Snowbound

Twenty-Two

John Tribucci was still alive.

He was alive because the bullets which had entered his chest had both missed vital organs-one chipping the left collarbone and one lodging against a right upper rib-and because of the two vicious kicks in the side Kubion had delivered just after the shooting. Shock had been responsible for the red-black haze, the initial unconsciousness; but if it had not been for the kicks, the freezing wind and snow would have prevented him from coming to and eventually have done the job the bullets failed to do.

The sudden pain in his side brought him out of it gradually, into a vague awareness of where he was and what had happened, and he did not move perceptibly or make any sound. He lay there at first feeling only the cold and the pain in his side where he had been kicked and a bitter hollow helplessness, half expecting a final bullet, the coup de grace, that he would never really feel or hear. Instead, there was the audible crunching of steps going away from him-not far, it seemed, just up to the garage wall a few yards distant, but far enough for Tribucci to begin to taste faint hope. His thoughts cleared somewhat then, and he clung with silent desperation to the threads of consciousness, giving thanks that he had fallen with his face turned downward against one arm, so that each thin expulsion of breath went into the snow and did not dilate upward in a telltale white vapor.

In his wounded and cold-stiffened condition, he knew it would be suicidal to go after the second. 22 revolver in his left coat pocket or the knife strapped to his leg, or to make any sort of movement at all, while the psycho remained in the vicinity. He waited, playing dead-and kept on waiting. Pain began to seep through the numbness in his chest, muted at first but gathering a pulsing intensity; he was aware of the faint cold stickiness of blood on his upper torso.

And then, above the cry of the wind, he thought he heard steps crackling again, retreating to the south. But he was not completely sure, and still he kept his body immobile. One or five or ten more minutes ebbed away. He began to feel a kind of torpid warmth, lying there in the snow, and that was a certain sign you were on your way to freezing to death; he could not wait any longer, if he didn’t move very soon now he would never move at all.

Tribucci forced his eyes open into slits, blinking the lids free of ice flakes, and then turned his head slowly up and around. He could see all right; the haziness was gone. It was snowing less heavily now, giving him greater visibility than he had had earlier, and there was no one at the garage wall and appeared to be no one to the south along Placer. When he had worked his head around to look to the north, he saw nothing in that direction either.

He got his hands under him and lifted himself slowly, weakly, into a kneeling position, setting his teeth against the rising agony in his chest. The depression in the snow where he had lain was spotted darkly with blood, but most of the fluid had been contained inside his clothing, caking his undershirt to his body. Trembling with cold and enervation, he lifted one leg and planted his shoe firmly and heaved upward onto his feet; staggered, fell to one knee again; pushed upward a second time and groped his way to the garage wall. He leaned against it heavily, panting.

How much time had passed? Tribucci dragged his left arm up and looked at his watch, and it was seven thirty-seven. More than an hour since he had left Cain, three-quarters of an hour since he had come out of Vince’s house across Eldorado. He swallowed into a constricted throat and tried to collect his thoughts into coherent order.

The psycho knew now that at least one person had got out of the church, and he had to be thinking that maybe there were more as well. He would head there, then, he wouldn’t keep on reconning the partner who’d been running away from him-and maybe that one would make for the church as well. Cain would have realized by now that something had happened, too much time had elapsed for him to think otherwise, and he would be extra-cautious; but so would the runner and so would the psycho, particularly the psycho.

Tribucci sleeved snow and chilled sweat from his face, breathing rackingly. I’ve got to get to the church, he thought, and I’ve got to get there fast: warn Cain, join him in a stand. There might still be a little time, but not enough for him to attempt the trek on foot; too dangerous with the psycho’s whereabouts unknown, the runner’s whereabouts unknown, and the frigid wind and snow would sap too much of his remaining strength. He had to do something overt, then; there just wasn’t any other choice.

Take a car; a car was fast and direct, and it would give him some protection as well. Vince’s Buick? It was in the garage across Eldorado-but God he didn’t have a key for it, and he wasn’t enough of a mechanic to be able to jump the ignition wires. His own car was at the church, he and Ann and Vince and Judy had gone in that this morning. Was there another vehicle in the village somewhere that might have the keys in it? He could not think of one, there might not be any, and he would waste precious time, too much time, if he Snowmobile, he thought.

Vince’s snowmobile.

It, too, was in his brother’s garage, and the key for it was kept in a storage compartment under the cowl; friends were always borrowing the machine with Vince’s carte blanche permission and he felt it was simpler to keep the key there than on his person. It was as good as a car in that it could travel just as quickly, better than a car because it was smaller and more maneuverable in the snow and would not be noticed as soon from a distance. He would be fully exposed driving it, a moving target, but there was nothing to be done about that; he had to get to the church, he had to get to Cain.

Tribucci pushed away from the wall, located the dropped. 22, and bent for it. The motion made his head spin dizzily and sickness funnel into his throat, but when he straightened again the nausea receded. He shoved the gun into his free pocket, went back toward Eldorado Street with his left arm pressed hard across his chest, running drunkenly on legs which felt as if they had been rubberized. He fell once, dragged himself up; he could not seem to get enough of the biting cold air into his lungs. The pain in his chest was a fiery, pulsing counterpoint to the hammerlike tempo of his heart.

He went down twice more crossing to Vince’s front yard, willed his body up again both times. Fresh blood welled from the two bullet wounds, and it was like a coating of viscid oil on his skin. He wondered dimly if he were bleeding to death. No. He wouldn’t bleed to death and he wouldn’t freeze to death, remember Ann, remember the baby, remember Vince and Judy and seventy of his friends and neighbors locked inside the church-and Cain, remember Cain.

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