He fiddled with Belskiy’s belt buckle. Shukshin unlatched the man and felt the full weight of Belskiy’s body drag him into the cabin. He struggled to gain a foothold and hooked his feet into the broken frame of the four-wheel-drive vehicle. Shukshin pulled back at Belskiy’s heavy body and lost the flashlight from his mouth in the process. It fell into the snow behind the truck. Using his own bodyweight to free Belskiy from the truck, he jumped back off the truck. Belskiy caught for a second on the broken window, but slid out after him and slumped across Shukshin in the snow.
Shukshin caught his breath and rolled Belskiy onto the snow. He straightened Belskiy out against the upturned truck and delved into the man’s coat collar to probe for a pulse. A gentle, weak throb made Shukshin’s heart jump into his throat.
“Belskiy?”
“Mmrgh.”
“Belskiy! You’re alive!”
“Mmrgh.”
Shukshin scrambled for the flashlight and shined it directly into Belskiy’s face. The man was a pallid shade of gray and only the whites of his eyes showed before his eyelids shut.
“Belskiy!” Shukshin felt for the man’s pulse again.
His arteries still throbbed, maybe weaker than before. Shukshin could not tell, so he slid his hat up slightly and held his ear to Belskiy’s mouth. He could feel warm, wet air escaping Belskiy’s nose, followed by the weak inhalation of cold air.
Dusha barked wildly and appeared around the rear of the truck, her face held low against the ground and her shoulders tense.
“He’s alive, Dusha. We have to save him!”
Dusha ignored Shukshin and slipped past him, her haunches taut and her low growl making Shukshin quiet and nervous. With a deliberate slowness, Shukshin wheeled around and aimed the flashlight directly into the cause of Belskiy’s accident.
An enormous bear had sauntered in front of the truck, his head held crooked to avoid the direct light of Shukshin’s beam. With a deafening roar, the beast stood on its hind legs and held its front paws in the air. Each wicked obsidian claw gleamed in Shukshin’s light. Shukshin could not move. His thoughts and his body were as frozen as the taiga around him. His gun was in his glove box and Belskiy’s was entirely unreachable in the mangled UAZ. He had nothing to defend himself with except for puffy layers of cloth fabric that barely protected him against the cold.
Dusha threw herself in front of Shukshin and Belskiy. Her growl could barely be heard above the bear’s own deep utterances, but she stood resolute. Shukshin, still sitting, dragged himself behind the unconscious Belskiy.
“Dusha,” he whispered, “come here. Come here, girl. Let’s go.”
His voice barely left his mouth before falling flat against the blowing wind and frozen ground, drowned out by the standoff of the two animals. The bear took a step forward and let out another ice-shattering roar. Dusha lunged at the bear, pouncing at the beast’s matted brown coat, and tore her teeth into his fur. She bit madly at his stomach.
In one fierce swipe, the bear sent her flying into the darkness to his right, beyond the crashed truck’s lights. Shukshin let out a boyish whimper and crawled backwards again, his eyes locked on the bear. The bear did not growl or roar, though. Instead, its beady black eyes and wet snout bobbed side to side as it rambled toward Belskiy. With an uncannily human-like groan, the bear bent its head down and locked its mouth around Belskiy’s arm. It pulled the man back into the beams of the truck’s headlights and meandered between the trees until it disappeared into the shadows.
Shukshin sat in the snow, still frozen. A short while later, a human-like scream emanated from the bear’s direction, but quieted just as quickly as it had sounded.
Grabbing the truck beside him for support, Shukshin righted himself and stood up again. A sudden rush of blood from his head made him dizzy and he closed his eyes, almost falling forward into the snow. When he reopened his eyes, he saw another shape, smaller than the bear, go hurtling into the woods.
“Dusha!” Shukshin ran after her. “Dusha!”
Her paw prints decorated the flat lines where the bear had dragged Belskiy. Already, snowflakes were drifting into the little pockets and Shukshin worried he would not be able to track her for long.
His flashlight provided minimal guidance as the beam whipped around the trees and rocks. Something tugged at Shukshin’s feet and he fell into the snow. The flashlight flew from his hands and hit a tree. With a shudder, the light flickered and turned off.
When Shukshin got to his feet and wiped the snow out of his beard and face, he smelled something coppery, wet. He smelled his gloves again. His heart dropped at the familiar scent. The draining of an elk after a hunt, the butchered pig. In the dull moonlight that glowed through clouds and filtered between pine needles and snow, Shukshin spied what he had tripped on.
Belskiy’s body, mauled and gored, laid bare on the snow. Dark shadows and pools formed around his body and Shukshin did not need to guess what stained the snow, even with his limited night vision. At once, his stomach heaved and wretched. Shukshin threw up the meager contents of his stomach. The sight of the vomit caused him to gag and throw up again, but there was nothing left. He fell against a tree. Holding the evergreen trunk for support, he wiped his mouth.
A yelp from beyond the trees brought Shukshin to attention. He managed to regain his composure and chase the sound. The snow had let up, but the clouds still obscured and distorted the stars above him. Snowflakes that escaped the trees with the keening wind blew into his face as he sprinted as best he could toward where he had last heard Dusha.
The deep piles of snow deposited across the ground grabbed at his ankles and his calves. His pants began to soak through and weigh down. It was as though sandbags were materializing around his ankles and pulling him into the rolling tides, deeper and deeper.
A shape moved in the distance. A shadow; a silhouette.
He stopped and squinted into the distance, trying to make sense of the four-legged creature. He swallowed hard when the animal appeared to be heading for him and he crouched. He wished to succumb to the icy environment around him, to freeze and disappear into a block of ice.
But, the creature’s size diminished as it grew close and he recognized the familiar trot accented with a fresh, exaggerated limp. Dusha.
He patted the dog and kissed her forehead. She returned the affection, licking the snow from his beard and rubbing up against him, whining. Her front right leg appeared swollen near her paw. He picked it up in his hand and she yelped in pain.
“I’m sorry, Dusha, I’m sorry.”
She accepted his apology by dragging her warm tongue across his face and whining loudly. Shukshin wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in tight.
With a start, Shukshin looked around. He had let himself be distracted by the reunion. The snow had begun to fall in earnest again, remitting the small break in the blizzard. Shukshin stood up in panic, commanded Dusha to follow him, and retraced his footsteps. As they trudged through the slush and ice, the footsteps appeared to grow shallower and less distinct, merging into the untouched alien landscape sculpted by the winter storm.
Shukshin clung to his retraced steps, not believing that they were filling up before him, like a sailor clings to the broken mast of the storm-wrecked frigate. Soon, even the mast slipped underwater, broken and waterlogged, rotting and wave-tossed. The spaces where his feet and legs had plunged into the snow were clotted with the fresh deposits left by the howling winds.
Recognizing a rock jutting from the snow, Shukshin’s optimism bloomed momentarily before he recognized that same rock again. A tree, maybe, bent a certain way. A dead branch, still protruding from the snow, parts remaining uncovered. They ran for hours in unrelenting darkness and determined squalls, unable to find the road. With a sickening feeling, he thought that he may have already passed the road but not recognized it in the absolute darkness and uniform obscurity the snow created.