Throw them, he thought. Dump them. Complete shit!
But instead he pushed them up on his head, what would happen if he came out of it and needed them to negotiate rocks or something?
Instead he groped onward, the rifle hanging on his shoulder, trying desperately to keep up speed. But now the ground was rockier and he couldn't see far enough to choose the right paths through the descending gullies, the twisty snow-clogged passage between rocks, the increasing tufts of vegetation bent into nightmare forms by the thick, wet snow. His own breath blossomed before him, foamy and betraying.
He fell. The snow jammed into his throat, got down inside the parka. His leg hurt like hell. A shiver ran down his body.
Get up, goddammit!
He climbed back to his feet, remembering another dark day of fog and wet. That was so long ago, it seemed to have happened in some other lifetime. That day he'd been so electric, so animal, so tiger, his reflexes were alive, and in a secret way he now realized, he loved it all.
Now he felt old and slow. His limbs were working out of coordination. The cold and the wet fought him. His leg hurt, particularly his hip. A slow sting had begun inside his thigh and he realized that his impact had reopened the incision above his knee where Solaratov's bullet had nestled all these years in its capsule of scar tissue.
The rage came again, a hot red tide, a frenzy of mutilating hatred.
God help me, he prayed.
God help the sniper.
He raced downward, coming across a clear spot, and thought for just a moment he might be out of it, but saw in the next second it was only an illusion.
Now!
In the gray light of dawn the snow was like a giant mound of softness. She thought of ice cream, vanilla, in big white piles everywhere, thick enough to grab her body and support her when she threw herself into it. She tasted it and received only messages of coldness and texture, which in the next fraction of a second became cold water, amazingly.
She giggled in delight.
'Mommy! It's fun!'
'Honey, don't go far. I can't get you yet. The sun will be up in a few minutes.'
'Wheeeeeeee! I want to sled.'
'No, baby, not yet. Wait till Aunt Sally is up. If you get hurt, I can't reach you.'
She struggled through the snow, which reached her knees, not listening a bit. The sled was in the barn. She knew where, exactly. The barn was empty but the sled leaned against the wall, beyond the eight stalls, in a feeding pen. It was an old sled--she could see it exactly in her mind--with rusty red runners and a battered wooden flatbed.
She should have gotten it last night when they said it would snow!
'Nikki!' her mother called.
Nikki turned back and saw her mother, standing on the edge of the porch, wrapped in a great parka over her immobilizing cast, her hand shielding her eyes from the snippets of snow the wind occasionally caught and flung.
'Nikki! Come back.'
Her mother stood there.
Is it her?
Goddammit, is it her?
The woman stood rooted to the front of the porch.
Against his finger, the trigger was a tease.
The mil-dot had her centered perfectly, and no tremor came to his arm. His position was superb. Adductor magnus was firm, anchoring him to the earth. He was four pounds away from the end of the war. No cold, no fear, no tremor, no doubt, no hesitation.
But .. . is it her?
He had only seen her through his scope at 722 meters for one second: he couldn't tell. She was wrapped in a coat, and one hand held it secured. Possibly that meant the other hand was immobilized in a cast, possibly it meant nothing. That's how you wore a coat if you didn't want to put it on and button it. Any person would wear it that way.
The woman ducked back. She was gone.
He exhaled.
'Wheeeeeeeeeeee!' came the far-off sound of the child.
Wheeeeeeeeeeee!'
It was so far away, light, dry, just the smallest of things.
Maybe a freak twist of wind blew it up to him or the kindness of God.
But there it was: my child.
