The Big Dark

  No idea how far I had to go to get there before nightfall. There were no recognizable landmarks on the long, swooping curves of the highway, at least not recognizable to me. The green highway signs indicated towns and villages I had never bothered to notice when we cruised by in our comfortable SUV. Now and then I glimpsed a distant silo poking out of the snow, or a cluster of homes with smoking chimneys, but I wasn’t tempted to investigate.

  Stick to the highway, that was my plan. Ignore anything that looks like a shortcut, because you might lose your way. Give a wide berth to the big, frozen lumps that must be abandoned cars and trucks, buried under the snow. Think about where you’re going, not where you’ve been, and don’t stop until you get there.

  Push, stride, purr.

  Push, stride, purr.

  Not too fast, not too slow. Keep it going. Keep moving, Charlie Cobb, and you’ll get there, you’ll make it.

  Miles to go before I sleep. Who said that? Must have been Becca, some poem or song she likes.

  Don’t think about Becca, don’t think about Mom, don’t think about the wrecked plane or the frozen dead. Don’t think about anything but where you’re heading. Stay on track, stick with the plan.

  Push, stride. Push, stride. Glide when you can, push when you can’t.

  Onward, onward, never look back—unless something catches up.

  And then it did.

  Coyotes.

  A whole pack of them, whining for my blood.

  Okay, maybe it wasn’t a whole pack, but there were at least four coyotes on my trail. Hunting me, that was obvious. Thin and hungry—starving, it looked like—with mangy, reddish-brown coats and long snouts and yellow eyes. And teeth. Lots of teeth.

  The closest coyote was about thirty feet away. Weighed maybe forty pounds. He was the leader, and the others yipped and whined as they cowered behind him, as if asking for instructions, or permission to attack.

  Coyotes will run down a deer. Why not a human?

  I faced them with a ski pole in my hands, ready to fend them off, or die trying, which seemed a distinct possibility.

  First thought: Wish I had a gun. Could have gotten hold of a hunting rifle easy, but guns are heavy and I was traveling light. Mostly I didn’t want to give Bragg and his boys an excuse to shoot me. And the fact is, these coyotes were so desperate I’m not sure they’d have cared if one of them got shot. Before I had a chance to aim a second time, they’d be on me, tearing me to pieces.

  Make some noise, Charlie. Show ’em who’s boss.

  I lunged with the point of the ski pole, screaming. Not words, just screaming.

  The coyotes lowered their hindquarters and crept backward, tails down, whining and yipping. But they didn’t run away. And the boss coyote backed up the least, and very soon crept forward.

  Low to the ground, ready to charge.

  Fool. That piece of jerky.

  Of course. Their starving noses had picked up the scent, and it was driving them crazy.

  “HA!” I shouted, stabbing the pole in the air. “GET BACK! YOU WANT IT? I GOT IT!”

  But instead of backing away, all four coyotes dropped their shrunken bellies to the snow, crouching.

  Waiting.

  They were thinking. Trying to figure me out. Calculating how to get me down without getting hurt. How to tear me apart and find the source of the smell.

  Slowly, keeping one hand on the outthrust pole, I shifted the pack from my shoulder. Slipped my hand inside.

  Coyotes are famous for being smart, and the hungry yellow eyes studied my every move. Does the human have a weapon? Can he kill us before we kill him? How do we get what we want and stay alive?

  Inside the pack I carefully opened the Ziploc bag and dug into it, filling my fist with about half the contents.

  “Good doggy,” I said in a good-doggy voice. Which was probably stupid. These weren’t dogs. Not even close.

  “Good doggy.”

  They lifted their noses, baring their teeth.

  I flung the handful of jerky outward, as far as it would go, scattering slices of smoked venison over the snow. Boss coyote growled a warning: the food was his, they were not to touch it until he ate his fill.

  The three smaller coyotes held still for a heartbeat, but they couldn’t help themselves. They were starving. Emitting little yips of unbearable excitement, they attacked the jerky slices, gobbling up chunks of snow and meat, shrieking at the others to stay away, this is mine mine mine.

  The boss coyote hadn’t moved. His eyes burned with fear and hatred. He knew I had more in my pack and he wanted it, every bite, all for himself.

  He charged. I’d never seen anything so fast, but I was already in motion, triggered by the hunger in his eyes.

  My hand swept out of the pack, tossing the Ziploc high in the air.

  The boss coyote leapt, caught it in his mouth in midair, and before he hit the ground the other three were on him, fighting for the bag.

  Go. Go. Go.

  Now was my chance, while they were distracted, fighting among themselves. I jammed the poles in the snow and pushed with all my might, heading down the slope. Striding with everything I had, picking up speed. Scared to death they’d run me down and tear me to pieces like that bag of jerky.

  But they didn’t. And when I finally dared to turn my head and look, the highway was empty behind me, and the only thing I could hear was the blood pounding in my ears.

  Never skied so hard in my life, or so fast. And to tell the truth, I never felt so alive.

  So I kept pushing as if my life depended on it, and maybe it did.

  Pushing until my legs felt like rubber and my arms were wet spaghetti. And then I pushed some more, because the sun kept getting lower in the sky.

  Truth is, I was chasing daylight. If worst came to worst I had Gronk’s super-duper sleeping bag, but my plan didn’t include sleeping out in the open. Not with packs of starving coyotes roaming around, and who knows what other creatures. Bobcats, possibly. Never heard of a bobcat hunting anything as big as a person, but if humans were acting crazy, why not animals, too?

  I had no clear idea of how many miles yet to go. Made me wish I’d paid more attention the last time we drove down to the hospital, when Mom had an appointment at the clinic to check her blood levels and stuff. In my mind I saw us getting off the highway at this big cloverleaf where the roads all merged. Mom pointing out the gold dome of the statehouse.

  The hospital wasn’t far from that exit. Less than a mile.

  My plan was to get to the cloverleaf and then ask for directions. Concord is pretty big, so there was bound to be someone who knew where the hospital was, right?

  Seemed as if I should be there already, but there was no sign of a city. Just trees and skinny forests on both sides of the highway, mile after mile. Sometimes the trees cleared out for a mile or two, and I was striding through fields of snow that threatened to submerge the highway. The downward incline had become very slight. Couldn’t just crouch over my skis and glide, like when I first started out. I had to work for every yard.

  Push, stride. Push, stride. The skis were no longer purring. Not enough speed.

  Late in the day I got so exhausted it almost felt like I was skiing through a dream. Like the world was fading all around me, blending into the darkening sky, and the frozen trees were wriggling white fingers. Snow-laden spruce branches swayed in the wind, whispering, What’s your hurry? Take it easy, rest awhile.

  I thought of my father, downhill skiing on a beautiful bright winter day, when a freak snowstorm came on so thick and fast that he lost his way and hit a tree. Were voices calling him? What did they say? Did he listen?

  So when I heard the voice in the distance, it was like part of my waking dream. The trees trying to fool me. Then it got louder, a long plaintive cry. “Haaaaalllllllllp! Haaaalllllllllp!”

  I stopped, planted my poles, and lifted the earflaps on my thick wool hat.

  There it was again, but fainter, smaller. “Haalllp … haa
lllp.”

  Not the trees, and not a bird or a coyote. A human crying for help. Getting weaker with each cry.

  I cupped my hands and shouted, “Where! Are! You!”

  “Haalllp! Over here!”

  A little stronger and even more urgent. The temperature was dropping quickly as the sun went down. I could feel it on my face and in my lungs. Cold and getting colder.

  I pushed off the highway in the direction of the voice. There was an embankment along the road that had been obscuring my view. Probably made the voice harder to hear, too. When I got to the top of the rise the first thing I saw was a square flicker of yellow light. A lantern in a window. I could just make out the shape of a small house and a few slanted sheds and smell the aroma of a wood fire.

  “HAAALLLP!”

  He was there by the woodpile, half-buried in chunks of firewood. An old man in a parka with a fur hood. Inside the hood, a weathered, hatchet-shaped face with a white chin beard and worried eyes.

  “Are you dere, you? Can’t see too good. Broke my glasses, might be my leg, too.”

  “I’m here. Let me give you a hand.”

  “What’s your name, you?”

  “Charlie Cobb.”

  I stepped out of the skis, planted them in the snow, and helped him crawl out from under the collapsed woodpile. He was a skinny little guy, trembling with exertion, but with my help he managed to stand and test his leg.

  “Not broke,” he said. “Tray bon!”

  I helped him limp to the little house, and when we pushed open the door an old woman began to keen, crying with joy to see him alive.

  And that’s how I met Pete Boncoeur and his sweet wife, Louise.

  Seeing an old geezer smother his wife with kisses, normally that would be extremely icky, but this was sort of okay, considering the circumstances. The wife, Louise, was confined to a wheelchair. She had been watching out the window when the woodpile collapsed on her husband, and thought he was a goner. Must have felt helpless, stuck in that chair.

  Anyhow, they insisted I stay for dinner. And they didn’t have to ask twice. Louise had a pot of stew warming on the woodstove, and it smelled delicious.

  “Civet de lapin!” Mr. Boncoeur exclaimed, inhaling the aroma. “The stew what I like best is the rabbit stew!”

  Rabbit stew. Never had it, never wanted to, but suddenly I was hungry enough to chew my own knuckles. Hey, if I was willing to eat Bambi jerky, why not Easter Bunny stew?

  We introduced ourselves over the meal, and the old man explained that he and Louise had come down from Quebec when they were young. At first to work in the shoe mills, and later to run a chainsaw repair service and a woodlot. His real name was Patrice but everybody called him Pete. They had a son who lived not far away, two daughters downstate, and several grandchildren. Louise took a fall a year ago and damaged her spine, which explained the wheelchair.

  They wanted to hear my story, too, and when I told them about my journey down the mountain, Pete Boncoeur leapt up, astonished. “No! True word?” he said, tugging on his wispy chin beard. “You come that far in one day? A boy your age?”

  “Most of it was downhill.”

  “Even so. Thirty-five miles, that’s a beauty!”

  Turns out Concord was fifteen miles farther along the highway. So there was no way I could have made it from Harmony to the hospital in one day as I had planned. The Boncoeurs peppered me with a lot more questions, and even though I don’t usually like talking with strangers, I found myself spilling the whole deal. What happened that first night when the lights went out, and then the Superette getting torched, and Reggie Kingman pretending to have a radio connection to the outside world, and the bodies in the trees, and me and the coyotes, and by the time I paused to catch a breath, their eyes were bugging out.

  “Louise, ma chère, did you hear? Coyotes! Smart you did that, Charlie Cobb, throw him that jerky!”

  “I guess.”

  “This a brave thing you do for your mama.”

  “She’s gonna kill me when I get back.”

  “Ha! Maybe not. So, what next? You find the hospital and get this medicine, then what? Snowshoe back home? All the way up la montagne?”

  “That’s my plan. I know it’ll take longer going up than it did coming down, but I’m a good hiker.”

  The old couple exchanged a secret smile, like they thought I was crazy but were too polite to say so.

  * * *

  It was warm and cozy next to the stove. Soon as I closed my eyes I dove into sleep like an airplane losing power. In my dreams coyotes tried to burn me with their yellow eyes, and I was skiing hard, trying to catch up with my father, but I never did, because he kept vanishing over the horizon like a sun that never quite set.

  Worried dreams, anxious dreams.

  I woke up very early the next morning to the smell of frying bacon and the sound of Mrs. Boncoeur singing as she prepared breakfast. Something in French that I couldn’t understand, except that it was a happy song, a morning kind of song. Her husband was trying to help her cook, and she kept shooing him away, like it was a game they’d been playing all their lives.

  It was amazing how well she got around that little kitchen, spinning her wheelchair from the gas range to the insulated coolers to the woodstove. Pouring just-perked coffee into big mugs, adding evaporated milk and sugar. Making a ton of home fries and onions in an iron skillet, and cracking eggs into another pan with steady, clever hands. Oh yeah, and frying up thin pancakes dusted with cinnamon and drenched in warm maple syrup.

  Crêpes, she called them. Quebec style. My mom was a really excellent cook, but I never in my life tasted anything so good as breakfast from Mrs. Boncoeur’s kitchen.

  “Mange pour la vie, mon cher! Eat for life! Eat enough to get where you going and back.”

  I stuffed my face until I was full to bursting. Probably consumed enough calories to circumnavigate the world. Between that and the coffee—Mrs. Boncoeur called it café au lait—I was roaring to go. Mom wouldn’t allow me to drink full-strength caffeinated coffee—not until I was fifteen, she said—and I could see why: it made me feel like a rocket ready to blast off.

  Before I got back on my skis, I restacked the woodpile and carried as much kindling and firewood inside the house as would fit. The Boncoeurs kept thanking me—merci, merci—and I kept saying it was nothing, and really it wasn’t any big deal, but they insisted that they wanted to repay the favor.

  How they intended to do that was far from clear. Probably just being polite.

  Mrs. Boncoeur waved good-bye from the window, but her husband followed me out into the yard and made me promise to stop and see them on the way home.

  “You help us, we help you,” he said, squeezing my hands through the mittens. “Stop by with us, we help you on your way. Promise you? Cross-your-heart promise?”

  I promised. Thinking, What can a couple of old geezers do for me that I can’t do for myself, much as they might want to help?

  Little did I know.

  Things started going wrong about a mile down the road. For one thing the weather had changed and the temperature was dropping by the minute. The wind mask helped, but the ice-cold air made it hard to breathe. And then when I did get warmed up and started making a little progress, the wind suddenly changed direction and increased velocity. Blowing right in my face and slowing me to a crawl.

  I swear, if I hadn’t kept fighting for every stride, the wind would have been pushing me backward. What did Mr. Mangano call it? The polar vortex? Believe me, after several hours of fighting the freezing wind, I had juicier names for it.

  Took me most of the day to cover those fifteen miles to Concord. When I finally made it to that cloverleaf, nothing looked like I remembered. Partly that’s because there were high banks of ice-covered snow blocking the view from the highway level—it was like slogging through a wind tunnel—and partly because when I did get a glimpse of the city, the buildings somehow looked wrong.

  Took me a while to figure
out why: a lot of them were scorched. Not burned to the ground, but blackened by interior fires, leaving behind sooty stains that made the empty windows look like raccoon eyes.

  The city looked half-dead.

  Only thing that stopped me from crying was knowing that tears would make my eyeballs freeze solid. First thing was to get down off the highway and out of the wind. Maybe find someplace to warm up and ask directions to the hospital.

  Rather than loop around the exit ramp—must have been a mile—I took off the skis, put them over my shoulder, and clambered down the embankment. Had to slide partway on my butt, but managed to get to city street level without breaking a leg or ankle.

  Out of the wind, the stink of the fire was even stronger. There were big lumps everywhere along the streets—must have been hundreds of vehicles buried under the snow and ice. But what I noticed most was what wasn’t there.

  Where was everybody?

  Maybe there was a clue across the street, where a good-sized convenience store had been boarded up with sheets of plywood. Spray-painted on the plywood, in bright orange letters three feet high:

  LOOTERS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT

  Below that someone had added a skull and crossbones, and the warning:

  OWNER SHOOTS FIRST, GOD ASKS QUESTIONS LATER

  I wondered if there might be a map of the city in the store, something looters wouldn’t bother stealing, but decided it wasn’t worth the risk of finding out. I’d just have to locate the hospital on my own.

  I picked a direction and started walking, skis over my shoulder. No way to ski down these lumpy streets anyhow. And it was a relief not to be stretching my legs quite so much.

  A couple blocks later I passed a Laundromat. The plate-glass windows were missing and snow had drifted deep inside, covering most of the washers and dryers. Sprayed on the wall: 24-HOUR CURFEW and BEGGARS NOT WELCOME and IF YUR FROM AWAY GO AWAY.

  Friendly place.

  A few more blocks and I came upon a modern motel complex set back from the street. I smelled kerosene burning, and firewood, and the snow had melted from parts of the roof, so it had to be warm inside, or at least above freezing. There was a motel sign in the empty parking lot, covered up with a blue tarp, and a single word sprayed on the tarp, in big drippy letters: FULL.