Authors: Chuck Dixon
No Moira.
Where was she?
25
Levon moved at a steady jog, wary of his footing, keeping his center of mass balanced slightly forward. He paced himself, weighing options as he moved. With no landmarks on the featureless lake surface, he oriented himself with regular glances toward the Christopher house dark against the snowy slope of the shore behind him. He jogged roughly west/northwest toward the Fenton’s.
Toward Merry.
Behind him the engine noise of the snow machine rose and fell. He looked back to see the corona of the search lamp’s glow moving in back of the guesthouse. The rider still thought Levon was up there.
He trotted on, leaning into the wind that gusted over the lake surface. Stinging crystals of freezing snow pelted his face and pattered against the firehose canvas shell of his coat. He had no hat and no gloves. His hands were cramping. He flexed them, making fists and releasing them, to keep circulation going.
Before him the haze of falling snow was illuminated by a sudden brush of bright light. Then a second beam crossed where the first still scorched on his retina. A shaft of light stabbed out from behind and above him. The racket of the snow machine soared to a rasping growl behind him. The blade of light lowered and lowered until it pierced the dark to his right in a jiggling beam. The beam narrowed and brightened. The engine noise was louder now, steadier. The rider was on the ice behind him, following that juddering lance of white radiance.
Three or four hundred yards back and closing. The light fell to the ice to his right. Levon veered away from it into the greater dark. He picked up his pace to a run. It was still a Hail Mary for the rider. He couldn’t know his prey was on the ice. It was a guess. One man was like a grain of sand on the thousands of square acres of open lake surface. The snow and darkness would hide Levon unless the beam of light caught him as the distance between them closed.
His shadow was thrown long before him. His breath appeared in a blue cloud before his face. The edges of his vision turned incandescent with silvery light. He was trapped in the spotlight.
The snow machine revved with new urgency; a high pitched howl. The beam thrown against his back brightened and narrowed as the gap closed between the running man and the racing machine.
Something appeared in the gloom off to Levon’s left. It glowed for a moment in the shimmering beam of light then vanished when the stream swept away to the right to train back on target.
An ice fishing shack. The two brothers Nate had told him about. He’d seen them a few days ago. Little specks out in the ice, visible from the windows of the Hoffert’s kitchen. The shacks were roughly midway across the lake. That meant a half mile more to the far shore and cover. The snow machine would be on him in minutes.
The effective range of the rider’s weapon was poor at best given the conditions. Firing from a moving base at a moving target in the dark took more luck than skill. The rider would need to close with him to improve the odds of a strike.
Levon hooked hard left out of the beam of brightening light and into the haven of the greater dark. He closed his eyes as he ran, restoring some of his night vision after the flash of the search light. The shack was fifty yards away. He broke into a sprint. The light beam washed over him, stabbing into the night to his left before swinging back to catch him full in its beam. The machine was closing near enough to hear the clatter of treads over the hard packed ice. The rider revved higher and the light beam slewed away sharply. The treads screamed on the slick surface before the machine regained purchase. The light trained his way again when Levon reached the shack and plunged around it into the shadow cast in the growing brilliance.
A simple eye bolt held the door secured. He slammed at the bolt with the heel of his hand until the frozen metal yielded. Levon leapt inside the shack.
Starting at the floor line he peppered the shack with most of a magazine of 9mm rounds. Splinters flew as the lead punched holes in the walls through the plywood to come out the opposite wall. The single window shattered in a spray of glass. Empty shells clattered to the ice. He trained the weapon on the entrance of the shack and sent the last rounds in the mag through the door before kicking at it.
The door was hinged to open out. The rider’s kick bounced it open off the frame. He shouldered it aside and poked his empty weapon within.
The shack was empty.
The running man was nowhere to be seen.
No blood.
The only evidence that the running man had been inside was a coat of firehose canvas discarded on a bench set on one wall. The rider leaned over to stare at the water sloshing in the hole in the ice at the center of the shack’s floor. Black water with chunks of ice bobbing in the ripples left behind.
26
Someone had been here.
Someone had forced their way in.
Someone could still be here.
She stayed in the tree line watching and listening. Nothing moved. No lights from the house.
Through the whistle and yaw of the wind in the trees she could hear a whining sound coming off the lake. Like a chainsaw.
Or a snow machine.
The tracks of Daddy’s truck were shallow furrows with the edges rounded by the snow. There were other tracks, sharply defined, recent, that crisscrossed around the house.
Her father wasn’t here. He left before the men came looking for him.
And looking for her.
That was the story the tracks told her.
The power was out here. That meant the phone would be dead, too, just like at the Fentons.
Hot tears sprang from her eyes only to freeze on her cheeks. She swallowed hard. She bit her lip until she tasted blood.
What would Daddy do? What would he want
her
to do?
Neither of them were where they were supposed to be. The men who came to the Fentons seemed to know who would be there.
Expected
them to be there. Knew about all about them.
But they hadn’t known the Fentons had a guest.
They came here to the house where she and Daddy were living thinking they’d both be there.
Merry worked hard to sort it out, to decide what to do next. She tore her mind from the sounds she’d heard back at the Fentons. Mrs. Fenton screaming. The rough voices of angry men.
What to do next? What were her choices?
Her father would not want her looking for him. Wherever he was, she prayed he was unhurt. She prayed in silence the way her mother had taught her. Not so much in words but in thoughts, trying to lay a blanket of comfort over the ice cold dread grasping at her heart. She closed her eyes and prayed that the men at the Fentons wouldn’t harm them. She prayed for Giselle and Carl to be brave. She prayed that her own daddy was out there somewhere doing what he could to stay alive. She prayed that he wouldn’t worry about her. And lastly, she prayed for herself, for courage to do whatever came next.
“In Jesus’s name, amen.” She said this last in a whisper. That sealed the deal, as her mother used to promise her. End every prayer that way and Jesus would hear you. Like a stamp on a letter, her mom would say.
Her heart rate had slowed while she prayed. Before it had been beating like it wanted out of her chest. Merry’s breath came easier. The trembling in her hands and legs settled down. It was fear more than the cold that made her shake. She knew that.
Merry took a deep breath and let it out slow in a fine stream of mist.
Two courses were open to her. Two ways to go.
She could hide or she could go down to the county road at Bellevue for help.
Where would she hide? She couldn’t go into the house. The men on the snow machines would be back. She couldn’t stay outside all night. Not in this cold, dressed only in PJs and a robe.
With the help of the poles she rose from the crouch, her knees and hips protesting. She would keep moving. That was the best way to stay warm. Giselle told her that when she was learning to cross-country.
The market at Bellevue was ten miles down Mohawk Road. Cecile lived in an apartment behind the store. She had a CB radio in the store. They could call for help even if the phones were down there.
Ten miles. Merry had never skied that far before.
“So, I break my own record,” she said to herself and pushed off down the gentle grade between the trees on an angle toward the roadway.
Merry stayed in the trees until she was well past where the road split to go around the lake. She was out of sight of any homes. The stretch of Mohawk Road out to the county road followed alongside a creek bed with curves here and there where it went around patches of old growth on slopes rising to the north side of the roadway.
There were no tracks in the snow covering the road surface. Nothing had been up or down this road in days. It was an even and level course winding between the high drifts to the north and the gradual drop down to the creek bed to the south.
Merry set a pace that she thought she could manage for the long hike to the county road. The skis slid easily through the fresh layer of powder. Her arms pumped forward and back, forward and back, spiking the poles just enough to maintain balance and momentum. All about rhythm. Don’t think too hard about it. Arms and legs pulling and sliding. The way Giselle had taught her.
The woods were silent except for the rattle of branches high above her each time the wind gusted. The only sounds were the whisper of her skis, the clank of the poles in her hands, the creak of the straps over her boots. Still, she kept her ears open to scan her surroundings. She listened for snow machine motors or voices. Nothing. The snow muted everything but her own sounds.
Ten miles. Maybe only nine now. Stay to the road and there was no way she could get lost. Concentrate on what was ahead not what was behind. She made her decision. She had to commit to it.
Daddy might go to the Fentons looking for her. Or back to their house. He’d be worried. Maybe she should have stayed near the house. He could be there right now, searching for her. He wouldn’t think to look down the road for her. The tracks of her skis didn’t come near the house. She’d made sure to stay in the trees after crossing the road a ways from the house.
She was making good distance at her current pace, getting closer to the Bellevue Market with every slide of her skis. But she was still closer to the house behind her than the county road before her. She could turn back and be at the house, in her Daddy’s arms, in minutes.
Or run into the men on the snow machines. They might be waiting for her at the house. Or turning off the lake road to follow her.
Merry planted a pole hard in the packed snow and pivoted to a stop to look back the way she’d come. She listened hard but heard nothing but the movement of the boughs way above her head. She stared through the swirling mist of wind-driven flakes, looking for the headlamps of snow machines lighting the night. All she could see were her own tandem tracks leading back the way she’d come and disappearing into the moiré patterned fog of blowing snow.
The pattern was broken. Something moved there back on the roadway. She blinked hard. She wiped the crystals of ice from her lashes and focused on a shape growing from the gray dimness above the silvery pathway.
A figure on skis emerged out of the gloom. Head down, eyes on Merry’s tracks. Poles lifting and legs marching forward.
Merry sucked in a lungful of icy air. She clamped her lips shut to cut off a cry. It could be someone else going for help. Her mind rejected that. Somehow, deep down, she knew this was one of
them
.
Leaning on the poles she turned herself back to the course and pushed off. She planted the poles, pushing and pulling, launching the skis over the hard pack. Breathing steady and even. Moving balanced for a curve in the road ahead. Maybe the person behind hadn’t seen her. If she could make the curve she’d be out of sight for a stretch.
The follower was moving steady but not fast. They didn’t have to. A grown-up had a longer stride. In a long race Merry would eventually be the loser even to an inexperienced cross-country skier. Merry had only been doing this a couple of weeks. Youth and luck were the only edge she had.
The road sloped down at a slight grade toward where the road bent to the left. Merry shoved hard, building speed, ending on a double push of the poles with all her weight behind them. She leaned forward from the waist and tucked the poles under her arms as momentum propelled her down the slope faster than her walking pace would carry her. Weight to one foot and then the other to maintain her balance. If she fell now she’d lose some of the distance that separated her from her pursuer. Or worse, she’d hurt herself and not be able to continue.
Merry dug a pole in to correct her course away from the sharp drop to her right. She leaned to the left and slalomed around where the road cut into the hillside, the wall of a berm topped with tall pines. She looked back for an instant as the road carried her out of sight. The follower was still there, arms rising higher than before, moving faster toward the spot where the road turned down for the curve. Close enough now to see the blue snow suit with double white stripes down the arms and legs. The head covered with a hood, the face with a dark mask that hid the wearer behind bug-like goggles.
They’d had seen her.
On level ground again, Merry pushed hard on the poles to covet the slight increase in momentum the glide down the grade had gifted her. Her breath came in gasps. Her arms rose high, reaching out to stab points of the poles into the hard pack. Her thighs were ablaze with the effort. Her lungs raged with cold fire. All attempts at maintaining rhythm and form were forgotten. She could think only of escape.