Bill Pronzini: Snowbound

He flung himself across the last few feet to the garage doors, banging hard against them with one shoulder. Gasping, he fumbled at the latch and got the doors open and shoved them wide against the powdery snow. He lurched inside. The odors of grease and winter dampness permeated the thick ebon interior, and Vince’s old Roadmaster gleamed dully in front of him. To the rear, Tribucci could make out the familiar shapes of tool-littered workbench and power saw and drill press, the chain-supported wooden storage platform which protruded from the upper back wall. He leaned against the car, used it to uphold the weight of his body as he shuffled around it toward the area beneath the suspended platform.

The snowmobile, beneath a dun-colored canvas tarp, sat parallel to the wall. With numb fingers he pulled the tarp off, thinking: Let there be gas in the tank. He caught hold of the plexiglass windshield with both hands, turned and dragged the machine out from under the platform. It moved easily across the smooth cement floor on its waxed skis and heavy roller treads. Tribucci laid his shoulder against the windshield, his hip against the edge of the cowl, and pushed the mobile past the Buick and out into the snow in front of the garage.

His vision now was obscured with sweat and shimmering black pain shadows. He pawed urgently at his eyes. When he could see again, he swung one leg over the Etha-foam seat, sat down, and braced his feet, knees up, on the narrow metal running boards on each side of the frame. Then he pressed his forehead against the top of the windshield and fumbled under the cowl, located the storage compartment, found the key in its magnetized metal case.

It seemed to take him minutes to get the key threaded into the ignition slot. He turned it finally, hit the electric starter button, and the engine coughed and didn’t catch and he thought, Oh, Christ, please! and pressed the button again-and this time the motor came to life in a low, throbbing whine.

Breath whistled through his nostrils. He took one of the Harrington amp; Richardson. 22s from his coat, the one which had not lain in the snow, and wedged it between his crotch and the padded seat, butt outward, where he could get at it instantly; but he left the safety on to guard against accidental discharge. Then he caught the handlebars, shifted into Forward, worked the hand throttle, and sent the snowmobile skimming at an angle across the yard and out onto Eldorado Street.

The jouncing, accelerated motion made razorlike lancinations slice through his chest, and his thoughts were sluggish, his reactions were sluggish. The wind hurled snow back against his face, distorting his vision again. He fought desperately to keep the machine on a steady course, to hold away the congealing red-black mist which had begun again to form inside his head.

Hang on, give me the strength to hang on…

And Tribucci swings the snowmobile around the corner onto Sierra Street, weaving erratically, straightening out again. His arms have taken on the weight of stone. Down the center of the street, beneath the darkened Christmas decorations mocked and made ludicrous by the bleak savagery of a nightmare, between wedges of light that reach out dully through broken doors and shattered and ice-frosted windows. Warm reddish black within, cold whitish black without; ominous shadows, the valley of shadows, Yea, though I go through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…

He comes past the Sport Shop then, and the church looms ahead of him through the now thinly sifting snowfall. He ducks his head against his left arm, to clear his vision again, as the snowmobile planes across Shasta Street. Cars in the parking lot all dark and icebound, nothing moving-take a chance. He bounces up over the sidewalk curbing-sharp cut of pain, pain and Cain, find Cain, get to Cain-and veers toward the southern front corner.

He sees something, something dark against the snow between Shasta Street and the north wall: man-figure, stopped, poised, not Cain, carrying something that looks like a sack.

The psycho, Tribucci knows instantly it is the psycho.

He makes an unconscious screaming-sobbing sound in his throat, wrenches the snowmobile back to the right. The psycho is running now, limpingly, toward the rear of the church, sack like an obscene caricature of Santa Claus’s toybag bouncing against one leg. His right arm crosses his body; the gun which is in his hand flashes: wild shot, missing both Tribucci and the snowmobile.

Leaden fingers fumble at the dashboard, locate the headlight knob, pull it out and twist it to high beam. Bright yellow cones jab glitteringly through the snowy darkness. Tribucci swerves left too abruptly and then overcorrects; the snowmobile begins to yaw. Get him, get him, run him down! and he tries to center the psycho in the headlights but seems to have no more control over the machine, no more control over his own bodily movements. Breath heaves out in out in through his open mouth, pain boils in his chest, weakness spreads tangibly and the red-black mist grows and twists through his mind like a helix, no hold on, and his left hand slips off the handlebar throttle, his right undergoes a paroxysm and jerks forward and sends the snowmobile sliding sideways toward the church, the helix widens blackly and he can’t hold on any longer, he can’t hold on any

When Cain first saw the blob of motive darkness coming unevenly along the center of Sierra Street, he did not know what to think. He stared at it through the thinning flurries: not quite distinguishable, the fuzzy patches of light from the buildings on either side failed to reach it. Stiffened joints protested painfully as he pulled his feet under him and flattened his upper torso across the layer of freezing snow which covered the Mercury’s deck.

Drawing nearer, the blob began to take on shape and substance-and when it passed the Sport Shop, Cain recognized it as a snowmobile. But the driver, crouched low behind the snow-speckled windshield, was just another heavy shadow. The psycho? It didn’t make sense that he would be coming so openly, coming on a snowmobile… Weaving, the machine angled toward the parking lot on a direct line to where Cain was hidden; the whining sound of its engine reached his ears. He still could not make out the driver, but he was thinking then: Tribucci? Whoever was piloting the snowmobile either knew nothing at all about handling one or else was hurt, badly hurt-Tribucci?

Cain saw the mobile lurch again, due west; instead of coming into the lot, it was going to parallel the north wall. When it was fifty feet away, abreast of the Mercury, he was finally able to make out the driver in dark profile: wearing a cap, wearing what appeared to be a women’s cap, wearing a light-colored overcoat. Tribucci! Relief, and a sense of sharp exigency welled inside him-and moving spontaneously, he pushed out from behind the car, ran along its side with his left hand upraised in frenetic signal.

The snowmobile’s dual headlights snapped on.

What’s he doing, what’s he doing? Cain thought, and ran another five steps; but Tribucci did not see him. The machine wobbled left, wobbled right, made a sudden right-angle turn toward the church, swirling a quadrant of light, and tilted up on its near side. Tribucci spilled off the seat, the howl of the motor cut off as it stalled. The snowmobile shuddered to a halt, full on its side, in a thin cumulus of dislodged snow.

Cain saw all this running, cutting toward the corner, coming out into the open-saw then the dark figure forty yards away, twenty yards from the rear corner, and knew why Tribucci had put on the headlights and realized with the abrupt taste of ashes in his mouth just how foolish his own actions had been. But it was too late now to reverse direction, the psycho could see him just as plainly, and without hesitation he threw himself forward and down in a flat running dive. He landed on his belly and left forearm, keeping the Walther up-heard a buzzing slap in the snow to one side of him, the muted sound of a shot. Frantically he propelled himself toward the snowmobile on elbows and knees, putting the machine between himself and the other man. A hole appeared in the plexiglass windshield, spurting ice crystals, making a loud cracking noise; a third bullet spanged somewhere into the undercarriage. He came up against the cowl, arched his body around the curved line of the windshield, and braced his right forearm in his left palm.