Thicker Than Blood

Orson trudged on at his tireless gait, showing no sign of pain or fatigue. The burning in my legs had grown so unendurable that my forehead broke out into a cold sweat.

"Hold up!" I shouted, and Orson stopped. He was twenty feet ahead, bundled up in two T-shirts, a sweater, a sweatshirt, and a black leather jacket. His legs appeared bulky beneath the long johns, sweatpants, and jeans I’d given him from Walter’s suitcase.

"What’s wrong?" he asked.

"I just need a breather."

After a moment, I lifted my grocery-filled suitcase up over my head, and we continued on. My legs and feet turned numb shortly thereafter, so I battled only the stinging in my eyes. The sole relief came from closing my eyes, but I couldn’t shut them long enough to quell the pain while Orson walked uncuffed ahead of me.

With the cabin three football fields away, my legs were spectacularly numb. I kept thinking of that medical definition I’d found for snow blindness while doing research for Blue Murder — a sunburn directly on the cornea. It watered my eyes just to think of it, and I fixated on locking Orson into that spare bedroom and falling asleep under his fleece blanket in the soothing darkness of the cabin.

Orson glanced back at me, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before. He wore my sunglasses. Did you swipe them from the top of the dashboard while we dressed for this snow trek? I was going to scream at him to stop, but I thought, Fuck it, we’re almost there.

Even when squinting, I couldn’t adequately shield my eyes from the glare, so I let them close entirely, and it felt wonderful. I’m just going to shut them for a moment, I thought, moving clumsily and blindly now through the snow.

After six gargantuan steps, I opened my eyes to check on Orson.

He was gone.

Dropping the suitcase, I took the Glock out of my waistband and looked in every direction — nothing but smooth unending snow, which drifted randomly in gentle mounds.

"Orson!" I screamed. My voice cracked and echoed across the blinding white expanse. "Orson!" No sound, not even wind. Trying to follow his tracks through the snow, my eyes watered, and the salt in the tears exacerbated the sting.

I sensed suddenly that someone was ru

He’s out there, I thought, turning back toward the cabin. He’s lying in the snow, and all I have to do is follow his footprints. I saw where they ended less than fifty feet ahead.

"Stand up!" I shouted. "I won’t shoot you, Orson! Come on! Don’t do this!"

Nothing moved. I grabbed up the suitcase, and I had taken three steps, when something occurred to me. Kneeling down in the snow, I hollowed out a sufficient space to sit. With my leather-gloved hands, I attempted to tu

I stood up, becoming colder now through my torso. The footprints ahead of me meant nothing. Even as I reached the end of Orson’s tracks and saw the suitcase he’d left behind, I knew that he could be anywhere in the immediate vicinity, hiding, waiting just two feet below the surface.

Dropping the suitcase again, I sprinted off into the snow, ru

On the cusp of blindness, I feared that the numbness in my legs masked tremendous pain, which warmth would soon unthaw. The Glock in my hands was useless, and conceding that for the moment he held the advantage, I came to my feet and bounded on through virgin powder toward the cabin.

34

REACHING into the side pocket of my frozen khakis, I took the key that Orson had promised me would unlock the front door. Punching it through the icebound keyhole, I turned the key. The door opened; hauling the suitcases behind me, I entered the cabin.

I wagered that no one had been here in months. There was an unpalatable scent in the air, as if I’d climbed into an attic or a crawl space. My effete vision made the interior of the cabin dusky. I staggered across the stone floor so I could look out the window that faced south, the direction from which we’d come. Though late in the afternoon, the sun blazed as it descended over the bluff. Nothing moved in the sprawl of dazzling white, and I took comfort in knowing that were he to approach the cabin now, I would undoubtedly see him.

My attention turned from my brother to the morbid condition of my legs. I could feel nothing below the knees, and I imagined this was the sensation an amputee might endure when first walking on a prosthetic appendage. I need heat, I thought, limping toward the kitchen.

My snow blindness caused me to see everything in crimson. Nothing had changed. Orson’s cornucopia of books still lined the walls, and on the northern edge of the living room, the perfectly organized kitchen stood against the wall, minus a functional sink. The doors to the back bedrooms were closed, and when I saw them, and that small Monet between the doors, my stomach dropped.

I noticed Orson’s record player on the stool by the front door, along with the stack of jazz records he’d left behind. I would’ve put on a record, but there was no power, and it dawned on me that I should find the fuel supply and crank the generator before nightfall.

Beside the stove, I found what I was looking for — the white kerosene heater. I couldn’t find a corresponding can of kerosene, but when I lifted the heater, I heard a plentiful sloshing of fuel inside its tank. After dragging it into the living room and setting it before the black leather couch, I pressed the electric starter, and, to my surprise, the heater ignited on the first attempt. Warmth flooded the subfreezing cabin, and as the drafts of heat splashed at my face, I began removing the sweaters and sweatshirts that had kept me alive on that hike from the car to this cabin.

Leaving the pile of clothes on the floor, I sank down into the couch, unlaced my boots, and pulled the ice-encrusted shoes off my feet. I stripped the stiff socks, the khakis, sweats, and finally the wet long underwear that stuck to my legs. Below my knees, my skin had turned waxy white. I touched my pallid calves, and though they felt cold and hard like a corpse’s, the tissue underneath was still malleable. My feet looked much worse. The ends of my toes were tinged with blue, and when I pinched the soles of my feet, there was no sensation of pain or pressure.

I glanced out the window and then, still seeing nothing on the desert, walked into the kitchen. There was a large silver basin on the counter, its interior frosted with the remnants of unbleached flour. I took it out onto the front porch and filled it with snow. The top of the kerosene heater was a level metal plate, exposed directly to the glowing orange coils underneath. I set the bowl of snow on the plate and lay back on the couch to watch it melt.

As the pile of snow disappeared into the basin, I couldn’t shake the pavid feeling that being in this cabin fomented inside of me. I felt as if I’d come to my own wake and was standing before the casket, looking down into my lifeless face, u