Something big and heavy collapsed against the door; a pitiful yowl.
Breath ragged, I circled the damaged lock, assessing it. I needed to come at it from a different angle. Gripping the sledgehammer, I whispered Sigrid’s seven words like an incantation. Spun a hard circle and came slamming at the lock from underneath. It broke off with a metal scream, the dial skittering off to the dark recesses of the room, the deformed upside-down U still holding the door fast. I dropped the sledgehammer at my feet and found a smaller hammer, banging at the remaining metal until it bent just enough for me to slip it off.
From behind the door: utter quiet.
I was too late.
I lifted the latch; the door opened with a smack of suction and swung wide.
For the first few seconds, ice smoke rolled out, obscuring my view, until, as if from a dream, a massive caribou filled the doorway. One side of his elegant set of antlers scraped the ceiling; the other had broken off and lay in pieces on the freezer floor. Dried, frozen blood, already sugared with frost, covered his hooves and forelocks. Sluggishly he scraped at the floor just once. With a human-sounding groan, he fell onto the knees of his forelegs before his haunches gave way and he dropped all the way down. He sank his long snout onto the steel floor, frosted black lips sputtering out a white foam before his eyes fluttered shut.
“Come on,” I choked out. “Get up! You have to get up.” I ran to the door of the Shed and flung it wide. The black cold roared in. “See? You can go. Go!”
But he lay like a broken statue, ice knitting around his closed eyes, cockeyed antlers motionless. I ran back to the freezer, stepped up onto the raised floor. Without thinking, I reached down to touch his long muzzle. He cracked open his frost-rimed brown eyes and lifted his tremendous head with a snarl, nostrils sputtering hot breath. I jumped backward and climbed out of the freezer.
Still collapsed on the floor, the creature snorted, huffing the night air, reading freedom. He lifted one front hoof and scraped it along the corrugated metal again and again, seeking traction of any kind. Somehow it caught in a groove between the interlocking metal sheets and he muscled himself up onto his forelegs, his backside still heartbreakingly inert. Nuggets of ice broke off his face and body like rock candy. For long, terrible moments he stayed that way: front half up, bottom half glued to the floor, until, with a harrowing cry, he unlocked his haunches and lifted himself all the way up to standing. He trembled so hard and so long in the steam of his cage I thought for sure he would fall to his knees again and simply die.
I heard voices.
Framed by the open door, the figures of Wyatt and Jeanne began to make their way up the hill toward the Shed.
“Come on,” I said. “You’ve got to run.” I backed up into the shadows of the room, trying to give the animal all the space he needed.
With a clop, the caribou tendered a leg out and down on the floor of the freezer. Took a wobbly, jerky step. Panted, snorted, shook his lopsided head. Banged another hoof down. One knee nearly buckled but he caught it, sticking the other leg out straight and commanding his body forward. He scrambled clear of the freezer and clattered down to the wooden floor of the Shed. Took a few confused steps—a half circle toward me, a half circle away—as if he’d lost the scent of the night and the way out.
“Go! Run!” I breathed the musky tang of his thick fur. For a moment he looked at me as if I had something he needed, some answer. “Bah!” I screamed, waving my arms, anything so he would move.
He skittered back, then pivoted—hooves screeching—toward the doorway, his big body and one antler filling it. Tilting his head sideways, he negotiated the opening, then launched himself full throttle across the snow. Jeanne and Wyatt, just yards from the door, reared back and out of his way, watching him leap toward the glacier as if witnessing something of the divine.
twenty-four
“That’s unforgivable.” From her seat on the floor, Nora nudged a plate of fried fish closer to Sigrid’s bed, no doubt hoping hunger would lure her out. “What did they say to you?”
My head pounded from lack of sleep, adrenaline from the night before still pulsing through me. “That it was none of my business. That it was science. Said I was getting in the way.”
Nora shook her head. “Look, Val, I would let it go. A few more days and we’re out of here, all of us. We just have to hang on.”
Sigrid crawled out from her lair and gave us both a shy smile; in no time she was tearing through her plate of food. She licked her fingers clean and handed me the crumbless plate, then climbed on the bed, where she leaned against her window—palms on the cold pane, breath clouding the glass—as if willing her body outside.