He had exhausted the entertainment possibilities of the hut in the first half hour. There were old animal skins—otter, beaver, bear—covering some unfinished headstones, and an assortment of rusty old shovels and axes leaning up against the walls. The leather-bound book on the table was written in Russian, but Russell could tell, from the way that the names and dates seemed to be lined up on most of the pages, that it must have been the sexton’s ledger. A record of who was getting buried where, and when. For a while, he tore out one page at a time and tried to keep a fire going with his Bic lighter, but each page simply vanished in a puff of smoke without generating more than a second of heat. He stuck the remainder in his pocket, just in case it might prove to be worth something to some nutcase at one of those antique shops in Nome.
It was only after the last daylight had gone, and the northern lights suddenly appeared in the sky, that he realized he was on his own, that nobody was coming to get him or offer a lick of help. He could slowly freeze to death in this hut, or he could try to make his own way back to the cave. The wind whistled through the spaces between the timbers and rattled the staves of the door so hard they sounded like castanets.
Cursing Harley, cursing Eddie, and cursing his luck, Russell stood up and instantly regretted it. He’d twisted his ankle in that pothole in the graveyard, and although he’d thought the pain would pass, the ankle had continued to swell. Rolling his sock down, he could see that the skin was a deep shade of purple already. The throbbing, too, was getting worse all the time. Slowly, carefully, he hobbled to the door, where he ripped one of the staves loose to make a crutch he could lean on.
He hated to think how much it was going to hurt when he really tried to walk with such a bad sprain.
Outside, the sky was still alight with the shimmering glow of the aurora borealis. He’d seen it a million times in his life, so the effect had definitely worn off, but he hoped that the light at least would stick around. He had a flashlight in his free hand—Harley had made sure they carried the essentials—but even among this dense brush and overhanging trees, the aurora lent enough illumination to help him pick his way through the woods. The snowy branches were tinged with the alternating colors in the sky—green and yellow and a pale dusky rose—that made the whole forest look fake and strange, like a scene from some movie. A movie Russell did not want to be in.
A strong wind was blowing, too, with flakes of snow and ice spinning through the air. He had only the most general sense of where he was. He knew the colony was off toward the sea, and the cave was somewhere to the west, but when he had heard the voices approaching and run wildly into the forest, he had lost all sense of direction.
The beers probably hadn’t helped on that score, either.
As he hobbled along, the flashlight beam trained at his feet to keep from tripping over any uneven ground, he told himself that if the Kodiak hadn’t been refloated on the tide by now, he was going to call the mainland, admit that they were stranded on St. Peter’s, and somehow get the hell back to Port Orlov. Even if there were jewels inside those coffins, this guy Slater, and the Coast Guard, had gotten there first by now, so what was the point of sticking around?
When the northern lights were suddenly extinguished—it always reminded Russell of the way his grandfather would pinch a candle flame between his thumb and forefinger—the forest went almost black all around him. Only the moon and stars offered a little help to navigate by.
Trying to ignore the pain in his ankle, Russell focused on what he’d do once he got back home—he imagined himself hoisting a brew in the Yardarm and maybe shooting some pool—when he heard a bustling in an alder thicket. He stopped, expecting a covey of quail to fly out, or maybe a squirrel to scamper underfoot, but nothing did. He waited silently—if it was a bear, it would want to avoid him as much as he wanted to avoid it—and then he said, with as much bravado as he could muster, “Hey, asshole, I’m coming through.” It was always best to give a bear fair warning.
But there was no more noise, and no sign or smell of anything lingering in the brush, so he forged on. Not that he didn’t wish he could trade his flashlight for a can of that mace Harley carried. He knew there were wolves on the island, but wolves never attacked humans. They looked for herds of elk, and cut the young, or the feeble, ones from the pack. He kept going, leaning on the stave with one hand and using the other one, clutching the flashlight, to bat low-hanging branches out of his way. He never thought he’d miss driving the propane truck, but right now even that was looking good. He just hoped his boss would let him slide for missing a few days of work; he’d told him he had to visit a sick relative, but if the truth got back to him, or even worse if it got back to Russell’s parole officer, it’d mean big trouble.
The rustling came again, and this time out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash of movement behind a moss-covered tree trunk. He rubbed the back of his glove across his eyes to clear his vision—the snow was starting to come down faster now—and swept the flashlight beam across the brush. But everything was suddenly still.
Too still … as if the usual woodland creatures had fled, or were lying low.