The Raven's Gift - Don Rearden [99]
He slowly and quietly lifted the covers and slipped out of the bed. He pulled on his parka and boots, tucked the pistol into his waistband, and grabbed the rifle. He had to go check out the clinic to make sure there wasn’t something there that could help her.
He was too late. Every possible medical supply had been taken. When he returned to her, empty-handed, she saw the look on his face and instead of crying, as he was so sure she would, she transformed. Right there on the bed, in front of him, she changed.
38
The old woman rode in the sled with the food and gear, the blue tarp wrapped around her. She wasn’t coughing, but he could tell she wasn’t doing well from the nights in the cold. The light coat of snow on the river ice made for fast, smooth travelling. The machine beneath him and the frigid wind in his face felt good. He felt strong on the machine. He knew the hunter would be coming, but the speed and the ground they were covering so quickly mattered.
As he put distance between themselves and Bethel, the thin willows and sporadic patches of black spruce along the wide, meandering river’s edge gave way to thicker stands of spruce and birch. The mountains seemed to grow up out of the tundra with each mile.
Broken-down snow machines and stripped four-wheelers abandoned along the riverbank made ominous trail markers. Each bend in the river revealed something more of the panicked flight from Bethel. Between the broken vehicles he spotted the occasional piece of clothing. A single red boot. A black glove. A pair of blue jeans flapping in the willows.
The darkened eye sockets of half-buried skulls stared out at them from the passing snowdrifts. At one point he thought he saw a hand reaching up out of the ice. He slowed and saw it was just a stick with branches.
A frozen River Styx, he thought to himself as the river turned north and then east and then west. Winding and winding, circling and circling, the underworld somewhere in the distance.
John kept looking back. Checking to make sure the old woman was okay, but also worried about the other, faster machine that would be coming for them.
The roofs and hoods of several pickup trucks and taxi cabs poked through the river ice in places they’d gotten stuck or run out of gas on the frantic arctic exodus from Bethel. He passed a set of four tires poking up through the ice, the ridiculous long undercarriage of a stretch limo.
The sun moved across the southern sky as he manoeuvred carefully around the metal corpses that stretched for as far as he could see from each twist in the river. He expected the steel carnage to begin thinning out, but then wondered if the wreckage stretched on forever.
ANNA JUST SMILED her lovely smile. She knew. He didn’t know if she knew it would be that night, or if she just knew there was no reason left to hope. She knew.
“Come here,” she said. “Hold me.”
He pulled off his parka and crawled beneath the covers and wrapped his arms around her. The cool air burned at his nostrils and his breath froze against the nylon sleeping bags over them.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Sorry for what? I should be the one who’s sorry. I should have found a way out.”
“I’m sorry for bringing us here,” she said. “We shouldn’t have come. We didn’t belong here. I didn’t belong here. I just thought maybe we should connect with your heritage for our children. I was wrong, John.”
“That’s not true. The regular life isn’t for us. And don’t give up on me. I don’t like your tone. You can’t give up on me, okay? Okay?”
“You’re not mad that I made the decision to bring us here?”
“That was our decision. We made it together,” he said.
“Yeah, but I was the one … I just wanted you to know where you came from.”
She stopped and coughed. The air crackled deep within her chest and the phlegm and mucus seemed too thick for her to bring up. She coughed again, harder, and then rested her head on the pillow, her eyes wet with tears from the effort.
“I was the one,” she whispered, “who pushed