They get to the kitchen sink just in time. Afterward, Eric turns on the cold water full blast. The cabin has a septic system and no garbage disposal. They’ll probably stop up the pipes. Big Earl always yelled when they clogged the johns: Who the hell used the whole roll on his ass?
“Hang on.” Eric snatches an old dishrag from a towel bar, soaks the cloth in cold water, and wipes his brother’s mouth. “Better?”
“Yeah.” Tears leak over Casey’s cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.” Eric pitches the soiled rag into the garbage can under the sink. “It was an accident.”
Actually, it was self-defense. The sight of Big Earl standing over Casey with that switch of whippy ash; the whickering sound that damn thing made as it cut the air … Something in Eric just broke. Eighteen years of pain and empty promises: God, enough was enough. Two long strides, and then he was wrestling away the switch, snapping it over his knee. Big Earl had turned with a drunken bellow—and that’s when Eric saw the Glock in his father’s fist, the bore larger than the world. Eric ducked as the gun roared. A bullet zinged by his ear, but then the bottle was in Eric’s hand and he swung.
And like that, Eric’s future went poof! Up in smoke.
3
HE WON’T LET Case come along, but tells his brother to find something to replace his ruined clothes—even one of Big Earl’s shirts, if it comes down to it—and be ready to go just as soon as he gets back. Where they would go, how far they ought to run … Eric hopes that works itself out.
The drifts are high. Big Earl is 250 pounds of dead meat, so the ride out on the sled takes time. Four miles from the cabin, Eric squeezes the brake and cuts the engine. He sits a moment, listening to the howl of the wind, the rasp of ice crystals spinning over snow, the dull whump of heavy snow sliding off a drooping evergreen. A hard winter. A lot of animals starving, he bets.
He has to peel out of his gloves to untie Big Earl. His fingers shake and he can’t make them work right, but he finally gets the job done. Then he stands a moment, staring down at the body slumped in the Skandic’s rumble seat. Except for the blood and that dent, Big Earl looks almost normal. Well, for a drunk sleeping it off.
Parents are supposed to take care of their kids. A kid shouldn’t have to join the Marines and risk ending up as roadkill or minus a couple body parts, all so he can scrape together enough money for college and not get the crap beaten out of him by his own dad.
Planting a booted foot, he gives the body a shove. For a long moment, nothing happens. Then his father’s body shifts and slews sideways in a languid swoon, settling to the snow like a sack of dirty laundry.
“I’m not sorry you’re dead,” Eric says as he throttles up the Skandic. He pulls away without a backward glance. “I don’t care.”
Yet when he reaches the cabin and puts a hand to his face, he feels tears there: frozen to his cheeks, hard as diamonds.
4
NOW, BIG EARL was back. Big Earl was right there; had hitched a ride on this lost road to nowhere. His father’s head was lopsided, caved in where the bottle had crushed bone and brain. His wifebeater was a bib of gore, and Big Earl’s brains slopped in a grotesque tangle of moist pink worms.
“NO!” Eric shrieked. His hands clamped down hard on the Skandic’s handlebars, sending him into a sharp turn he didn’t want. The Skandic canted in a scream of snow, first right and then a grinding left as he carved deep, trying to compensate. Casey was yelling something, but Eric didn’t answer, couldn’t. Was that thing still on the sled? No, no, the weight wasn’t right; the weight had never been right; it was never there to begin with. Get control, get control! He felt the sled hit something—a chunk of ice, maybe; a rock; it didn’t matter. The Skandic bounced, and then the runners stuttered as the sled spun.
“Eric!” Casey’s voice now, spiking through Eric’s helmet speaker: “Eric, look out look out look out!”
A sudden wash of silver-blue swept around the curve fifty feet ahead, and then twin shafts of light pinned him like a bug. Above the roar of the storm, he heard the churn of the car’s engine coming on way too fast.
Frantic, Eric jerked the sled hard left. The sled skated, skipped, drifted sideways, the runners skittering, and he felt the machine buck and jump between his thighs. At the same moment, he realized that the car—no, it was a van, big and blocky and still coming—was shrieking into a drunken skid, out of control, grinding right for him.
For one long, nightmarish second, the world slowed down. Eric saw the right rear fender swinging in a wide arc, heard Casey screaming in his helmet, felt the stutter of the Skandic’s engine in his legs, even saw the white blur of a face—a girl—swimming behind frosted glass.
He was going to die. This was what Big Earl wanted; this was his revenge. The van would kill Eric when it hit, or the Skandic would rocket off the road and smash into the guardrail. The snowmobile would stop, but he would not. He would keep going, catapulted like a stone into the black void of the valley, and he would fall a long, long way down to where Big Earl waited.
Only one chance.
He took it.
ERIC
A Gasp in Time
1
ERIC JUMPED—A WILD, desperate leap—hurtling left as the van slewed right. For a second, it felt as if he simply hung there, suspended in midair, like Keanu Reeves dodging a bullet. Through the spume of snow splattered on his faceplate, he saw the massive bulk of the van growing larger and larger, darker than the night. The red eye of the van’s taillight, hot and angry, loomed and became the world, and he thought, I’m dead.
The van sliced by, shaving air less than six inches away: so close he felt the suck as it swept through space. He thudded face-first into the snow, the stiff plastic of his breakaway faceplate jamming hard enough to flip up and click free of its tabs. A bright white pain shot through as his teeth sank into his tongue, and then he was choking, his mouth filling with blood.
Above the roar in his ears came a high shriek of metal—and then, for just an instant, the world seemed to skip: a gasp in time and space, as if the storm had taken a deep breath and held it.
Someone started to scream.
Eric pushed up on trembling arms. His head was swimmy with pain. Panting, he hung on hands and knees like a dog, his brain swirling, coppery blood drizzling from his mouth. Then he dragged his head around, and his breath died somewhere deep.
Oh my God.
2
THE VAN HAD jumped the barrier. It should’ve kept going, tumbling over the lip of the road to crash into the valley below. Instead, the van hung on a ruin of crumpled metal, like the badly balanced plank of a kid’s teeter-totter. The van’s lights were still on, and the engine was running, but just barely, coughing and knocking in hard death rattles bad enough to make the chassis shudder. The air smelled of acrid smoke and hot oil.