Then he was out of the light. Caught in the darkness, he probed ahead with his hands. The pain in his back grew like a cancer, spreading through him, into his belly, his legs, turning his body to lead. A tree limb caught him in the face mask, snapped his head back. His breath came harder: he pulled off the helmet, threw it away. He needed to feel . . .
He was bleeding. He could feel the blood flowing down his belly and his back, warm, sticking between his shirt and his skin. He took another step, waving his hands like a blind man; another, waving his hands. A branch snapped him in the face, and he swore, twisted, tripped, went down. Swore, struggled to his feet, took another three steps, fell in a hole, tried to get up.
Failed this time.
Felt so quiet.
Lay there, resting; all he needed was a little rest, then he could get up.
Yukon. Alaska.
Weather, coming up, saw Lucas on the snow and the blood on his face, screamed, “No, God . . .”
“He’s hit, he’s hit,” Climpt screamed.
He was cradling Lucas’ head, Henry Lacey standing over both Lucas and Climpt, Carr beside the yellow-haired girl, other deputies milling through the snow.
Like a scene shot in slow motion, Weather saw Lacey’s teeth flashing in the snowmobile headlights, saw the face of the little girl, serene, dead, her coat puckered with bullet holes, and she thought, Gone to the angels, as she dropped to her knees next to Lucas.
Lucas thrashed, his eyes half open, the whites showing, straining, straining. She grabbed his jaw, found blood, tipped his head back, saw the entry wound, a small puncture that might have been made with a ballpoint pen. He couldn’t breathe. She pulled off her gloves, pried open his jaws, and pushed one of the gloves into the corner of his mouth to keep him from snapping his teeth on her fingers. With his mouth wedged open, she probed his throat with her fingers, found the blockage, a chunk of soft tissue where there shouldn’t have been anything.
Her mind went cold, analytical.
“Knife,” she said to Lacey.
“What?” Lacey shouted down at her, shocked. She realized that he had a gun in his hand.
“Give me your fuckin’ knife—your knife!”
“Here, here.” Climpt thrust a red jackknife at her, a Swiss Army knife, and she scratched open the larger of the two blades.
“Hold his head down,” she said to Climpt. Lacey dropped to his knees to help as she straddled Lucas’ chest. “Put your hand on his forehead. Push down.”
She pushed the point of the blade into Lucas’ throat below the Adam’s apple and twisted it, prying . . . and there was a sudden frightening croak as air rushed into his lungs. “Keep his head down—keep his head down.”
She thrust her index finger into the incision and crimped it, keeping the hole open.
“Let’s get him out—let’s get him out,” she shouted, slipping off his chest. Lucas seemed to levitate, men at each thigh and two more at either shoulder. “Keep his head down.”
They rushed him out of the woods, up to the sheriff’s Suburban.
With each awkward, bloody breath, Lucas, eyes closed now, said, “Awwwk . . . awk” like a dying crow.
A siren screamed away down the road just above him. Helper was lying in the ditch below the road, he realized. All he had to do was crawl to the top, and when the cops were gone, flag a car.
A small piece of rationality bit back at him: the cops wouldn’t be going. Not now. They knew he was here, now.
The Iceman laughed. They’d find him, they were coming.
He tried to roll, get up; he would crawl to the top, flag the cops. Quit. After he healed, he could try again. There was always the possibility of breaking out of jail, always possibilities.
But he couldn’t get up. Couldn’t move. His mind was still clear, working wonderfully. He analyzed the problem. He was stiff from the wound, he thought. Not a bad wound, not a killer, but he was stiffening up like a wounded deer.
When you shot a deer and failed to knock it down, you waited a half hour or so and invariably found it lying close by, unable to move.
If he was going to live, he had to get up.
But he couldn’t.
Tried. Couldn’t.
They’d come, he thought. Come and get him. The trail was only a couple of hundred yards long. They’d track him, they’d find him. All he had to do was wait.
“If he’s not hit, then going in there’d be suicide. If he is hit, he’s dead. Just set up the cordon and let it go until daylight,” Carr said. Lacey nodded, stepped to another deputy to relay the word.
“I want three or four men together everywhere,” Carr called after him. “I don’t want anyone out there alone, okay? Just in case.”
They found him lying in the ditch beside the road. Still alive, still alert.
The Iceman sensed them coming; not so much heard them, but simply knew. Cocked his head up; that was as far as he could move now. But stilclass="underline" if they got him right into town, they could save him. They could still save him.
“Help me,” he groaned.
Something skittered away, then returned.
“Help.”
Something touched his face; something colder than he was. He moved and they fell away. And came back. Nipped at him; there was a snarl, then a twisting flight, then they were back.
Coyotes. Brought by the scent of blood and the protection of the dark.
Hungry this year.
Hungry with the deep snow. Most of the deer dead and gone.
They came closer; he tried to move; failed. Tried to lift his hand, tried to roll, tried to cover his face. Failed.
Mind clear as water. Sharper teeth at his face, snapping, ripping, pulling him apart. He opened his mouth to scream; teeth at his lips.
Nine deputies were at the scene, four of them as pickets, guarding against the return of Helper. The rest worked over the scene, searching for blood sign and shells, or simply watched. The yellow-haired girl was a bump under a blue plastic tarp. Lacey and Carr stood to one side, Carr talking into the radio. When he signed off, Lacey was looking into the dark. “I still think if we went slow . . .”
“Forget it,” Carr said. “If he’s laying up, he’d just take out more of us. Keep the cordon along the road. Davenport got off a half-dozen shots at him, Gene chopped up the woods—I think there’s a good chance that he’s down. What we need . . .”
“Wait,” Lacey snapped. He held up a gloved hand, turned, and looked northeast at an angle toward the road. He seemed to be straining into the dark.
“What?”
“Sounded like a scream,” Lacey said.
They listened together for a moment, heard the chatter of the deputies around them, the distant muffled mutter of trucks idling on the road, and beneath it all the profoundly subtle rumble of the falling snow.
Nothing at all like the scream of a man being eaten alive.
Carr shook his head. “Probably just the wind,” he said.
CHAPTER
He was on snowshoes, working along the ridges across the access road to his cabin. After the first mile, he was damp with sweat. He took his watch cap off, stuffed it in his pocket, unzipped his parka to cool down, and moved on.
The alders caught at his legs, tangled him. They were small, bushy trees with thumb-sized trunks marked with speckles, like wild cherries. In some places they’d been buried by the frequent snowfalls. When he stepped over a buried bush, his snowshoe would collapse beneath him as though he’d stepped in a hole, which, in fact, he had—a snow dome, held up by the flexible branches of a buried alder. Then he’d be up to his knee or even his crotch, struggling to get back on the level.