Northern Lights

Even later none of us have the energy to make that short nightmare into a joke. We're too shaken up to climb, and Han's ankle is messed up. He'll never make the summit, and we all know it.
    We have no choice but to chop out a platform and camp, divvy up food from our dwindling supplies while Han pops painkillers. He's weak, but not so weak his eyes don't roll with fear as the wind slams its killing fists at the thin walls of our tent.
    We should go back.
    We should go back. But when I floated that trial balloon, Darth went
    off, berating Han, shrieking at me in a voice shrill as a woman's. He looks half mad—maybe more than half—hulking in the dark, ice clinging to his stubbly beard and eyebrows, bitter lights in his eyes. Han's accident has cost us a day, and he'll be damned if it'll cost him the summit.
    He has a point, I can't deny it. We are within striking distance of the goal. Han may be able to make it after a night's rest.
    We'll climb tomorrow, and if Han can't manage, we'll leave him, do what we came to do, and pick him up on the way back.
    It's insanity of course, and even with the drugs, Han looks wrecked and scared. But I'm caught in it. Past the point of no return.
    The wind's howling like a hundred rabid dogs. That alone could drive a man mad.

 
     
     
    EIGHT
     
     
     
     
     
     
    FOR THIRTY HOURS, the snow fell and the wind howled. The world was a cold, white beast that rampaged day and night, fangs bared, claws extended to bite and rake at anyone brave or foolish enough to go out and face it.
    Generators hummed or roared, and communications were reduced to radios. Travel was impossible as that beast stalked its way across the Interior and over southeast Alaska. Cars and trucks were buried, planes grounded. Even the sled dogs waited for it to pass.
    The little town of Lunacy was cut off, a frozen island in the midst of a blind, white sea.
    Too busy to brood, too astonished to curse, Nate dealt with emergencies—a child who'd toppled onto a table and needed to get to the clinic for stitches, a man who'd had a heart attack while trying to dig out his truck, a chimney fire, a family brawl.
    He had Drunk Mike—as opposed to Big Mike the cook—in an unlocked cell sleeping off a bender, and Manny Ozenburger in a locked one, rethinking his position on driving his Tundra pickup over his neighbor's Ski-doo.
    He kept crews hacking away at the snow on the main streets and pushed his way through the canyons of it to The Corner Store.
    He found Harry and Deb sitting at a card table in front of the canned goods, playing gin while Cecil snuggled in his basket.
    "Hell of a blow," Harry called out.
    "No, it's just hell."
    Nate pushed back the hood of his parka, stopped to give Cecil a quick rub. He was out of breath and vaguely surprised to still be alive. "I need some supplies. I'm going to bunk at the station until this is over."
    Deb's eyes gleamed. "Oh? Something wrong at The Lodge?"
    "No." Yanking off gloves, Nate began to hunt up basics to keep body and soul together. "Somebody needs to man the radio—and we've got a couple of guests."
    "I heard Drunk Mike tied one on. Gin."
    "Gin? Damn you, Harry."
    "Tied one on," Nate agreed, dumping bread, lunch meat, chips on the counter. "And staggered around singing Bob Seger songs. Snow removal crew spotted him and hauled him up when he fell facedown in the middle of the damn street." Nate picked up a six-pack of Coke. "They hadn't seen him, brought him in, we might've found him by April, dead as Elvis."
    "I'll just run a tab for these, chief." Harry got out his book, noted down the purchases. "And I'm not convinced Elvis is dead. This going to be enough for you?"
    "It'll have to be. Getting it back's going to be an adventure."
    "Why don't you sit a minute, have some of this coffee?" Deb was already getting up. "Let me fix you a sandwich."
    Nate stared at her. It wasn't the way people usually treated cops. "Thanks, but I need to get back. If you need anything, hell, send up a flare."
    He pulled on his gloves, resecured his hood, then hefted his bag of supplies.
    It wasn't any more hospitable out than it had been five minutes before. He felt the teeth and claws slice at him as he used the rope and instinct to drag his way toward the station.
    He'd left every light burning, to give himself a beacon.
    He could hear the muffled rumble of Bing's plow and hoped to sweet God that Bing didn't head his way, running over him accidentally—or purposely. The beast, as