Where the Chill Waits by T. Chris Martindale

Author:T. Chris Martindale [Martindale, T. Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horror, supernatural
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2021-11-21T00:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

“Covey! Tucker! Answer me!”

But the echoes broke on the far shore of the valley without response.

“They’re dead, aren’t they?” Davejac said aloud. “They’re dead and I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere with two injured men. What the hell do I do now?”

No one offered answers. Not the still-skittish dogs. Not the two men on the ridge with him, enveloped in the folds of catatonia. In fact, their silence only drove home the helplessness he felt.

No, he thought defiantly. I’m not helpless. We’ll make it out of here if I just calm down, take things one step at a time. First, take care of the men…

He pushed his fear aside as he inspected each man’s condition. Neither fought him; they were barely lucid as it was. He found only superficial cuts and bruises on Steven. But when he peeled back the shredded and bloody yoke of Andy Church’s jacket and shirt, Barton gasped in spite of himself. A big chunk of flesh had been torn from the young man’s deltoid. Blood was still bubbling from the horrendous wound, though remarkably little considering its severity. The Indian took off his flannel shirt just long enough to skin out of his thermal underwear. Then he used his knife to cut the latter into long strips, which he wrapped around the shoulder tightly to put pressure on the wound. Finally, he tied the arm to the man’s midsection, just to keep it immobilized.

Barton sat back and took stock of his situation. The two couldn’t walk, that much was obvious. And even if they could, it was too far back to the base camp anyway. They would have to be airlifted out of there, something the dense forest in the immediate vicinity precluded. Get them to a clearing, he decided, where a chopper can touch down. That’s step one. Get that done and then take it from there.

He thought back along the trail they had blazed this far and remembered a suitable clearing about a kilometer back, maybe a little farther. There was no easy way around it; to get there, he would have to carry them, one at a time. There was nothing else to do. So he picked up Andy Church and hauled him all the way back to the tent, where he wrapped him in a sleeping bag and told the elkhounds to stay and stand guard. They didn’t seem to like it but they obeyed nonetheless. He retrieved his rope, then went back for Steven and draped him over a shoulder.

Without a flashlight to show the way, it took them more than an hour to locate the clearing he remembered, a rock field strewn with some boulder-sized fragments but not so many as to prevent a helicopter from coming in. At the edge of the field he sat Wilhoit down beside a tall rock and tried to talk to him, told him to stay right there, that he’d be back with Andy. But the man was stuporous; his eyes had glazed over, and his mumblings were no longer even audible.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.