Dark of The Woods by Dean Koontz

Author:Dean Koontz [Koontz, Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci-Fi., Science Fiction
Published: 2017-12-11T16:00:00+00:00

Davis grabbed Leah, tried to leap with her up the slope toward the avalanche, with the intention of reaching the cleared section where there was little snow left to fall. But before he could get there, the wave of cold snow and ice swept over them, pulled her from his grasp and carried her away, toward the bottom of the small valley . . .

VII

He managed to grasp the trunk of a thin, sturdy, yil tree —past which the rushing snow carried him—wrapped his arms around it and locked his hands together on the other side. The tree bent amazingly beneath the pressure of the small avalanche though it refused to snap. In a moment, the roar seemed to grow distant, as if he were hearing only echoes of the event, then abruptly ceased altogether.

He rose, his legs shaky beneath him, and tried to get his breath and to still the fluttering of his heart. The air was so choked with mist that it was difficult to breathe, and he thought it would not be improbable for a man with an impaired lung or a cold and its subsequent stuffed nose to either drown or suffocate in seconds.

He wiped the dewy vapor from his face, squinted his eyes and tried to see through the water droplets that im-mediately beaded his eyelashes. There was a dense cloud of snow eddying in the air currents in the valley bottom, a couple of hundred feet below, and it effectively shielded anything down there from his vision.

Wiping his face once more, he stumbled foward, grabbing trees and shattered saplings for handholds, slipping, crash-ing into rock formations and yil trunks with his hips, but somehow managing not to fall. He was breathing well enough now that the vapor had begun to settle, but his heart still thumped wildly in his chest. He had recalled the dream he had had only a couple of hours before in which he had been imprisoned in a house of ice and Leah had come to release him by melting the walls down—and how she, in turn, had been led away, appropriated by the Alliance soldier without a face . . .

If she were dead, in this avalanche, it would be as much the Alliance's fault as if a blue suited, brass buttoned officer had come and taken her and shot her . . .

No. No, he had to face up to the fact that some of the blame would lie with him. He should have tied her to a tree, tied both of them firmly, to protect against the possibility of an avalanche. Never before in his life had there been another human being for which he had felt responsible. It had always been him, alone, against the world, and any cuts or wounds incurred were marks of pride to satisfy the sadistic trait in him. Now the “me” was “us” as he had been reminding himself ever since that day in the temple, in the corridors of God's mind, when the point of no return had been reached and passed at blinding speeds.

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