Nevada Barr - Winter Study

Anna went over like a stone, Bob’s weight pinning her knees to her chest, her hands trapped between thighs and breasts. Air gusted from her lungs and she couldn’t get it back. Bob’s hands scrabbled at her head, trying to work under the layers to her throat to strangle her. Hot blood or snot or spittle hit her face. Moans and grunts, expelled on breath like sulfur, burned her nostrils. Like a trapped animal, Anna howled. Then she bit. Catching his nose between her teeth, she clamped down and hung on. Bob roared and thrashed, his fists pummeling her head. But for the hood, she would have been knocked senseless. Salty liquid filled her mouth, streamed down her throat, but she didn’t unlock her jaws. With a jerk, Bob freed himself. A chunk of his nose was still in her mouth. She spit it into his face. He reared back and her knees were free; her hands were free.

The flares were still clutched in her fingers. Striking one against the other, she heard the hiss of red fire and pushed them up into Bob’s gut. The down of his coat took the flames, then he screamed high and wild as the fire cut into his body. Anna pushed them deeper. He rolled away, pawing at his middle. Then he was up and running. Crazed with the fire in his belly, he crashed into the trunk of a tree several yards away, then fell. Screams turned to cries and cries turned to silence. Finally the only sound was the hissing of the flares, ships’ flares designed to burn underwater, under blood and flesh.

The smell of it sickened her. For a long time, she lay where she was, curled up like a sow bug, the taste of Bob Menechinn in her mouth and her mind. It was hard to remember why she lay like this, where she was and who she had killed. Presumably killed. Her eyes drifted closed and she began to fall. Through the rush of the canyon walls flashing by in her brain, she heard a growl. Bob had come to his feet, a human torch; he staggered toward her, arms outstretched, fire streaming from his hands.

With a lurch that triggered the pain in her shoulder, Anna came awake. Bob was where he had fallen. She’d gone to sleep. If she fell asleep again, she would freeze to death. More out of the habit of surviving than a force of will, she bunched her legs under her and, using the tree trunk, climbed to her feet.

Menechinn was dead. There’d be no last-minute rising from the jaws of death to make one last stand for the final scene. “Thankyoubabyjesus,” Anna muttered. He lay on his side, his hands hidden in the melted, blackened ruin of his coat where they’d clawed at the fire consuming his insides. The front and back of his parka were tarry messes of bodily fluids and goose down and synthetic fabric.

For a while, Anna stayed, looking at the wreck that had been, at least nominally, human. The sight of the damage she’d done didn’t please or displease her. It had taken time and pain to hobble the few yards to where he’d finally collapsed, and she hadn’t the energy to move away. She spit and spit again, not from disrespect – once one killed a man, there was little point in lesser forms of malice – she wanted the taste of him out of her mouth.

She also wanted his coat to keep herself warm, but hadn’t the strength to wrestle the garment off the body. Much of it would be melted to his skin. Its value wasn’t worth the calories it would take to harvest it. A story she’d read when she was a teenager flitted into her mind. To keep from freezing to death in a blizzard, a man had killed his horse, cut it open and crawled inside.

“Gross!” she said. She left coat and corpse unmolested. His radio had been melted, the leather case burned away, the buttons a mass of plastic still hot to the touch. Anna made her way painfully back to the Bearcat. Beyond hurting or thinking or much caring, she rolled herself in the army blanket, then the blue plastic tarp, leaned back against the snowmobile and let the winter coalesce around her.

“I told you not to breathe into your sleeping bag.”

Robin’s voice drifted into Anna’s cloudy brain and she smiled. Her face might not have moved, but, in her mind, she welcomed the young woman. It was good to have her company again.

A soft warmth crept under the bundling around Anna’s throat, and she wondered if, unlike the depictions in literature and lore, Death did not have a cold and bony hand but one warm and open, a kind and relieving touch welcoming saints and sinners alike, taking away the pain of the suffering, the cravings of the addict, the sorrow of the bereft.

“She’s not dead.” The warmth receded, and Anna knew she’d flunked the test. Her bell wasn’t tolling. Death had not come for her.

A new blessing came in its stead. The warmth that touched so briefly at her throat spread over her face. “Anna, you’re not dead,” Robin’s voice told her. “Since you’re not dead, you have to wake up or you will be dead. Come on, wake up.”

Anna opened her eyes. Robin’s hands were on her cheeks, her face only inches away, so close it was hard to bring into focus. “You’re not dead either?” Anna asked.

“Just hungover,” Robin said.

It took Anna’s cold brain a minute to put two thoughts together.

“Ketamine.”

“Yeah. Adam freaked. He was afraid what happened to his wife was going to happen to me. He got hold of Gavin and Gavin came and took me to Feldtmann tower.”

“She only looks light,” said a voice. Robin’s face moved away, and Anna saw the speaker, a tall, slender, Byronesque man with the deep-set green eyes of a poet offset by the square jaw of a pugilist.

“The wog,” Anna croaked.

“I am the wog,” Gavin said and smiled, a sweet blink of teeth and good nature. “Robin and me and Adam.”

“Adam’s dead,” Anna said. The words should have meant more to her than they did. By the shock she saw in the faces of Robin and Gavin, she knew she had told them a horrible truth. To her, it seemed so long ago, hundreds of years. One didn’t cry over history, didn’t break down when telling the third-grade class that George Washington was dead, Napoleon lost at Waterloo or Atlanta was put to the torch.

“Bob Menechinn’s dead,” Anna said, to see if the news felt any different. “I killed him.”

Robin and Gavin did not react with shock this time, just a minute freezing of the facial muscles. Robin put her deliciously warm hands back on Anna’s face. “You poor thing,” she said as Gavin said:

“Did you kill Adam too?”

Anna tried to remember all those thousands of years ago. “I don’t think so,” she said finally.

“I killed Katherine,” Gavin said.

“You did not!” Robin cried.

“You thought I did.”

Robin reached up a hand toward Gavin and he took it, his glove swallowing the slender fingers and palm.

“Put your gloves on,” Anna said.

“I’ll try Ridley again,” Robin said and rose to her feet. “Dispatch has been trying to raise him for half an hour,” she told Anna. “Gavin and I were out skiing. We called in as soon as we heard.”

“Blew your cover,” Anna said. She was too fog-brained to count how many laws and park regulations the two of them had broken, but it was enough to land them in jail or the poorhouse if the judge levied the full penalties and fines.

“You were in trouble,” Robin said simply.

“Gloves,” Anna said so she wouldn’t cry and watched as the biotech obediently put her gloves back on before using the radio.

Gavin squatted beside Anna. He was graceful, the towering length of him folding neatly, effortlessly. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

“Dislocated shoulder and broken or badly bruised ankle,” Anna replied. Said succinctly, it didn’t sound all that bad, not like it should have. She decided she’d keep the limping and weeping and whining parts to herself. Why not? The witnesses were all dead.