The enraged wind screamed in the distance, but reached them only as an attenuated breeze, barely strong enough to sweep the snow across the ground and make the branches overhead sway. Pine needles rustled and bark scraped. Snow fell in clumps onto the uneven accumulation, which wasn’t even half as deep as it had been in the meadow they just left. The dead leaves still crackled underfoot.
While he was grateful for the forest’s protection from the blizzard, he would have appreciated even what little sun graced the world without. A deep twilight reigned beneath the canopy; a perpetual state of shadow drifting around the trunks and through the scrub oak and saplings, forever trapped on the mountainside. It felt like he was being watched from every direction at once, and for all he knew he was. There were countless places to hide and the tramping sounds of their passage would easily mask a stealthy approach. His toes ached, his eyes stung, and he could feel the mucus freezing on his upper lip, but couldn’t bring himself to lower his stare from his rifle to wipe it away. His scope was useless and his normal sight alone couldn’t penetrate the deep pools of darkness. Still, he alternated walking backward so he could cover the forest behind them and jogging to catch back up when he lagged. At a guess, they’d come maybe half a mile and already the muscles in his legs were burning from trudging through the snow.
He was just about to turn and attempt to catch up again when he backed right into Shore, who grabbed him by the straps of his backpack and pulled him behind the trunk of a pine.
“What—?”
Shore clasped his gloved hand over Coburn’s mouth.
He swatted his friend’s hand away and peered around the tree. Baumann’s footprints terminated about five paces ahead, where he had ducked from the path to the right, behind a juniper bush. Coburn followed Baumann’s sightline deeper into the forest—
He ducked back behind the trunk and pressed his back against the bark. His breath blossomed in rapid clouds from his chapped lips.
Had he really seen…?
No.
No. He couldn’t have…could he?
His pulse thudding in his ears, Coburn lowered himself to his knees, leaned around the tree, and sighted down the dark path. There. About fifty feet away along a rare straight stretch, where the dense forest absorbed the snow-blanketed trail, was what he had at first mistaken with his bare eyes for a man kneeling on the ground.
The rifle trembled in his grasp.
Two femora, the upper leg bones, had been staked into the snow, mid-thigh-deep. They had been stripped of the muscle and fat, clear down to the knots of tendons and connective tissue over the trochanters and femoral necks, where the bones still articulated with the acetabula of the hip bones. The northern sides of the bones were rimed with ice, while the remainder was crusted black and brown. The viscera had been removed from the lower abdomen and the brim of the pelvis tipped at such an angle that it functioned like the seat of a chair. And there…sitting on that seat…was Vigil’s head.
* * *
Snow had accumulated on his ebon hair, which was crusted to his forehead by a brick-red smear of blood. The tips of his ears and nose were black with frostbite, his ordinarily caramel-colored skin faded to a pallid bluish-white. His eyes were dark recesses, save for the lower crescents of the sclera beneath his eyelids. His lips were plump and purple, his jaw askew like he was attempting a conspiratorial wink. The severed tendons and vessels from his throat dangled through the outlet of the pelvis, into which the circumference of his neck had been fitted like a collar.
The macabre tableau was just sitting there in the middle of the path, on a pristine sheet of white snow, without a single footprint leading up to it. Put on display with the sole intention of being viewed from this exact point. Staked into the ground where they would have missed it entirely had they chosen any other path. Placed where whoever had done this knew they would eventually end up.
They were being hunted.
And if whoever was out there had enough foresight to recognize that they would attempt to flee on the same trail they had used before, then it stood to reason that they would already be moving into place to cut off their—
“We should have stayed in the cabin,” Shore whispered. “I told you…we should never have tried to leave.”
“Shh!” Baumann hissed.
A sudden strong stench. Body odor?
Coburn reached for Shore’s backpack. He needed to silence his old friend and buy them some time to think things through. But Shore easily avoided his grasp and darted back down the path toward the homestead.
“No!” Coburn pushed himself away from the tree and made a desperate lunge for Shore, who shoved through the dense thicket ahead of him, just out of reach. “That’s exactly what they want us to do! They’re flanking us, Blaine! They’re already behind—!”
Warmth on his face. Wet heat. In his eyes. His mouth.
He couldn’t see. Stopped in his tracks. Wiped his eyes.
The taste. Salty. Metallic.
Cooling on his skin.
A tug on his pack from behind and he fell backward into the snow. Being dragged in reverse. His legs trailing him through the snow. The crimson-spattered snow. Red on the trees. Melting through the accumulation. Dripping from the branches.
Blood.
He gagged at the realization.
Shore’s blood. Freezing into his lashes, the stubble on his cheeks. On his tongue. Trickling down his throat.
The movement stopped and his field of view lolled upward, granting him a view of the canopy.
Baumann kneeled over him, his rifle directed back down the path.
Shouting.
“Get up, Will! For Christ’s sake! Snap out of it and get the hell up!”
Coburn found his grip on his Remington. Sat up. Raised the rifle to his shoulder.
“Shore…” he said. “I tried to stop him…tried—”
“He’s dead, damn it! And we will be too, if you don’t snap out of it!”
Baumann’s words cut through the disorientation and brought home the reality of the situation.
Coburn turned around and knelt behind Baumann to cover the forest behind them.
He tried not to look at Vigil, who stared through him with sightless eyes, or at the shadows beneath the trees that appeared to roil with life.
He tried not to taste the finality of Shore’s death.
Or think about the fact that there were only two of them left now, no one knew exactly where they were, and they were being stalked like animals.
* * *
Coburn struggled to keep his teeth from chattering. He was shaking so badly that the barrel of his rifle jittered against the forest, all but guaranteeing a missed shot. There was no choice but to let his nose run down his upper lip for fear of making even the slightest noise. His breath formed a frozen fog in front of him. The skin on his face and lips tightened against the cold, and already he could feel it starting to split.
He had no idea how long they’d been kneeling there in the woods, terrified to make a move, waiting for what was beginning to feel like the inevitable. The wind cut through their clothing and made it sound as though the entire forest was alive with movement. Their tracks had nearly vanished. Vigil’s hair was now completely white, his skin was crusted with ice, and, mercifully, his eye sockets had filled with snow. Every few minutes, Coburn was sure he saw motion in the distance, but it could have been clumps of snow falling from the trees or the dancing snowflakes shifting on the breeze.
“We can’t stay here any longer,” he finally whispered, barely loud enough to be heard.
When there was no immediate answer from behind him, he repeated his statement.
“Where do you propose we go?” Baumann whispered.
“Anywhere but here. They know where we are.”
“They’ve known exactly what we were going to do every step of the way.”
“Then we need to do the opposite. Something they won’t be expecting.”
“And just what would that be?”
“Do you think they’re watching us right now?”
“I’m not sure, but we should assume they are.”
“Then we’ve probably lulled them to sleep with how long we’ve been sitting here.”
“So they won’t anticipate sudden movement.”
“What
will
they be expecting then?”
“The way I see it, we have four options. We can press on and try to backtrack to our camp. We can head uphill and hope to eventually find the trail, or at least get out of the valley. We can head downhill and follow the topography wherever it takes us. Or we can head back in the direction we came from.”
“I think our best choice would be to break away from the established trail and try to reach the camp on our own.”
“Then we obviously can’t do that.”
“Agreed.” Coburn paused and held his breath. He was positive he detected movement at the furthest reaches of his vision. “So what’s our least appealing option?”
“Heading back to the cabin.”
“Jesus.”
“I know.”
They sat in silence for several minutes. Returning to the cabin was a stall tactic at best, but at least it would be a defensible position. Out here, the enemy could come from any number of directions. And who knew? Maybe they would be able to wait out their hunters. And the storm. Once the snow cleared, they’d be unencumbered by the deep accumulation and the poor visibility. The biggest challenge would be surviving the interim.
“No time like the present,” Baumann whispered.
“We need a distraction to buy ourselves some time.”
“I say we fire two shots each. You shoot straight along the path like you’re trying to clear the way and I’ll shoot uphill into the trees. We agreed that those were the two most likely routes. If they’re out there—”
“They’re out there.”
“—they’ll be waiting for us to come right at them. And they’ll be wary we might shoot again. That ought to at least give us a head start.”
“That’s all I’m going to need,” Coburn whispered. “I don’t need to worry about outrunning them as long as I can outrun you.”
Baumann glanced back over his shoulder and Coburn smirked.
“I guess we’ll see about that.”
“I guess we will.”
“On my count?”
“You’ll need whatever lead you can get.”
“Awfully cocky for a man facing the wrong direction,” Baumann whispered. “Make sure you hit something or they might see through our ruse too soon.”
“I’m not the one you need to worry about.”
“See you on the other side, Will.”
“Not if I see you first.”
“One…”
The wind arose with a howl, shaking the treetops and loosing a cascade of glittering snow all around them.
“Two…”
Coburn sighted down a knot on the trunk of a pine near where he last saw movement. He swallowed hard and breathed out slowly through his mouth.
“Three!”
* * *
Coburn squeezed the trigger and took the recoil against his shoulder. He thought he heard the crack of splintering wood over the ringing in his ears.
Jerk back the bolt.
Eject the spent casing.
Slam home another.
He didn’t even aim the second shot. He just pulled the trigger, whirled, and leapt to his feet.
Baumann was already crashing through the brush ahead of him, his rifle held out to part the branches. Coburn churned through the deep snow and the shivering boughs in Todd’s wake. There was no sign of Shore. No blood on the branches or spattered on the snow. No bones. No body. Not even a single track in the snow. And then they were past where their friend had fallen and barreling through the forest, following a path that had already rid itself of any hint of their passage.
The ringing in his ears toyed with his balance. His legs were stiff from the cold, his feet blocks of ice in his boots. His own heavy breathing was deafening in the confines of his skull, which throbbed in time with his thundering pulse. He ducked and dodged and plowed straight through pine limbs and aspen branches that lacerated his cheeks and forced him to close his eyes. He burst from the forest before he even saw the meadow. The wind greeted him with a shriek and nearly knocked him off his feet. Baumann was maybe three paces ahead of him, charging across the perfect whiteness toward the dark shape of the house, which faded in and out of the blizzard.
Forty feet.
Thirty.
Coburn overtook Baumann with twenty feet to go. His lungs filled with fire and each step sent a painful jolt straight up his legs, but he didn’t dare slow. Not when he reached the house. Not as he passed the front door. Not until he rounded the far end of the house and took up position against the wall to cover Baumann.
Their tracks drew crooked lines across the meadow to the point where they merged and vanished into the trees. The storm was already filling them in and smoothing them over.
He was expecting to see several silhouettes streaking toward them through the snow, but instead he saw…