“Yeah.”
“You’re covered in blood.”
“Moose blood. I’m okay.”
“The moose ain’t. That’s the third one this year.” He gestured with the flashlight. “There anyone else in there?”
“No.”
The man moved toward the van. It was on the side of the road, at an almost perfect right angle, with the dead moose half sunken into it.
Durie gripped the Glock in his pocket. His head was clearing a little, but even so, he was not seeing a wealth of alternatives.
“Not that big,” the man observed, “as moose go. Van’s a writeoff. Tell me what you need outta here.”
“Leave it,” Durie said. “Just take me somewhere.”
The man pulled at the side-door handle.
“Leave it,” Durie said.
The man pulled again and the door slid back. “What in the hell?”
He stepped back and looked over at Durie standing in the headlights.
He leaned back into the van, and when he came back out he said, “Girl looks okay, but she’s out cold. You must of incurred a head injury, mister-you said there was no one in there. Shouldn’t let people sleep in the back like that, even if they are strapped in.”
He reached into his pocket.
“Don’t.”
“I gotta call an ambulance.”
“We don’t need an ambulance.”
“I’m gonna call.”
“Just help me get her into your car.”
“No way. I’m not gonna risk moving an unconscious person.” The man held his phone out at arm’s length to shade his eyes. “Okay? Why don’t you go siddown in my truck, eh?”
He held the phone to his face to dial. The screen lit up his features-doughy, harmless, middle-aged-and a surrounding nimbus of falling snow.
Giles Blunt
Until the Night
From the Blue Notebook
The headwind had driven us closer to the shore of Axel Heiberg, an island rich in glaciers and one I knew well. It provided the dedicated researcher with everything the Arctic offers: desert, ice cap, meltwater ponds and icebound lakes. Mountainous in the centre, much of it is also just above sea level. Not so many years ago I had taken cores from the Midden Ice Field, walked the Crusoe Glacier to its terminus and observed its new meltwater stream, which had only just started flowing. I discovered vast deposits of dead ice that had lain hidden for centuries beneath layers of tundra and soil-evidence of a previous glacier, and a glimpse into the far recesses of planetary time.
Rebecca and I were now drifting south of Iceberg Glacier, the only one on Heiberg that reaches the sea. But we were staring at thirty metres of open water that separated us from the pro-glacial gravel of Heiberg. Thirty metres we had no way of crossing.
The terror of hypothermia welled up in me. The fact is, few of the nineteenth-century explorers who came to grief did so by freezing to death. They were killed by scurvy, by malnutrition, in some cases by lead poisoning brought on by faulty canned goods. They had the assistance of Inuit hunters who knew the landscape intimately, whose hand-drawn maps may still be used to advantage, and whose clothing has never been bettered, except in terms of weight, for keeping the cold at bay.
The temperatures Rebecca and I faced were by Arctic standards not severe. As far as I could judge, the temperature swung from perhaps minus ten Celsius to a few degrees above freezing. But we were improperly dressed. Even so, the human body maintains its warmth very well until other factors come into play-wetness, which we had so far managed mostly to avoid, hunger, exhaustion. We had been walking for hours, without food. Our core temperatures were moving downward, and hypothermia, despite the layers we had salvaged from the dead, was imminent.
There’s a promontory just above Strand Fiord, I said. Pack ice tends to jam up there-we may be able to make it to shore. If we can do that, we can make the LARS camp.
Rebecca’s face was grey and there was a blue tinge to her lips-not a good sign. She nodded silently.
I pulled out the radio and scanned for transmissions. Nothing but the gasp and crackle of solar storms. I pulled the aerial out full and pointed it in the direction of the LARS station. It is sometimes possible to reach receivers normally out of range by doing a cloud skip or strat skip. There was small hope of success, but I put out another mayday all the same.
I don’t know how long we walked after that. Polar conditions do nothing good for your sense of time. The fog had gone, but without time, one has no idea of distance. I knew we must be near Strand Fiord, but not how near.
Eventually, yes, there came a moment of luck. We were jammed, not against the shore, but up against another floe. The fit was not perfect, but we found a place where the gap was about four feet, perhaps a little less. That may not sound like much, but the surface was slush and we were ragged and worn.
How’s your long jump? I said.
We can’t. The edge will snap.
It’s multi-year ice-you can tell by the blue. It’ll be a couple of metres thick right up to the edge. Do you want me to go first?
I don’t care.
She was shivering violently, her body becoming less able to generate heat.
I decided to go first. That way I could grab hold of her if she had trouble on the far edge. We both knew that even a few seconds of exposure to that water would mean death.
If I fall, she said, hold my hand if you can, but don’t pull me out.
You’re not going to fall.
We moved back a few metres and without preliminary I took my run. Landing on the far side, I stumbled forward and my hands and forearms plunged into slush-a sure sentence of maiming by frostbite. Then Rebecca ran toward me and leapt the gap and I made sure she crashed into me so she couldn’t fall.
We tore Ray Deville’s shirt into pieces to wrap my hands and forearms, and set off again. We made landfall in less than an hour. The tabular floe had been forced well up onto the rocky shore, and it didn’t take long to find a spot where the drop to the gravel beach was not too high.
If we can make Strand Fiord, we can make LARS, I said. This time of year there’s bound to be someone there. Even if there isn’t, it’ll mean shelter, supplies.
Rebecca said nothing.
Did you hear me?
What? Yes, I heard you, she said, but she remained still, staring at the gravel. She was shivering again, and I held her close and rubbed her arms. My own arms, particularly the left, were going numb. Heiberg is a forbidding landscape-from our present vantage point it was nothing but gravel and bald rock-but the feel of dry land under my boots was encouraging.
Come on, then. Let’s move. You go first. And I want you to talk to me.
I’m going to die, Kit. I’m going to die and I don’t feel like talking. I don’t feel like walking either. I just want to lie down.
I made her walk ahead of me and browbeat her into talking. She told me about some places she had lived-a farmhouse in Saskatchewan’s Qu’Appelle Valley, a small room in a house she had shared with five other people. She spoke of the colours of fields, the million hues of green and gold, and she told me of a split-log cottage she and Kurt had rented one summer on Georgian Bay, and about the white sparks that seem to fly off Lake Huron in certain seas, certain lights.
I wanted to keep her talking so that I could judge her state of mind. She talked well and coherently over the
