Beneath a Winter Moon (9 page)

Thomas knew that Delmar was only frustrated and was not angry with Steven, but his voice conveyed the opposite. It took a long time to become familiar with all aspects of Delmar’s temperament, and most would likely see anger where there was merely frustration.

“We stay here and try to keep warm until daylight or until Kyle gets an air-rescue up here. He probably heard enough to know we are stuck and has radioed for help.” Steven said.

“
Probably
…” Delmar muttered.

“Look, we are all safe and sound and we can stay relatively warm in here, especially with the gear you guys have with you. We just need to sit tight and keep the hot air to a minimum.”

“Hey…” Delmar began to protest.

“That is enough, you two,” Jenny said. “It doesn’t matter right now. Save it for when we are back in town in front of a warm fire.”

“Sorry,” Delmar halfheartedly grumbled, not wanting to go toe to toe with Jenny.

“Don’t apologize, you big goof. You’ve got more than a right to be pissed…but it’s pretty tight in here and it’s a long time to daylight.”

Steven sighed.

“Right,” Delmar said. “You are right. No
problemo
.”

Thomas leaned back into the seat’s webbing and sighed. He had folded his thin bedroll in half so that Jack could lay on it, off of the cold floor of the helicopter, and he was wishing now that the soft padding was underneath his own rear end. He kept one gloved hand hanging down so that he could occasionally stroke the Husky’s fur.

“Want to sing a song?” Daniel asked.

“Are you serious?” Delmar asked.

“Why not? I can’t sleep…everyone is awake.” He poked Delmar’s arm. “Even you are awake…and that is something, isn’t it?”

“If I promise to go to sleep right now can we not sing any songs?”

Daniel chuckled. “I guess so.”

“Would you look at that moon,” Jenny said.

Thomas opened his eyes and shifted forward to take a look out his window. Shining through the thin cloud cover was the largest full moon that he had ever seen. Daniel whistled, leaning over Thomas’s lap to get a clear view.

“Now that is beautiful,” Daniel said.

“Yeah, I’ve been looking at it,” said Delmar. “Reminds me of a night in
Panama
on the Atlantic side. I don’t know what causes it to sometimes seem so big, but on that night it was so huge…like this one. It was a dark orange then, but it was amazing.”

“The clouds and the haze give it a spooky look,” Thomas said.

“It’s
Annigan
, the moon god, looking down on the earth for his sister,
Malina
,” Steven said. “He forgot to eat for many days as he looked for her, so he left, filled himself, and now comes back full and strong.”

After a moment of silence, Thomas asked, “Who is
Malina
?”

“
Malina
is his sister, the sun goddess, who hides each night from
Annigan
because he is pure evil.”

“So, what happens if he catches his sister?” Daniel asked.

Steven shuffled in his seat, trying to stretch his long legs. “The end of the world. Day and night become one.”

“Nice,” Delmar said in the darkness. “Is that some local folklore?”

“Not really,” Steven replied, “It’s an Inuit legend that I learned when I was in
Greenland
—when I was a kid. My grandfather used to insist that my father let me go out at night to learn about the stars and the moon. He said I needed to know the history of my Inuit brothers and sisters.”

“You never mentioned siblings,” Thomas said inquisitively.

Steven laughed, “No, I don’t have any. He meant the people of
Greenland
. I was supposed to stay there. My father was supposed to take over the trading post and post office when grandfather died.”

“He didn’t stay?”

“He always wanted to fish. He was out one day with a group of fishermen, doing some crabbing. He never came back. I was fifteen.”

“Sorry,” Thomas said, “you never mentioned it before.”

Steven sighed. “My dreams were in the sky, you could say—maybe not quite as high up as the moon.” He chuckled. “I made it to the sky, though…for the most part, anyway.”

“So, your mother brought you back here?” Delmar asked.

“Yep. She jumped at the chance to come back. We just swapped one cold green land for another.”

Jenny leaned her head against Steven’s shoulder.

“What about you, Delmar?” Steven asked. “Did your father or grandfather ever tell you stories about the moon and stars?”

Delmar huffed and shifted back in his seat. “My father was too busy drinking and beating the hell out of me and my sister to have had time to teach us anything but pain.”

Daniel punched Delmar hard in the arm.

“
Owwww
! Jesus, Daniel.”

“Damned ornery bastard,” Daniel said in a half mocking voice. “Here we are having a nice conversation about the moon and stars and loved ones, and you have to wreck it.”

“Shit, Daniel…he asked me, so I answered.”

Thomas laughed. “You should have known better than to ask Delmar anything, Steven. He’s like a little kid. He always tells it like it is…even when it is not the time or place.”

Steven and Jenny both laughed and Delmar and Daniel joined in.

“Sorry,” Delmar said. “I didn’t mean to ruin the mood.”

They talked for a while longer, until one by one, they dozed off, their breath fogging the windows of the aircraft.

* * * * *

Samuel Tucker sat at his desk with his feet propped up in an empty chair, his mind wandering. He really disliked his job at the airfield—the night shift, monitoring flights through the night. There would be one or two each night but they were regulars and didn’t require much by way of tracking. The job required no physical labor—which was good, because Samuel had more than doubled his weight since high school and could no longer do much of anything for very long. The pay was decent, it was union of course, and he brought home enough money each week to keep himself supplied with beer and to keep his wife, who had also more than doubled her weight since high school, satisfied. Overall, it was a decent living but he pretty much hated it. He had moved beyond wondering how he had ended up staying in this lonely, cold shithole of a town. He knew exactly why he was here and he resented that, too.

Samuel had been a promising student in high school, making good grades and doing well in football and baseball. He was popular and he was an all-around good kid. His dream was to be what he called a “nature journalist,” which he defined as a man who traveled into wildernesses, jungles, and the outback, living or working in the native population while writing articles for the AP and for magazines like
National Geographic
. His teachers encouraged him and his parents were prepared to take out a second mortgage to get him through college. Then he had met Ellen.

Everything changed when Ellen moved into town during his senior year. They fell in love and Samuel decided he could not live without her. She could not afford college and neither could her folks…and she was not willing to work for it. At first, Samuel stuck to his guns—he was going to college. Then, during a short break-up, he had caught Ellen with Timothy Autry, whose father owned one of the outpost and guide companies. Tim didn’t need college and had plenty of money to take care of Ellen if she stayed with him.

So, that was it. Ellen was pregnant soon after marrying Samuel and then pregnant again three years later. Samuel did odd jobs around town until landing the job at the airfield. Years passed and one of the boys, Alan, became a pilot and had managed to get a loan to finance his own plane. He had his own, small charter but did okay. Samuel’s youngest son, Dwayne had graduated high school with a decent scholarship to a city college but decided he didn’t need college. Instead, Samuel thought, Dwayne believed he could just live off of his parents until he was thirty. Samuel tried to get the boy to take on a decent job and the most recent conversation with Dwayne had ended badly when Dwayne blurted in the middle of it that he was wondering if he could borrow enough money to get his nose pierced. The kid wanted a nose ring. That was all—just a nose ring. His boy could not see the future beyond his own nose.

Samuel was jealous of Alan and disliked Dwayne. He resented his wife and he generally just barely managed to tolerate everyone and everything else—that was probably why he was asleep during the three or four times that Kyle’s radio calls came through. Samuel had traded his sense of responsibility for spite and an all around
bad attitude
.

A loud knock on the tower door scared Samuel so bad that he almost fell out of his chair—both chairs. It turned out that a local amateur radio operator—actually a teenage boy,
had
received one of Kyle’s radio calls. An angry father, one who knew Samuel very well, shook a finger at Samuel and said he knew that he’d been sleeping or else there would not have been repeated radio checks after the call. Samuel listened as the man read what his son had written down on a piece of notebook paper:

“This is Kyle at Crazy Horse base, relaying call from Crazy Horse actual. Actual was unable to land at destination LZ or alternate LZ. He is changing his flight path to 300 degrees north by northwest and is planning an emergency weather landing in the bluffs at approximately 287034.”

“You have to admire that guy’s radio etiquette,” Samuel said. “So, that was it?”

“Yeah, except for some radio checks and a couple of apparent attempts to answer Steven.” The man turned for the door. “Brian didn’t write any of that down, but he said it sounded like Kyle was answering Steven in such a way that he—
Kyle
—believed they might be in some sort of trouble.” He paused and looked back at Samuel. “Do your damned job and look into this. We all like Steven and his wife,
who is with him
, by the way, and it would not bode well for the man who slept through their distress call.
Any
distress call.” He slammed the door shut behind him before Samuel could reply to the threat.

“Bastard,” Samuel muttered.

He sat back down and worked some controls on his radio, and did an area-wide radio check. He received a few replies, to which he requested any knowledge of transmissions from Crazy Horse or Crazy Horse base. There were none. He called for Kyle and for Steven on the emergency channel as well as the normal channels. There was no answer. He resolved that what he would do is run a radio check every half hour until he found out something. That would ruin his plans for sleep, but it just might keep him out of trouble—and Samuel hated trouble.

* * * * *

The Other howled in ecstasy as it ripped a large strip of muscle away from bone. The long, black jaws were covered in blood and gore, but the creature did not care. Chunks of flesh fell to the ground as it chewed. Hideous hands with two-inch claws were clamped firmly into the chest of the kill. He did not use the hands to eat with—he did not have that much control. The hands and their long, razor-sharp claws were for ripping and tearing. Although the Other’s build, in general, was like that of a man, he did not possess human skills. He could grip things in his powerful elongated fingers, but he did not have the ability to use them as a human would. His extraordinary legs were thick with muscle and built more like that of canine, joints reversed, allowing him to leap impossibly high and far into the air. He was just as comfortable running on all fours as he was on two legs, but instinct kept him upright and kept his hands free for grasping, ripping, and tearing. His feet were more canine than human—just as large, but formed like that of a wolf. Something caught his attention. He froze, silently sniffing the cold winter air. He was puzzled. The smell, although somewhat familiar, brought something to him. He sensed danger—an eminent threat.