Snowbound - Blake Crouch [50]
Will was working his way through profound darkness, trying to find the tent, confident he was headed in the right direction, but soon his hands were touching the snow-glazed bark of spruce trees, and he realized he’d wandered out of the meadow, back into the woods.
He should have stopped right there, but he kept plodding forward, no sense of sight, everything else in overdrive, his ears picking up the steady thudding of his heart, the dry-grass scrape of snow falling on the hood of his parka, his nose detecting the sterilized odor of snow-rinsed air.
The world blinked—a strange electric blue. He saw trees, his footprints.
Darkness again.
It thundered.
He imagined where the tent stood, saw it in his mind’s eye, assured himself he hadn’t veered that far off track.
He started to call out for Devlin, let her voice guide him back to the meadow. But what if she couldn’t hear his words, just heard him yelling? She might leave the tent, strike out into this darkness by herself, lose her way.
The forest lighted up again. He corrected his bearing and kept going, fighting off the first needling tinge of panic as he stumbled along in the dark.
FORTY
Will stopped walking. As far as he could tell, he was still in the trees. It was snowing and moonless and he might as well have been blind. He decided there was no point in going on in these conditions. He’d been on the move for at least ten minutes, and if he went any farther, he might not be able to find the tent again, whenever the hell the moon decided to reappear.
He sat down against the trunk of a large birch and waited.
Within a minute, he was shivering. He’d left the tent without gloves—a stupid fucking thing to do—and the gun was freezing to the touch, so he set it beside him in the snow and pulled the sleeves of his parka and fleece jacket over his hands.
Ten excruciating minutes passed, his face growing numb, the snow still falling.
The darkness held.
He stood up and brushed the snow off his pants, his parka, having decided to walk around the tree several times in an effort to get warm.
Something moved in the vicinity.
He held his breath, straining to listen.
Whispered, “Kalyn?” The sound repeated, closer now, ten or fifteen feet dead ahead, and he’d started to back away from it, when he heard another noise behind him, close enough to recognize—careful footsteps sinking in the snow.
“Kalyn, that you?” He was picking up noise on his left. Now his right. He squatted down, digging through the snow until he grasped the Smith & Wesson. “I have a gun,” he said in full voice, panic rising in his chest, constricting his throat.
The snow dissipated. He looked up, saw the moon again, or at least a piece of it. A handful of stars. Ragged black clouds.
He scanned the woods—slim black tree trunks, his footprints leading up a gentle slope. The meadow’s just over the top, I think. I haven’t come that far. I’d have heard Devi scream if anything had happened.
At first, he thought it was a person crouched down twenty feet ahead, and he raised the .45. But as it skulked toward him, he recognized his mistake, took several steps toward it, waving his hands wildly in the air.
The wolf was pure white, and the moon made its pink eyes appear to glow. It loped back through the trees. After thirty feet, it stopped, turned, and faced him again, head cocked. “You’re endangered,” he said, “so don’t make me shoot your ass.”
Will began to follow his own footprints back toward the hill, the moon shining down into the forest now.
He sensed movement to his right and left and behind him, though he hadn’t heard a thing.
Will spun around, looking back toward the tree he’d been hunkered down against. The three black wolves that were tracking him stopped.
He ran at them and waved his arms.
They dispersed among the