Whitelodge 5.1 & 5.2

-5.1-

Sheryl walked along behind the group, stunned. Kerren, unconscious, was being carried by someone who she now realized was a famous author. Her own hand was being held tightly by a blonde woman who was a perfect stranger to her. She had never felt less in control of a situation, or more relieved that it was turning out this way, her responsibility being lifted away from her.

One moment, she had been alone, struggling to get Kerren out of the cocoon of fabric she had been entombed in, and next there was a searing shaft of light and a man who had dragged Kerren out from under the bed, expertly scooping her up and pulling her out from under the bed before Sheryl could do much more than utter some feeble words of protest.

Sheryl glided along the hallway, allowing someone else to take care of things for the moment. She didn't even notice the uneasy inconsistency of the floor under her feet anymore; she must have been getting used to it. The blonde was talking to her, asking her questions, and Sheryl must have been answering with some kind of accuracy, but she really was watching Kerren's hair. With each step her rescuer took, a little wave of movement rolled down through the strands as they hung halfway to the floor. That underwater-like little wave was the only thing that really drew her attention. When it reached the end of Kerren's hair, where did it go? And along the same lines, where was Kerren right now, exactly?

It was Kelly's voice that cut through this distracted reverie, when she spoke loud enough for the entire group to hear: "Should we be checking these other rooms, to see if anyone else is in them, maybe hurt too?"

Dale answered quickly, as if he had been thinking the same thing. "That's my next M.O., miss. But I'm going to get the four of you down to the lobby first. It's the only area that's been secured as of right now, and there's someone who also has some emergency training down there. Then I'm going to make a sweep of the rest of the rooms."

The celebrity, Sheryl noticed, was looking down at the woman cradled in his arms in a very peculiar way. "If you're taking volunteers," he said to Dale without looking away, "I'll come along with you. Provided this lady gets stabilized."

The security guard seemed to think about this for a moment, then grudgingly admitted, "Sure. I could use the help. There are twenty-four suites in all, and the quicker we can check them, the better off everyone will be." Dale's flashlight briefly played on Bruce's slippered feet, shuffling carefully but quickly along the carpet. "We'll see if we can get you some safer clothing."

Bruce shook his head. "I can't get back to my room. It's behind that deadfall of beams and debris back there. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure how I got out." He looked down at Kerren again, as if studying her. Did he recognize her or something? Sheryl wondered. She doubted he had been able to get a clear look at her wife's face since he had found them, but he seemed to keep trying. God damn it, was she going to feel jealous every time someone looked at Kerren for more than a moment? It was totally inappropriate at a time when they were being helped, she knew, but couldn't help it. It was kind of comforting, falling back on an old fear instead of focusing on the dozen new ones she had been handed.

"See?" Kelly said to Sheryl. "The worst is over. We'll get you someplace safe, and then figure out what to do." As the light around them grew, Sheryl was able to comprehend what was being said, at least enough to be comforted by it.

The beam of Dale's flashlight seemed to fade as it was added to by a growing paleness ahead. Sheryl was still in her head enough to know that they were getting close to the wide stairs that led down to the lobby. From what Dale had said about it, she had a picture in her head that it was going to be untouched, warm lighting and everything still where it should have been... She closed her eyes for a moment, in anticipation of walking back into the world as she had known it before...

Kelly had spoken over some raised voices that were coming from up ahead, and now there were thuds of people running. Coming up the stairs. Sheryl felt her hand being squeezed by the woman who had grabbed it, which sent a new shock through her own body as she sensed fear in the sensation. Her eyes flew back open.

"Manoj! There you are!" Kelly was crowing, and dropped Sheryl's hand as she ran forward. She met the young man -- dressed in a bathrobe identical to Kelly's -- at the top of the stairs, and they fell into a clutching embrace that made it clear they were a serious couple. Sheryl stood where she had been left, not having taken another step forward. She hadn't realized how much the grip of Kelly's hand had impelled her until it was removed.

There was a woman coming up the stairs, too. Much to the surprise of just about everyone there, she pushed right past the bathrobed couple, ran up to Dale and threw her arms around him. She had to literally jump up into the big guy's arms to plant a big kiss right on his lips, but that's exactly what she did. Dale stumbled backward, not just with the force the woman slammed into him with, but as if his immediate instinct was to push her away.

To Sheryl's eye, this was clearly an unexpected greeting for the security guard. It brought her closer to laughing than anything had in the last hour (or however long it had been since the world had collapsed on itself, she had no real idea). It was a fleeting joy, however, when she realized that the love of her life was still unconscious and mangled in the arms of the familiar stranger in front of her, and at least a whole stairway descent was between them and comparative safety.

This thought impelled her to look down over the railing they had just reached and look down into the lobby. Her heart sank when she saw that apparently no part of the world she had known escaped this cataclysm unscathed. The lobby, which she had thought so inviting and homey when she and Kerren had first walked in and been greeted by the smiling woman who was amorously assaulting Dale, was now rendered in bruisy blues and blacks. If there had been any other place for them to go, she wouldn't have even wanted Kerren to be taken down those steps.

But that was where they went. The security guard, once he had managed to pry the desk clerk off of him -- with a surprising sense of delicacy and politeness, Sheryl thought -- the group picked their way down to ground level and assessed the situation. First things being first, she stayed right by Bruce's side as he tenderly placed Kerren down on the couch. Other than the pillows being in a little disarray -- and she was quick to rearrange them so that Kerren could recline but not entirely lie down, as well as have one left over to support Kerren's limp, twisted-looking knees -- the couch looked like the most stable, comfortable place she could be put. She knelt down next to her wife's head, and stroked her hair while she finally started to tune back into the conversations that had been swirling around her since the top of the stairs.

The desk clerk -- was her name Glinda? Like the Good Witch of the North? -- was saying something about an intercom that wasn't working, which the security guard seemed supremely upset about. "Manoj and I were actually on our way up to the roof access," she finished by saying. She was staying right by Dale's side, who clearly wasn't as keen on her idea as she was.

"Hold on," he jumped in. "We don't know where Harmon actually is--"

"West of the service road," the man who Kelly called Manoj said, extending a walkie-talkie as proof. He seemed excited just to have anything to add. The device in his hand was making some odd clicks, then fell silent.

Dale, irritated, turned quickly to him. "That could mean almost anywhere, sir. The service road is seven miles long. And we still don't know if there are people like her--" he gestured to Kerren, unconscious on the sofa "-- right here in the Lodge with us. What we've got to do is secure this area, and then we can see about getting out of here."

"But he'll freeze out there!" Glenda -- that was it, Sheryl could finally make out her name tag -- was saying. "We're only at half occupancy tonight, and how many people are actually here?" She quickly began to count with her fingers, but it was clear that Dale was right. There must have been two or three times as many people as there were present in the lodge when the avalanche hit.

"No, We're going to check for them first, Glenda. I'm sorry, but we've got to. I want to find Harmon just as badly as you--" a dissatisfied huff came from the woman who so recently had been leaping to kiss him, "-- but we've got to take first things first. Mr. Casey here has already volunteered to help."

"Bruce," the author said. "Just Bruce. No need for formalities now, I think." He was still looking down at Kerren in a way that Sheryl didn't like, mostly because she didn't understand it, like the sleeping woman were the celebrity and not him.

Dale nodded, incorporating this information. "Right. Bruce. So we've got two hallways to cover... and what staff are still in the building?"

Kelly, who had selected a midpoint between Manoj and Sheryl around which to hover, gasped aloud. "The room service guy!"

Glenda couldn't help but roll her eyes in frustration. "Yes... Carlos and that other one..."

"Benny," Dale answered confidently. "They're usually here until two or so, prepping for tomorrow's breakfast. We'll have to check the kitchen too. So that's three areas." Without looking up from the spot on the floor that was taking his concentration, Dale threw his thumb in three different directions behind him: top of the stairs to the left, top of the stairs to the right, back toward the first-floor dining room/bar. Everyone else was watching Glenda, who raised her own hand and pointed an accusing finger out the front windows, daring Dale to raise his gaze and meet hers. He didn't.

-5.2-

Bruce Casey was having a hard time paying attention to the admittedly crucial conversations going on around him. He found he couldn't pull his focus from the woman lying on the couch directly in front of him. He felt he knew her so intimately, and she him, but he had never touched her before. He had never even come close, because in his dreamworld she was always enshrouded in her swirling robes, and forever outside the circle of Sounding Stones that he didn't seem able to leave.

After all that time, all those nights he spent in wonder of the gift of inspiration that she gave him over and over again, he had found her with broken legs, under a broken bed in a broken ski lodge that he had expressly come to in order to regain his thread of mental connection to her. He had ended up getting so much more than dreams, and now he wasn't exactly sure what he was supposed to do.

He forced his gaze away from her, to where Dale the security guard and Glenda the desk clerk -- who clearly had some kind of entanglement of their own going on -- were having a passive-aggressive war about whether to risk going outside to rescue someone they both clearly cared about. Bruce had already opened his mouth and said he would help with the search for others, but now he wished he hadn't spoken so hastily.

He looked around the room, tallied the numbers, and then spoke up. As he had hoped, the other conversations going on about what should be done, and how, died off as he spoke. He had long known that celebrity had its small advantages. "So I think we're agreeing that we need to split up." No objections to this immediately came up, so he went on. "Well, take a look around. Even if we divide into pairs, we've only got enough people to check three places at once. And that's if we leave this young lady --" he gestured to Theda/Kerren sprawled across the couch, "-- all by herself, which I personally don't think is such a good idea."

Of course, this immediately got Sheryl on board with him. She crouched right down beside him, trying to show that she cared for Kerren's fate just as much as he did. "We can't do that," she said softly.

Meanwhile, the others were all looking at each other, doing the same calculation. There were only six able-bodied people present. Either some of them would have to go off alone, or they would have to prioritize where they searched first.

Bruce reached out and put his hand on Sheryl's arm in solidarity, responding to her concern. "And that's why I think you should go back up to your room," he told her. The look she gave him was fearful and incredulous. Pretending to care about this, Bruce stood up, bracing his hands against the small of his back and grimacing. "Boy, I'm starting to wish I hadn't carried her all that way." He said to Dale, "I should have taken you up on your offer to help, but I thought it would just be easier..."

"Back's hurting?" Dale asked sympathetically, apparently eager to take Glenda's focus off of him.

"Yeah, a bit," Bruce said, grimacing again toward the security guard. "I don't actually have a room to go back to, anyway. I thought maybe you'd be willing to escort Miss Sheryl here back to her room, try to see if there's anything salvageable in there." He turned back to Sheryl. "Maybe see if you can't get your friend something warmer to wear."

"She's my wife," Sheryl said, standing back up, a slight defensive bite in her voice. Bruce was a little surprised. To be honest, he hadn't thought about Theda having any kind of romantic notions at all. He had always pined for her, but he knew it was more for her creative powers, and anyway he had never seen any hint of reciprocation. He ended up figuring she was beyond such human aspects as love.

Dale jumped in, nodding. "I'll go with you. That area seems the most dangerous." He turned to Glenda, stammering a little. "We, we-we'll have to make sure that everyone's safe in here before we can go outside. We'll get everyone dressed warmly, and then -- I promise -- we'll find a way to get to Harmon."

Glenda looked at him incredulously. "It will be too late," she said, her voice flat. It was the sound of a woman who had no conviction left.

Dale said, "He's tougher than he looks, Glenda. He can hang on a little while longer while we help the others. You know he'd say the same."

Silence fell then, and the walkie chose that moment to start clicking out its message again. Manoj, the young man holding it, didn't seem sure whether he should dampen the volume or let it ring out. Either way, he seemed to realize he would be choosing a side of the arguing couple. He ended up not moving, and the group listened to the flurry of clicks, pretending they knew what was being said.

The message stopped, and Kelly spoke up. "I'll stay here with Kerren," she said. She was looking around at their surroundings. "I think I can find something to splint her legs with, at least temporarily."

Manoj looked at Glenda, who was returning his gaze incredulously. "Our room's not that bad, all things considered," he was telling her. "I'm sure we could find something up there that we can use. We could use some real clothes, too." He gestured to his and Kelly's bathrobes. No one had said anything about it, but everyone had come to their individual realization that the pair were naked underneath.

Glenda gave out another huffing sound and whirled around, heading for the stairs. Once Manoj realized that she meant to lead him, he gave a quick look to Kelly, who nodded reassuringly, and rushed after the desk clerk. Dale watched them go, seemed like he was about to call something after them, then stopped himself. He extended his hand to Sheryl. "Ma'am? Can I escort you to your room?"

Sheryl, clearly reluctant to move, looked at each of the remaining occupants of the lobby, her eyes lingering on Kerren's closed eyelids last, before standing and moving toward Dale's towering form. His hand eclipsed hers, and he turned toward the stairs as if he were leading her to a formal dance.

Bruce watched them go, silently smiling to himself. Now he had Theda to himself. He was still crouching, still trying to figure out what to do next. He wondered if this was always the way she found him when they met in his dreams, looking down at him and wondering when he would wake up.

Whitelodge 4.5 & 4.6

-4.5-

Harmon stopped clicking the walkie's button, not knowing for how long he had been drowning out the response to his distress signal with its hypnotic repetition. His hand froze -- not literally, not yet -- and waited for the complete response. He caught just the tail end of it, "ccess... stay... warm." A pause, and then the message started again. "Trapd... in... lodge... seeking... roof... access... stay... warm."

Easy for them to say. Harmon listened to the sequence several times through before he thought to question exactly who it was that was responding to him. Not that he'd never had a walkie exchange with either Dale or Glenda before, but it seemed a little, well, sophisticated for them. This seemed to be a message from someone who was well-acquainted with Morse code. Unless those two had been studying up without him noticing.

But that was ridiculous. He would have known about it if they had. He had a better idea of what was going on at that lodge than anyone else conceivably could. That was most of the reason Jimmy kept him on, to be the Deertail's eyes and ears, so to speak. Or maybe Jimmy Gough knew more about what was going on at his lodge than he let on. Was it mere coincidence that the director had taken this particular weekend to head off for Florida?

Harmon sighed. It would be an interesting question to ponder while he was waiting to be rescued, or while his internal clock wound down to final stillness, whichever was going to happen now. But he should at least acknowledge that he had received the response. He tapped a flurry of arrhythmic clicks until the person on the other end stopped transmitting, and then sent back a simple "OK". The letter pair was parroted back to him, followed by "5 min".

So they were telling Harmon that he didn't need to continuously send out his original message, but that he should send updates every five minutes. Like he had a watch to time these things...

The more he shook off his initial sense of confusion and pain, the more of his situation he was able to understand. He was half-buried in snow, with at least a broken ankle, in the protective shelter of a fallen tree that was buried under more snow. Could be worse, he supposed. But the issue of figuring out where he was remained. A possible solution to this problem had been in the back of his mind ever since he regained consciousness, but he had been reluctant to consider it.

Truthfully, he had been thinking about it ever since his pins had started talking to him that evening. The only time they had ever rung as badly was a few days before Jimmy had called him into the director's office and asked him to take a seat.

Harmon had sat there for a long time -- this had been what, close to ten years ago? -- watching Jimmy shuffling papers around on his desk and in general making him sweat. He had been sure that the next words out of the tidy young man's mouth would be that Harmon had to clear out and leave, that he'd had enough of him bumming a ride from someone up the mountain every morning and hanging around, practically begging for handouts of drinks, food, company, whatever was offered from the paying customers (even the occasional surreptitious bong hit in some snowboarder's room). It was too good of an arrangement to last, of course, and Harmon was already starting to wonder where else he could go. He wasn't going to stay down in Mrs. Handy's boardinghouse all day, that was for sure, waiting for his savings to dry up.

Jimmy Gough finally spoke. "You enjoy it here, don't you, Harmon?"

Harmon nodded, willing to go through the patronizing rigmarole if that was what it took to get this over with amicably. "Sure. Lovely place."

Jimmy tented his fingers and looked over the desk at him. The man was dressed as usual, like an accountant at his waterfront house on the weekend, but acted like a Fortune 500 CEO. "I want to discuss last week's incident with the lift."

Harmon tensed. "Oh, that," he said. "I was heading back from the slope, and I heard this noise coming from the mechanism housing. I told Terry he should look at it, that's all."

Jimmy leaned forward a little. "That's the thing, though. Did Terry tell you what he found when he looked at the motor?"

Harmon shook his head. "No, sir." Didn't know why he felt the need to be so deferential to this guy who was at least thirty years younger than he, but that was something to be considered later.

"One of the belts had been mostly chewed through by some kind of animal," Jimmy said, never taking his eyes off Harmon's. "It was only a matter of hours away from snapping altogether. We could have lost partial tension in the cables; people could have been hurt. Or at least stranded up on the wires for hours until we got the belt fixed."

Harmon allowed himself a little smile, thinking for the first time that this meeting might not end with his being thrown out on his ass after all. "Oh, well, since it was making an awful sound as that, I'm sure Terry would have heard it soon anyway."

"That's the thing, though," Jimmy said. "He told me it was one of the free belts. They don't rub up against anything, and thus make no sound."

"Well, I could hear it clear as day," Harmon said. "It hurt my spine, actually."

"And that's my point, Harmon," Jimmy continued. He leaned back in his chair, adjusting his meant-to-be-casual tie so that it lay straight down over the buttons of his shirt. "You hear things like that at other times, don't you?"

Harmon nodded. "Sometimes. Mostly it's not a hearing sort of thing, just a feeling. I've wondered if it's something like a dog whistle, except more like a Harmon whistle." He chuckled a little, unsure of what kind of tone he should be taking.

"This is really interesting, Harmon," Jimmy said, and for the first time his face conveyed genuine warmth toward the old man. "Because I've been keeping track of you. How you react toward different people. And at first it was only because you're the one person here at the lodge who casually interacts with all the customers. The staff, some of them do, but strictly on a professional level. You actually *talk* to just about everyone here at some time or another. And I've learned that I can tell who the problem children are going to be on a given day... by watching you."

Harmon was puzzled. "Me? What do I do?"

"You react to people, Harmon. I don't even know if you're aware that you do it. But when you get near certain people, you instinctively flinch or move away. Sometimes it even happens when they're behind you, where you can't see them. And I know that if you do, I should keep my eye on them. You remember our friend The Maestro?"

What could have been the biggest scandal in the lodge's history had been narrowly averted a few months earlier. A well-known high-school orchestra conductor had invited select female members of his ensemble for a weekend ski trip, with what Jimmy would later describe as "unwholesome intentions". Interception by the resident security force (not Dale, but the man who had come before him) revealed certain items in The Maestro's luggage that revealed these intentions beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Jimmy continued, "Do you know how I knew that he was bad news, and what made me so confident that I rang the police even before we made that search?" To Harmon's silence, he said, "It was you. You shied away from that man the way a horse will shy from someone who's been beating him for years. And I don't think you even noticed it... or if you had, you quickly forgot it."

He was right. Harmon didn't remember any of that. All he recalled was that he was glad not to be caught up in the furor that went on when the police did arrive, ready to slap the cuffs on The Maestro and escort the bewildered young ladies home.

"So I've learned from experience," Jimmy was saying, "that it's valuable to have you along, sir." He was extending a neatly-manicured hand across the desk toward Harmon. Not knowing what else to do, the old athlete shook it. But Jimmy wasn't ready to let go. Still holding Harmon's hand in his sure grip, he said, "And that's why this incident with the ski lift has prompted me to do what I've been considering since back then. I'd like to bring you on board full time, Harmon."

Snow-white eyebrows rose incredulously. "What's that now?"

"Not as part of the staff, in any legitimate sense. But I'd like you to stay here as a kind of permanent guest. I can fix up a space for you -- not one of the paid rooms, you understand, but a place of your own -- to keep your stuff. A small per diem."

"That sounds... great," Harmon said, speaking slowly to give himself time to turn this over in his mind, if there was a down side. "And I would have to..." Harmon began, and Jimmy chortled at the way the grizzled skier was leading him along.

"Just what you always do," the director said. "Talk with the people. I'm not going to tell you to turn down drinks or anything like that. Just make yourself available to feel whatever you feel. I bet there are more disasters to avert. And who knows? Together we might figure out a way to hone this particular skill of yours."

The rest was history. Harmon moved in under the stairs, stocked it with horror novels and warm blankets, and spent his evenings talking to folks in the bar and waiting for his pins to tingle. It was what he wanted to do anyway, and he suddenly found himself being paid for it. An old skier who was barely able to ski could do a lot worse for himself.

And he did sometimes have things to report to Jimmy. Sometimes they panned out, and sometimes they didn't. But Jimmy seemed fine to follow any lead, and never spoke harshly to Harmon when he was wrong. As the seasons passed, with Harmon inhabiting the summer months down in town and the rest of the year up at the lodge, he did start to learn how to tune into this "particular skill".

And, although he hadn't revealed it to Jimmy or anyone else yet, he had even learned how to go beyond just sensing trouble. No, that wasn't quite right... the skill was being *replaced* with something else. He hadn't considered it until that moment, but it might have been the reason he hadn't seen the avalanche coming sooner. The pins still tingled when trouble was afoot, of course, but now there was something else too. Harmon had started to understand the nature of this new power, but it frightened him. He also knew that in his current situation it might be the thing that saved his life.

Harmon closed his eyes, concentrated his focus, and felt himself tapping into this power. It had been hard at first, but it was coming easier. Tonight, it was like a needle slipping into a vein.

-4.6-

Carlos was on his sixth towel, and he wasn't sure if the bleeding was slowing or not. Benny's face looked almost serene, now that it had been cleaned off, but this only unnerved Carlos more. The skin color was good, but other than that there was no clear reason why Benny couldn't be declared dead on the spot. He held the towel tightly on the head wound for as long as he could stand the texture of it, then tossed the blood-soaked fabric away and reached for another.

Things seemed quieter now. There was a little cool air sighing in around the ragged edges of the recently-enlarged window and the snowslide that choked it, and there was still the hiss of the gas burner that was still running, but other than that the lodge kitchen was tomb-silent. The stillness of the atmosphere made Carlos think that he could just keep do what he was doing forever. Grab towel, press towel, toss towel, reach for towel.

He blinked his eyes hard to shock himself out of complacency. He hadn't been worried about Benny's lack of blood before, but if the increasing heap of scarlet rags strewn across the snowbank were any indication, the situation wasn't improving. He had to try something else, fast.

His eyes kept being drawn to the gas stove, its blue ring as faithfully consistent as it always was, and realized that it was his solution. It would be harder than anything he had done so far, but it might be Benny's only hope. He looked at his friend's barely closed eyes, finding ways to reassure himself that his assistant really was out. Unconscious, if not already in shock or a coma. Carlos pulled the latest towel away, and hissed through his teeth when the flow of blood didn't look any slower than it had five minutes before. He couldn't even tell himself that the rhythmic pulsing he had seen before, denoting Benny's heartbeat, wasn't part of his imagination now.

Strength flooded his tired limbs as he realized there was no choice. He took a moment to assess the situation, figuring out how best to do what needed to be done. Then he spun around and sat down in the bloody slush, along Benny's left side. He slid an arm under his friend's shoulders, and slowly brought the unconscious man up into a similar sitting position. Holding Benny like that, Carlos got his legs under him until he was in a crouching position. This was going to be the tough part; getting all of Benny's dead weight (a phrase Carlos hated to use, even inside his own mind, but couldn't think of a better one) off the floor and into motion.

Carlos threw Benny's left arm across his own shoulders, and tucked his right arm into the man's right armpit. He hoped to push hard enough with his legs to get the both of them upright. Done right, they would end up looking like a pair of drunken friends propping each other up on the stagger home. He took a few deep breaths, held it, and tried to straighten his legs. The pair rose up three inches, then settled back down to the floor. Benny's drenched pants hit the wet tile with a flat, sickening plop.

Carlos grimaced, hoping his back would be able to handle this. He spread his feet a little farther apart, took an even deeper breath, and tried again. This time he got a little higher, and then reached some kind of tipping point and the job got easier. Soon he was standing mostly upright, but Benny had swung around mostly in front of him, so it was hard for Carlos to keep him from slipping away. Carlos kept telling himself it was okay; all he needed was to keep his friend from hitting floor for about fifteen feet of space and thirty seconds of time. It could be done.

Carlos slid one of his feet forward, afraid to take an actual step, which would force him to try balancing all their combined weight on one leg. Once that was done, he dragged his other leg (and Benny) forward, thus establishing a process.

It wasn't until they were halfway to the stove that Carlos started to realize that there wasn't as much weight pushing him down anymore. Benny's bleeding head lolled against him in a way that didn't seem entirely dictated by gravity, and he realized that one of Benny's feet was actually planted flat on the floor.

"'Los?" Benny's voice came, sludgy and faint. "Wha?"

Carlos squinted his eyes. As much as he was glad that Benny was able to assist in carrying himself across the kitchen, he desperately didn't want him to be awake for this. But he had to keep going. At this point, stopping would be more dangerous than continuing.

"It's okay, man," Carlos said, no louder than necessary for Benny to hear. "Gonna get you..." He didn't know how to finish the sentence. He kept moving.

The bright blue ring of flame grew closer. It was strangely advantageous that Benny was still slumped halfway around to Carlos's front. It would make aiming him much easier. Benny was actually clutching Carlos's shoulders now, bearing a few more pounds on his own legs.

If Carlos had any doubts about what needed doing, they were gone when he looked down at Benny's scalp, just a few inches below and to the side of his own face. The wide, bleeding scrape looked like a canyon from here, and couldn't possibly have gone any deeper without exposing bone. Carlos took the final step to the front of the stove and dipped his friend in what might have looked from elsewhere like a graceful dance move. Benny's torn scalp lowered down into the blue flame, and a sizzling sound started immediately.

Carlos forced himself to keep watching, to make sure that Benny was aimed correctly. Not only that, but he had to tip them both forward, to make sure that the cauterizing fire spread back far enough to cover the whole wound. The smell of Benny's flesh burning was not as bad as he had expected it to be, but the sound... the crackling as flesh crisped and fine gray hairs lit up like a thousand tiny fuses...

It took a good two seconds before Benny began screaming. Carlos managed to hold his friend in the flames for one more -- the longest of his entire life -- and then threw them both backward into the melting snow.

Whitelodge 4.3 & 4.4

-4.3-

Glenda wanted Dale. Desperately, with a passion and immediacy she had never felt before. What was worse, she almost said it aloud, as she threw her body down on the couch in frustration. The words had been piled up behind her teeth, ready to burst out, but she hadn't let them, instead straining them between her lips so they came out in one unintelligible ululation. She felt terrible, freaking out in front of a guest like this. She hated for anybody, customer or staff, to see her at anything less than her best: her biggest smile, her most helpful attitude. But in this moment, with two people she deeply cared about out of her reach, one upstairs in the hall and one buried out in the snow, she just couldn't hang on another second. She lost it.

She felt terrible as this forbidden thought formed in her mind. In a moment like this, her first instinct should have been to call out for her husband. Or her kids. Or even a simple "I want to go home!" would have been appropriately pitiful. But more than anything else, she had wanted to summon the burly security guard who was, at that moment, upstairs helping people who were surely in much more dire circumstances than she was. So selfish.

Her face pressed deep into the soft fabric of one of the lobby's sizeable throw pillows. She took a deep breath of its dusty surface, trying to breathe in the dust of the world as it used to be through its fibers, and then allowed herself one sob, a hard, potentially rib-cracking one. The pillow did its job well, letting her vent her frustrated sadness, her mourning for this revelation that it took a literal avalanche for her to admit to herself. Then her moment of weakness passed. She turned her focus toward pulling herself together.

Glenda lifted her head up as quickly as she had thrown it down, and looked at the man standing with the walkie in his hand, which was still clicking out its desperate message in measured rhythm. She hoped that the tears she could feel burning the corners of her eyes wouldn't choose that moment to spill down her cheeks.

"I want Dale," she said, and almost drew her head back and clamped her hand on her mouth like a cartoon character, before she realized that the words had actually sounded more like, "We've got to help him." Exactly like that, in fact.

"Yeah," the man said, his brow furrowing as he half-concentrated on the clicks coming from the walkie. He appeared to be choosing his words carefully. "I don't think he's going to last long out there."

Glenda nodded, wishing he would turn away, so she could swipe the back of her hand over her eyes and keep them from betraying her vulnerability. He didn't. He seemed to be waiting for her to say something, to make a proclamation about their next course of action. She didn't have any, so she said, "My name's Glenda. And you're--" she pointed at him, trying to match her memory of his checking in with some blonde girl that afternoon to the name he had given...

"Manoj," he said. "I'm here with my girlfriend Kelly." Glenda nodded at this, as if it had just been on the tip of her mind, and then the two of them stared at each other a little longer. The clicks continued.

Manoj managed to say, "And the person on the other end of this is..." He swiveled the walkie in her direction.

"Harmon," she said. "He's not a guest, he's... well, he's sort of a resident. It's a long story. One that I don't know much of. He was acting weird tonight. Actually, he walked out suddenly a little while ago..." She hadn't even had the following thought until it was coming out of her mouth. "Do you think he knew, somehow?"

Manoj shrugged. She sighed, knowing this man had no idea who Harmon was, or what she was even talking about. Why couldn't Dale still be here?

"Is there any way to get outside?" Manoj asked, nodding at the broken front door. "If there's someone out there, we need to try to get to him as soon as we can."

Glenda followed his gaze, trying to think. Dale might be able to break through that door, get out to the equipment building, or at least hold her tightly enough that she might feel safe and warm again. "There's a pair of snowmobiles out in the shed, but I don't know how--" She threw a hand in the direction of the snow piled up against the huge windows, only now noticing that it had creeped even higher up while she'd been exploring the office and having her tantrum. Only about two feet of moonlight showed through now. In a matter of minutes, the lobby might be entirely dark too. "If Harmon's telling us he's next to the service road... that thing's miles long. It goes all the way down into town. But of course you know that, you drove up it earlier."

Manoj nodded gravely. The road was been long and winding, lots of switchbacks as it rose up the side of the mountain that had recently decided to revolt against them all.

Manoj appeared to be thinking hard, quietly, for so long that Glenda thought he had gone back to analyzing Harmon's desperate message of clicks. Or maybe he was just freaking out in his own quiet way. Whatever... she just knew that she wanted someone to come along and relieve her of all her Stuff She Had To Deal With right now, and she knew exactly who she wanted that someone to be.

A mental light went on, and Manoj came back from wherever he had gone. "Does this place have an attic?" he asked her.

For a moment, she honestly didn't know. But then she remembered that there was a place in the second-floor ceiling that looked like those pull-down attic doors. "I think so... I've never been up there, but I think I know how we can get in. If it isn't too damaged, that is."

The young man nodded thoughtfully a few more moments, and for a second Glenda could tell just by looking at him that he was really smart. Like, amazingly so, in a way she never could be. She bet that blonde girl -- Kelly -- appreciated him for that. Glenda saw flashes of that same esoteric brilliance in Dale sometimes, but most of the time he was just *him*, strong and down-to-earth and tack-sharp...

"If they have roof access," Manoj was musing, "we might be able to get down somehow. The snow didn't entirely block our second-floor windows, so there might be a clear way. Like you said, if the roof held up..." Manoj looked like he was going to lapse into another fugue, but then he made a mad dash for the stairs. "Come on, then! Who knows if there'll be another avalanche, so we've got to hurry!"

Glad to have a course of action to take -- any action at all -- Glenda ran up the stairs toward Dale just as fervently as Manoj ran toward Kelly. Still wrapped in only his white bathrobe, he turned left at the top of the stairs. Before Glenda followed she turned, and looked down at her lobby from up above. Even though her eyes should have been adjusting to the low light, the added snow piling against the windows balanced it with new darkness. The place looked no more familiar now than it had in those first instants.

She wondered if she was looking at this little arena of her life for the last time. Quickly on the heels of this was the thought that, as long as Dale was ahead of her, at the end of the corridor, she didn't care if it was the last time. She turned and ran after the white shape that was already blurring into the gloom ahead of her.

-4.4-

Kelly assumed that Manoj was still behind her. She was focused solely on the light dancing far ahead. It had tumbled around a little, as if the flashlight had been dropped, but it had been recovered. The man carrying had turned a corner, but she could still see the way it flickered as he swept it around, and she could hear vague sounds of several people calling to each other over the slap of her slippers against the uneven hall carpet. Their voices seemed strangely distant, however; sound didn't seem to be carrying the way you'd think it should in this jumbled, wooden funhouse. Kelly pushed that thought aside. Everything but one goal fell away; to reach the source of that wavering light.

This was something that had always been easy for her, to slip into this state of concentration. She had been told this was why she was always so good at whatever she tried; she had a innate sense of determination, a way of shutting out the world and seeing only the thing she was trying to accomplish. To her, it wasn't even a matter of getting her body to move faster, or push it harder. It was seeing the place she needed to get to, and not getting distracted until she was there.

She knew Manoj didn't have the same outlook. If a person were to examine their relationship, there were many places in which that statement would apply. It was a fact she didn't pay much attention to, although she knew he did, enough for the both of them. She was still trying to get him to realize that their differences didn't really mean anything to her, but it was hard for him to not analyze everything six ways to Sunday. She knew this, and forgave him for it... most of the time.

She was actually grinning as she ran down the hall, and realized the reason why shortly after: when she was young, she and a childhood friend sometimes would run up and down the hall when they got into slap-happy giggling fits late at night during sleepovers. Her friend's explanation for why such an activity was good for stopping a raucous gale of laughter: "Because there isn't anything funny about running down the hall". There might not be, but sometimes it just felt good.

This was more her speed: action over cognition. She actually was running a little faster than she knew she should be; without the direct beam of the flashlight before her, she was almost running blind. There was an increase in light as she passed by a wide opening in the wall that she knew led down the main stairs to the lobby, but once she was past that illumination, she was only going by faint impressions of what was in front of her. She didn't care, was only concerned with her own forward motion.

She came to the corner, only slowing down when she was worried that her sudden eruption out of nowhere would startle the security guard, which is what she assumed the big guy with the light was. She moved forward, and peeked around the corner, assessing the situation. What she saw was odd; he was alone in the corridor, totally unmoving, shining his light through a severely broken door into one of the lodge's rooms. Now she wished she had paid more attention to what the voices were saying as she had run down the hall toward them.

A voice called out from somewhere far behind Kelly. "Dale? ... Dale!!"

Kelly saw the security guard wince, shifting his weight as if he wanted to drop the flashlight and run toward the sound but couldn't. He braced the flashlight in both hands, straining to keep it focused inside the doorway. Finally, after working his lips with silent agitation, he called back, "Kind of got a situation here, Glenda! Hang on."

"Harmon's calling in!" came the voice again, and this time the guard actually looked away from his task. Kelly instinctively ducked back, behind the corner. There was no reason she didn't want to be seen. Her body had just reacted before her mind. More words came drifting up. "He's in trouble!"

Kelly couldn't see the man, but she knew he was even more troubled by this. "Hang on, honey..." he said finally, through clenched jaw muscles. "I'll be there in a minute!"

As she puzzled on what this exchange could mean, she noticed that beyond the guard, the corridor quickly devolved into a jagged, roof-high pile of heaped timbers and insulation, from which the slightest whiff of outside air emanated. She started heard new sounds coming from inside the room. There was a scraping of wood against wood, a half-screamed woman's voice -- "Hey!" -- and then the sounds of large quantities of cloth being dragged across each other.

"No!" the voice barked. "Let go of her!" Then, sounding a little defeated, the same voice: "Please, watch her legs..." More sliding and scraping followed. There was something on the floor down by the guard's foot, and it took Kelly a few moments of study before she realized what it was: a doorknob, presumably from the shattered portal he was now shining his light into. It dawned on her that he was holding it steady for the benefit of the people inside the room, although exactly who that was remained unclear. For the moment, they were quiet.

She took this break in the action to step out into the corridor. She made sure to step heavily, hoping to draw attention without startling a man who might have a weapon of some sort. Fortunately, the floor underneath her creaked, and the guard's head managed to whip toward her without changing the position of the flashlight.

"It's me," she said, raising her hands.

"Hey," he said, nodding to her before looking back into the room. "You okay? You should have stayed in your room." He was still talking to her, although he was looking into the room beyond them.

"Sure, we're..." She had just noticed that Manoj was nowhere to be found. "We're okay. What's going on in there? I'm Kelly, by the way."

The security guard nodded without looking at her, absently intoned, "Dale."

A woman's bare legs came into view, floating horizontally out of the door at about waist height, and Kelly almost screamed. The flashlight brutally revealed that those limbs were bloody, and slightly twisted in a way they shouldn't have been. Her hands flew to her mouth, mind reeling in the bizarrity of the scene, but then the woman came a little farther out of the room and it all made sense.

She was being carried in a man's arms, gingerly moved through the broken frame of the doorway. He stepped over the threshold sideways, with his back to Kelly. He was wearing a plain white t-shirt and a pair of dark lounge pants. She could tell from the love handles and balding head that he was well into middle age, even though she couldn't see his face. He came slowly through the door, taking long careful steps. His arms didn't look particularly muscular, but he seemed strong, because he moved as steadily if he weren't carrying anything.

The carried woman's face was the last thing to come into view, her head and shoulders lolled back over he savior's other arm. Her hair, long and curled in the way Kelly wished hers could be, trailed down toward the floor, illuminated by the flashlight so much that it acted as a secondary light source for the dark hallway. The security guard backed up, allowing the man/woman pair the space to turn once they were in the open.

"That doesn't look good," Dale exhaled.

A third form drifted through the door. It was another woman, this one darker than the pale, beatific form that had just been carried over the threshold like a bride. This one walked carefully, palms out, evenly balanced as if she were partially responsible for the steadiness of the man holding the unconscious woman, her face drawn with fear. "Careful..." she breathed, which could have been a plea to any of them there. "Be careful with her..."

"She's fine," the older man breathed, his voice being the first thing to provide evidence that he didn't do this sort of thing professionally. His teeth were gritted tightly.

Kelly couldn't help but speak, just as much as she couldn't take her eyes off those broken legs. "What happened?"

"Damned avalanche," the older man said as if Kelly were only speaking generally, turning a little in her direction. This movement elicited two gasps, one from the woman behind him, worried that he was going to lose his grip on what he was carrying, and one from Kelly, who suddenly recognized the man. "Bruce Casey?" she blurted.

He seemed to give a little sigh, his shoulders somehow drooping without lowering the woman in his arms, and nodded to the general populous. No one seemed to think this was an unusual coincidence save for Kelly. "What are you--?" she began.

Dale jumped in, keeping the focus where it should be. "Here," he said, motioning with his free hand. "Pass her to me. I can get her down to the lobby. There's not as much damage down there." There would be time to gush over the celebrity later, Kelly realized. Right now there was an injured woman to tend to.

Bruce looked at him for a long moment, as if he were reluctant to give up this burden to anyone else, albeit someone much more qualified to handle it. "It's okay. I can make it, I think."

The fragile-looking woman behind them spoke up. "Let's just get her somewhere safe. Hurry! We don't know if all this is over yet."

She was right. Kelly instinctively moved forward and took the shaken woman's hand. After nearly recoiling in shock, those wild eyes grew a little calmer and her palm relaxed against Kelly's. At least a little. "It'll be okay. I'm Kelly."

"Sheryl."

"We'll get her someplace safe. All of us together. Let's go." She said this more loudly, to make sure that everyone knew she was speaking to them all.

The five of them, led by the Dale's flashlight, started moving down the hallway back to the lobby. Bruce led the way, the others ready to jump forward if they saw his arms start to tremble from the weight he carried.

Whitelodge 4.1 & 4.2

-4.1-

The man trying to break down the door had scared them both. Even after they had heard him moving away down the hall, saying that he was going to get help, neither of them spoke or moved for a long time. It was finally Kerren's voice from under the bed, sounding both amazed and disturbingly distracted: "Was he asking about someone named Theda?"

It was the tone of her voice that made Sheryl finally, after all that had happened, begin to panic. Even though she was so maddeningly close, for the first time Sheryl thought her wife was going into shock, losing a lot of blood somewhere underneath the bed, or both. She couldn't wait for the cavalry to come breaking through the door. She was going to have to do it herself.

She steeled her nerves and pressed forward, knowing that no avoided injury would make her feel better if greater harm came to her wife. "Kerren," she called, wanting to keep hearing her more than having anything to say, "keep talking so I can follow your voice... How are you doing down there? I know you hurt your leg..."

"It's not so bad now, since I've gotten used to it," Kerren said, her voice not regaining an ounce of vitality. It almost sounded like those times when she would mumble in her sleep, only more articulate. "I should have told that guy it's okay. That the stones are going to be okay."

Sheryl was so intent on finding her way over the edge of the bed that she wasn't paying attention to the content of Kerren's words. That distant tone was just so unnerving...

"Ow, ow ow ow!" Kerren suddenly said from beneath her. "Not so tight!" she said, her voice that of the petulant child she sometimes claimed she used to be. Sheryl realized what was happening, almost immediately. In her progress toward the edge of the bed that Kerren had slid over, she was putting more of her weight on the covers that Kerren was wrapped up in. In doing this, she must have been tightening the fabric, making it close on Kerren's surely-broken leg.

Sheryl backed up, sputtering, "Sorry, sorry sorry. I'm just trying to get to you, honey." Kerren's pained cries tapered off into a low moan, and Sheryl suddenly realized there was another, safer way to get down there. She backed up as far as she could, back to her side of the bed, and lowered one foot down tentatively. Long before it should have touched the floor, her foot dipped into the stabbing cold of piled snow. She winced, yanked it back up, then took a deep breath and plunged in again.

She spent the next fifteen seconds sliding her leg back and forth along the edge of the bed, trying to figure out where the snow was the shallowest. It appeared to have piled up highest near the foot of the bed when it came blasting in through the patio doors, which explained why the foot of the bed had turned the most, and become jammed against the convex corner of the wall. She scooted as far toward the headboard as she could, and then backed off the bed, wincing as she sank ankle-deep into snow.

It felt totally incongruous to have her feet touch down on polished hard wood under three inches of powdery snow, but that thought was soon superseded by the numbing cold that pressed in on them like needles. Sheryl didn't take the time to think about how painful it was, instead just took notice of it. It's just sensory data, she kept telling herself as she bent down to kneel in the snow. Just nerve impulses reporting something that doesn't matter right now. Just get it done.

She bent down and began scraping away snow from her side of the bed, trying to make enough room underneath that she could crawl under and get to Kerren that way. By the time she had cleared enough that her knuckles were starting to scrape against the wooden floorboards, she could barely feel the cold.

A sudden thought made her yank her hand back. This torrent of snow had blasted through the patio door on its way to their bed, so where was all the glass? She didn't know if it had broken into millions of tiny cubes, or if there were huge jagged pieces waiting for her somewhere down there. Now she was afraid to even bring her heels down on the floor. She shook some of the near-freezing water off her hands and slowly felt around behind her.

After a quick, light-fingered sweep and finding nothing, she realized she hadn't heard from Kerren ever since she had gotten down from the bed. "Kerr?" she called, trying hard not to sound terrified. "How are you holding up down there?"

No reply came, and it made Sheryl's fingers, shaking from equal parts cold and fear, widen their search... until the back of one of her hands brushed against something hard. She yanked it back, then realized this might be the very thing she was looking for. She reached for the shape again, and this time her fingers touched something amazingly smooth and rounded among all the rough textures. The object spun a little as she imparted some grasping force into it. She heard it push a few other little somethings aside, and realized that she had found a sizeable chunk of the base of the china lamp that had been on the nightstand.

She felt tenderly for the sharp edges that she knew it must have, and found them. When she found what felt like the least harmful place to take hold, she picked it up. It wasn't exactly in the shape of a blade, but it would work for what she had in mind. The next part was steeling herself to lie flat against the floor and shimmying under the bed.

"Kerren? Honey? I'm coming to get you. Hold on." She had realized mid-thought that she didn't want to leave a question hanging, because then she would be wondering if Kerren's lack of answer was by choice, or because she couldn't anymore. So Sheryl issued her pair of declarative, proactive statements and dropped on her stomach.

What was left of the snow on the floor immediately melted under the body heat she had suspected she no longer had any of, and it actually aided her slide underneath the heavy wooden board of the bed frame. She was so cold, and working her way inch by inch across to where Kerren was lying encased in a cotton cocoon, unable to move... the thought of how similar their situations were getting made Sheryl's throat clench in fear, but she choked down the imaginary blockage and continued.

Her non-weapon-wielding hand found the taut pouch of blanket that held her wife. She had hoped to get a reaction from Kerren when she touched it, but aside from the weight and warmth she could feel through it, there was no response. Sheryl tried to work as quickly as she could in the confined space. She slid alongside the bundle, as closely as possible, and then used both hands to guide the sharpest edge of the broken lamp along the slats on the underside of the bed. She wanted to cut through the blanket and sheet as high off the ground as she could, taking the least risk in cutting Kerren as she set her free.

She began working the lamp piece back and forth, hoping she was making some progress. At first, it didn't seem like she was, and the longer she slashed at it, the more convinced she became that this was a mistake. Either the improvised blade wasn't sharp enough, or it was going to punch through and lacerate Kerren's arms, which for all Sheryl knew were raised up over her head, right on the other side of the cloth Sheryl was trying to cut. If Kerren were unconscious, Sheryl might cut halfway through her wife's arm before she even knew what she was doing.

But she had to get her out of there. The best thing to do now was to get Kerren out and then re-evaluate the situation. Nothing was going to improve as long as she was in there. Sheryl's arm, beginning to tire, kept dragging the sharpness across the blanket -- which had felt so comforting and warm when they were lying together under it -- and willed it to split.

In her desperation, the anger she felt at the material flew off in unexpected directions, hating the snow, the lamp piece, her own foolishness for finding this forsaken place to celebrate their anniversary, even... Kerren. As much as Sheryl tried to push it aside, none of this would have happened if Kerren had kept her vow. Suddenly, she was faced with the inescapable facts she had been pushing aside all weekend. Kerren had lied to her, multiple times, with full intent of doing so, in order to sleep with someone else.

Was she foolish, she wondered, for staying? Maybe. There were friends that had told her yes, some that had told her no. That was the trouble with coming together as a couple from a vast pool of mutual friends; a split between them would have sent awkward ripples and backbiting all through their shared community. The fact that she didn't want to be the cause of such upheaval was initially the reason she hadn't packed and moved out the very day she found out. And that, after all else that had happened, was what troubled her the most.

She had always put more importance on other's thoughts and feelings than her own. She had been like that since childhood, when her classmates had always known they could cut in front of her at the lunch line or waiting for the swings and Sheryl wouldn't say anything. She eventually learned to feel retroactively magnanimous, as if giving up her spot had been her idea in the first place. But it was just the way she dealt with being unable to stand up for herself. She had made strides in the meantime, but all she had to do was recall the contended, peaceful smile on Kerren's face as she slept next to her, and couldn't entirely convince herself that much had changed at all.

But at this point, what would leaving prove? The same chaos would result, she'd be just as alone, and she would be left with the thought that she had only left as an exercise in self-assertion. There would be an equal measure of regret either way.

Could she keep this up, though? To look into those green eyes and, from now on, pretend that she didn't wonder if Kerren was looking at her the same way she had looked at that other woman? After all this time, she didn't even know her real name. The texts were labeled only "ScarletHarlot", a porn name if there ever was one. And she had only caught a glimpse of her that one time, the day after the conflagration of Sheryl's discovery of the evidence. She had waited while Kerren had met the woman in the nuetral territory of a coffee shop, watching their break-up with less glee than she had hoped for. Kerren had always maintained that what Sheryl had seen from afar was their final communication, but Sheryl had never been entirely sure about that.

Somewhere, a seam began to rip. Sheryl's arm, growing more and more forceful the longer she thought about her wife's infidelity, was starting to find less taut resistance in the blanket, and Kerren's weight was starting to aid in pulling the torn fabric apart.

Sheryl threw aside the lamp shard and thrust her hands into the breach, working them in opposite directions, hearing the satisfying sound of frayed, strained material splitting. A wash of hot air that had been breathed in and out repeatedly hit her, instantly melting bits of snow that had lingered in her hair during the struggle. The upper half of Kerren's body slid out into Sheryl's arms, and suddenly the wetness on her face wasn't all melted snow. Sheryl cradled her wife as best she could and thanked whoever needed to be thanked that they were together again.

-4.2-

Bruce was heading for the dancing light at the far end of the hall when he heard another scream. This one wasn't urgent, but more like a startled scream from the back of a darkened movie theater than a cry of real human pain. It happened almost in perfect synchronicity with a big, muffled thud, the largest sound since... well, whatever the hell it was that had happened to this building and all the souls inside it.

He moved along in a crouch now, compromising between the belly-crawl from before and the heedless sprinting run that he wanted to adopt, now that he had a clear goal in mind. He had to get help for Theda, as quickly as possible. The ice bucket had been forgotten, but still rattled its fractured parts in his grip, sounding much like the rest of the building felt. Now that he had grown used to it, he felt more sure of the way every angle was canted, every smooth surface churned and buckled away from the way it had intended to be. Corners, both convex and concave, had popped from mechanical stress, and were now full of thick, long splinters.

He kept his focus on the light. It was moving, playing around some far corner of the hall -- he wasn't sure if it was his own self-involvement or structural damage that made it impossible for him to recall the lodge's floor plan, and where the rest of it was in relation to his room -- and the pattern in the way it swung around told Bruce that it likely belonged to someone who used it professionally. In a hotel, that meant staff.

The beam seemed to narrow the closer he got to the corner, and he hoped that meant that the flashlight's wielder was headed in his direction. "Hey," he called, not wanting to pop out on anyone in this already heightened atmosphere.

The beam paused. "Are you the one who called for help?" a voice deeper than his own called back. "Who is it?"

Bruce nodded, then remembered he couldn't be seen by this person yet. "Bruce Casey," he replied, then winced when he remembered that he had signed in under another name. He heard a brief, quiet chuckle from around the corner, and then silence. It was no wonder; his real name was well known. It was much the same reaction as if he had called out that his name was "Stephen King" or "Benjamin Franklin".

The deep voice replied, having full regained full composure, "Stay where you are, Mr. Casey. I'm in the process of making sure this corridor is secure before we try to extract anyone. Is it you that needs help?"

The man holding the flashlight came around the corner as he asked this. It was a sturdily built security guard, his wide shoulders and bald head conveying a sense of assuredness that Bruce hoped the man actually had.

Before Bruce could tell him about the trapped women, the man said, "Holy shit. You really are Bruce Casey." Bruce responded with an apologetic shrug. "Now, who's in trouble?"

Thankful that the recognition phase of their relationship had passed quickly, Bruce pointed back down the twisted hall. "There are women trapped in one of the rooms. I tried to open the door, but everything's tilted and I couldn't open it." He held up the cracked ice bucket, as if that explained anything about the situation.

"Which room?" the security man asked.

Bruce replied, "Back here. I... I didn't see the room number. It's dark back there."

The security guard nodded, swung the flashlight past Bruce to illuminate the hall the writer had just come down. Bruce's breath caught when he saw the gauntlet he had unwittingly passed through. Beyond a certain point, fractured beams chaotically cris-crossed the space that could no longer be defined as a hallway. The only space that appeared even close to being unaffected was the area closer than the door with the broken doorknob. Past that was mostly destruction. Bruce couldn't figure out how he had crawled so far down the hallway without being stopped by wreckage.

"I broke the doorknob," Bruce indicated, pointing. The security guard played his flashlight across it, sizing it up, while Bruce continued to marvel at how he had come through the mess that his part of the hotel had turned into. Wouldn't he have noticed if--

"Stand back, Mr. Casey," the guard was saying, guiding him back toward the less-broken wing of the lodge with an arm as thick as a tree limb. He played the light around the perimeter of the door, as if sizing it up, leaning down a little to peer into the mechanism, nakedly visible now that the knob was gone. "You say there are people in there?"

"Yes," Bruce said. "Women."

"Don't hear anyone," the security guard mused, although it didn't sound like he was doubting, only stating a fact. He further stated, "I haven't knocked down one of these doors before... haven't had to. They're built pretty sturdy."

Bruce felt he should just let the man figure this out. He'd done all he could.

After a few minutes of checking around the door, the security stepped forward and rapped on it, as if there were nothing wrong. "Excuse me?" he called into the room. "If you're near the door, you might want to stand back."

As the guard took two steps back and prepared to rush at the door, Bruce realized that he really had no idea what was on the other side. If the hall he had somehow traveled down was as impassable as this one was, how did he even know there was anything at all beyond this particular door? It might be anything, even a thirty-foot drop to the mountain below--

"Wait!" Bruce said, but the guard was already in motion, rounding his shoulder and barreling for the hinge side of the door. He hit it hard, high on the outside, and the resounding thump and sharp crack filled the narrow hall like a double-barrel gunshot.

When the guard's body fell away from the door, it was clear what kind of damage had been done; the upper left corner of the door had bent inward, the hinge behind that section presumably having shot into the room like a rocket, and the rest of the door had cracked down the middle, but other than that it hadn't moved much. The guard went down on a knee, hunching over and grabbing his battering shoulder. Bruce ran over to him and put a hand on what was clearly now his good shoulder. "You all right, Mister...?"

"Dale," the guard said, not looking up. "I'll be fine, but there are some things that just don't want to get broken, huh?"

Bruce chuckled a little, and looking up, saw that there was now a two-inch gap between the bent upper corner of the door and the jamb. He stepped up to it, went up on his tiptoes, and called in. "Sheryl? Are you still there?"

The voice that came back was forced but half-whispered, as if she were trying to yell, but also not trying to wake someone. "We're still here. We need a doctor, though."

"I know," Bruce called. "We're working on that. I think--" he tested the rest of the door by pushing on it with his slippered foot, and found that the crack down the middle allowed the wood to give quite a bit, with just a little pressure. He indicated this to Dale by saying, "I think you did more damage than you thought."

"Hope so," came the pained voice. Dale took one long, deep breath as he knelt there, posed somewhat like Atlas, before slowly standing up again. He strode over to Bruce, who ceded his place at the door. Dale slid his fingers up into the gap near the bent top of the door, tensed his arms enough to make his muscles stretch the arms of his uniform, and pushed it in. With a satisfying rip, the top corner or the door split easily along the crease his shoulder had created, and tipped even further into the room beyond. "Anyone in there?" he called.

A woman's voice -- the one that wasn't Theda, Bruce noted with a pang -- called back, as if she had just noticed that the door was in the process of being broken down. "Yes! We're here! I can see some light!"

Dale took this moment to lift his booted foot and plant three hard kicks right in the center of the increasingly-splintered door, which completely gave way on the last. The two halves split as if they had been designed to be bat-wing doors to a saloon. The one not still propped up by hinges fell to the floor with a loud clatter.

Dale immediately swung his flashlight into the dark space that had opened beyond. Bruce stepped up behind him to benefit from the angle of illumination. With the amount of glittering snow that had piled up in the room, it was almost as if another flashlight was being turned back upon them, but it was just a frigid reflection of the LED. All that was visible was the short hall leading into the room, something resembling a bed jammed into the mouth of the hallway, and an immense heap of snow beyond. Air rushed past them into the slightly warmer hallway, cold and forbidding.

"Where are you?" Dale asked, because there were no women to be seen.

"Under here!" not-Theda's voice came again. "My wife's hurt! Please help us!"

The tangle of sheet and blanket that hung over the leading edge of the sideways bed twitched and shifted.

"Dear Jesus," Dale breathed. His beam played across the broken flooring that filled the distance between the doorway and the bed. Boards had been pressed so hard they had sprung out of place, exposing the cobwebby subflooring in multiple places.

"Hold this," Dale said, handing his flashlight to Bruce. "I think I can see a clear path across--"

The flashlight fell to the floor, Bruce's fingers refusing to take it. Instead, the writer jumped through the now-open doorway, like a racehorse bolting from the gate. The light turned away as the flashlight rolled on the floor, once again dropping the room beyond the door into utter blackness. He was yelling out a name that belonged to no one present.