Snow Crash

The trip back home was rushed, because the storms were getting closer. They were worse now than they'd been three years earlier, and worse then than six years, and even then, they'd been pretty bad. So the group piled camping equipment, skiis, snowshoes, backpacks from their cabins on the edge of Lac La Martre, and put them into the huge DeHavilland for the flight back to Yellowknife. Mark and Anne travelled light, with only the two pair of Fischer cross-country skiis, cooking kit, their sleeping bags. The Brewsters, who had the cabin directly across from Mark's, had brought enough stuff for three weeks in the wilds, and after only six days, were having to haul a lot back home again. The pilot, Kary, was helping Malcom Brewster with the cots they'd brought, fighting the winds that swept snow horizontally across their vision. Kary's red hair snapped and tangled in the air, collecting ice as they moved. "You planning on living out here for the winter?" he hollered, looking at the suitcases they'd brought.
Mark and Anne climbed in the door, sat in the last set of bunk seats. Katrine and Sophie were right in front of them, and the Brewsters in the frontmost seats. The gear they'd brought was behind them, in the dark cavern of the aircraft's tail. They'd spent the week together, but more as couples than as six people, and Anne hugged Mark as the plane turned into the headwind, began to pick up speed.
"That was fun. Thank you," she said. She grinned at him. "Let's do this next year." She had freckles and a thin red crescent across each cheek, from the combination of sunburn and ski goggles.
"Next year, I'm bringing more warm socks," he said. She laughed.
They flew for ten minutes in the sunlight, then the clouds closed in above them. Anne turned, frowning.
"We get new carpets for the living room," she said. "Like the Richardsons' but more blueish. That's what I want for my birthday."
He laughed. "Not a dark green? English Racing Green?"
"NO. That would look ghastly."
Mark leaned over, whispered in her ear, "I've got a surprise for you."
"What's that?" she said, turning to look at him.
"You'll see when we get home." He turned to look out the window, pretending to watch the snow and trees go by below them.
Kary flew low, dropping to 1000 feet above the snow-covered ground, across half-frozen lakes, thick with birds on the white, sparkling water, and the clouds were above them, a solid grey ceiling that crept down on all sides. The air was gusty and jagged, and the plane jumped and twitched at unseen movements out there, invisible storm kings walking by. The cloud bottom lifted again, and Kary climbed with them, momentarily, getting further above the ground.
The clouds ahead of them were taller, they could see now, and darker. Kary shook his head. "Ok," he said, looking out in front of them. "Ok," a little louder, "It's too nasty. We're going to have to go back."
There was a moment of silence. Around him, Mark could see people stiffen. They knew they shouldn't argue, they knew that Kary's word was law, but they still felt like they were supposed to get through, that it wasn't fair to have to go back.
"I'm sorry, folks. But, see, there's an old sayings, which goes, 'it is better to be on the ground wishing you were flying, than flying wishing you were on the ground.'" Kary looked over his shoulder and grinned. He reached over, adjusted something on the directional gyro, and started into a shallow left bank.
They hit a larger gust, and the airplane rose suddenly, and outside, the world went white as they tore through a cloud. They continued to turn, and still there was only greyness outside.
"This is screwed up, man," Kary said. He pushed the throttle quads back, and they began to climb. "Ok, we should be out in the clear again, pretty soon."
It stayed grey outside.
He leveled the plane, and continued climbing for a moment longer. "Ok, we're heading back. We're heading back."
"Why don't you, uh." Malcom, the businessman from Michigan, was looking out the side window, downwards.
"Don't I what?" Kary asked, not looking back.
"Don't you drop so that you're out where you can see?"
"Coz we're, uh, somewhere about 2000 feet above the ground, and we're heading back towards mountains, and, well, I really don't know how far down the ground is. The air pressure's changing and the clouds weren't this low when we flew through here a minute ago."
The gray-white outside seemed to get darker, and they began hearing ticking noises, like someone was outside tapping on the side of the plane with a drumstick. Suddenly there was a hollow bang, like the person outside had found a hammer, then ticks, then another bang.
"Is that hail?"
The banging outside increased, and Malcom said again, "Is that hail?"
Kary turned around somewhat, and yelled, "No! That's ice on the props! It's coming off and hitting the sides of the airplane!"
No one spoke after that, because they couldn't hear each other over the clangings and clatterings. It was very much like being in a car in a hailstorm, but louder. The plane began jerking around more and more, and Kary pushed the throttle quads to full on. They couldn't hear the engines over the clamor, and the windows went slowly darker.
Mark realized that what they saw outside the windows was ice on the surface of the glass, and he felt the cold reach in from it to grab him. He put his arm around Anne and they leaned towards each other, her head on his shoulder. He smelled her hair, the scent of almond soap, and blew on her scalp. She rocked her head back, looked at him with eyes big and dark in the half-light of their space, and stuck her tongue out at him.
The jouncing got worse and worse, until they were holding onto everything they'd taken out, to keep it from flying away, stuffing books under their legs. Mark could imagine the wingtips flexing at each new buffet. Kary was leaning forward, as if he could see through the ice, and his shoulders were stiff against the twitches and jerks of the control wheel. There was another jolt, hard upwards, then a horrible emptiness as they dropped, like driving over the top of a hill way too fast, then a series of three hard shocks, pushing them down into their seats. Mark's inner ear said they'd just tilted heavily over to the left, and he saw Kary fighting the wheel. Then another huge jolt, the front of the plane jerking upwards, and another one, twisting and rolling them to their right, and then the biggest jolt of all.

There was a moment of quiet, before Mark opened his eyes. It was dark, but he could feel wind on his chest. There was a sound, KRUMPH! from his left. It was very quiet afterwards, as quiet as anything had ever been in his life. Then, again, KRUMPH!, from his right, and something moved against his leg. It was very restful to lie where he was, and there was warmth all around him. He felt buried in warmth, and he knew there was something he should be thinking about, but it was warm and it was quiet and it was still, still as it could be.
He felt something on his right leg, a faint tingling sensation of warmth, of more warmth than anywhere else, and then on his chest, where it had been cold, and then the feeling wasn't warm any more, it was hot, and then it was very hot. But something seemed to be disconnected between his body and his brain. There was this lag, this sensation like he had to consciously think about his leg, and he could faintly hear words. "It is very hot. I request instructions. Signed: Right Leg."
He thought for a while. He tried to move his right arm, but something heavy and soft and warm was lying on top of it. The sensation of heat was considerably more intense now, and a voice in his brain began to say words like up, out, push, think, move. He could smell something, a weird sweet smell, like being at an airport, or maybe like the smell of dark, wet green weeds burning in a ditch in spring.
Burning.
He squirmed and something moved against his leg, and then something moved in front of his face, and the cloth of a jacket pulled across his nose. He was lying almost in the cockpit, and the window in front of him was gone, and he looked down through blood to see a dark-haired woman lying across his legs, twitching aimlessly. He sat up, and the heat from the fires outside, the petrol spilled as the burst wing tanks drained across the hot engines, the heat and light and flickering shadows lit the torn body of the craft. He reached forward, grabbed Anne where she lay across his legs, and began trying to crawl forward, through the hole in the front of the aircraft. His right arm wasn't working quite right so he held her to his right side and crawled on his knees. The smoke from the flames was thick black sooty sticky stuff, and the snowflakes blew through it in billows, and he stumped out through the broken, bloody glass of the windscreen, and across the nose of the craft, turning and pulling her, and as he stepped off the metal, he fell back into snow higher than he was.
It wasn't, really. It was only waist-deep, but he'd fallen backwards, so he stumbled up and began pulling her again, dragging her. He looked back quickly and saw a huge rock, maybe thirty feet from them, so he pulled her over into the lee of the rock, then ran back to the fire.
By now the smell was more obvious: burning plastic, petrol, and meat. The wings were laceworks of glowing red steel, with silver aluminum going grey and dripping off them, splashing and hissing in the water as the snow melted, and he had to put his hands over his face before he got into the body of the craft, where the walls protected him a little. The whole back end was empty; the contents of the plane had spilled forward as it stopped, compacted in the front. He saw the blue square of a first aid kit, and picked it up reflexively, from where it lay on Malcom's back. There was still a weird feeling of distance, of automatic action, as he bent over to turn Malcom over.
He felt almost no reaction as he looked at where Malcom's face should have been, just a faint surprise that the sight didn't make him sick. He stood there staring for a moment, then gently rolled the body back over, and turned to the next body.
He stepped back, onto the nose cowl, and looked down at the brown-haired woman with the green down jacket, and some tiny memory floated into his head. There was only one woman on the plane who was a brunette and wearing a green jacket, and that was Anne. He leaned down and recognised her hand, where it lay bloody on the back of a seat, and as he leaned down, his foot slipped, hard rubber sole on wet aluminum, and he fell backwards into the snow again, wondering who he'd actually pulled to the safety of the rock.
There was another long moment of not remembering.
He woke again, and the whole world was a dense, oily black smoke, and a crackling, a sizzling, and he turned over and crawled away into the whiteness. Wherever he put his hand, he opened a shaft of whiteness in the surface of the black-stained snow. From behind him, he heard another KRUMPH and felt a wave of heat, as the wind momentarily stopped, as snowflakes melted in the air and turned to rain. His hand found a suitcase, buried in the snow, vomited out from the collision. He kept crawling forward, leaving it behind.
Suddenly, he was back at the rock, with no real feeling of having actually moved. The woman he'd drug there was lying against the rock; she'd sat up and was looking at him. It was Katrine, he thought. He was having trouble remembering names. He was confused -- it was Anne he'd dragged here. No, it was Anne he'd seen in the plane.
Mark turned around to look at where he'd left the wreck, and through the snow he could see a glowing red lump, hungry and angry, black-stained yellow flames licking at the edges of the snow, digesting the last bits of what they could reach. There was nothing left of the wings, of the fuselage or tail. There was only an outline, like someone had Xeroxed the airplane in black, with the contrast up way too high so that the snow around it was grimy in lines and whirls.
"Did you see Sophie?" Katrine said to him.
"What?"
"Sophie. Is she ok?"
Mark thought for a long time, trying to form words, trying to think about what she'd said. Finally, he said, softly, "What?"
She moved towards him, scooting sideways. "You hit your head, I think." He nodded, and she continued. "I think my leg's broken. I can't stand on it. Also my ribs, I think. Are you hurt badly?"
"No," he said, tiredly. "I just got smacked in the head."
There was a long silence, as they watched the last flames jump and die in the wind. "Sophie was still in there," said Katrine, at last. "So was everyone else, weren't they?"
Mark felt like he could think more clearly now, or at least he could understand what she was saying. "Yeah. I think Kary maybe got thrown clear, through the windshield. It was broken out. But..."
"Yeah. So what now?"
Mark shrugged. "They'll come look for us."
"You think so? How long will that take?"
"I don't know."
"Maybe an hour after we should have landed," she said. "They'll fly over, try and spot the wreckage."
The snow almost blocked their view of the airplane, thirty feet away. The heat kept snow from settling on the black ashes, but already the grey outline had faded to white.
"Seven hours, huh? After they figure out we're late, and fly out." Katrine looked around at the blowing snow. "How far you figure it is back to the cabins?"
Mark thought. "How long were we in the air? Ten minutes?"
She nodded. "So, like, 10 miles?"
"More like twenty."
There was a long silence. Katrine finally said, "There's plenty of fuel at the cabins. The radiotelephone too. You could call for help."
Mark nodded and crawled over to sit beside her.
"My mom always used to say, 'where there's life, there's hope.'" she said. "I wish I had a coat."
"There's a suitcase back there," Mark pointed towards the plane. "Maybe a first aid kit, too. I saw that." He got up unsteadily, stretched.
"I'd like it if you could find a first aid kit," said Katrine. "Especially if there's any morphine or something in it."
Mark turned to look at her. Her face was completely white and she was rocking slowly back and forth. Her yellow hair had blood on it, he suddenly noticed, and she was holding her arms tightly against her chest, as if she was keeping something in. She looked up at him. He shook his head and walked off.
A lot of stuff lay in the snow, buried, and he found them only by stumbling over them -- packs, a sleeping bag, the first aid kit right at the edge of the circle of ashes. He looked into the wreckage, but there was nothing, not even a trace of what he'd seen there before. The heat had baked the ground dry, for a while, and the warmth that still radiated from the blackness was diminishing as he stood there, looking.
The kit had some painkillers, prescription stuff, and after Katrine swallowed one, and Mark washed his forehead off, they ate a little from the Brewsters' backpack. Apples, bananas, some water with the thin, metallic taste of the purification tablets.
"You better get going," Katrine said, finally, not looking at him.
"I know," Mark said. "Backpack, a bit of food in it. I'll leave most of it here. I've got the GPS, so I know which way to go." He sat with his back against the rock, and she leaned back against his shoulder. "Katrine, what are you thinking about?"
"I was thinking about when I met Sophie. We were hiking, a tour group, near Uppsala. A couple of us got drunk, one night, on cheap vodka, and Sophie and I started talking. We walked off together, into the darkness, and got lost. They didn't find us until the next day." She laughed, then. "I wasn't sure I wanted to be found, honestly."
Mark smiled. "How long ago was that?"
"Seven years ago. Just after the war. I'd just gotten out, and it was my big fling, with some of my old squad buddies. We lost contact pretty quickly, though. Nothing, really, to keep us together anymore."
Mark nodded to her. "Yeah, I know. Where were you stationed?"
"Tel Aviv," she said. "I was on leave when they hit it, and then I was in Athens, Albania, wherever. I was gunnery for one of the tanks."
Another long silence. Mark got out the GPS. "Ok. We're here, and the cabins are right there. Actually, it looks like only about fifteen miles to me."
"Damn, it's cold," Katrine said.
Mark looked into the snowstorm, to the east. "This isn't cold," he said. "Not yet."
"So what are you thinking about?"
"Me?" said Mark. "Um. The war. I was on border patrol, in India. I flew choppers, for the night patrol. I was thinking about one night, we were flying out of Furozpur. Northwest of New Delhi. It used to be beautiful land, all heavy forests, but we'd completely destroyed it. There wasn't anything more than bushes for 800 miles along the border, this thin strip of nothing. When we flew high over it, it looked just like the boundaries they draw on maps."
Mark rubbed his back against the stone. "We were out one night, three choppers. Night vision stuff, you know. So we spotted something, and we looked. I saw them, actually, and I pointed them out -- two people right up beside a rock, like this one. I think it was two kids. In the Zone. My gunner saw them, when I pointed them out. Probably just two kids from a local village, out late. Maybe lost. They were all curled up together against the rock. I wish I hadn't pointed them out to him."
"Did you," said Katrine, then she stopped for a second. "Did you ever tell your wife about this?"
"No. She wouldn't understand." Mark rubbed snow off his nose. "Hell, I didn't understand. I didn't understand the whole thing."
"This storm's supposed to last a week, isn't it?"
"Yeah. All that ash and stuff in the air, screwed up the weather patterns, is what I've heard."
Katrine looked over her shoulder at him. "You ever talk to any of those guys you served with, there?"
"No." Mark pursed his lips for a second, and looked off into the snow. "I probably better get going, if I'm going to get to the cabins at a reasonable time."
She nodded. They watched the snow. Any remains of the airplane were entirely covered by drifts now. There was almost no snow falling, from what they could see. It was just moving from place to place in the fog, from rock to rock.
"You just, you know, find yourself in these places," said Mark. "Like, I couldn't do anything, you know? Once Vance had seen those two kids, it was out of my hands. Or, like, once Kary started to turn back, it was out of his hands."
"Or when the bomb went off in Mecca and the war started. Or when Sophie and I got drunk."
"Yeah," said Mark. He twisted his leg around between them and rested his back against the rock, and she leaned back against him. He put his arms around her, and she said, "Any more of those pills left?"
"Sure." He pushed the blue box up so she could put her hand in. She was wearing one of Regina Brewster's mittens, and the clumsy thumb made it hard to pick things up.
"They had these ratty old MiG's they flew," Mark said. "But, see, they would drop right down out of the sun. They'd figure out where their shadow was and they'd put it just below you and dive at you, and you wouldn't see them coming. And the radar didn't work worth crap."
"We didn't even see that much. We'd just be rolling along and suddenly one of the tanks would explode. We'd hear the shell coming in, afterwards, after it'd already landed."
"I wish I had a drink," Mark said.
"So, what do you think?" Katrine looked over her shoulder at him again.
"'Where there's life, there's hope,' you know."
"What's that supposed to mean, anyway?"
"I don't know," said Mark. "Stick together. Figure out what happens on the edge of the night."
It began to snow in earnest, then. Thin snowflakes, tiny points of white, snapped down and crashed into the drifts. Mark hugged her, as they tried to keep warm.
"Yeah," said Katrine. "Now it's cold."