Coburn sat in the doorway, which he had been forced to widen with several solid kicks to collect more wood for the fire. He could barely feel its warmth, but that was enough. He needed to stay sharp and the cold helped him focus his senses. After all, he was tasked with covering the barricaded front door, the hole in the roof through which the boughs of the pine had grown, and now the door to the storage rooms and the tunnel to God-knows-where in their depths. His magazine was stuffed to the gills. He had an open box of ammunition in the left hip pocket of his jacket and eight more rounds lined up on the ground beside him. Just under two seconds to reload meant he needed to shoot first and ask questions later. It also meant that he couldn’t afford to miss.
He had crumbled a bouillon cube into a bottle of water, but it had been too cold to mix well and he found himself grinding his teeth on the grains. At least it gave his nervous energy some form of release. It kept him from practicing loading and reloading and rehearsing the plan over and over in his mind. If the attack came through the window, they would fall back into the storerooms. If it came through the doorway from the back rooms, they would try to hold off the assault from the bedroom. If it came through the hole in the roof, Coburn would fend them off as long as possible to buy Baumann some time. If they came from more than one direction at once, though…
Most of all, he tried not to remember the expression on Vigil’s lifeless face and picturing it on his own.
“How come you never got married, Will?” Baumann whispered.
His voice was tiny and quivered when he spoke. Coburn resisted the urge to turn around. He could hear the tears in his old friend’s voice; he didn’t need to see them on his face.
“I guess it was never a priority. Once I started med school, I became so focused on reaching the ultimate goal that I kind of lost touch with my personal life. Why do you ask?”
“You remember that girl Michelle McNeal from way back? The Kappa Delt? I still think about her. I wonder how things might have turned out had I done things…differently.”
“You mean instead of sleeping your way through her entire sorority?”
“I was just a kid, for Christ’s sake. We shouldn’t have to make choices that affect the course of our lives when we’re just kids.” He paused and Coburn waited him out. “I looked her up, you know. She’s divorced and living out in San Diego. I actually flew down there to talk to her, but when I saw her jogging into her apartment complex, looking even more beautiful than I remembered, I just…I don’t know…lost my nerve. I mean, what was I supposed to say? So I just sat out there in my rental car, staring out the window, until I finally ended up driving back to the airport and getting on a plane. I wish I’d gotten out. Wish I’d walked right up to her and told her that I was sorry, that I messed up. That I wanted to try again. Try harder. Do better this time. But now I’ll never have that chance. Funny how you’re only granted clarity at the end, isn’t it?”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Who’s going to miss you when you don’t come back, Will?”
“Be quiet or we won’t be able to hear them coming.”
“Vigil? Shore? Their families will be out here tromping through the wilderness for weeks, combing through the forest. But us? I don’t have friends. I have remoras. You know, those things that cling to a shark and eat the food that falls out of its mouth? As long as I have money, I have people around to tell me how amazing I am and pretty much cater to my every whim. Your patients, Will? They’ll find another doctor. The hospital will hire another surgeon. Vigil and Shore will leave holes that can never be filled, but us? We’re footprints in the snow.”
“We’re going to survive this, Todd.”
“That’s why I look forward to these trips all year. This is my only real human contact. You guys are all that’s left of my life before all of the money and success. You guys are the only real things left in my life. The rest of the year I feel like an actor on a stage, putting on a performance for an audience that cheers regardless of how badly I screw up.”
“We’re different, Todd. I don’t feel empty. I change lives. I
save
lives. I don’t need the audience or the applause. I’m comfortable in my own skin.”
“Of course you are, but tell me, Will…how many times have you volunteered to cover holidays or picked up shifts for other surgeons to keep from having to go home to your empty house?”
Coburn said nothing. The wind shrieked outside. A clump of snow fell through the hole in the roof and he nearly fired blindly in surprise.
“Do me a favor, Will. If you make it, will you get in touch with Michelle for me? Tell her…tell her I’m sorry.”
“Tell her yourself. We’re both getting out of here. I don’t want to hear any more nonsense. We’re going to get through this.”
The words sounded hollow, even to his own ears. He tried to concentrate on his surroundings, on each and every minute sound. The boards creaked. The wind gusted. Snowflakes pelted the side of the house. Todd sniffed. The fire crackled. And somewhere in the distance, he was sure he heard what sounded like a bear’s roar.
November 20th: Mt. Isolation
Yesterday
Time slowed. Seconds became minutes, minutes hours, and hours eternities. Had he a watch, Coburn would have glanced at it so often that time might actually have stopped. Assuming he would have been able to read it, anyway. He was shaking so badly he could barely maintain his grip on his rifle. He had to bite his lip to keep his teeth from chattering. He looked from one egress to the next to the next so quickly that he was starting to make himself dizzy.
Why weren’t they coming? What in God’s name were they waiting for?
His heartbeat was too loud. The sound of his breathing was deafening. How was he supposed to hear anything over all of the noise inside his own skull?
A clump of snow fell through the roof.
The needles and branches were still shaking when Coburn looked up.
“Did you hear that?” Baumann whispered.
Coburn peeked back over his shoulder. Baumann was looking up at the ceiling. His stare traveled slowly toward Coburn as though following the progress of something Coburn still couldn’t hear.
A moment passed.
Creaking overhead.
Barely audible, like the gentle transfer of weight from one foot to the next. Stealthy movement. Slow. Deceptive.
More snow fell through the hole and landed with a soft thump.
There was definitely something up there.
Coburn raised his rifle and tracked the footsteps with his barrel. Moving toward the hole.
Closer.
Closer still.
He tightened his finger on the trigger.
Another footstep.
Pause.
Then another.
He tried to swallow the lump in his throat, but produced only a dry clicking noise. He could hardly breathe.
One thought: Just under two seconds to reload.
Another step.
A cascade of snow glittered as it fell around him.
Just under two seconds.
Creak
.
Two seconds.
Creak
.
Two.
Creak
.
Coburn squeezed the trigger and the rifle bucked against his shoulder. The report was deafening. Splinters flew. Snow fell through the new hole in the roof. Baumann shouted. A roar. Or was that just the ringing in his ears?
Pull back the bolt.
Jack the casing.
Chamber another.
Slam the bolt home.
Aim at the hole in the roof.
Six heartbeats.
Two seconds.
Movement.
Squeeze the trigger.
Deafening boom. Kick in the shoulder.
Dark form. Jerked.
Plummeting to the ground.
Coburn yelled in an effort to clear his head of the ringing.
A body struck his legs.
He scrabbled backward. Aimed the rifle.
Pull-jack-chamber-slam.
Faster this time.
Squeeze the trigger.
He was already loading another bullet when the body jumped with the impact. Flesh and bone spattered the wall.
Ringing…needles driven through his eardrums and into his brain.
Shouting, he staggered forward, thrust his barrel into the destroyed remains of his assailant’s face.
Recognition dawned.
Dark hair.
Blue-tinged skin.
Broken teeth.
Dark eyes.
Sweet Jesus.
Shore.
* * *
Ringing in his ears. The entire world was ringing. A high-pitched whine like mosquitoes inside his head.
He couldn’t breathe. Was he breathing?
Coburn fell to his knees and sighted through the hole in the roof, waiting for something else to descend upon him. Full of confusion. Seething with anger. He wanted nothing more than to bellow at the top of his lungs and fire repeatedly up into the gap.
“Show yourselves!” he yelled. He felt the pain of the words ripping up his throat, but couldn’t even hear them.
Nothing.
Only the swaying green-needled branches of the ponderosa pines and the snowflakes twirling down from the cold darkness.
He brayed like a wild animal and lowered his eyes to his longtime friend’s remains, crumpled on the dirt in front of him. His first shot had struck Shore in the upper left chest, destroying his clavicle and shoulder girdle. At such close range, the bullet had shattered the scapula and humeral head. There was no blood. The second shot had connected squarely with Shore’s forehead, leaving a jagged, bone-lined crater. Chunks of tissue, gray matter, bone, and hair clung to the wooden slats behind him. And yet there was no crimson starburst spatter.
He stared into Shore’s eyes. Whatever intangible substance had once animated them was long gone. There was ice in the lashes. The lids were swollen. Only the lower halves of the irises showed. Coburn did everything in his power not to look away from the eyes, for they were the only part of his friend that hadn’t been mutilated. There were holes in the cheeks through which the teeth showed. The ears were gone. The neck was little more than sinew and knobby vertebrae. The muscles had been stripped from the remainder of the body. There was no belly, no organs, just a section of lumbar spine to bridge the torso and the pelvis. The meat had been sloppily torn off, leaving the curled nubs of tendons and an ice-crusted layer of frozen blood on connective tissue. What little flesh remained was ragged…ridged…the distinct impressions of teeth immortalized in the blue flesh and the deep white gouges carved into the otherwise rust-colored bones.
“…out of it…”
A voice cut through the ringing, as if from a great distance.
“…damn it, Coburn!”
He glanced up and stared through a sheen of tears. The fire came into focus, and, behind it, Baumann posted at the window, a dark silhouette against the whiteness outside, shouting.
“Snap out of it!”
Coburn focused again on his rifle and pointed it up through the hole. He scooted as far away from the body as he could without losing his vantage point.
His tears froze to his cheeks as he stared up through the gracefully falling snow into the dense canopy.
* * *
“I can’t do this anymore,” Baumann whispered. “What are they doing out there? Why haven’t they attacked yet?”
“They’re just toying with us. Stay focused.”
“We should make a run for it now. While they’re off doing whatever it is they’re doing.”
“They know this forest better than we do. We won’t get far.”
“We aren’t getting
anywhere
just sitting here.”
Baumann’s logic was inarguable.
A gust screamed across the face of the house.
Coburn was taking his turn at the window. The wind was blowing directly into his face, but at least it cleared the smoke and kept him from roasting in the heat. It had to be getting close to dawn. Or at least close to what passed for dawn in the shadows of the mountains and beneath the blizzard. At a guess, it had been about three hours since Shore’s corpse had been dropped through the roof, which, if his internal clock was remotely accurate, made it somewhere between three and four AM. There hadn’t been so much as a hint of movement and yet they both sensed their enemy out there in the darkness. The night positively crackled with violent potential, an electrical sensation that grew stronger and stronger with each passing second.
Another gust of wind wailed and beneath it…a deep rumble…a vibrating sensation in the earth as much as an audible sound. Coburn couldn’t be quite certain he had heard anything at all.
“Did you hear something?” he whispered.
Baumann paused so long before replying that Coburn started to ask again.