Peter Clement - Mortal Remains

Glancing back over his shoulder and through the trees, Mark saw the man’s silhouetted form circle the car, then kneel where tracks would have been. The figure reached into his pocket, and, seconds later, a tiny beam of light shot out from his hand toward the ground.

Mark pressed ahead all the faster.

The floor of the forest sloped steeply upward, and his breathing quickly became labored. The trees overhead were old, big enough to have blocked the sun for the last hundred years, so there was little new undergrowth to ensnare him. But the rocks and wet leaves beneath the snow made traction difficult, and with each step forward he seemed to slide halfway back. Every now and then a branch caught him across the face, and the pain in his injured eye seared as hot as if a live coal were stuck in it.

But up he went, able to use the left eye by squinting the injured one closed. Having adapted to the dark, he could see enough to grab low-hanging branches and pull himself along whenever his feet started to skid.

Taking another glance backward, he saw the man with the rifle following his thin cone of light across the highway toward Mark’s first hiding place.

He kept going up, figuring he was now a hundred and twenty yards from the road and had probably climbed a hundred feet of elevation.

Two ridges lay ahead, each about five hundred feet high with a shallow valley between them, some of it open ground. But if he could reach the first ridge well ahead of the hunter, he could widen his lead going down the far slope, possibly even get out of rifle range. That might discourage his pursuer from following him.

His right eye, tearing profusely, clamped itself so tightly shut in reflex to the pain that he could barely keep his left one open. He had to use the fingers of his left hand to pry the lids apart. Even then he couldn’t manage more than a squint and found his field of vision cut in half.

He tried again to glance behind him. The man, little more than a dark shape in the open snow at the highway’s edge, stood directly below him now and looked right up to where he climbed.

He can’t see me, Mark thought, keeping his panic in check.

His tracker shouldered the rifle and started after him, once more following the thin beam of light, presumably playing it over his footprints.

Mark estimated he had a hundred-and-fifty-yard lead. Not much of an advantage over a bullet. He redoubled his efforts. Everything depended on how far down the other side of the ridge he could get before the gunman reached the peak and drew a bead on him.

His breathing grew more ragged, and his boots kept slipping, sapping energy from his legs until his calves burned. But at least he wasn’t cold. The exertion made him warm, so much so that as sweat began to cling to his shirt, he hardly noticed his wet pants. Now and then he scooped a handful of slush into his mouth and gulped it down between gasps of breath. The coolness actually felt good. But as soon as he stopped to rest, his damp clothes would accelerate heat loss and quicken the onset of hypothermia.

But as much as the trees blocked the wind down here, high overhead it roared through the branches, obliterating any noises the man below made. That better work both ways, he thought. Whenever one of the low limbs he grabbed as a handhold snapped off with a crack , he imagined it could be heard for a mile. He tried not to think of the man stopping, unshouldering his rifle, and aiming at the sound. He took yet another furtive look. Mark could no longer see him, not even the thin beam of light. But he could see his own trail, leading to him like a tracer bullet.

Up he went, his legs and arms aching from the effort. He could only hope the man behind him had as much trouble.

As the slope became steeper, more slippery, he had to reach directly in front of him to grab rocks and roots buried in the ground so as to propel himself upward. He mustn’t slip now, or he’d slide a lot more than a few steps, possibly all the way to the feet of his pursuer. He tested each handhold before actually gripping it, his exposed fingers aching with wet and cold, and kicked at every toehold to secure an extra half inch of footing.

He must be near the top, he told himself. The wind sounded louder. And some of what he crawled over became bare rock. In spots it became even too steep to hold an accumulation of snow, and he crawled over bare rock, part of a granite spine that ran the length of the crest. That meant no tracks. Mark felt a sudden burst of elation. If the top was just as bare, he could not only get ahead of the son of a bitch, but run along the ridge before starting down, then lose him altogether.

He hoisted himself over a ledge and stood on a shelf of stone in a full blast of icy cold. He’d made it. He also instantly started to freeze. His damp clothes flattened against his skin, and the chill cut through him as if he had nothing on. The worst were his fingers, which immediately cramped and curled into claws. But the stony ground beneath his feet, though coated with ice, had been blown clean of snow just as he’d hoped.

He quickly looked around, making sure his would-be assassin hadn’t somehow beaten him by taking a different route. To the right and left he saw only naked rock disappearing into the gloom. On the horizon in front of him, the wind was rolling back the cloud, exposing a dazzling strip of stars and a full moon low in the sky. He must get to the safety of the woods before it got any higher. Once it lit up the snowscape below, he’d be like a mouse running from a hawk in the clearings.

Huddled low and keeping his feet wide apart so as not to slip, he thrust his hands under his arms and scurried along the top of the ridge. After about a hundred yards he jumped down onto a bushy shallow ledge on the far side. He saw a gradual, snow-covered slope fifteen feet beneath him. Once there he would be a dozen strides from the trees. He’d need to smooth over any prints he left, then count on the wind to do the rest. With a bit of luck, the man behind him might have already lost the trail and not be able to spot it again.

He moved to ease himself over the rocky edge and lower himself to the ground when a movement in the darkness below, another fifty yards farther to his left, caught his eye.

He stood absolutely still.

Staring down into the shadows, he saw nothing more and thought he must have imagined it.

Until a shape darker than the woods crept toward him and quickly became a human form.

But it couldn’t be.

He had such a head start on the man. How could he be here already?

Choices raced through his mind. Should he scramble back down the other side? Stay crouched on the ledge? Maybe he hadn’t been seen yet. Or any second there’d be a bullet. He drew his breath, determined not to scream and beg.

The figure crossed about ten yards below him. Mark could easily see the dark outline of a rifle barrel held upward toward the sky. But the man’s head seemed turned toward the forest, cocked to one side as if he listened for something down there. Not once did he glance up where Mark lay crouched.

Was it the same person who’d first shot at him? Had he found a less steep way up after all? Or was it someone else? His build looked slimmer, though in the dark Mark couldn’t be sure. An accomplice of the man who’d pursued him, perhaps, lying in wait, knowing his partner would chase the prey up to him?

Whoever it was remained focused on the forest below, looking down the hill, away from the ridge.

Some accomplice.

Mark breathed as softly as he could. The cold continued to rip through him, and he started to shiver. He clamped his jaws closed to keep his teeth from chattering.

The man beneath him continued to listen and stare into the woods, the white vapor of his breath whipping into the night.