Manoj didn't fully appreciated how bright the nearly-vertical moonlight had been until he stepped into the shed. It was like following Dale down into a pool of ink. He would have hesitated, but Kelly stepped over threshold with supreme confidence, and if he wanted to keep his end of Kerren's stretcher from dropping into the snow, he had no choice but to follow.
He felt better when he heard Sheryl gasp next to him. She must have been suffering from the same momentary blindness he was. Fortunately, Kerren stopped shortly after they had all gotten into the shelter and stood still, giving them all time to adjust. In a surprisingly short amount of time, Manoj's eyes found the bright areas of the windows, huddled close around them. As his eyes continued to open themselves to stimuli, he saw why there were so few of them; they were standing in only a small portion of the building that was still habitable.
Where the damage in the hotel had been clearly caused by the falling of large timbers, the demise of the small shed was of a different origin. It looked as if when the ski lift wreckage had come sliding down the mountain, it had plowed into the end of the structure holding the embarkation station. The mechanism that the cables wound around had fallen here, and the giant flywheel had come down like a buzzsaw twelve feet in diameter, tilting vertical as it sliced into the building. It now formed an uncomfortably close steel wall, a giant plate separating them from the rest of the devastation. Manoj thought he could see broken timbers and possibly a hint of the outdoors through its myriad machine-tooled holes, some as big as a foot across, but his eyes were suddenly more concerned with the contents of the half-room itself.
The falling of the huge steel wheel left only a small corner of what must have been a garage. It now was barely large enough to hold a single, oversized snowmobile, its shiny corners the only revelation of its presence. It looked formidable, but at the same time Manoj's stomach dropped in disappointment. He didn't see how five people were going to get on it and ride down the mountain, never mind the fact that two of them were incapacitated.
Considering the second injured person, he suddenly perceived a pale leaf tumbling in the darkness that turned out to be Glenda's raised hand. She was feebly waving at them from the far side of the snowmobile. He heard Kelly give out a short, sharp sound that was halfway between a bark and a laugh, relieved and horrified by the gesture.
"We're not ready to go yet," Dale was saying to them. "I've got to make sure this is secure..." He was moving around to the rear of the contraption, revealing the way Glenda had been laid down on a sled hastily strapped to the back of the snowmobile. What appeared to be cloth storage bags had been piled on its back, so Glenda could recline against them. She looked groggy and pallid in the dim light, the handle of the knife still obscenely sticking out from below her left collarbone, as if it had always been a part of her, but still had no right being there.
Dale was continuing to explain what he had done, attaching one of the low, flat equipment sledges to the back of the snowmobile, which hadn't been easy in the cramped space. "The only thing I could find was some of this heavy-duty line, so it's looped around about twenty or thirty times." He was pacing around the vehicle now, grimly studying it like someone who had customized their car might. He went on, talking about weight distribution and using the word "torque" in a context that Manoj had never heard before, when Kelly interrupted him:
"Dale, is there a way we can get Kerren and the rest of us on it?"
He stopped talking, as if she had asked the very question he was afraid she would. Manoj could see Glenda's eyes sluggishly flicker toward the security guard, as if wondering what his answer was going to be, too.
Dale swallowed hard, then said, "We can figure out a way."
Manoj suddenly felt the weight on his arms increase. He hadn't noticed how tired his arms were until he was forced to adjust them, picking up the slack carrying Kerren's stretcher as Sheryl let go and walked toward Dale. Manoj had just enough time to stabilize Kerren before Sheryl reached Dale. She put her hand on his arm, and spoke to him directly, softly.
"I'm sorry, Dale. You're trying to get Glenda to safety, and we're making it that much harder. But we appreciate it. I want to make sure you know how much." She went up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. A great sigh rose up through his chest, held, and released.
"Come on," he said finally. "Let's find a way to set them together on the sledge."
A few moments later, the four of them worked together in the minimized garage to lay Kerren's stretcher down next to Glenda, who had slid over enough to allow some space next to her on the storage bags. Dale went to get some elastic bungee cords from where they hung on the wall, which Manoj realized he never would have noticed, even though his eyes were now fully adapted to the darkness. He shivered for the first time since they had left the lodge, and the only thing he could think of to explain it was the bitter coldness of the immense steel disc standing on its edge a few feet away from him.
Dale used the cords to strap the women down, hooking both edges to the sides of the sledge and laying them snugly across the women. He moved carefully, not wanting to touch Kerren's legs any more than he wanted to touch Glenda's knife. Eventually he stepped back to survey the arrangement, trying not to look into the eyes of the two women he had lashed to the sledge. Their eyes were calm, resigned in their own individual way. Manoj thought that Glenda appeared like she was trying to stay awake, and feared what would happen if those eyes closed and stayed that way. He figured they had all managed to ignore the wet darkness that was still spreading across the extra storage bags that Dale had laid across her body.
"Now how do we sit?" Kelly asked, surveying the snowmobile-and-sledge hybrid he had constructed.
Dale looked up and down the length of the vehicle. "Kelly," he asked finally, "can you sit on the sledge? Every time I have to slow down, it's going to want to keep going and bump into the snowmobile. Maybe--"
"Brace my legs against it. I got it," she said, comprehending immediately, and gracefully slid into poisition, gingerly sitting between the supine women's feet. Raising her own, she propped them up against the back panel of the snowmobile. Manoj couldn't help but recall times when she was in a similar position with him, and the coiled strength he had felt hidden inside those calf muscles. He swallowed hard.
"I think the three of us--" Dale was speaking about himself, Manoj and Sheryl, "can fit on the seat. It's only supposed to be for two people, but we can make it work. I'm not going to go any faster than I have to, so it's okay if I'm right up on the handlebars. Twisting them too far in either direction wouldn't be a good idea, anyway, because of the added weight. First, though..." He motioned to Manoj, and then swept his hand toward the side of the mini-garage, which the snowmobile's nose was almost grazing. Now Manoj could see it; next to the door they had come through, a set of shutter-like garage doors were securely fastened closed.
Manoj stepped forward to help Dale open them. It didn't look like the structural damage had warped them at all, and that made him recall what they had seen on the way here. As Dale messed with the lock mechanism, Manoj said, "Dale, we saw the horned thing again." The tall man's hands faltered against the knobs and hooks, then continued. Manoj pressed on: "It went into the Lodge. I think it might have been attracted to the sound of the window breaking."
"Yeah?" Dale asked, clearly more interested than the tone in his voice was letting on."
"Um... how loud is the snowmobile going to be?"
Dale shrugged as his hands worked. "Pretty loud. It's not really built for subtlety. But it's the only way down the mountain, so what choice do we have?"
"None," Manoj agreed. "I just wanted to be sure you knew."
The lock finally popped open. "Thanks," Dale said. "I can't go any faster than it's safe to, though. If we lose traction or the sledge tips, it's all for nothing anyway."
Manoj nodded, grasped the righthand door as a moonlight gap appeared between them. Dale took the lefthand one and started accordioning it back, creating a wide opening that looked down the mountain's slope, as starkly white and forbidding as always.
Manoj mimicked the guard's movements, pulling back his own side of the doors. The gap was more than wide enough for the snowmobile to pass through, and probably would have been able to accomadate two of them at once, which it mostly likely had been deisgned for.
Dale, then Sheryl, then Manoj, climbed onto the long, padded seat, which was refreshingly soft but ice-cold. Manoj turned his head back far enough to look down at Kelly, still lying back with her feet braced against the back of the snowmobile. Her lips tightened in a concerned approximation of a smile. He reached down behind himself and clasped her ankle with his near-numb hands, trying to convey more reassurance than he really felt.
Dale turned the snowmobile's key, and the sound of the engine revving was deafening, even with nearly a whole wall of the garage open to the air. Manoj felt his entire body wince. As the engine cycled up, he was sure he heard a moment where the steel disc behind them picked up the sympathetic throb of the engine, and began to ring like an immense gong.
Praying that they wouldn't attract the attention of the horned thing for a second time, they pulled out of the garage and back into view of the moon, which shone down on them like a cold spotlight.
-10.4-
The cool air felt good sliding across her face, so much that she wished Dale hadn't laid the other covers across her. It would help to cool the burning heat, which had dissipated somewhat but still hurt her, making her insides itch. She hadn't been able to pull together the strength to tell him; it had taken everything she had, fueled by the adrenaline of joy, to wave at the others as they came through the garage door.
She was so glad they were together again, and she felt so sure she was going to be away from this horrible place soon. It was strange how something that seemed a home away from her home like the Deertail Lodge, a place of sanctuary and comfort, could change character so quickly. It really wasn't the fault of the lodge itself, she supposed. It had taken something with the force of an avalanche to turn it into a place of cold, dark, and fear. But now she was away from it. Dale was shepherding her to safety, and soon they would find someone who knew how to take the metal and its heat away from her, find her a clean place to lie down until she felt better.
These were the thoughts that she held onto as the snowmobile and its passengers began its long downhill slide. More than anything else, they were what kept away the strange sensation Glenda had of being pulled backward, away from the light of world. The feeling was always there now, waxing and waning in intensity. Kind of like she suspected the moon would, if she could lie still and watch it long enough. Or the tides the moon brought. And that didn't sound so bad, did it? To just let it all go and look forever up at the sky...
No. She was going home, Dale was making sure of that, and she wanted to get there, to her children, to her... husband. Would he like Dale? She didn't see any reason why he shouldn't. One thing she had learned through all this was that there was enough love in the world for everyone. There was no reason to be jealous, or envious, or anything like that. Just love... that would be a world worth going back to. That possibility was another handhold that she could cling to when the backward pull into the dark became too much, which was become more and more.
She turned her head back and forth, savoring the way it made her hair ripple as the snowmobile made its way downhill. She silently thanked Dale, for letting her feel this. Trees moved by incredibly slow, far off at the edge of her vision. She looked over to where Kerren lay beside her, noticed that the woman's hair -- blonde, longish, curled -- was moving the same way she imagined hers was. Glenda didn't care for the look in her eyes, though.
Kerren's lips parted and she silently mouthed two words. "I'm scared."
Glenda was charmed, much in the same way she always was when her children woke from bad dreams in the middle of the night. Not that she doubted Kerren's fear... With her kids, she it could be cured with fifteen minutes of snuggling under warm covers before being carried back to bed with a drink of water and a few extra clicks on the nightlight timer. She wished she could help Kerren in a similar way. Maybe she would come to see what Glenda had, that all the fear and doubt and pain was temporary, ephemeral. It would pass, and all there was to do was hold on as best you could until you reached the bottom of the hill.
"We will be okay," she spoke back to Kerren, sure that no one else could hear it above the wind and engine noise. She had no idea how strong her voice was, so she hoped her lips weren't slurring so much that they couldn't be read. She could feel that backward pull growing ever stronger. "Dale will take us home," she said.
And with those words, Glenda died.
No comments:
Post a Comment