Cover Your Tracks Page 5

  “Line them up, Isadora,” their father had said in a raised voice. Then he gave a lecture on the evils of smoking and on the agony of tooth decay.

  The Fletcher girls often heard those three little words—line them up! The lectures were bad enough, because they were not in fact lectures but berating sessions. Worse, their mother was also a target. Even as a young girl, Margo understood that her father was humiliating her mother. Not until she became an adult did she understand that her mother tolerated his behavior to protect her daughters. That was what mothers did—protect their children at all costs. That was what Margo would do with the child she was carrying.

  Sometimes her mother would push back, however, and Margo would feel pride. Using her charms as a Southern belle, her mother would say in a gentle tone, “The girls are only having fun, Anthony. They’re children, not sailors to be commanded. Not everything in life runs with mathematical precision.”

  But their father treated them as mathematical components anyway. As a statistician, he worshipped numbers, certainty, and the rational. Instinct and intuition were dirty words. Sucking on candy cigarettes that could rot your teeth and teach you bad habits wasn’t rational behavior.

  When Margo was a sophomore in high school, her father opened her purse and discovered an unopened pack of real cigarettes. She was tempted to blame her friend Bree for sneaking them in there, but that would’ve been a lie. She had gotten them from Bree, but she’d asked for them. So she informed her father with teenage bravado.

  “For your insolence, you’ll sleep in a tent outside for the rest of the week,” her father had said. “Until the smoke and tar and nicotine are purged from your body.” Never mind that the pack was unopened, proving she hadn’t tried a single one.

  Despite her mother’s pleas, Margo did sleep in the backyard for the remainder of the week. Of course it rained. She had to use the hose pipe as a makeshift shower. That was humiliating enough, but the worst of the punishment was the survival-kit potty. Now, as Margo sat in this orphaned train car, she wished she’d learned a lot more about camping out.

  The wind and snow pounded against the walls in a broken rhythm, like the sound of a deranged psychiatric patient beating his head and fists against the walls of a padded cell. The train car rocked with the wind, sometimes violently. Occasionally, the sound of tree limbs arching and cracking rose above the howl of the wind. The snow’s weight tested the limits of the trees.

  At last, there were footsteps on the back stairs. The door opened. Nick was carrying a plastic bag in one hand. His upper cheeks were scarlet from too much exposure to the cold, and through his thick day-after beard, a deep scar on his left cheek and another small one in the middle of his forehead stood out. Odd that the scars hadn’t been noticeable when they first spoke on the train. She hadn’t considered his age before this. From his present appearance, sun damage and elemental exposure aside, he was likely in his mid to late forties.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  He nodded and walked inside the room with a soldier’s rigid gait, obviously trying to avoid limping. He went into the kitchen and put the bag in the sink. He shook his arms and shoulders, causing the remnants of snow to fall from his coat.

  Before she could ask about the bag, she noticed that his left pants leg was ripped at the seams. Underneath, his calf was covered with a white cloth.

  She rose from the couch and started toward him. “You’re bleeding. You should’ve told me last night.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Let me take a look at it.”

  “I’ve already dressed it. It’s nothing.”

  She stood before him with hands on her hips. “You’ve said that one too many times. I insist.”

  “If it’ll make you feel better, take a look.” At the kitchen table, he raised his pants leg. A cloth was wrapped around the lower calf and secured with a string he must’ve found inside the car.

  “Is that a whipping knot?” she asked.

  “Yeah. It allows the leg to bend. How did you know?”

  “Sailors use it. Mostly with ropes. I’ve done some sailing in my day.”

  He didn’t grimace as she removed the soiled cloth stuck to his leg. Under the bandaging, she was presented with a four-inch laceration to the outer leg—a sheer tear, almost like a knife wound. There were smaller lacerations that appeared to be bite marks.

  “I thought coyotes don’t attack humans,” she said.

  “As far as coyote behavior goes, generally they don’t attack unless they’re hungry. And, in this cold, I’m sure food is scarce.” He took a deep breath.

  Infection and rabies were the biggest concern. There was no way to deal with those issues now. He must already have considered these possibilities. No need to reiterate the obvious.

  “The wound needs sutures,” she said. “The laceration is long, and you don’t want to rip it any more than it is. I could tear out a seam on a couch pillow and use the thread. I just have to find something to substitute as a needle.”

  “Negative. If you’ll get a clean towel, let’s wrap it up for now. It’s not that bad.”

  Manly patients were a dime a dozen in the ER. They weren’t easy to persuade, so the worst approach was to argue with them, because they only dug in harder when pushed. If he didn’t want stitches, so be it. He’d reconsider if the injury worsened, of that she was sure.

  “You’re the patient,” she said.

  Without responding, he sat with folded arms and an annoyed expression. What appointment was he late for? She re-bandaged the leg. The procedure must’ve hurt, but he showed no sign of pain. Only when she finished did he let out a long sigh of relief.

  A new sort of rumbling sounded in the distance—the wind?

  Nick bolted out of his chair, walked to the kitchen sink, and retrieved the plastic bag he’d brought inside the car. He reached under a cabinet and found a frying pan. From another drawer, he found silverware. He shoved the items inside the bag and started out of the kitchen.

  “What’s wrong, Nick?”

  “We’re no longer safe here. Grab a blanket and whatever else you can carry. And I mean for a long trek.”

  The rumbling grew louder and louder and turned to a low decibel roar, as if a wave had crashed onshore. The sound was decidedly not thunder, because it didn’t stop.

  A spike of electricity shot up Margo’s spine.

  “The mountain is completely unstable,” he said. “Avalanches are happening all over the place. We’ve got to leave now.”

  She began to shake uncontrollably. “No. It has to be safer in here than outside.”

  He bent down and firmly gripped her arms. “We have to go. Now. It’s not a choice.”

  “You’re hurting me.”

  “Margo, listen to me.”

  She didn’t move; she needed to think, to calculate the odds.

  “We’re sitting right below a massive horizontal plane of snow,” he continued. “It’s coming down any minute—any second, as a matter of fact. If that happens, and we’re inside here, we’re going down the mountain just like the train.”

  “Give me a minute to think!”

  “Quiet. Sound is a factor.”

  The rumbling intensified, and still she stood paralyzed. He gently but firmly pulled her toward the door. When they passed the couch, he grabbed the blanket, and when they reached the door, he yanked it open. As soon as they were outside, the cold attacked them. Vibrations reverberated through their bodies, the sensation coming at them from everywhere and nowhere. Margo tried to breathe, but the air was beginning to fog with a fine white powder, which burned her lungs when she inhaled. She coughed, trying to catch her breath.

  Not missing a beat, Nick reached for the hood of her coat, pulled it up and around her face, and secured the toggles tight so her nose and mouth were covered.

  “Come over to the stairs. I’m going down first.” He let go of her and jumped to the ground. “Hold your arms out to the side and jump. I’ve got you
.”

  She was tempted to retreat back inside the train car, her safe haven. Her father’s face flashed through her mind, as it always did when she needed to make crucial decision and didn’t know what to do. What would her father have calculated now? Never mind what he’d do. This was all instinct—hers.

  CHAPTER 12

  Margo stood on the platform, looking between the snowy ground and Nick. He motioned for her to jump. Walking down was too hazardous; there could be ice underneath the snow on the steps. The jump was about five feet, doable even a few months ago. Not now. With her pregnant belly and bloated limbs, she might as well have been leaping from the top floor of a skyscraper. The wind, honed by the bitter cold, sliced through the air. The dull rumbling nearby continued to build. A sudden crackling, like eggshells breaking in a boiling pot, reverberated through the canyon, the sound out of place and menacing. White talcum flooded the air, becoming thicker by the second.

  Without further thought, she held out her arms and took that leap of faith. Nick caught her under the armpits and stopped her from falling. When he let go, she almost lost her balance but managed to right herself. Tiny ice crystals stung her eyes and cheeks. She blinked hard and bent her head down, trying to shield her face.

  Taking one of her hands, Nick led her along the outside of the tracks and toward the rear of the passenger car. The rumbling intensified, propelling her along as fast as she could go. Moving away from the passenger car, their no-longer-safe haven, they followed what appeared to be the path of the railway tracks—away from the train wreck. With each step, she sank almost knee-deep into the snow, sometimes going so deep that she touched a railroad tie with the sole of her boot. The wind shifted and blew in their faces, the gusts so ferocious that she was forced to lean forward to prevent a fall. Nick kept shouting over his shoulder, urging her on. He didn’t have to. Although her lungs burned and she was gasping for breath, nothing could stop her. Her mind swirled as if lost in an indiscernible dream in which she was a bird with a broken wing trying to fly, trying to escape a would-be predator’s jaws.

  When Nick slowed, she caught her breath well enough to shout, “Where are we going?”

  “To safety.”

  She prayed such a place existed in this wilderness, because it looked as if they were heading toward oblivion. They plowed ahead. Nick quickened the pace again, and the pain in her chest and legs intensified, but it also served an important purpose—the pain reminded her that she was still alive.

  A loud boom, like a cannon shot, assaulted them from behind. She didn’t dare look back. Nick picked up the pace and shouted for her to hurry. She found a hidden reserve of energy that let her go faster. Fear could be an effective fuel.

  She pushed forward, but after going five to ten yards at most, she tripped on a raised railroad tie or a large rock and fell to her knees. Without Nick’s help, she regained her footing and continued on. Then a wave of terror hit her having nothing to do with this new and unexpected avalanche—well, nothing directly. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt the baby move. The baby’s fine, she told herself, repeating the mantra over and over. The baby is fine.

  Muscle fatigue turned to muscle failure. She stumbled several times. She began to cough.

  “Inhale through your nose,” Nick called out without looking back. “Exhale through your mouth. Saves energy.”

  The avalanche was rapidly approaching, its roar no longer a dull rumble but rather an agonizing groan, as if the entire mountain were in unbearable pain. Was it possible for a human being to outrun a vicious, soulless giant?

  They started around a bend in the tracks. She had to look back, to stare death down. When she glanced over her shoulder, there was nothing but white. No trees. No sky. No ground. Not a trace of the passenger car. Only white, a void. The snowy mountain had devoured everything.

  “Hurry!” Nick shouted. “We’re almost there.”

  She tried to run to there. Where was there? A place Nick had made up to spare her the agony of accepting their impending death, to keep her hopes up until the last possible second?

  He urged her forward, and by the time they staggered around the curve, the dense fog of white gave way to a light haze. The white particles were dissipating.

  “Over there!” Nick shouted, pointing with his free hand. “The snowshed.”

  Could it be? Safety at last.

  Fifty yards ahead was a railroad tunnel that resembled an enormous, metallic carport with a slanted roof. In all the flurry, they accelerated their pace—a mistake. She stumbled and went down to her knees, jarring every organ inside. The impact pounded the air from her lungs.

  Whumph!

  That ominous sound again. The taunt of thousands and thousands of tons of frozen powder about to slide down the mountain and bury them propelled her back on her feet. She took a step, but damn it all, she tripped again.

  Nick helped her stand and without warning swept her off her feet as if she were a slender child. He carried her toward safety, half-jogging and half-sliding. A loud clap of thunder boomed, competing with the roar of the avalanche. They’d never make it to the shed. There wasn’t time now. A white mass of snow slid toward them, creating a massive wall that was littered with broken tree trunks and branches and boulders, all of which were being tossed about like toys in a sandbox.

  She turned her head away—there was no reason to pay homage to their executioner.

  The snowshed was too far away. No way could they outrun the avalanche.

  Please, God, make it painless. Don’t let my baby be impaled by a broken limb or survive longer than I do, entombed in my lifeless body.

  Nick abruptly stopped running and set her down. Clinging to her hand, he pulled her from the railroad tracks and down the right-of-way embankment, not away from the avalanche but toward it.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” she screamed.

  “Trying to save our lives!”

  Then she understood. Going in this direction was their only chance to avoid being thrown into the gulch. They took four more steps before the first wave of snow struck them like a wrecking ball, knocking them to the ground. She lost her grip on Nick’s hand.

  “Swim on your back uphill!” he called out. She tried to swim, windmilling her arms, but she was soon buried under snow. Her head throbbed. She gasped for breath.

  The image of her unborn child flashed through her mind. She wished she’d found out the gender. A moment later, her body felt weightless, not buried under tons of snow but suspended in pure white light. She was no longer cold, no longer shivering. Was she dead, was this a dream? Would she wake in the viewing car of the train, freshen up at the next stop, and get ready to face her family? The baby moved. This was no dream.

  Snow surrounded her entire body. She was buried alive! How long had she been like this? Sheer panic gripped her. She couldn’t breathe. No, wait. Yes, she could. How was that possible? Because the hood of her coat had created a temporary air pocket. The same was true with the mounds of snow. There were plenty of pockets inside the snow, which wasn’t solid like cement. She stilled a moment. Though she was encased in snow, she could hear sounds—not the mountain’s rumble, but the crackle of snowflakes settling. If that was true, really true, she couldn’t be that far from the surface. Swimming on her back uphill had kept her closer to the surface! Giving her a chance to survive.

  She flexed her muscles without moving her limbs. Nothing seemed to be broken. She shut her eyes tight and pushed her arms up and away from her body. The only way out was to dig. As she pushed, her knuckles bumped against something rough. The object was only a foot, maybe two feet, away. She groped at it—the thick, scaly bark of a fallen tree. With her hands and fingers, she dug and clawed at the snow until she determined that the width of the tree was about two feet. She twisted and turned her torso, hollowing out the snow around her. Then she bent her knees, pushed against some compacted snow, and hoisted her body closer to the trunk, which she grasped with both hands. Little b
y little, she pulled with her arms and moved her knees back and forth until her feet were resting against the trunk. Her limbs became the new branches of the tree. She pushed upward and began to follow the line of the tree trunk toward the surface, careful to avoid the splintering shards from broken branches. Inch by inch, she moved higher along the trunk. The snow beneath the tree wasn’t as compact, so it was easier to move through. She climbed upward five or more feet and finally broke free of this grave and into the gray light of the day. She inhaled deeply, savoring the sting of the frigid air. She was so exhausted, so shaken, she could do no more than crawl. But she’d never been happier to crawl in her life. The air was clear, and a fresh blanket of snow covered the landscape for as far as the eye could see.

  Nick—where was he?

  “Nick? Can you hear me? Nick?”

  There was no sign of him. In a frenzy, she began kicking the snow. Realizing the futility of the act, she dropped to her knees and with cupped hands dug down a couple of feet, all the while shouting his name. He must’ve been buried close to where she was.

  She paused to think. There must be a better way. A bird chirped nearby; she recognized the call of a chickadee. How peculiar that anything had survived the avalanche, although she had. She turned and saw the bird pecking at an exposed branch of a downed tree, probably because she’d lost her nest. How sad but also inspiring, because now Margo knew what to do. She quickly began searching for something she could use to peck at the snow. Not far from where she had been buried, she found a four-foot branch with a sharp point at one end. With it, she began poking the stick into the ground, hoping to locate Nick.