Bill Pronzini: Snowbound

Pain lanced white-hot in Kubion’s leg and groin and lower belly, and ice granules filled his open mouth and pricked like slivers in his lungs. He came up finally on his buttocks, coughing, sucking breath, clawing at his eyes. The snowmobile, ten yards away, was swinging around once more, and he heard the shrill howl of its engine as the single high-beam light struck him, again half blinded him.

Inside his head the impulse screamed and screamed and screamed-snowmobile hick son of a bitch with snowmobile Jesus Christ why won’t things stop screwing up ten feet tall you can’t do this to me kill you kill your snowmobile kill you all kill-and he twisted over onto his right knee, left leg useless, bones broken and grating, pain pulsing, and brought his right arm up and he didn’t have the automatic, he had lost the frigging gun, and the screaming was a rage of sound, the snowmobile’s engine was a rage of sound, glaring yellow eye hurtling down on him and he pitched his body flat and rolled and rolled but then the screaming in his head and the screaming of the machine blended into one and a new, supreme agony exploded in the small of his back, surging metal hurled him broken-doll-like toward the church wall. His head struck the icy wood jarringly, more agony bursting like shrapnel through his brain. He lifted onto his right hand and tried to stand up, tried to just kneel, but his body was all searing pain, paralyzed by pain.

Six feet away the snowmobile had come to a stop, its one headlight shining over his head, and dimly he saw Cain rise up out of it, saw the gun in his gloved fingers as he came slowly forward. Spittle drooled from the corners of Kubion’s mouth, freezing there, and he thought You won’t shoot Eskimo snowmobile shit not face to face; began screaming aloud then, screaming, “Won’t shoot hick bastard won’t do it oh you fucking-”

Cain shot him three times in the head at point-blank range.

They heard inside the church the initial exchange of shots, and they heard the accelerated whine of the snowmobile’s engine, and they heard those final three, close-spaced reports beyond the south wall. A kind of breathless paralysis succeeded the first and carried them through the second, but when the last came and was followed by silence from without, the thin edge of panic finally crumbled away.

Bodies massed confusedly toward the front; there was a rising torrent of sounds and cries. Ann’s newborn daughter began to wail. Gibbering, Frank McNeil stumbled onto the pulpit and tried to force his way into the vestry past Joe Garvey; Garvey threw him against the wall, hit him in the stomach in a release of pent-up emotion, and McNeil went down gasping and moaning and lay with his hands over his head. Coopersmith stood back hard against the entrance doors, arms spread, and shouted, “Stay calm, for God’s sake stay calm, we don’t know what’s happening, we’ve got enough people hurt as it is!”

They didn’t listen to him; they did not even hear him. They had lived in fear of the worst for all the long, long hours, and they expected the worst now. Have to get out! their faces said. Going to be killed anyway, have to get out…

Heavy footfalls on the stairs outside-and then a voice, a voice wearily raised no more than a few decibels above normal but still loud enough so that almost everyone could hear it and recognize it. That voice did what no other but one could have: it froze them all in place again, it stilled them, it transformed terror into incipient relief.

“This is Cain,” the voice said. “This is Cain, I’ve got the key and I’m going to open the doors, give me room.”

Key scraping the lock as Coopersmith swept them back, clearing space; doors opening.

Cain stood there with his feet braced apart and the limp form of John Tribucci cradled close to his chest. “They’re dead, all three of them,” he said. “You’re free now, they’re dead.”

And the people of Hidden Valley surged around him like waves around a pinnacle of rock.

For the first few seconds after consciousness returned fuzzy and disjointed, Tribucci did not know where he was. Someone was holding his hand, chafing it briskly, and there were faint garbled voices, and there was softness beneath him and warmth over and around him. He had no pain, only a tingling seminumbness everywhere except in his face and in the hand that was being rubbed. Cain! he thought immediately, and made a noise far down in his throat, and wanted to sit up. Gentle hands held him still.

He fluttered his eyes open. Bright shimmering grayness, but then dissolving and images beginning to take shape-pale blue walls, fluorescent ceiling lights, face hovering over him as if disembodied and saying words that now he could comprehend: “Johnny, it’s all right. You’re in my emergency room, son, it’s all right.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, opened them again, and this time he could see more clearly. His throat worked. “Webb?”

“Yes, it’s Webb.”

“You… you’re out of the church…”

“All of us, Johnny-we’re all safe. Cain too.”

“Thank God. But how? How did Cain…?”

“There’s no time for explanations now. Sally and I are going to put you under anesthesia; you’ve got two bullets in you, and we’ve got to get them out. But we wanted you awake first, there’s something you have to know.”

Ann, he thought suddenly. “Oh God, Ann, what about Ann, she-”

“She’s fine, she’s upstairs in my room; I gave her something to make her sleep. Johnny, listen carefully: Ann is fine. When she found out in the church what you and Cain had gone to do, she went into labor. And she gave birth; she gave birth there in the church to a healthy little girl. Do you understand, Johnny? Ann’s fine and the baby’s fine, you’ve got a daughter.”

The fuzziness would not release his thoughts, but he understood, yes, and he tried to smile, lips cracking and stretching faintly. “A daughter,” he said. “Ann’s fine and we have a daughter.”

“That’s right, that’s good. You’ve got everything to live for now. You’re badly hurt, but you’re going to live, you’re going to keep on fighting; you’re not going to stop fighting for a second, Johnny, do you hear me?”

“Not for a second,” he said.

Edwards sighed softly and his face retreated, and Sally Chilton’s wavered into Tribucci’s vision. He felt the sting of a needle in the crook of his left arm.

“She looks like Ann, doesn’t she?” he asked.

“Just like Ann,” Sally said. “Wait until you see her.”

Tribucci felt himself beginning to drift. “Marika,” he said, “we’re going to name her Marika.” Drifting, drifting-and his last thought before the anesthesia took him under was that if it had been a boy, they would surely have called him Zachary…

The Reverend Peter Keyes waited in the adjacent anteroom, his now professionally, if hurriedly, bandaged right hand resting in his lap, left hand clutching his Bible. The shot of morphine Sally had given him minutes ago, to ease the pain, had also made him drowsy; but he would not sleep yet-not yet.

After a time, eyes tightly closed, he raised the Bible and held it against his breast. “Oh Lord my rock,” he said aloud, softly, “thank you for not forsaking us all…”

In the parlor at the front of the house, Coopersmith sat in silent vigil with Ellen and with Vince and Judy.

As soon as Edwards came in to tell them Johnny was going to live-and he would tell them that, a man who had been through what Tribucci had would not be allowed to die now — Coopersmith thought he would find Cain and try to put into words some of what he felt in his heart. He had never had a feeling of love for a man before, other than his two sons; but now, tonight, he loved both Cain and John Tribucci. All the hate and all the pressure and all the terror were gone; tomorrow there would be pain and sorrow when he woke and remembered and saw the ravaged face of a Hidden Valley that would never be quite the same again-yet for what was left of this day, he would have nothing except love inside him.