At that moment movement could be seen and heard through the thickening snowfall coming in from either side just to the front. As Jay and Jacques were overcome by the main group of hyenas the out-runners were now closing the door on their prey. Terrence took one look at Eddie, grabbed him by his parka with one big hand and tossed him with a yell into the snowdrift, “Tunnel fo yo life!”
Eddie felt a feeling of unbelievable lightness as he hurdled through the air like a discarded toy tossed by an irate toddler. His headfirst entry into the fifteen foot high drift was accompanied by a “poof”, as if he were a marble tossed among cotton balls. The ridiculous image of him and Terrence, pillow-fighting in some childhood paradise that could have been, flashed before his eyes. He hit something sharp that stabbed into his left shoulder. A branch, no, a bone! The snow was collapsing behind and above him.
This is ridiculous. You are going to die in this pile of snow!
A hideous laughing, howling, growling, snarling, shinging, bone-snapping, screaming chaos sounded dully but not distant behind him. Suddenly afraid that he would be added to the grisly feast beyond this white cocoon, he took his friend’s advice and dug for all he was worth, down to the frozen ground and onward into the darkness. There was a hint of light somewhere above and he began to suffocate. As he crawled and scraped with his right hand he used his numb and throbbing left hand to clear snow away from his nose and mouth so that he could breathe.
He could hear Terrence, as if rapping about dirty cops on some distant stage, taunting his attackers, “Come on ya freaks, come en ged some muth…”
He had tunneled to a place between two rocks where incoming sounds were reduced to a muffled rumble of indistinct chaos. He was packed in snow, digging a little breathing pocket for himself, somehow not cold. As he curled up between the rocks he made a bigger air pocket with his right hand, his left now numb and useless. The dull distant sounds still came to him. For how long he could not tell. It seemed like forever, and he was ridden with guilt over the prospect of surviving his friends, his protectors, his first patient, poor Jacques—surely eaten alive. A curious anger suddenly animated him.
I’m not going to die here, under this pile. I got the capacitator. I got a chance. Don’t let those who gave you the chance to live die for nothing. Breathe Eddie. What’s that?
It’s a bone, a broken rib from some big beast. There you go brother. Breathe slowly and hold onto that. Stab them creepy-crawlies if they come for you. Go out like your crazy brothers. You’re done running Eddie.
He was sleepy, nodding off like a junkie on the bus. He was getting drossy and had to dig more of a breathing space. Then he heard the howl and thought of the wolves above. He could feel something scraping the ground ahead of him, following his path, sniffing like a vacuum cleaner.
It’s those wolves, they saw your ass. They’re coming for you Eddie. Put up a fight.
Suddenly afraid that his extended foot would be bitten between salivating jaws and used to drag him off to a terrible death, he tucked it under him. The scraping stopped, as if in response to his movement. The snow in front of his face then began to fall away and light began to filter down to him, along with air and a terrible shit-and-blood smell. The animal was sniffing, snarling and snorting as it came for him.
Stab this bastard Eddie!
He thrust the splintered bone forward in hopes that he would stab the snout of the animal that was digging him out of his snow drift like the Big Bad Wolf digging out the Twig-Pig. His thrust hit home. He felt it sink into hard muscle and stop when it hit a bone. Then his wrist was seized and he was dragged into the brutal gray-black sunset with a chilling roar: part wolf; part lion; part ape?
