Snowblind II: The Killing Grounds
Read Snowblind II: The Killing Grounds Online
Authors: Michael McBride
SNOWBLIND:
THE KILLING GROUNDS
Michael McBride
First Edition
Snowblind: The Killing Grounds
© 2015 by Michael McBride
All Rights Reserved.
A DarkFuse Release
Copy Editor: Steve Souza
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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For H Casper, Paul Nelson,
Jason Phillips, and Matt Pontiff
November 27
th
Wolf Creek Pass
Today
The Range Rover slews sideways as it rounds the bend near the first scenic overlook east of the Continental Divide. The driver pumps the brakes and manages to regain traction on the ice. Only a guardrail separates him from plummeting into the deep valley and to his death. The lodgepole pines clinging to the sheer slope are brown from the assault of pine beetles.
This second storm had descended out of the blue. It was forecast to pass well to the southwest, through northern Arizona and New Mexico, but the El Niño winds kicked up off the Pacific and hurled the front against the western slope of the Rockies without warning. The road crews had barely had time to plow the pass from the last storm before the snow added a fresh dusting to the lingering ice. They’d already passed two cars that had slid off the road and were now buried under drifts, their taillights peering out like malevolent eyes, their occupants riding out the storm.
Len Badgett wasn’t about to join them. He didn’t pay seventy-five grand for an SUV with the expectation of sleeping in it. He’d narrowly made it through before the Colorado Department of Transportation closed the pass and locked the gates behind him. A half-dozen long-haul truckers had been camped at the top of the pass. He briefly entertained the notion of pulling off and joining them, but he had a 10 a.m. deposition and wasn’t about to have his fast track to partnership derailed by Mother Nature. He’d driven this stretch of road a hundred times since his years as an undergrad and knew every bend and straightaway like the back of his hand.
He wouldn’t be able to justify another night away, anyway. His wife thought he was attending a conference in Dallas and would kill him if she found out about the woman asleep in the passenger seat beside him.
Ashley Gale was an intern at Halsey, Pruitt, and Kline and had claimed she could dust him on the slopes any day. They never found out, though. They didn’t make it out of the lodge once during the entire weekend. She wore yoga pants and a baggy wool sweater and had her legs drawn up to her chest. The curvature of her thighs and her butt, the way they tapered to her tiny waist—
The rear of the vehicle kicks out. Len taps the brakes to straighten it out again. He stretches his fingers, then grips the wheel even tighter. He needs to focus. He can barely see the fresh white sheet that passes for the road through the onslaught of snowflakes. There are no brake lights to guide him, no tracks through the virgin snow. He keeps one eye on the guardrail to his right and eases closer to the center of the road. If any cars made it through before they closed the other side of the pass, he’ll see them coming with plenty of warning. At least he hopes he’ll be able to. The way the clouds have settled into the valley, he can barely see more than fifty feet ahead of him, let alone into the forest uphill and to his left, at the top of the twenty-foot embankment where they cut the highway into the side of the mountain.
He passes a diamond-shaped sign, its face crusted with ice. It’s there to caution him that the road ahead has a seven percent grade, which means that for every hundred feet of travel, the road descends seven feet beneath him. Three hundred seventy feet for every mile. He eases off the gas and crosses farther into the oncoming lanes, away from the guardrail slowly vanishing under the snow.
The windshield wipers flap back and forth.
Thoomp-shraa. Thoomp-shraa
.
The blades are thick with ice and the arcs on his windshield seemingly narrow by the second. He turns up the blower on the defrost until it feels like the fires of hell blow directly into his eyes.
Thoomp-shraa. Thoomp-shraa
.
Ashley stirs and mutters something unintelligible. She turns her face toward him. A lock of her long blond hair clings to the corner of her mouth.
Thoomp-shraa. Thoomp-shraa
.
Len returns his attention to the road. His eyes are dry, tired. He turns up the radio and cracks the window. The cold air bites at his ear and clears the fog he hadn’t noticed forming at the periphery of the windshield. His fingertips are cold from gripping the wheel so hard. He makes a conscious effort to relax his grip and taps the brakes to slow even more.
Thoomp-shraa. Thoomp-shraa
.
He glances at the speedometer.
Twenty-five.
Twenty.
It’s a six-hour drive back to Denver under ideal conditions and it’s already quarter past ten. If he goes straight to the office, he can shower and change and be ready in half an hour, but he can’t show up with Ashley. He’ll have to drop her off—
The ABS kicks in with a grinding sound and still the car slides around the curve. His heart rate accelerates and his bladder reminds him that the coffee was only ever on loan.
Thoomp-shraa. Thoomp-shraa
.
The road widens to his right and he recognizes another overlook. Far below, the West Fork of the San Juan River flows beneath a sheet of ice. For the briefest of moments he considers pulling off, but he knows the roads will only get worse and his nerve is beginning to fade. There are no bars on his cell phone, so he can’t even call his wife to make up an excuse. If he stops now, she’ll end up calling his office when he doesn’t come home and learn that Dallas was a lie. She’ll check his credit card account online and see the charges for the lodge and an absurd amount of room service.
Thoomp-shraa. Thoomp-shraa
.
He pushes on. The more snow that accumulates on the road, the better the traction will get. And with the weight of the car and the new all-season tires, he might as well be driving a tank.
Thoomp-shraa. Thoomp-shraa
.
White rainbows begin to form where the blades fail to clear them, further narrowing his field of view. The snow intensifies and the world closes in around him.
Thoomp-shraa. Thoomp-shraa
.
He eases off the gas.
Twenty.
Fifteen.
He can’t ride the brakes or he’ll lose traction. Gravity encourages the speedometer to creep back up to twenty. He taps the brakes and slides.
Tap, slide.
Tap, slide.
His breathing comes shallow and fast. The road winds to the left and he feels the car drifting farther and farther to the right, toward the bank of snow hiding the guardrail and the open air beyond it. He overcorrects and the car slides. He turns into it and steers toward the steep embankment to his left. The tires catch and he rounds the bend into a straightaway, his heart beating in his throat.
Thoomp-shraa. Thoomp-shraa
.
Ashley shifts in the seat beside him. Her sweater falls from her shoulder, revealing her pale ivory skin, the curve of her collarbone, and the strap of her bra.
Len forces his attention back to the road. The wind blows the snow downhill from the top of the mountain. The entire world seems to move sideways. The road vanishes and he’s forced to navigate by the evergreens and skeletal aspens to either side. When he can see them, anyway.
Thoomp-shraa. Thoomp-shraa
.
He struggles to keep his tired eyes open against the heat, which is the only thing preventing his windshield from completely icing over. He taps the brakes again and again. The car bucks sideways each time, but the car barely slows. They can’t take the next bend with a head of steam like this.
Thoomp-shraa. Thoomp-shraa
.
A blur of motion from the corner of his left eye.
He turns to see a shape knifing through the blowing snow. He hits the brakes and a white form materializes in his headlights. The Range Rover slides sideways. He catches a final glimpse of it as the car goes into a spin.
Thud.
Thump-thump
.
The car whips around and comes to a stop, facing in the opposite direction. Its headlights reveal its own serpentine tracks through in the snow.
Thoomp-shraa. Thoomp-shraa
.
“What was that?” Ashley says.
Len looks at her, but only sees the spatter of blood on the passenger window behind her.
“I don’t know.”
He watches the snow blow through the headlights, sweeping the accumulation from the ground as quickly as it settles, burying their tracks before his very eyes.
“Did we hit something?”
Len doesn’t answer. In his mind, he’s running through every possible scenario and how he’s going to explain the potential damage to both his insurance company and his wife.
Thoomp-shraa. Thoomp-shraa
.
He must have hit a deer. There was no other explanation. But he hadn’t seen antlers, and a deer would have put a crater in the side of his car.