The Alex King Series, A BATEMAN [good books for high schoolers .TXT] 📗

screen, before picking up the remote and switching off the television.

“You can’t beat The Reaper,” said Caroline.

“No,” King agreed. “You most certainly can’t.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stormbound

By

A P Bateman

 

1

 

Lapland

Five miles from the tripoint of Norway, Finland and Russia

The air was so dry and cold that it had started to freeze his lungs, crystallising and ripping him inside as each ice crystal stuck to one another. It was inevitable. Exertion should have been avoided at all costs. The Sami - the natives of Northern Finland - were not runners for good reason. They paced themselves, breathed through a shroud of folded cotton on the coldest days. And today was cold. As cold as he thought possible on this earth.

With the exertion his breathing rate raised considerably. The frigid air chilled his lungs, and with each exhalation, the lungs emptied of air and stuck together. The freezing air rushed back inside, cooled them further. The effect was like licking a metal pole in the sub-zero temperatures. Only each time his lungs stuck together, there were no pain receptors to warn him, and when they refilled with freezing air, the wet lining peeled away from the frozen layer and bled even more. Not that it would ultimately make a difference to him breathing, it was nothing more than a natural and uncontrollable reflex, but he did not know the damage he was doing to himself inside, and he never would. The damage had already been done. He was slowly drowning in his own blood.

He wiped his sleeve across his mouth, glanced at the blood. His breathing was laboured, becoming wet and thick. The lack of useable air was thinning the oxygen levels in his bloodstream. He didn’t know it yet, but he was already dying slowly through hypoxia.

He could hear the incessant motors of the snowmobiles getting closer. He had earlier tried to cover his tracks, take a devious route, but when he had realised how quickly they were catching him, he had made a break for it and broken cover. His efforts had been poor, and although he had once learned about escape and evasion, those scenarios spent on the Brecon Beacons one weekend now seemed trite. Nothing could have prepared a man for this climate. This extreme environment. And he was a deskman now, years after his basic training, he had lost his edge, dulled in reactions. It wouldn’t have made a difference though, he had simply run out of time.

The snowmobiles went silent. He ducked down behind a ledge of ice, a series of ridges which had been blown into waves like a frozen sea. The arctic wind, an irresistible force of nature.

He hunkered down, aware that his clothing afforded him no camouflage qualities in the monochrome landscape. His heart pounded, his breathing tearing his lungs apart within him.

A gunshot rang out across the clearing, cracking the heavy, freezing air and sounding like a canon in the stillness. A solid mist of frozen snow dusted into the air just a few inches from his feet. He pulled his feet up, then broke cover and dodged to a wispy pine. He moved laboriously, partly because of the lack of oxygen in his bloodstream, and partly because of the multiple layers that were both bulky and stiff from the cold. He felt a cumbersome, inelegant beast. But worse; he felt like prey. It was a poor tactical move, too. The tree was far narrower than himself, but more solid than the icy ridge and the crusty layer of frozen snow at his feet. The trees were thinner this far north. They only grew for a few months of the year and the forest was both widely spaced and looked like five-year-old plantations of pine, rather than centuries old forest.

He grimaced, the pain working its way up his throat like bringing up gravel. He coughed, but it only made it worse and he started to retch uncontrollably, blood and sputum dotting the snow at his feet.

Another gunshot. The high-velocity crack ringing through the valley. Part of the tree trunk was blown away and the bullet ricocheted into the forest. The tree was frozen as solid as everything else in this landscape and the soft-nosed hunting round merely chipped off the bark, when it could well have travelled through, had they been a thousand miles further to the south.

He slid down the trunk and slumped onto the frozen ground. The snow had frozen, the temperature now -30°C, and was as hard as concrete. He knew he was finished. He had no fight left in him and had reached as far as he could go. He wiped more blood from his lips, marvelled at how it had already frozen on his sleeve. He closed his eyes for a moment, willed images of his wife and son to come into his thoughts. He wanted to be with them as he died, take solace in the warmth of family memories. But then he snapped too. Remembered his training. Hazy days, twenty-years ago.

Another world. Another lifetime. The tough Scot instructor shouting at him. Keep moving forward! Or; if you’re dying, you can still be useful…

He raised a hand, bit down on the crusty tip of a gloved finger and pulled it free. Another shot rang out. He was aware of a zing in the air as the bullet ricocheted, but he did not falter. Could not care less anymore. His hand felt cold and numb as soon as it met the frigid air. He feebly unzipped a chest pocket, dug his fingers inside and took out a small, orange-coloured lozenge, approximately half the length of his finger. He reached behind him, dug into the frozen snow. He worked away at the crust, his fingers losing all feeling and making the task near-impossible. He broke