The Raven's Gift - Don Rearden [68]
The storm during the night had created new drifts, and the girl and old woman struggled until they reached the crest of a small hill, where the wind had blown the surface clear, leaving hard-packed frozen tundra. The old woman kept watching behind them, searching continually, he suspected, for the hunter. They made better time, and before long, the giant black shield loomed over them.
“What are you going to do?” the girl asked when they reached the base of the tower.
“I’m going up. See if I can spot anything,” he said.
He handed his rifle to the old woman, went inside, and grabbed the first rung on the ladder that led to the top, some seventy feet above them in the darkness. He began to climb. His arms and legs barely seemed to have the strength to lift him, but slowly he managed to pull himself up.
At the top, he hoisted himself up and over the edge. He rested for a moment, on his stomach, as he tried to catch his breath.
“You okay?”
He leaned over the edge and held his finger to his lips, and remembered she couldn’t see this. “Quiet!” he said. They were a mile from town, but he didn’t want to take any risks.
He crawled on his hands and knees to the far edge and scanned the horizon. An orange haze began to appear in the distance with the rising sun. From the top of the tower he could see the town, the wide, sweeping river, and the rolling mountains in the distance. Before surveying the town he looked back at their tracks and followed them toward their last camp beneath the bluff. If someone was following them, he didn’t see any movement.
The town looked as lifeless as the white wasteland surrounding it. The single red light he had seen the night before, perched high on a radio tower, was still lit, but that was the only sign of life. No smoke. No movement. No sounds.
Parts of Bethel bore the familiar snow-covered blackness of ruin, just on a much larger scale. The monstrous white fuel tanks that once bordered the river at the centre of town were gone, replaced with twisted, blackened metal craters. The half-charred ruins of the town stretched out before him like a commune for the undead. The vision of a burnt and frozen town reminded him of a Robert Frost poem, something about the world ending in either ice or fire. Bethel appeared to have died twice.
ONE SATURDAY MORNING Anna and John awoke to snow. A soft, light blanket covered the ground overnight, and the worn and dirty village appeared renewed, refreshed, and the two of them could feel a strange sort of excitement bristling through the community. Men dragged their snow machines out from beneath their houses or removed the tarps that covered them. Young boys tried to stockpile snowballs as more snow began to fall.
John sat on his steps watching what he thought was probably the last outside basketball game of the season. Four boys played in their T-shirts and rubber boots on the wooden play deck. The chill in the air bit at his ears, but apparently had no effect on the boys, or their game.
Anna came out and sat on the steps beside him, wearing the same as he did, her new winter boots, wool hat, and Gore-Tex parka. She was ready for the change in seasons. They both were. Frozen lakes, rivers, and tundra meant they could get out for walks somewhere other than laps around the school gym or through the hallways or down the icy boardwalks.
“How soon until the river freezes?” Anna asked.
“Carl said it will all be frozen by next week. Safe to walk on in another couple of weeks, maybe, and then safe for snow-machine travel by the end of the month. If it stays cold.”
“If?” she said, picking at a frozen chunk of mud on the bottom step.
“He said it warms up often now, sometimes twice a winter, and makes the ice rotten—treacherous. Climate change, worse here in the Subarctic.”
John stood and stretched. He’d been playing open gym with the men the last few weeks, trying to get back into shape, and had pulled something in his back going up for a rebound.
“You think we should order some cross-country