Snowblind Read Online Free

down!”
    Coburn walked cautiously, one step at a time, sweeping his rifle across the tree line a mere twenty feet away. The Remington was a powerful rifle that could drop a bull at three hundred yards like it was a point-blank shot, but at such close range, the scope was not only useless, it was in the way. The load didn’t scatter like buckshot from a shotgun; there was one bullet that was less than half an inch in diameter. And if he missed it would take him nearly two whole seconds to draw back the bolt, eject the spent casing, chamber another, slam the bolt home again, and pull the trigger. Based on the evidence around him, Coburn was certain that he wouldn’t have that kind of time. He’d once read that a grizzly bear could run at speeds of up to thirty miles an hour. At that rate, it would be upon him in half a second.
    He halved the distance and stopped ten feet from the wall of pine trees. The wind was blowing so hard that it was snowing sideways. The flakes flew past so quickly that even standing still felt like he was moving to his right, but he could clearly see Vigil’s silhouette against the dark shadows lurking under the canopy. He’d been somehow suspended upside down from the skeletal branches of an aspen, his arms dangling toward the ground. He bounced gently up and down from the bough as he swayed in the wind. It was obvious he’d been stripped to the bare skin…and then gutted.
    “No bear could do that,” Shore repeated.
    “Yeah…” Coburn said. The telltale scent of evisceration, of warm blood and lacerated bowels, found him on the screaming wind. “I think you might be right…”
    Movement in the shadows to his left.
    “Back to the cabin,” Coburn said. More movement drew his attention to the right. “Get back to the cabin!”
    He turned and ran as fast as he could, lifting his feet high to clear the accumulation. Shore was an indistinct blur ahead of him against the smoky light of the window. He heard Baumann shouting from somewhere behind him. Shore plowed into the drift against the house first and kicked at the planks until he managed to haul himself over the sill. Coburn spun and covered the edge of the forest while Baumann leapt up and scrambled through the window.
    There was no sign of pursuit.
    “Come on, Will!”
    “Hurry up!”
    Coburn turned, climbed through the open window, and fell down to the muddy ground beside the fire.
    * * *
    “I’m telling you, bears don’t do that kind of thing!” Shore’s voice carried from the main room. “They can’t do that kind of thing!”
    “What else could have done it then?” Baumann said. He was sitting in the slanted doorway between rooms, where he could see both the front door and the side window. “I can’t think of anything that could have done that.”
    “That’s exactly my point!”
    “Men,” Coburn said without taking his eyes from the window, where he focused on the stretch of white that separated him from the forest, despite the snow blowing directly into his face. “Only men are capable of doing something like that.”
    The silence was interrupted only by the wail of the wind. When it paused to draw a breath, he could see Vigil’s outline, still dangling from the trees. Every few minutes, he was convinced he caught movement in the shadows, in a slightly different location each time. Someone or something was still out there. Watching them.
    Waiting.
    A shiver rippled up his spine.
    “What are we going to do?” Shore said, barely loud enough to be heard.
    Coburn didn’t have the slightest clue. They had no idea who or what was out there, or how many of them there were. Until they did and had a solid plan of action, running blindly into the forest and the storm was suicide.
    They had already barricaded the front door as well as they could. It had been unnerving how easily the pile of debris just inside the front door had slid into place against it. The only other window, on the front of the house, was still boarded