Snowblind II: The Killing Grounds (12 page)

Schick
.

A small blue flame blossomed from the housing. It wasn’t much, but it was a whole lot better than nothing.

Dayton tilted the stack of printouts toward the light and flipped past the one on top.

“Wait,” Avery said. “Go back.”

“You don’t want to see that, son.”

“The hell I don’t.”

“I’m telling you…you don’t.”

Dayton returned the screenshot to the top of the pile. It showed a body suspended from the trees in the same manner as Crowell’s, only the silhouette defined this one as male.

“Jesus. That’s Jeremy. Why didn’t you show me this earlier? What else have you been keeping from me?”

Dayton locked stares with Avery, then handed him the stack, minus the one of the house. He hoped he might be able to see something from the exterior that wasn’t evident from his current vantage point.

He turned and scrutinized the image in the lines of light that passed through the wall. It looked like the front window was boarded from the inside, not the outside. The door was closed. The roof looked largely intact, although the angle made it difficult to tell for sure.

The blowing snow caused the picture to appear blurred, as though it were just slightly out of focus, obscuring fine details. There wasn’t anything useful. He was about to cast it aside when he caught something from the corner of his eye. He’d been concentrating so hard on the house itself that he hadn’t seen it. On the ground. Maybe ten feet from the structure, at the edge of the image.

Thoosh-thoosh-thoosh-thoosh
.

A vague shape, a mere shade of white apart from the accumulation. Nearly indistinguishable. A mound where there shouldn’t have been one on the windswept field and the subtle shadow it cast.

Dayton brought the picture to his face and tilted it until the weak light illuminated it as well as it was going to. He still couldn’t tell what it was, but it almost appeared as though long hairs blew sideways from it in a way that mimicked the snow being swept from the ground during a blizzard.

And it wasn’t the only one. From this distance he could clearly see at least three more that neither he nor Thom had seen in real time.

Obviously, whichever one of the kids filmed their approach hadn’t either. They were completely oblivious to the fact that they were walking blindly to their deaths.

He remembered the other picture. The one of the silhouette through the trees. The image he’d printed because he thought the missing teens might have inadvertently filmed their killer.

Thoosh-thoosh-thoosh-thoosh
.

Dayton snatched the pictures from Avery and sorted through them until he found it. The silhouette was indistinct. It was blurred by a combination of motion and the blowing snow.

Or perhaps long fur flagging on the wind.

* * *

Avery didn’t need to see the other pictures. He’d seen more than enough already. The image of Michelle had captured a woman he’d never seen before. His girlfriend had never been without a smile and a playful twinkle in her eye. She’d been vibrant and beautiful and had carried herself in a way that made her seem to possess an additional dimension that the world around her lacked. This girl. The one in the picture. She was more animal than human. It wasn’t just the dirt and blood smeared on her face or the mucus running from her nose or her cracked lips. It was her eyes. They were flat and emotionless.

Lifeless.

She had known she was going to die.

He was overwhelmed by a crippling physical sensation of hopelessness. Michelle was dead. The love of his life, his reason for living, had been dead from the start. All of the years of searching…they were all for naught.

Avery’s legs gave out and dropped him to floor. He leaned back against the wall and stared blankly into the room where Michelle and her friends had huddled around the fire, while whatever hunted her lurked outside, just as it did now. While he was working a shift he couldn’t bring himself to miss at a job of no consequence, she was running for her life. And while he was sleeping comfortably in his nice warm bed, she was dying in this awful place. Terrified and alone.

“Get up, son.”

Avery rolled his eyes upward toward the sound of the voice. He couldn’t seem to focus on the sheriff. His body felt so cold…and he could hear his pulse…

Thump…

Thump…

Thump…

Thump…

Zeke barked in the other room. High-pitched. Frenetic.

Dayton glanced toward the dog, then back again. He grabbed the printout from Avery’s hand, crumpled it up, and cast it aside.

“You think she would have wanted you to throw away your life for her? That’s precisely why she made the recording. So you wouldn’t. Do you hear me?”

The sheriff’s voice seemed to come from far away and sounded every bit as hollow as his words.

Woof-woof-woof-woof
.

Dayton grabbed him by the shoulder of his jacket and jerked him up maybe four inches before he fell back to the ground.

“She wanted to live, damn it! More than all of the others. She risked everything to live. For you. You owe her the same. Don’t you think that’s what she would have wanted?”

Avery looked away. Nothing mattered now. Soon enough he’d know exactly what happened to Michelle, and then he could be with her again. There was nothing in the world he wanted more.

Woof-woof-woof-woof
.

“For Christ’s sake!” Dayton holstered his sidearm, grabbed him by the front of his jacket, and hauled him to his feet. He pinned Avery to the wall with his forearm and got right in his face. “You listen to me and you listen good. At this very moment there’s a Search and Rescue chopper heading this way and I’ll be damned if both of us aren’t going to be on it. I don’t give a rat’s ass what you do from there, but I’m sure as hell not going to let what happened to your girlfriend happen to anyone else. So you pull your shit together and help me figure out how we’re getting out of here.”

He bounced Avery off the wall for emphasis and stormed out of the room toward where Zeke was braced with his front paws up on the remains of the crumbled roof, barking up into the snow.

Woof-woof-woof-woof
.

Avery followed as though in a trance. His legs were numb. His whole body was, save for his exposed skin, which positively burned from the bitter wind blowing straight through the decomposing building.

The sheriff was right and he knew it. Michelle never would have wanted him to throw his life away. She would have wanted him to live, to find a way to carry on without her. The problem was he simply didn’t want to. There was no life out there for him. He’d been fortunate enough to find his one true love, his soul mate, a miracle for which most people spent their entire lives praying.

He skirted the center of the main room, where Dayton moved silently around the perimeter of the snow accumulated on the floor, sighting down the hole in the roof from the relative protection of the shadows.

Zeke’s barking faded to a growl. His lips writhed over his bared teeth.

Beneath the sound, Avery heard something else. A creaking sound. Coming from somewhere overhead.

He looked up. Across the room.

The roof sagged ever so slightly.

Creak
.

He struck the lighter.

Schick-schick
.

The dust falling from the ceiling glimmered in the dim glow.

Again, the planks bowed and a cascade of dust shivered from the rafters.

“Something’s up there.”

Avery stumbled backward so quickly he extinguished the lighter and nearly fell into the pit. He sidestepped it and backed into the wall beside the front door. Something metallic crunched underfoot. He glanced down and saw the antenna where he’d dropped it, both horizontal wires broken, and the monitor with the small red beacon, which passed through the inner ring toward the crosshairs.

Creak
.

Zeke released a fusillade of barking.

Woof-woof-woof-woof
.

Avery snapped the lighter again.

Schick
.

He couldn’t even hear himself think over the frantic barking.

The roof sagged. Closer this time. Dust sparkled as it descended.

He looked down at the monitor. The beacon was even closer now. Looked up again. Saw the roof dimple and dust—

A flash of light from the corner of his eye and a hole appeared in the roof.

The report hit him a split-second later.

His ears rang as the world came apart around him.

* * *

Dayton fired again and again.

The roof splintered and the room filled with gun smoke and dust, through which thin columns of light streaked.

He had to force himself to stop firing before he wasted the entire clip.

Zeke continued to bark, although the sound was nearly drowned out by the residual ringing in his ears.

He watched the hole in the roof, his pulse pounding so hard his peripheral vision constricted in time with it.

Thoosh-thoosh-thoosh-thoosh
.

The falling dust settled all around him. He held his breath in an effort to keep from coughing.

A clump of snow fell from one of the pine branches. It sprung back upward, free of its burden.

There’d been something up there. He was certain of it. He’d seen the rotting boards buckle under its weight. Was it possible he’d hit it?

Dayton stepped sideways. Slowly. One step at a time. Circling the accumulation in an effort to change his perspective. To see anything at all through the branches and the storm.

Thoosh-thoosh-thoosh-thoosh
.

Avery said something, but he tuned out the kid’s voice. He had to focus. His Smith & Wesson M&P9 held seventeen shots in the clip and one in the breech. How many shots had he fired? Three? Four? And how many back in the clearing? Another five, maybe?

There was nothing up there. Nothing moving anyway.

Thoosh-thoosh-thoosh-thoosh
.

Avery grabbed him by the shoulder. Dayton shrugged him off and watched the ceiling for any signs of transferred weight. For the resultant dust.

Nothing.

Thoosh-thoosh-thoosh-thoosh
.

Avery stepped in front of him. It was all he could do not to instinctively fire. The kid thrust Seaver’s tracking device into his face. The little red light glowed brightly. Nearly right in the center of the crosshairs. Slightly to the northwest. And moving. What was the scale? Five, maybe ten feet?

A metallic crunching sound.

Clung-kle
.

Zeke slowly climbed down from the weathered timber and turned to face the short hallway at the back of the room.

Thoosh-thoosh-thoosh-thoosh
.

The snow descended through the rusted aluminum roof, alighting on the bare branches of the aspens.

Clung-kle
.

The corrugated sheet dimpled.

Dayton advanced toward it. Slowly. His pistol raised, finger tight on the trigger. His head throbbed. Was he holding his breath? He released it in a cloud.

Thoosh-thoosh-thoosh-thoosh
.

Something eclipsed the hole and a shadow fell upon the ground.

Dayton resisted the urge to fire. He needed something to target. Anything at all. He couldn’t afford to waste any more bullets.

Clung-kle
.

Zeke slipped around his legs and walked in front of him. Every bit as slowly.

The shepherd’s body trembled.

Thoosh-thoosh-thoosh-thoosh
.

The shadow crept across the snow and a pair of feet descended from the hole.

Dayton targeted the right foot, which was followed by a lower leg. Then a knee. A thigh.

Someone was easing himself down through the rusted roof. Trying to sneak up on them from behind.

Clung-kle
.

The silhouette suggested whoever it was wore jeans. And a jacket. But his left foot. His left foot was bare.

Thoosh-thoosh-thoosh-thoosh
.

Dayton was nearly to the aspens. Close enough to see the foot. And the droplets of blood dripping from the toes. Dotting the accumulation with a gentle
plat…plat…

He studied the roof. The distinct indentations where something heavy stood on top of it. He targeted the more pronounced of the two down the sightline of his shaking barrel.