where it was – and strapped into the rescue Sked, it was full dark. Wind from the northeast, bringing the promised front, had picked up and the temperature was falling.
Anna had to help Robin on with her skis. In the morning, the woman had worn them as if they were an extension of her body. Now she fumbled with the locks, unsure of how they worked.
“Hang on,” Anna said and patted her leg awkwardly. “We’ll be home in no time. Don’t think too much.” Robin said nothing.
Anna held the light for the others as they strapped on their skis, then helped Ridley into the harness attached to the Sked. The only one without skis, she would follow behind to free it if it got hung up on anything.
Now that the distraction of the corpse and its attendant parts was over, Anna was feeling every mile and minute of the day as well as the day before’s fight to get clear of the ice of Intermediate. Fatigue pressed on her till it was all she could do to keep her head up.
Robin went first, carrying one of the flashlights. Anna didn’t like her leading, but she didn’t want her bringing up the rear either. At least in front, if she went down, they’d see her.
Bob followed in Robin’s tracks. Anna was surprised how good he was on skis till she remembered he’d been born and raised in Canada. Ridley was third, carrying the other light and pulling the body. Anna fell into place at the tail of the train.
They’d not been on the move for fifteen minutes when the Sked tipped between two stones at the base of the outcropping with the stone nose. Anna was grateful. She was at the end of her strength and needed the short rest. “Hold up,” Ridley called to the others, then stood silently in his traces like an old horse. None of them spoke. Anything that came to mind to say was too grim to share.
The narrow metal sled had ridden up on the right side over a rock beneath the snow until it was close to tipping over. Anna caught up the few yards she’d fallen behind and knelt to right it. Both knees cracked as she went down and she wondered if she’d have to push on the ground like an old woman to get up again. Bracing herself, she lifted and pulled on the left edge of the aluminum sled, sliding it back onto level ground.
“You’re good to go,” she said.
“Go, Robin,” Ridley called.
Anna stayed where she was, the energy to rise eluding her for a moment. She’d heard about people wanting to lie down and sleep in the snow but had never understood the allure of it till now. She was gathering her strength to rise when she heard something in the trees to the left of the trail. Intermixed with the sighing of the wind was the sound of stealthy movement, whispering over the snow purposeful and stealthy, keeping pace with Ridley and the others.
They were being stalked.
17
The flicker and cut of the flashlights were ahead of her. But for these theatrical sharps of light, snipping images from perfect dark, Anna could see nothing. Three feet from where she knelt, the hounds of hell could be waiting, tails wagging in anticipation, and she’d not see them. She closed her eyes to shut out distraction and felt her universe extend on a plane of sound waves. Wind sighed, gentled from its earlier shrieks. Branches of trees discussed the small doings of the creatures beneath in whispers of snow falling from overburdened limbs and the snicker of bark on bark.
Nothing else. The stealthy slip and pad of predators had stopped. Or was never there. Ears swaddled in fleece, brain in fatigue, eyes in darkness: imagining sneaking noises was not beyond the realm of possibility.
With a grunt that she was glad none of the young and agile heard, Anna pushed to her feet and trudged on. Ridley had reached the top of the small knoll. He wasn’t a whole lot bigger than Anna, not more than five-foot-eight or so, and slight of frame. He had skied twenty miles before he was called to the body recovery, yet his movements remained fluid. Anna envied him for a few steps, then let it go. She hadn’t the strength to waste on nonessentials.
“SWITCH OUT!” Ridley hollered.
Anna woke with a start. She was on her feet, she was in position behind the Sked where she was supposed to be, but she’d been walking in a trance. Thirty minutes had elapsed. Ridley and Robin were switching out. Robin would pull the Sked for half an hour, then switch with Bob, so no one got overtired.
As Robin made her way to the rear of the line, Anna knelt in the snow, glad the darkness was there to cover what might have looked more like a collapse than a controlled descent. Light smashed into her face and she threw up an arm to protect herself.
“Sorry,” Ridley said. “How are you doing?”
“Good,” Anna said. “I’m doing good.”
“Eat something,” he said.
“Good idea.” That got the flashlight and his attention off of her and she slumped back into her clothes. She didn’t have anything to eat and, for the first time in what seemed like forever, she wasn’t hungry. Or, if she was, she was too tired to chew and swallow.
Ridley escaped the harness and buckled Robin into it. Robin had never towed a Sked before, but she’d skied a thousand miles with a pack and a rifle on her back so Ridley didn’t bother with much in the way of instruction.
When they’d done, he shined his light over the harness and the Sked, checking that the lines were still secure. “Where’s your light?” he demanded suddenly.
“Bob took it. He wanted to go first.”
“Bob took it,” Ridley said. “God damn him. Here, take mine. God damn him. God damn Adam,” he said and pushed into the darkness toward the wavering speck of light that was the purloined flashlight.
“What’s with Ridley and Adam?” Anna asked.
“Who knows,” Robin replied. Her voice was hollow, as if part of her said the expected words while another, greater part of her was someplace else. Someplace where nightmare was the special of the day.
“How are you doing?” Anna asked. “My strength of ten men is down to about eight-point-five,” she admitted. “Are you okay?”
“Bob took my light.”
The biotech was crying. Anna couldn’t see it but tears were breaking in her words.
“Let me pull the Sked for a while,” Anna said, wondering if she could make good on the offer.
“No.”
Maybe it would be good for Robin to keep working, keep moving, so Anna didn’t argue with her. She didn’t get up either. In a moment she would, she promised herself.
The wind stopped, the trees ceased their muttering and silence as cold and deep as an ice cave poured down. Into that silence came the sound Anna had heard before, stealthy movement in the trees to their left. Robin heard it too. In the glow of the flashlight, Anna saw her head jerk as if on a string; she uttered a strangled cry and began to swing the light in erratic arcs across the landscape. Suddenly illuminated, and as suddenly vanishing back into the dark, trunks and white and rocks flashed by, and for a second Anna felt as if she were falling.
Whether a curious moose, a band of squirrels or a slavering wog was with them, they couldn’t stay where they were. Ridley and Bob were already out of sight. Without light, Ridley couldn’t come back to help them; all he could do was follow Bob’s flashlight the way a lost ship follows the flashing of a buoy. Shaking her head to clear it, Anna blinked a few times. “We better get going.”
Without a word, Robin put her weight behind the harness and pulled. From her kneeling position, Anna pushed on the back of the Sked, breaking it free of where it had frozen to the snow while they’d stopped. A crack, a lurch, and it was moving. A crack, a lurch, and Anna was on her feet moving as well. Robin covered more ground than Ridley had, either not so considerate of Anna slogging behind or more anxious to get back to the main trail and then the bunkhouse.
Anna lifted one foot, then the other, and stayed upright, but the Sked drew away little by little. When the body, the biotech and the light source were several yards ahead, and traveling ever faster, Anna swallowed her pride and called out.
