Winter Study

If Robin heard, she showed no sign. She showed no sign of knowing A

“They’ve decided to kill,” Robin said.

Her voice held the same note of sorrow as the howl.

18

A

Help was the word A

The flashlight began to brown out. Ski tracks leading back to the main trail were filling with blowing snow, becoming harder and harder to follow. Wind carved up the storm and slung freezing snow at them from every direction. A

Ridley never came back. Then A

There was a place in her about the size of a softball just behind her sternum. A surgeon or MRI or X-ray would never find it, but it was where her center of energy resided; the tiny machine that had to be kick-started at the begi

Whatever it was – will, stubbor

The Sked hit the back of her knees and she went down on all fours. Robin stopped beside her the way an old dog will stop when its master does.

“Fucking Ridley,” A

She tried to push herself up. Her arms buckled as if the bones had been boiled to the consistency of overcooked noodles and she fell face-first into the snow. She tried to find her feet and couldn’t. Her fingers, around the grip of the flashlight wouldn’t close.

“Robin!” she yelled. “Help me.”

Robin looked down into the sepia pool of light where A

“Help me up, God dammit!” A

“Don’t die,” Robin whispered. A

“I will fucking die and so will you if you don’t help me.” A

Something got through. Robin leaned down and extended a hand. Using the woman’s strength, A

Without the Sked dragging her down, A

The world shrank till even Paul could not fit in it. Only the circle of light and her hand clamped on Robin’s parka. Soon, A

“Keep walking,” she whispered to the biotech. “Help me out here.”

Help me. The words that had formed on the window glass of the bunkhouse. They’d not saved Katherine. Had her spirit come and written them with the cold fingertip of the dead after the wolves had savaged her?

Help me. Help me. Help me. A

“The walking dead.”

A

Robin hadn’t said it. Robin was the walking dead.

A groan pushed through the dark and the wind. The beam of the flashlight wasn’t strong enough to penetrate more than a few feet, but it was strong enough to pinpoint her and Robin. A

“At first, I saw, but now am blind,” came the voice. Then: “Don’t tell me your batteries are dead.” Then an “Uff!” and “I sound like an old man.”

“Ridley?” A

“Did your batteries go dead?”

A

“Why are you here?” she asked. She would have shouted at him but hadn’t the energy for anything more than mild curiosity.

“Bob got ahead of me. It was too dark to catch him. Without a flashlight, I’d have killed myself trying to stay on the trail. So I waited for you.”

The flashlight fell from fingers gone suddenly numb. The butt of it stuck in the snow, sending the light up beneath A

“Holy moly!” Ridley said. “You okay?”

“Is this the Feldtma

“Yeah. What happened to the Sked?”

A

Three miles. Ridley had on his skis.

“Here.” A

“The Park Service…” he began, then stopped, undoubtedly realizing it would be easier to explain using an engine in the wilderness than the death by negligence of a visiting District Ranger.

“Sit tight,” he said.

“Don’t stop to kill Bob,” A

ROUGH PAWS WERE SCRAPING at A

“Come on, sleeping beauties. Don’t want to wake up dead, do you? Wakey-wakey – well, I don’t have eggs and bacon, but I’ve got coffee. Hot coffee.”

A