Drifting

Chapter 9

"H-h-h-h-h-h..." the young, dark-haired woman managed through her violently vibrating lips. She sucked in a deep, piercing breath, and forced her noncompliant mouth to cry, "Help!"

"We're here, we're here, it's okay!" Lara promised. She ripped her hands free of the gloves and scrabbled at the knots holding her in place, the snow drifting around her. It was that same orange, black, and red-threaded synthetic rope as before.

"We're never going to get this off without a knife or something," Jesse hollered over the wind.

The woman's head lolled and her eyes fluttered. A long line of drool flowed from her mouth, mixed with the stench of bile.

"Stay with me! Hey, wake up!" Lara ordered. "Jesse, she's not responding..." She pressed her warm hand against the woman's icy throat. "I can't find a pulse!"

"We have to get her inside!" He ripped his glove from his hand and held out his bare palm to her.

Without a second thought, Lara took it. The roar overtook her, but she was able to control it. It came easier now, the quietude, and serenity overtook Jesse's features. He took a handful of rope and curled it between is fingers. The fibers dissolved at his touch, unravelling fiber by fiber until they finally snapped. Lara couldn't suppress her moan of amazement even as she knelt in the snow to unwind the bindings.

Their backs still aching from their last rescue, Lara and Jesse bore the woman between them as best they could back to the school, heading in through the front doors. Jesse led the way, and a few turns and halls later, they were at the nurse's office. It was inky black inside, so Lara turned on the weak flashlight they'd stolen from the SUV, setting it on the desk as they rushed to attend the frozen victim. Jesse ran to get more coats from the donation box while Lara patted her cheeks and felt her neck for a pulse. She was about to suggest they start CPR when the young woman woke up, gasping and coughing under the pile of coats. Unlike the last woman they'd saved, she was more properly dressed in jeans, snow boots, and a sweater.

"You're safe, you're safe," Lara repeated on a steady loop. Jesse left again, and came back with a warm soda from someone's stash in the teacher's lounge. He popped the top and lifted it to the woman's lips. She drank gratefully, the color slowly returning.

"Police," she managed after a few minutes. "You gotta call the police. Some guy attacked me. He attacked me and he hit my head, and he tied me to that goddamn flagpole. Nobody was outside. Nobody saw..."

Lara and Jesse shared a knowing, terrified glance. "What happened?" Lara asked.

"I was outside shoveling snow, and this guy..." She coughed and choked again, her blue eyes bloodshot and leaking a steady stream of angry tears. "Oh God, it hurts," she yelped as the feeling began to return to her limbs.

"Go ahead. You were shoveling snow..."

She motioned for another drink of soda. "I was shoveling, and this guy asked if I needed any help. I said I was just going to clear off the steps of the building so the door wouldn't freeze shut, and I could get outside with my dog. We got to talking..."

"What did he look like?" Jesse wanted to know.

"Tall. White. Handsome, I guess. About my age. He was wearing a black coat." She kept going, as if she could not turn off the spigot of words that poured from her lips. Shivers wracked her body, but they did not silence her. "He started acting so weird. He asked me to have a snowball fight, and if I wanted to build a fort. I thought he was just playing around, so I suggested..." She coughed again, for a good minute, before continuing. "I said, 'let's go sledding' and he got all weird. He started crying. Apologizing. And then he hit me with his shovel... that—" she exploded into quaking expletives. "Who attacks a random person with a goddamn shovel and ties them to a goddamn flagpole? He took my coat, my gloves--"

"Stay calm, stay calm, you're going to hurt yourself!" Lara warned.

After a few silent, quaking breaths, the woman raised her bare hands up from beneath the blankets. The tips of her fingers were already turning black. She threw her head back and howled, her rage and pain echoing through the empty halls.

Three pairs of eyes shot to the darkened doorway when they heard the rack of a shotgun. An old man stood there, the weapon in hand, not pointing it at them, but ready to draw it to his shoulder. He had snow on his peaked cap and on the thin shoulders of his coat. "You back away from her, now," he said, calm and even and uncompromising. "Just put your hands up and back away."

Lara and Jesse immediately complied, their hands itching to come together.

"Miss, you come to me now, real slow," the old man suggested.

She looked at him hard, snuffling through her tears, then glanced at Lara and Jesse. "No," she murmured. "No, they're helping me, I, uh, can you put the gun down, mister, you're making me really nervous, okay, and I think I've put up with enough for one evening, all right? So just cool it with the whole shooting us thing."

The old man squinted through the darkness. "I saw these people drag you through the door of the school against your will," he argued. "Tried the cops but couldn't get through."

"Where the hell were you like, two hours ago when I was being assaulted?" the woman roared with sudden strength. Lara turned to hush her, kneeling at her side and putting her hands gingerly on the woman's taut shoulders.

"We found her in the snow, almost unconscious," Jesse explained quickly. "We brought her in here to try and help."

"She's distraught, she has hypothermia and frostbite," Lara added. "Please, she really needs help."

"I'll try 911 again." The old man pulled a flip phone from his coat pocket and dialed. "On hold again," he huffed.

"Just stay on the line," Lara advised, getting to her feet. "Someone will pick up. You have to tell them to hurry, okay? She really needs help." The victim's soft sobbing punctuated this.

"Wait, where are the two of you going?" the old man demanded, leaning his shotgun up against the wall near the nurse's desk, the phone at his gnarled ear. Jesse and Lara looked back as they inched out the door. "Hey, wait a second, I thought you looked familiar." A small smile cracked over the wizened dark features. "Jesse Finn. Don't you remember me? Mr. Miles? I used to teach math in this building, gosh, that seems like a million years ago. Still live just across the street. Not that this is the time to—"

"No, it's really not the time," Jesse said. "You remember my sister Christine?"

"Of course. She was one of my top students." Mr. Miles used his free hand to coax more cola down the young woman's throat as she coughed again.

"Well, she's in trouble. We were on our way to her place right now. I need you to please wait here for EMS," Jesse said, taking a few steps down the hall and raising his voice to be heard. He gestured for Lara to follow.

Lara paused, poking her head through the door. "Keep her covered, and keep pushing the fluids!" she said.

"Trouble? What kind of— hey, Jesse, wait!"

The slamming door marked their hasty exist.

Lara had seen Jesse pale and grim all night, but now he was really and seriously frightened, biting his lip and pushing with feverish intensity through the snow back toward the street. "This has something to do with me," he said, putting an arm around her and drawing her in closer so she could hear him as they hurried along the frozen sidewalk.

"With you?"

"With Christine and I. That bodega used to be a candy store when I was a kid. We were there all the time. Now my old elementary school? And the guy says he's from Piney Grove? I grew up in Piney Grove, Lara. Sledding..." He shook his head. "This is surreal. This is a nightmare." He gave a shivery, terrified sigh. "We have to find Christine. It might already be too late."