Blood of the Isir Omnibus Page 6

  I made myself stop moving and lay very still, waiting for the ice to decide if I was going for a swim or not. I endured the searing paroxysm of agony that had sunk its fangs into my wrist. Thick new cracks shot away from me like bullets and a foot or so away from me, creating a chilling sight—a jagged “step” in the ice about an inch high. That meant the ice I was on was tilting and separating from the rest of the sheet, and if I allowed that to happen while I lay there, I was sunk.

  I pulled my arm out of the strap, groaning with relief, and without giving myself time to think about it, I rolled to the left, making a sound on the ice like a flat tire thumping on pavement every time the pack came around and slapped into the ice. The sheet of ice was banging and snapping in accompaniment, but I didn’t dare stop. Over it all, the wind shrieked and screeched, blowing snow and tiny shards of ice across the lake.

  Powered by my fear, I rolled all the way to the shore and into the snow drifted up there. I was dizzy from all that spinning, and my hips and shoulders felt like so much broken glass, but I had solid ground beneath me.

  With a twisted lip, I thought back to how much better I’d seemed back home after the new meds. I was better than I had been, but if nothing else, my little romp on the ice underscored how far away from “normal” I still was.

  The blizzard was building in strength and fury, and the temperature was dropping at an alarming rate. The only plus side to how cold it was getting was that it would soon be too cold to snow. If only the wind would stop at the same time.

  I started to shiver, teeth chattering like a typewriter. I needed a fire, dry clothes, and a coat, and I needed to get out of the blizzard before I froze to death. I had my coat (what man in New England would leave the house in early November without one?), but it was stuffed into the pack, and I didn’t want to put it on over wet clothes anyway.

  I forced myself to my feet and looked around. The storm was blowing enough snow around me that getting a glimpse of anything more than ten or twenty feet in any direction was impossible, and what I could see was disheartening. There was no shelter from the wind in my immediate vicinity—no rocks, no trees, no buildings. The cold was like a wet blanket around my head, smothering the air around me, forcing me to breathe harder and deeper than normal just to get the same amount of oxygen.

  The outcropping of rock, that I was already calling Shark Fin Island in my head, and the silvery shimmering oval hanging in the air were both hidden by the whiteout. I stood there, searching the air above the patch of cracked ice, enraptured by swirling snow and the absence of silvery-rainbow light.

  With a start, I shook myself and made myself turn away. Standing there in a raging blizzard and staring into the white out in hopes of seeing a magical door was not going to accomplish anything.

  Walking around in an unknown place in the middle of a blizzard was dangerous, but if I stayed there on the shore of that frozen lake, I’d end up creating an ice sculpture from my frozen corpse. I had to get to shelter, or build one, and even a copse of woods would help. I couldn’t afford to go stumbling around in circles, however. Without a visual landmark, I wasn’t sure how I could keep from doing just that.

  I dug my cellphone and its built-in compass out of the waterproof pocket of the backpack. I started walking away from the lake, due north according to the phone. I couldn’t remember (or never had known) if the phone relied on global positioning satellites to determine cardinal directions, but for now, it didn’t really matter. I needed something that pointed in the same direction every time.

  Within minutes, forcing my way through the snow and the harsh, frozen wind became impossible. My body sang with pain and cold. I had gone as far as I was going to be able to and there was nothing to help shelter me. I couldn’t afford to push myself to exhaustion; I needed the energy to build a shelter, and I needed what little body warmth I still had to warm the shelter up. I had to get a quinzhee built before I turned into a flesh-colored popsicle.

  I let the pack drop from my shoulders and started kicking snow into a pile, wincing with each impact of my foot. Darts of pain shrieked up my spine. I kept kicking and pushing snow to the pile, ignoring the agony of it, and using my body weight to pack the mound of snow as tight as I could get it. Each time I stepped up to stomp fresh snow into the mound I was building, I wanted to scream with pain or throw up, or maybe both at the same time. My hips were like hot coals buried in my groin, and my knees…my god, my knees felt like lumps of cancerous, eviscerated flesh grinding and grinding and grinding against a sharpened rasp.

  I kept drifting away and suddenly waking up to find myself standing next to the mound, and just staring at it, or just standing next to a pile of fresh snow, staring at the wall of blown snow swirling around me. Each time I did, I wondered how long I’d been standing there freezing to death and fear would snap through me like a whip.

  Somehow, I kept working at it until I had a mound four feet high and about eight feet in diameter. I didn’t have the time to allow it to sinter, and that was a risk because it might collapse around me once I got inside, but compared to me staying out in the ever-decreasing temperatures and wind, it was an acceptable risk. I dropped to my knees on the lee side of the mound, thankful for any break from the biting wind. I began scooping snow out of a short tunnel. The tips of my fingers turned a bright shade of cherry red—a color I’d come to associate with flares of the old R.A.-monster, except the red would have been in my knuckles. I was even colder than before. I dug out a small room, just big enough for me to crouch in and long enough for me to lay flat. By the time I’d finished the basic excavation, my hands were raw, and my knuckles felt like someone had been at them with sand paper and a chisel. The tips of my fingers felt like hard pellets of ice.

  I was very cold, perhaps colder than I’d ever felt in my life, Norwegian genes or no. My heart was beating at a syncopated, furious rate. I was shivering with a violence that scared me, but even so, I had to build one more thing. I needed something to block the snow and wind from blowing through the open doorway and piling up inside the quinzhee.

  I pushed more snow together in front of the door and made another small mound of packed snow. I dug out an L-shaped tunnel and ended up inside the quinzhee. My hands felt like they were frozen into claws, but my fingertips felt strangely warm.

  With shaking hands, I managed to get a small can of Sterno out of the pack. I lit the jelly and held my hands over the flame—resisting the urge to put my fingers in the bluish flames. Even after years of coping with intense pain, it amazed me how extreme physical feelings made insane notions not only sound rational but desirable. As my fingertips began to warm up, they began to throb and sting.

  I started fighting my frozen clothes off my body. Buttons that had been a problem for me since the R.A. bit into my fingers like they had teeth. It was even worse when it was cold, but fear and desperation were strong motivators. I pulled a spare set of clothes out of my pack and slipped into them. They were cold, but at least they were dry. At least they weren’t sheathed in ice and melting snow.

  I dug around in my pack until I found the inner shell for my coat that I so rarely used and then zipped it into the outer shell. I put the coat on and curled around the little can of Sterno trying to capture all the warmth it could give off. I stopped shivering with an agonizing slowness as the small space got warmer and warmer. When I slid the lid on top of the little can, smothering the flame, I was almost sweating, and the fuel was almost depleted. I let my eyes close and soaked up the warmth.

  Outside, the wind continued to howl and scream.

  When I woke, the wind had fallen silent, and my mouth felt like a family of gophers had lived in it while I slept. I hadn’t meant to sleep, but the physical exhaustion and heat trapped in the little room built of packed snow had had their way with me. I’d been sleeping curled into a ball, arms crossed over my chest with my right fist on the floor, and the left tucked under my right arm. I tried to open my right hand, but my fingers were too stiff to mo
ve. Morning stiffness was a thing I was accustomed to—another gift of the disease I lived with—but I’d never experienced it to the point I couldn’t move my fingers at all.

  I lay there, staring at my hands, trying to open my hand and fighting panic—both by sheer force of will. If I’d been thinking straight the previous night, I would have been wearing my gloves, instead of flopping around in the frigid wind and digging in the snow with bare fingers. I started blowing into my closed fists, alternating breaths between the right and the left. After ten minutes or so of that, I could loosen my fists and straighten my thumbs. It wasn’t much, but it was a start, and the flood of terror in my system began to recede.

  I pushed the lid off the can of Sterno and managed to work the lighter with both of my thumbs. I held my claws close to that blue flame and tried to take a physical inventory. I felt like hammered shit that had been run over by a freight train. My hips were twin points of burning agony every time I moved my legs. Moving my feet caused pain to shoot through my ankles and up my shins to my knees. My knees…well, they were on a different continent of pain, maybe a different planet. After a few more minutes of “Sterno-therapy,” I could force my fingers into an almost straight position.

  It has been said that there should be more than one word to express the concept of love. The same was true for pain. It was silly to think one single four letter word could adequately express the myriad kinds of pain I had felt since I’d been sick.

  I’d been lucky—lucky enough not to fall through the ice into the lake, lucky not to have been overcome by confusion and disorientation, lucky the quinzhee hadn’t collapsed on my head.

  I pulled on my boots, fighting waves of nauseating pain in my knuckles to tie the laces. I pulled on my gloves, wincing as my swollen finger joints rubbed against the lining. I had always loved winter, but there’s nothing like having a personal monster to cure you of everything you love.

  With one last breath of warmth, I kicked my way through the snow blocking the entrance of the tunnel and then turned back to get my pack. I crawled outside on my hands and knees, gritting my teeth against the fresh assault of pain and tottered my way to an upright position.

  The snow around the quinzhee was waist deep. If the smooth white plane that stretched in every direction was all as deep as it was near the quinzhee, walking was going to be even more painful than I’d planned on. The forest was no more than a quarter of a mile away, but with the snow as deep as it was, it would feel like miles instead of a quarter of a mile.

  Shark Fin Island was visible behind me—the snow cover on the lake making the illusion of a circling shark even more realistic. The temperature was brutal and disheartening. Not as cold as it had been the night before, but cold enough to kill me if I wasn’t careful.

  The quinzhee sat there taunting me with its warmness, and I longed for it in a way that seemed perverted and disgusting. It could be kept warm for a long time, and the idea of crawling back inside and waiting another day was very tempting. I looked back and forth between the cold woods and the warm quinzhee several times, but wherever they were, Jane and Sig weren’t inside the quinzhee, so I turned toward the woods and started slogging through the snow. I needed food, shelter, and a way to find my family.

  It took me most of the morning to cross the three hundred or so yards to the forest. The trees still had green leaves on them, but they were shriveling and turning brown and black from the cold. Snow was caked on the tops of the black branches and plastered on their west-facing side. It was beautiful in a strange sort of way. I found myself staring at the shriveling green leaves more than once, wondering what kind of storm could flash freeze an entire forest with no warning.

  I walked—or at least I shuffled and limped— all through the afternoon, refusing to let myself stop and stare at the strange beauty. At least the trees had blocked some of the snowfall, and it was easier going inside the forest. I kept to a northerly path, using the phone for a compass, because it was as good a direction as any, and because it was easier travelling.

  As the afternoon stretched on, light started reflecting from the trunks of the trees and shadows stretched out to my right. I came across what would have been a pleasant babbling brook except for the fact that it was frozen solid. Ripples still showed on the surface of the ice. I’d never heard of any freeze happening so fast that ripples were frozen into the ice and again found myself wondering about the previous night’s storm with the kind of awe reserved for things like hurricanes and earthquakes.

  The brook ran northwest, and I turned to follow its bank. If I followed it far enough, the brook would lead to a river, and a river would lead me back to civilization. The bank was treacherous—slick with snow and ice and steep, and I had to pick my way along it carefully.

  After trudging along for what seemed like an entire geological age, the brook led me to a small wooden bridge. A snow-covered path stretched away from either side of it.

  The bridge had been handcrafted and was well-maintained. The carved hand rails depicted elaborate scenes, and I brushed the loose snow off for a better look at them. It was like something out of Scandinavian history—trolls, Viking warriors, dragons, and ships. Lots of ships.

  The sun dipped toward the horizon in the east as I was admiring the carvings, and I was surprised to see a flickering light coming from up the trail. Maybe the brook had led me back to civilization without the help of his big brother river.

  I lumbered across the snow-covered footbridge and followed the buried path on the other side. It curved toward north, and as I followed the curve, more lights flickered ahead.

  A gas lamp perched on top of a metal pole like a weird bird. Scrolled metal supported four glass panes that protected the gas flame from the wind. Civilization, of sorts, at least.

  Ahead, the buried path became a tended, cleared path stretching away into the woods. Chest-high drifts on each side of it, and more gas lamps lit the way.

  I floundered forward on legs that felt light but uncoordinated and ungainly. I longed to sit and rest, but if I did, my chances of getting up again were slim and none. The cleared path dipped into a valley up ahead, and that coupled with the growing darkness meant another drop in temperature. Barely distinguishable in the gloom, smoke swam from the snow-covered roof of a log cabin nestled inside the valley’s protection.

  The cold was drilling into my hands and cheeks. Despite the protection of the trees, the wind had picked up and was hurling frozen bits of ice into my face. I trudged down into the valley, close to exhaustion. I had done more in the past two days than I had in the past seven years, and my body screamed for rest. I sighed with relief as I came abreast of the cabin, its roof peeking above the tall snow berm on my right.

  “Help me!” The cry was just audible over the wind. It came from ahead of me.

  Dark was coming on at a rapid pace. The temperature was about to plummet if last night was any predictor of the weather in this snow-bound place. The smoking chimney of the little cabin promised warmth, rest, and probably food. I longed to be warm, and more to the point, my aching joints demanded warmth, and soon.

  “Help me! Please!”

  I couldn’t turn my back on a call for help. There was something hardwired into my soul that demanded better of me. “Here!” I called. “I’m here by the cabin. Where are you?”

  “Oh, thank you, sir!” The voice was male and was watery with weakness.

  “Keep talking. I’ll follow your voice.”

  “I’m trapped by this gods-forsaken tree fall. Up the path around the bend.”

  With a last look at the cabin, I trudged on past it. The path curved to my left and around the bend was a mess of evergreen limbs, roots, and tree trunks up against the right-side bank.

  “Is this you?” I asked.

  “Yes! Here!”

  Some of the branches began to rattle, and I set to work trying to clear the loose stuff out of the way. “You’ve made quite a mess here, mister. How’d you manage to bring a tree down o
n this side of the berm?”

  “It flipped over.”

  There was something about the situation that was tickling my Cop Radar. No alarm bells, yet, but a definite tickle. “What are you doing out here, old timer?”

  “Old, is it?” The man chuckled. “I’m going home. I finished clearing the path as far as I could, and now it’s time for supper.”

  As I cleared the evergreen branches, an old man was revealed. He had flowing white hair and a long, but well-kept, white beard. He was wrapped in clothing made from cured animal skin. “There you are,” I said.

  “Yes, here I am. And there you are.”

  I grinned at him. “Now that we’ve established we are both where we are; maybe you can tell me what I need to shift to get you free.”

  The man grunted and slapped a thick trunk that lay at an oblique angle to his torso. “This bastard here,” he muttered.

  The trunk was thick. “You don’t sound like you are in pain.”

  “No,” he said. “The damn thing is just pinning my legs. The snow, is soft and comfortable, albeit a little chilly.”

  My Cop Radar twanged again. I scanned the woods around us, but nothing was moving. The forest had fallen silent.

  I shook my head at the trunk. “Not sure I can move this, old timer. I’m not as strong as I once was.”

  “It doesn’t need to move much,” he said. “I can slide out if you can move it even a few inches.”

  “I’ll try,” I said. I bent over and wrapped my arms around the tree trunk. “Count of three,” I grunted. I set my feet on the frozen path.

  “Yes,” said the man.

  “One…two…three!” I grunted with effort and pulled as hard as I could. The weight of the tree trunk was immense, and a yell tore itself from my chest. Just when I thought I would have to give up, the tree shifted a little…and then a little more.