Snowbound - Crouch Blake (мир книг .TXT) 📗

“I’m not going anywhere, Will. Don’t know if you’ve realized, but we need each other.”

They reached the floor of the cellar. Peering just ahead, Will could see a door outlined by seams of light where the sun passed between the cracks.

Kalyn opened it. Light poured in. He saw the empty cages.

“They won’t all enter the same way, but this is where I’d come in.”

Kalyn’s eyes fell upon something that made her smile.

She approached a wall adorned with ancient tools—saddles, scythes, machetes. Kalyn tapped one of two enormous bear traps.

“This thing’s made to catch grizzlies,” she said. “Break a man’s leg like it was nothing.”

“You think they still work? Looks pretty rusted out to me.”

“We’ll see. Come on, let’s head back up. I want to take a look through the binoculars.”

SIXTY-ONE

I don’t see them,” she said. “It’s just the plane.”

Kalyn stepped back inside, and Rachael shut the doors and locked them.

“How much time you think we have?” Will asked. “That’s deep snow. Might take them what? An hour? Hour and a half to get here? And we’ve burned thirty minutes already.”

Kalyn shook her head. “I actually think we’ve got time on our side. They flew right over the lodge, ballsy fuckers, set down in plain site, so they have to realize we’re aware of them. For all they know, we’ve got a small army in this lodge.”

“What are you getting at?”

“I’m fairly certain they won’t make their move until dark.”

Rachael said, “I felt better when I thought this was going to happen in daylight.”

“No, it’s good. Gives us time to prepare. We should meet with Sean and Ken and the women, tell them the good news, sign up a few recruits. But I’d like a moment with my sister first. I only saw her through a peephole yesterday. I don’t even think she knows I’m here.”

“She doesn’t,” Will said.

“Well?”

“You really think we have time for a family reunion?”

“Please, Will.”

“Five minutes.”

Will unlocked the door and walked inside, caught him rising out of bed, puffy-eyed from dehydration and looking very afraid.

“Sit down, Sean.”

Sean complied as Will closed the door and dragged a chair away from the desk. He sat facing the young man, the shotgun lying across his lap.

“Are you going to kill me?” Sean asked.

Will shook his head. “My daughter overheard a conversation between you and your father yesterday morning. You know what I’m talking about?”

Sean stared at his bare feet for a moment. “You mean in the library? After breakfast?”

Will nodded. “You didn’t want to be here, did you, Sean?”

“I didn’t know what this lodge was. I swear to you.”

“Did your father?”

“No. I mean, he’d heard it was a wild place, but we didn’t have any idea. Would you have believed it without seeing it?”

“My wife has been here for five years.”

“I’m sorry, man. Really.”

“I need to know something.”

“What?”

Will locked his gaze on Sean.

“Did you help yourself to any of the women here?”

“No.”

“You can tell me the truth.”

“I swear to you. This place makes me sick.”

“Then what did you do yesterday?”

“I stayed in my room.”

“All day?”

“Until dinner.”

“What about your father?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think he would have hurt anyone. That’s not like him.”

Will stood. “Did you grow up with firearms around the house?”

“My dad and I go elk hunting in Montana every fall.”

“Good.”

“Why is that good?”

Will walked to the door, pulled it open, cold air from the corridor sweeping in.

“Let’s go talk to your father. I’ve got some bad news.”

Lucy Dahl sat in a chair by a fireplace in one of the guest rooms, a book in her lap, her legs propped on a footstool, basking in the heat.

Kalyn closed the door and moved quietly across the room toward her sister, no sound but the shift of smoldering logs and the paper scrape as Lucy turned the pages of her book.

It had been three years since Kalyn had laid eyes on her sister, and their last words had been angry ones, a stupid fight that Kalyn had started—big sis telling little sis what was best for her life.

Two steps from the chair, Kalyn’s eyes welled up. She couldn’t see Lucy look up from her book through the lens of salt water shivering on the surface of her eyes.

“Kalyn? Oh my God.”

They sat on the floor by the fire, Lucy crying, Kalyn whispering, “I’m here, honey. I’m here.” Wanting to tell her she was safe now, that they had a plane waiting on the lake to take her home, back to her husband, away from this nightmare.

Lucy must have sensed her holding back, because she said, “What’s wrong, K? What is it?”

Kalyn shook her head, footsteps entering the boondocks of her perception, Will already coming back, the five minutes gone faster than it seemed possible.

“We’re together,” she said. “Just that we aren’t home yet.”

Will stood in front of the hearth in what had been Ethan’s room, facing twenty-two women (most of whom watched him with the desperate blankness of refugees) and Sean and Ken (still massively hungover from the previous night and looking more than a little uncertain about their demoted stations under the new management).

“As Rachael mentioned to you all, four men have landed on the inner lake. While Kalyn and I are the primary targets, you’re all in danger here, and we have to prepare. Kalyn and I can’t defend everyone on our own, and I know you’ve been through so much hell, and I’m sorry we have to deal with this, but we need your help. Sean and Ken have come on board, along with Kalyn’s sister, but we need one more volunteer.”

The women glanced at one another. A few began to cry.

It was thirty seconds before a hand went up—raised by a dark-haired woman who appeared to be in the first trimester of her pregnancy.

Will said, “Yeah? What’s your name?”

“Suzanne Tyrpak. I’ll fight. I’ve never even touched a gun before, but if you show me how, I’ll do it. I mean, if this is what we gotta do to get back to our families.”

There were no other volunteers, the rest too weak or pregnant or broken, some still whispering to themselves—incoherent, devastated babblings.

He looked at Kalyn. “That makes eight of us. Can we pull this off?”

. . .

“The beautiful thing about a twelve-gauge,” Kalyn said, “is you can be a terrible shot, and it doesn’t matter.” They all stood outside the supply room—the Innises, Kalyn, her sister, Suzanne Tyrpak, and the oilmen—shouldering pump-action Mossbergs.

Kalyn said, “I think these guys may come wearing bulletproof vests, which is why I want you to aim either below the waist or at the head. You have to pump it after every shot.” She pumped her shotgun. “The kick is strong, so remember to lean into it.”

“Is it loud?” Suzanne asked. “When you pull the trigger?”

“Loud as hell. All right, let me show you how to load.”

It took both Kalyn and Will to pull the grizzly traps off the wall, the monstrous contraptions weighing in at forty-eight pounds of rusted cast iron apiece, with jaw spreads of seventeen inches. Will stepped on the release, and they strained to force the jaws open.

Although barely legible, American Fur and Trade Company, HBC No. 6 had been engraved into the iron of the pan. When Kalyn popped it with one of the pitchforks, the snare jumped, the giant teeth chomping together, snapping the wooden handle in two.

The sun hung low in the sky, sitting just over the horizon at the end of the lake, turning clouds and snow pink, the water scarlet. Devlin watched from a window on the third floor, thought it was the most striking end of day she’d ever seen, the sky at war with itself.

Kalyn stood at the window in Rachael’s old room on the fourth floor, glassing what she could see of the surrounding grounds and forest behind the lodge.