The problem was, his pal Eddie was still so stoned he could waltz off the cliff, or wander off into the woods, and for the time being at least, Harley needed him alive; the Kodiak needed a deckhand. Taking a nylon cord out of his backpack, he tied a tight loop around Eddie’s waist—Eddie laughed and tried to twirl as it was done—and then knotted the other end around the tool belt he was wearing to hold his knife and bear mace. He’d left no more than ten or fifteen feet of rope between them.
With the edge of the forest on one side and the ocean on the other, Harley set off along the cliffs, picking his way over the rocks and brambles with his flashlight beam and occasionally feeling the drag of Eddie as he slowed down or missed a step. It would have been an arduous task on a summer day, but in the dark, with an Arctic wind slicing across the Bering Sea, it was nearly impossible. Once he was well away from the colony, he breathed a little easier and let his flashlight pan out over a wider stretch of ground. The snow was crusting, and his boots crunched with every step he took. But one false move, he knew, and they could both go tumbling off the ridgeline.
With no landmarks to go by, it was impossible to calculate the distance they’d traveled. All he could do was plow ahead and count on spotting the cove where the Kodiak was anchored; from there, he could easily find his way back into the cave. But if he missed it, or overshot the mark, both he and Eddie could wind up either lost in the storm, or worse. Already, his feet and hands were starting to lose some sensation from the unrelenting cold. As soon as they got back to the cave, he would light the camp stove and make some hot soup or stew. Nobody was going to be out doing reconnaissance on a night like this.
Several times, Eddie stumbled, and Harley had to stop to let him get back on his feet. The farther they went, the more he thought he was carrying Eddie rather than leading him.
“Wake up!” Harley finally shouted at him. “I’m not gonna keep hauling your ass for you!”
“Fuck you!” Eddie shouted back. “I’m freezing back here.”
“Yeah, right,” Harley said, “like it’s warmer in front.”
Harley kept plodding forward, glancing at the ground, then off at the turbulent black sea crashing below. It was only when he thought he caught a glimpse of the boat that he deliberately stopped to clear his vision and make sure. He turned the flashlight in its direction, but the beam couldn’t penetrate that far. Taking out the night-vision binoculars, he tried to draw a bead on it, but there was so much snow flying in the air now, and so little light, that it was useless.
Still, he thought he could hear the groaning of its hull over the roar of the surf.
“Almost there,” he said to Eddie, whose presence he could sense right behind him. He left the binoculars looped around his neck.
But Eddie didn’t say anything.
“Maybe we’ll even find Russell there.”
Again, there was no reply, which was odd for such a motormouth as Eddie.
Turning around, Harley raised the flashlight and saw someone—but definitely not Eddie—standing right behind him.
It was an old woman, in a long skirt and a kerchief tied around her head. He lifted the beam to her face and saw two blue eyes, hard as a husky’s, sunken into a leathery face, lined and creased as an antique map. She was staring, but not at his face; her eyes were trained on the breast pocket of his coat, where the icon was stashed.
She didn’t have to say a word; he knew what she wanted.
And he swung at her with the flashlight.
But somehow missed.
He was grabbing for his knife when Eddie stumbled up, and said, “Holy Christ.”
Harley was weirdly relieved that Eddie could see her, too, but when he wheeled around, holding the knife out and searching for the old woman in the snow, he got so tangled up in the rope that it was Eddie he nearly stabbed.
“Watch the fucking knife!” Eddie shouted, as he backpedaled as fast as he could go.
Too fast, as it happened.
Harley suddenly felt the rope jerk tight on his tool belt, and a second later, he was staggering toward the cliff. Eddie was screaming, already sliding backwards down the icy slope. Harley flailed around, trying to grab hold of anything in reach.
“Help me!” Eddie shouted, and Harley managed to snag a lowlying branch heavy with snow. The knife dropped to the ground.
But even as he hung on with one hand, his gloves stripping the snow and then the needles right off of it, the branch slid free, and he crashed to his knees. He heard the crunch of test tubes breaking in his pockets, and a moment later the sharp pain of broken glass cutting into his thigh. He was being dragged off the edge of the cliff, too, by the weight of Eddie on the rope.
“Christ Almighty!” Eddie hollered in terror, his boots scraping the rock for any kind of ledge or crevice.
Harley dug his fingers into the snow and ice, and found a ridge in the earth, a solid bit of frozen tundra, maybe three or four inches deep, and hung on for dear life, but the nylon cord was pulling him down, twisting the belt around his waist like a tourniquet. His underarms were burning from the drag on the sleeves of his coat.
He reached for the buckle on his belt, but it was pulled so tight he couldn’t loosen it.