5 June 2012

Taking the pistol Bud Kilgore had left or him but leaving everything else, Einar retreated to the tunnel without a word, a long, lingering look at Will on his way out, but he couldn’t meet Liz’s eye, and she was afraid for him, but made no move to prevent his departure.  Wanted to be alone and figured he probably did, too; best that way, at least for a while.  It was the only thing for them to do; if he hadn’t left, she would have had to.  She didn’t start a fire.  Had intended to go without for a day or two after the departure of the rescuers, anyway, just to be safe and make sure they had no intention of returning, and had no reason to change her plans now.  Besides, she hated to think of Einar sitting out there and seeing the smoke, knew what it would mean to him.  If he was even in a place where he could have seen it.  She didn’t know where he had gone.  Had left the tunnel some time ago, of that she was sure, his need to put some distance between the two of them apparently growing greater than his fear of leaving tracks, but she knew that wherever he had gone, his route would involve heavy timber, concealment surely remaining highest priority, no matter his state of mind.  Some habits simply don’t fade, regardless of the circumstances.

Silence in the cabin, and only when Will made a noise, stirring and whimpering in her arms, did she realize how intently she had been listening, straining her ears in the silence, and she took a deep breath, turned her attention to the little one…

It was getting dark.  She lit a candle.  Figured they could afford a candle, a single candle, and the darkness was becoming terribly oppressive, the aloneness there in the cabin, the silence.  Will was asleep again.  She half wished he would wake, so she could talk to him.  Which was silly.  He couldn’t answer.  Couldn’t carry on a conversation, not yet, and it was conversation she really wanted.  But Einar was gone, and she wanted him to stay that way.  At least for the moment.  Until she’d had a little time to think things through.  Better get started thinking, then.  It was cold out there, and he hadn’t taken much of anything with him.

Darkness was near complete.  Windy outside, and Liz sat listening to its howling against the walls, scouring of wind-driven snow as it was lifted from the ground and hurled against the timbers.  She shivered.  Wanted him gone, but didn’t want him dead, and though he certainly knew how to take care of himself out there, she had little confidence that he possessed either the will or the strength to do so, that night.  Warmed some soup over the candle, wrapped the pot in a fur to keep it warm, folded up the smaller of the two bear hides and slid Will into the carrying pouch at the back of her parka, went to find him.

He’d gone up the cliffs, up there where he could overlook the cabin, wanting to watch it, she supposed, to watch for the enemy or for her or maybe for both, and she followed him, boots in his tracks where they stumbled stricken and crooked up through the timber, slumping to his knees now and then but always rising again, climbing the precarious, icy rocks, surprisingly sure-footed once he’d got into the really difficult stuff.  He always had been good at the really difficult stuff.  The top.  A bit lighter up there; less timber, and there he was, all hunched up at the edge of the cliff, just far enough from its lip to avoid crunching through the bit of icy snow that clung there and going down, but not so far that it would be any great surprise should he slide those extra few inches and take a fall.  Figured he probably wanted it that way.  She sat down at a safe distance, spoke to him.

No response, nothing, no sign that he was even aware of her presence.  Might as well have been made of stone.  He wasn’t even shivering, though she expected he must have been, earlier.  Not a good sign, but what could she do?  She left the soup and the hide within his reach, pushing them out carefully there to the brink of the cliff with him, returned the way she had come and made ready for the night.  She did not sleep much, still listening, tears flowing after a while as she poured out her prayer for him, wordless, for she did not know what to say.

Einar’s self-imposed exile continued through the night as he sat up there in the cliffs, and she went to him the next morning, once more following his tracks through the snow, half afraid that she would find him to have frozen in the night.

Which she did not.  Should have known.  He was an awfully sturdy fellow in a lot of ways and had certainly been through worse, was still upright and, though she had her doubts at first, still breathing, though it appeared he hadn’t moved an inch since first taking his seat up there in the snow.  Not only was the surrounding ground undisturbed, no sign of the shuffling and stomping that would have been necessary to keep him even marginally warm through the night, but the wind had blown a thin skiff of snow up and over his boots, coating pants and parka with white where he sat with arms around his knees, unmoving.  She crouched beside him, tried to catch his eye.

“I want you to come back inside with us.”

Took him a long time to respond, brain all slow and sluggish, voice coming cracked and hollow from somewhere very deep inside him.  “No…can’t do that.”

His face was pale, purple, haggard, eyes red-rimmed as if he hadn’t slept at all and mouth a thin white slash, grim, set, pained but stoic, in it for the long haul; looked bad.  He hadn’t touched the food she’d left him; soup was frozen solid in its pot, bear hide remaining folded neatly beneath it.

“You haven’t been eating.”  Stating the obvious; not much else to say.  “It’s cold.  You’re going to die.”

He nodded.  Didn’t even bother disputing it as he normally would have done, the sincere objections of no, I’m fine, would take a lot more than this to freeze me solid, I like the cold, need the cold, thrive in it, where’s the tarn?  I want to go for a swim!  No point in pretense, now.  In pretending.  He lacked the heart for it.

“Or.” she went on, wanting to scare him, jolt him, reach him and get some sort of reaction,  “you’ll live, and lose the rest of your toes.  Or your hands.  Or both.”

Yes, probably both.

“Come inside.  I want you with us.  I want you to live.”

No answer.  He didn’t have any answer for that.  Wished she would go away, for he could not face her.  She did not go.  Inched closer, and he shifted a boot, sending a shower of ice and snow into the emptiness below.  She didn’t want to push he luck.

“Just to the tunnel, then.  Come to the tunnel, where you’ll be out of the wind.”  Will was waking, squirming and demanding his breakfast, but she couldn’t tend to him just then.  Einar heard, head on his knees as he listened to the soft, alive sounds of his son greeting the day, and he didn’t know what to do.

“Maybe…tunnel.”

He would have fallen, would have surely toppled forward over the edge had he tried to stand just then, and she could see it, crept up close behind him, talking all the while so as not to take him by surprise, and took him beneath the arms, hauled him back away from the abyss, inch at a time until he was on more stable ground and could rise without too much danger, helped him to his feet.

“Let’s go home.”

Comments from 4 June

Kellie said...

wow, it looks like Einar has gone around the bend or off the cliff.  

Is there any way back? It will be almost impossible for him to win back the trust that Liz had for him. She now knows that he will kill them all in his delusions.  

Now what will Liz do? Will she protect her child above all else?  

What a dark and lonely place they are at. And it's in separate dark and lonely places now.  

They were in "it" together, despite Einar's desire to handle it all alone. But Einar finally found the one way to alienate Liz.

It's not going to be an easy time, for sure.

4 June 2012

The helicopter did finally take off again, faint hum and then a louder popping and pounding reaching Einar and Liz where they sat listening, and though not wholly reassured as to the straightforwardness of their mission in the basin, he certainly was glad to see them go.  Hear them go, at least, for they never did circle back over the cabin, opting instead to follow, near as Einar could determine, the contours of the valley as they headed down.  Confirmation, perhaps, that their intentions had been benign, related only to the rescue of the injured man and his companion, or simply a diversion meant to lull the two of them into letting their guard down while the strike team hiked quickly up from the basin to surround the cabin, wait for dusk and then…strike?  Probably the first, but a person can’t be too sure, or too cautious, either, and as they sat together listening to the receding echoes from the valley, Einar ran a hand over his pack, half-consciously counting the atlatl darts that bristled sharp and ready from their special carrying pouch at the back.

“I should go check, make sure everyone left.  Look for tracks heading up into the timber where they might circle round on us.  You and Will…I don’t want to leave you behind, this time.  Don’t want to get there and find a problem that makes it a bad idea to come back to the cabin, only to have the two of you waiting for me here.  What do you say to packing up and coming along, just hanging back at a certain point while I go forward to check on things down in the basin?”

“If you go, I think it’s a good idea that we come with you.  But what about the tracks we’ll leave?  Wouldn’t it be a better idea to stay in here for a day or two and make sure they’re not coming back, before tracking up that new snow?  As it is, our trail’s been completely eliminated by the storm without a trace left for them to see, and it seems a shame to change that…”

“Sure, unless they’re out there and coming for us!  In which case we got to know, rather than sitting here while they surround us and get ready to make their move.”

“Einar, seriously.  What are the chances that they were here for any purpose other than the rescue?  You were there, saw it happen from beginning to end, the slide, the skier leaving to get help…it’s pretty clear, at least to me, that it was Mountain Rescue in that chopper, just doing what they do in responding to a backcountry injury.  While I don’t doubt that they’ve been instructed to watch for unusual sights on the ground and to report anything they might see, well, there weren’t any tracks for them to see and you said yourself that based on how quickly they seemed to find their landing spot and go down that they probably weren’t using FLIR to try and find warm bodies, so I just don’t understand the source of your concern.  It seems to me you’re over-thinking this and letting your mind run away with you when it comes to the threat level, here.  Unless you have a more solid reason to the contrary, I think we should stay put.”

Einar didn’t answer right away, looking somewhat taken aback at her forthrightness in challenging him, nodding slowly.  “Yeah, makes sense what you’re saying, but only if the whole incident with the skiers wasn’t just a way to entrap us, from the very start.  Slide like that can be induced or at least encouraged if you know where to step, where to make a turn, and I wouldn’t put it past them at all to carry out something this extensive if they thought it would mean an ‘easy’ way to get close to us.  They know conventional means don’t work too well against us, haven’t worked so far, at least, have only lost them men and equipment, so you know they’d just jump at the chance to take us through deception, and this is looking to me like the perfect setup.”

Liz let out a silent sigh, turned her attention for a moment to the feeding child, not immediately sure what to say to a man who had every right to be suspicious of the entire world and its motives, whose perhaps overactive sense of caution in that regard had been responsible in the past not only for saving his own life and preserving his freedom on more than one occasion, but hers, as well, but who was in this particular case so clearly and obviously mistaken.  Was imagining it.  Had to be.  The slide, the long night spent out in the open by two of its victims with the third going for help in the face of an oncoming storm…it was all so obvious and straightforward to her, little chance for ulterior motives, grand conspiracies or anything other than three individuals fighting hard to stay alive after a serious accident in some of the roughest and most remote country in the lower 48, but how to go about convincing Einar of this?  Very directly, that was how.

“No.  Think about it.  It’s too complicated, too real to have been a setup.  This was a simple, straight-forward backcountry skiing accident, and it’s been resolved.  They’re gone, and any tracks we leave right now will only serve to mark our location on the chance that they do need to come back, for some reason.  I can’t think why that would be, but you probably can, so it seems the only thing to do this time is to stay right here where we are and lie low for a few days until we’re sure they’re through with the area, then you can go check and see the story in the snow, if you need to.  See what they did, and how, and where all their tracks go.  But wherever that is, I don’t believe it’s up here or anywhere close to it, and we’d only be asking for trouble for ourselves by going looking too soon.”

Angry.  Starting to look at her as the enemy, and he didn’t want to do that, knew logically that she wouldn’t be making any deliberate attempt to play into the hands of the enemy but obviously she had been fooled by the ruse, herself.  No wonder; he had to admit that it was a good one.  Well planned, flawlessly executed, so flawlessly as to entirely conceal all evidence of its own existence, which of course was the best kind, the most insidious, for there was never any way of disproving them, not until it was too late and he figured that time had probably come and gone already, sometime just after that chopper set down.  Even if they took off just then--which would require his somehow getting Liz on board in a hurry, for he was in no shape to be taking her anywhere just then without her full and entire cooperation--their tracks in the snow would give them away, and the enemy would be on them within the hour, realistically, and he was trapped, they were, couldn’t see a way out and when he thought about the possibility of them getting their hands on Liz and little Will--oh, she’d fight beside him, of that he had no doubt, but things can happen, things like the tranquilizer darts which had nearly led to his being captured alive when he had no intention whatsoever of allowing such, and he knew it could happen again--he couldn’t breathe at the horror of it, was shadowed suddenly by an overwhelmingly strong realization that there was truly only one thing he could do, one thing to ensure that they all lived and died as free men and women, and when he put his hand on Liz’s cheek and met her eyes, she found herself for one of the first times in her life really afraid of him.  She could read what he was thinking, that oddly terrifying mixture of mourning and resolve and kindness and regret all tangled up in his eyes and taking on a life of its own, leaving her with little doubt, and she knew she must act before he had the chance to do so, first.

Measuring the situation with a quick dart of her eyes, she took in the fact that he was not armed, aside from the knife that he always carried, was room’s length away from anything else that would readily lend itself to use as a weapon while she, in a strange and fortunate twist of fate, had easy access to both rabbit stick and rock griddle, and she meant to use one of them on him, and would have, had not little Will woke just then and started crying, the high-pitched keening somehow reaching Einar through the single-minded intensity that had seized hold of him, jarring him back to his senses so that he could perhaps begin thinking the whole thing through on a slightly more logical level.

Tension in the room easing considerably, Einar slumped back against the water barrel looking pale and exhausted as Liz comforted Will, holding trembling hands out before him and staring at them as if at something alien, frightening, something he did not recognize.

“You’re right,” he said quietly, simply, staring at the child’s sleeping form, “we better not be making any tracks right now.”

3 June 2012

It seemed a very long time Einar and Liz sat together in the dimness of the cabin waiting for that helicopter to power back up and be on its way, rocks putting off the last of their heat and the air cooling until its temperature could not have been too far above that of the snowy world outside, but still they heard nothing.  Einar was cold, never having warmed properly from his time out in the snow and chilling rapidly in the strained, listening stillness.  Liz tried to warm him with the bear hides and with occasional scoops of honey and Nutella, efforts which he largely resisted--can’t get all warm and sleepy right now, got to stay alert; not that there was any danger just then of his doing otherwise--until the shivering of his breaths began to interfere with his ability to listen, so that he feared they might miss the first signs of that chopper being ready to take off once more.

Accepting the food then, he allowed Liz to get the bear hide around the two of them and, checking first to see that little Will slept warm and undisturbed, she wrapped herself around him and did her best to prevent the otherwise-inevitable loss of heat that she knew would progressively affect him so long as he remained near-motionless there in the cooling cabin.  Fifteen minutes and then twenty, Will woke and had to be fed, Einar taking up a position beside the water barrel as soon as she left him, pressing himself against the wall where it seemed he might be slightly better able to hear when the craft took to the air.

Still nothing came, and in the silence he began to wonder, worry, the suspicious nature that had been responsible for keeping him alive in more than one questionable situation suggesting that perhaps it had been a setup from the start, all of it, merely a way to get boots in on the ground without the two of them suspecting, fleeing, making ready to defend themselves.  If so, it was working, for there they were, waiting, trusting at least to some degree that the rescue party was what it seemed and nothing more.  Wanted to go check, creep close and peer over the dropoff to make sure everyone was present and accounted for, no string of tracks leading off into the timber, men coming their direction to take them, but he couldn’t do it, mustn’t, for in scouting he would leave tracks of his own, and that trail would certainly arouse the suspicion of the departing crew, if nothing yet had.

Liz could sense his unease, sat down as close beside him as the constraints of wall and water barrel would allow--why does he always have to jam himself into the tightest of little places like that?  And up against the cold wall, too.  Much as he’s trying to hide it this time, it really does bother him to hear a chopper come in this close, even if it is just a small one and we know it’s not here for us, and I guess I can’t really blame him--and fed Will, who quieted only reluctantly, seeming almost offended that he had been fooled into sleeping by himself for a nearly half an hour, missing perhaps as many as two of his customary and incredibly frequent snacks.  Little one certainly had an amazingly strong instinct of self-preservation, something she supposed must be inherent to all infants, though she did wonder if perhaps something about the circumstances during her pregnancy--short rations and the three of them always on the move, sometimes running for their lives--their current situation, or possibly even some innate trait inherited from his father might add to the keenness and force with which the little one insisted that his basic needs be met from moment to moment.  Whatever the cause, she expected that drive and will would serve him well through life, especially the one he was destined to be living, up there in the high remoteness of their basin.  Content now, eating, Will’s immediate needs were no longer her greatest concern, and she turned to Einar, trying to make eye contact but that was a difficult endeavor at the best of times, and just then he appeared incredibly distant, wholly absorbed in his listening and whatever thought processes were required of him by the information--or lack of it--thus collected.  She startled him with her first words, breaking the silence.

“What do you suppose is taking them so long?  Usually when we’d have a chopper come in on the rescues I helped with, they were on the ground and gone again within minutes, it seems like…”

“Yeah, that’s what I’d tend to expect.  Get in, get out, get on with it.  All I can think is maybe it’s taking a while to stabilize the injured guy…he really was looking pretty bad off yesterday when I was last able to see him, but even in that case, I’m thinking most of what they’d have to do would be better done on the chopper, anyway, so I don’t know why they haven’t scooped them up and left by now.  Don’t like it.”

“Maybe they’re having a hard time finding them?”

“Only circled the basin once, and I figured that was mostly just to take a look at the LZ and find the best spot to set down.  Seemed they must know right where they were going.”

“Well, maybe the man who skied out gave them a pretty exact location, something that could be recognized from the air, but what if the other two moved in the night, and the snow covered up their tracks?  Maybe they’re having to search for them.”

Einar ran a finger thoughtfully across the rim of the water barrel, briefly contemplating, but shook his head.  “Nah, they didn’t go anywhere.  No reason that I can come up with, and besides, I’m not even sure the guy was conscious anymore.  Crawled into that lean-to she made, and I never even saw him move after that.  Doesn’t make a lot of sense that they would have moved camp after all that.”

No.  Liz could see that it probably didn’t, though she could think of a couple reasons why such might have been their course of action, including a perhaps-desperate effort to get better protection from the wind that had picked up in the night and which surely must have been tormenting them as they tried to keep warm through the night.  Seemed to her that they might have remembered the nearly sheer granite cliffs of the dropoff, and remembering, made their way to the base in the hopes that the wind would be less forceful there, but either way, the pair ought to have been found by then, surely.  Hopefully.  She wanted the rescuers to finish their business and take off soon, needed it, lest Einar begin getting the idea that he must make another trip up to the overlook to check on them, defend against the potential assault that he probably had himself half-convinced they were plotting to launch from down there.  She could see it in his eyes, the growing suspicion, knew that if not for the concern about leaving tracks all over the freshly-fallen blanket of snow, he would have already been gone.

Comments from 2 June

Kellie said…

authorized? but no warrant? lol! yep! "They" can now do that AND more.

Right, if they determined that he might have been “harboring a terrorist,” or some such…  But Patriot Act aside, this situation is further complicated by the fact that Kilgore is working for them at the moment.

Anonymous said… 

They can die too.
Mike

That is indeed another thing they can do…

And almost certainly would have, had Einar really been in there.

Anonymous said.. 

Sounds like Bud needs to sweep the ol homestead for nasties the jbts' may have left behind.cimarron

Absolutely!  Isn’t that the first thing most folks think to do, after having been away for a while…?   After watching the house for a day or two from a distance and then approaching cautiously, looking for tracks and other sign, of course!  Or is that just me?  :)

Apple said… 

Lets hope nothing listening was left in the truck with them talking openly like that

They didn’t really have access to the cab of the truck, but yes, caution is in order.

2 June 2012

The road trip down to Arizona was an enjoyable one for Bud and Susan, stopping whenever it suited them to walk here or there and let Bud stretch his healing leg so it didn’t become too stiff with all the hours of sitting, talking, listening to music and generally enjoying one another’s company, and when after a brief stop for groceries they began climbing the long, winding gravel road up to Bud’s gate, both were in good spirits.  Bud had somewhat expected the road to be snow packed, after seeing conditions back in the search area, but it was instead quite thoroughly melted out, gravel and mud with only the occasional hint of a lingering snow bank, and he was glad, as he had made no provision for keeping the driveway plowed in his absence, and had figured they’d have to park at the bottom and walk up.  Not that he had any doubt about Susan’s ability or willingness to make that climb on foot, not after having spent the past two weeks climbing with her all over some of the roughest terrain in the Rockies, she leading the way a good bit of the time, but seeing as they had a good bit of luggage and the groceries besides he was happy to be able to drive.  All of which, he knew, was really just his way of justifying the fact that he really didn’t want to put that many more miles on his leg, just yet.  Thing had got him up to the ridge to meet Roger’s plane, but it had come at a cost, and he hadn’t been moving very fast at all, since.

Driveway was nearly as clear as the road had been, muddier, in patches, and he got out just below the gate out locked the hubs on Susan’s truck more in the hopes of being able to avoid too badly washboarding the driveway than out of any concern that they might not make it.  They’d make it.  He’d done that drive in worse conditions.  Something wasn’t right, though, and he crouched for a minute there beside the front wheel of the truck, listening, testing the breeze that rolled down soft and ponderosa pine-scented from the surrounding hills, hair standing up on the back of his neck.  Couldn’t figure it.  Saw no tracks--either vehicle or boot--in the muddy turnoff leading from the road, no sign that anyone had been up there before them yet his sense of another human presence, a menacing, malignant force, lying in wait and about to spring, was so strong that it was all he could do to keep from hastily pulling Susan from the truck, rolling into the nearby ditch and taking up a defensive position.

Good thing he found himself able to resist that urge, as the next moment, on his feet and heading cautiously up to unlock the gate, Bud heard a rustle and a snap from down in that very same ditch--a small gully, more accurately, which ran alongside the road and was heavily timbered with chokecherry and small ponderosas--and turned around just in time to see four heavily armed men rush out at the truck.  His response swift and immediate, there followed a standoff during which Bud’s .45 remained leveled at one of the men, reasonably close range, no way he could miss, and he’d caught them somewhat off guard, rushing at his back as they’d been, Susan’s shotgun on another from her position in the cab as hasty words were exchanged, identification shown on both sides and things began to settle down a bit.

Bud Kilgore was angry.  For a number of reasons and at a number of people, but the one he chose to focus on just then involved the audacity of those four federal agents ambushing him on his own driveway, on his honeymoon, when he’d just been at Task Force HQ the day before where they could have asked him anything they wanted, and in a far more civilized manner.  The AIC would hear of it, he let them know, Washington would hear of it, and they’d be doing temp work out of the nearest agency office before they ever found themselves in a position to ambush a man and his wife on their honeymoon, again.  Quiet and professional, the men let him finish his rant, motioning Susan out of the truck--she complied, only so that she could stand with Bud--and never relaxing their attention on the bed of the truck, inching closer until finally Bud got their attention with the pistol, temporarily stopping their advance.

“What’s this, now?  Not only disrupt a man’s honeymoon, but now you’re intent on ripping up my lady’s truck?  What’s the idea, here?”

“It’s authorized, Kilgore.  Talk to HQ.  Now are you going to let us have a look, or do we need to toss in a flashbang or two and see what comes out?”

“Doggone flashbang’ll break all the eggs and smash up the tomatoes and leave the sharp cheddar tasting of nitrate and fumes, and then what’re we gonna do for omelets?  Mighty dirty trick, that one is.  Threatening a man’s food supply, and on his honeymoon.  Yeah, go ahead and have your look, but I’m telling you, there’s gonna be hell to pay for this one, fellas.”

Moving with a swift caution that definitely implied the expectation of something more alive and reactive than omelet ingredients two of the men ripped back the bed cover while the other two covered it with their carbines, rifling through the various bags and boxes contained therein with the precision and care of men who expected a trap.  But found little more than the aforementioned groceries, bags of outdoor gear, warm clothes and two pairs of snowshoes.  They looked disappointed, relieved and slightly embarrassed all at once, even taking the time to put things back in some semblance of order before stepping away from the truck.  Bud was not impressed, climbed into the cab and shot the men a dark look.

“Now if you’ll excuse us, gentlemen, I’ve got a gate to lock and some phone calls to make.  You boys better keep off my land from now on, understand?”

Not until they had turned the corner of the first switchback on Bud’s driveway did Susan dare to breathe again, letting out a long sigh and beginning to shake, shotgun still across her knees.  “They were here for Einar, weren’t they?  Thought we might have brought him down with us…”

“Yep.”

“What if he’d said yes?  And they’d all three been back there under that cover?  It would have been the end for them…”

“Would have been the end for a lot of folks, that’s for sure.  Not that we would have driven up here so casually if carrying that sort of cargo, but the crazy old mountain critter was probably right.  Only place for them’s up there in those hills.  At least for now.  I still think we can work out something better for ’em, provided he’s ever willing to consider such a move, but for now they’d better just sit tight.

1 June 2012

Thank you all very much for reading, and for your comments.  I don't have a chapter for today, but should, tomorrow.

For today, I'll just leave you with springtime in the high country...