a tightening in his chest, an uneasy mingling of tenderness, anxiety, and longing. He had known Kris for over a year, but until now he hadn't realized how strong his feelings were for her.

"They went down near Caribou Mountain," said the policeman into the telephone next to him. "They know at least one of 'em's alive."

Josh was suddenly all ears. Caribou Mountain was north off the Dalton Highway, halfway up the winding road to the Summit Mountain condo.

"It's my job, Nikki, it's what I do!" the cop shouted. Then he cringed, held the phone away from his ear for a moment; Josh noticed he wore a thick, shiny wedding band.

"I know they can't go up yet, but that don't mean I can leave. I gotta be here when they bring 'em in." The cop covered the mouthpiece and cranked his neck to watch a bare-waisted blonde in a tied-up Hawaiian shirt waggle by. He noticed Josh looking at him. Josh pretended to make another phone call.

"I'm listening," the cop said, spinning back around.

Josh heard a dial tone in one ear and the policeman's conversation in the other. "It ain't a good night for planes goin' out, Nik, but that don't make it any better for Christmas shoppin'." Finally the man mumbled something and hung up the phone. He hadn't given in, but he clearly hadn't won anything, either.

"Excuse me — Officer?" Josh followed him down the corridor. "I couldn't help overhearing you mention Caribou Mountain. Did you say a plane went down?

"That's right," he said.

"So they'll be sending search planes out then?" Josh figured they'd probably release search planes long before they'd open up the airport to general traffic.

"That's the plan," said the officer. He was heading toward his partner, a short squat man standing down the corridor watching people walk by.

"I've got some friends who are stranded up that way," said Josh. "If I could join the search party, I might be able to look for them and help find that downed plane at the same time. Is there someone in charge I could talk to about that?"

"I reckon that'd be the Chief," said the lanky officer. "Chief Adashek. He's over in the Tower."

"Oh," said Josh, suddenly disheartened. He knew they didn't allow pilots into the Tower without prior permission from air traffic control. "You wouldn't be heading over that way anytime soon, would you?" he asked solicitously.

"Not if I can help it," said the cop. He reached his stocky partner and asked with a smile, "Did you see her, Frank?"

Frank fanned his face with his hand. "Whew! Have to be blind not to," he said.

Abbot and Costello, Josh thought. He started away dejectedly.
How in hell can I get in the Tower?

"Hey, fella."

Josh turned. The tall cop was looking at him. "You say you got friends up there."

"Yeah."

"Caribou Mountain?"

"Yeah. ...Why?"

The cop stared at him a moment. "'Cause you got a hell of a lot more than a blizzard to worry about."

Josh looked at the two policemen. "What do you mean?"

The cop glanced down at his partner. "Tell him, Frank."

Frank turned away from Josh. "I don't know," he said in a hushed voice. "Chief don't want the word gettin' out."

"Kid's got people up there, he's got a right to know."

Frank continued in a whisper. "Yeah, but you're gonna start a goddamn panic."

"One guy ain't a panic."

"Yeah, but one guy leads to two guys, pretty soon..."

"Pretty soon what?" said the tall cop.

Josh interrupted them. "Will one of you please tell me what the heck you're talking about?"

They stopped, looked at him. "There's a killer went down with that plane," the tall cop said at last. "A real freakin' nuthouse whacko killer. Until they find the son-of-a-bitch, there ain't nobody safe within fifty miles of Caribou Mountain."

Josh stood gaping at them.

*  *  *

"Thanks," Chief Adashek said into the telephone. "And I'm sorry about all this. If you get any word from him, let me know as soon as you can." He hung up the phone and stared gravely out the window at the tumbling snow.

"What is it?" asked Dr. Katukan. "What happened?"

"Ranger Station in Evansville. Their man at the Caribou Mountain post went out three hours ago looking for the plane.

They lost radio contact with him. They think something might have happened."

"Oh, no..." said Katukan.

"That's not all," said the Chief.

The doctor looked afraid to ask.

"Before they lost contact with him," Adashek continued, "he radioed in to say he'd found some stranded skiers holed up in a trapper's cabin. The trapper was gone missing."

Dr. Katukan sat down, a grim look on his face. "We've got to do something," he said.

Adashek looked across the smoky air traffic control room at Dean Stanton. Stanton was coolly lighting a cigarette while another controller argued with him.

"We can't," said the Chief. "Not while Stanton's in charge. He's not letting anything off the ground."

"Is there any way around him?" asked the doctor, peering across the room at the old man.

"Call in the Air Force," said Adashek. He was too tired to even grin at his own joke.

The doctor turned to him slowly. "...Or the National Guard," he said.

Adashek looked at him a moment. "The Guard.... Of course!"

He spun back to the desk and dialed the telephone.

"Hartley, it's me. I want the home telephone number of the governor." He listened a moment. "Yes, the governor of Alaska, whaddya think?!"