I heard helicopters for a while, but they stopped. They probably couldn’t see shit through the trees. The highway shootout must have gotten the attention of the police. And Aldus. He won’t give the order to kill Noah now. He can’t. It’s his guys who fucked up. It’s not like I called the cops on him.

I sigh. The disadvantage of this situation--the kidnappers being cut off from Aldus and with the police on their tail--is that their main objective at this point will be to escape. Their best bet for keeping the police from mauling them will be to keep Noah close to them. If they try to leave Noah behind and hightail it, they will get no help from Aldus, and the police will have no reason to cautiously approach them.

The trail is moving southwest. I’ve probably walked three miles by now. It will be 20 miles or more before they can exit out of the woods and foothills to the peninsula. Maybe they had a plan A and a plan B all lined up. Plan A was driving out through Canada, and plan B was getting into a boat on the gulf.

Plan B is just as shitty as it ever was. Now that the cops are on them, they can’t reasonably expect to reach the gulf. Probably the only way they could pull it off would be holding a gun to Noah’s head.

That image alone is enough to push me forward faster. I can’t let it reach that point. Once Brody and his fucking goons realize there’s nothing left to lose, they’ll get reckless as hell. Noah’s life will be little more than a bargaining chip.

The trees thin out as the elevation increases, but then the sun starts to set. There’s not a lot of daylight in the Alaskan winter. Tracking them at night will be that much harder, but they won’t be able to move quickly. They’ll need to start a fire, too, which will be my best bet at finding them.

I slowly follow the tracks as the last of the light dies down. The moon is bright enough that I can hobble on in the silvery light.

The cuts from the glass have all crusted over, but the deeper cut on my left shoulder is starting to hurt. It might be getting infected. I rotate my left arm as I grasp the rifle in my right hand. It’s sore as I move it, and I move gently so as not to reopen the wound. I need to keep the arm from getting stiff, as I’ll need to be ready to move when I spot these assholes.

I stop dead. The tracks diverge. Shit.

One set of footprints is going left, and suddenly--to the right--the other set of footprints becomes two. A set of big boots, and small ones. Noah’s feet.

Either the guy got tired of carrying Noah, or he intentionally did this to lead me toward him. If I have a choice, clearly I want to follow the asshole who has Noah alone with him.

Strategically speaking, it’s a shit move to do the most obvious option. I’ve already got one guy tracking me, following me from behind, and now--if I follow Noah’s footprints--I’ll have two unknowns on me. The two of them could even meet back up and hit me in numbers.

I sigh. Even if I’m doing exactly what they want, I have to follow Noah. There’s no other choice.

I follow the footprints for 10 or 15 minutes, and then I hear a gun go off. Behind me.

I drop to the ground. Instinct takes over. I spin around and sight across the rifle. I wait for another shot, but it doesn’t come. I can’t see shit anyway. If he’s not shooting at me, then who the hell fired?

Then I hear a man shouting.

It’s close behind me. Even though Noah is the other way, this is too much of an opportunity to pass up, picking this guy off will not cost me a lot of time. Once he’s down--or better yet, if both of them are down--I can press on straight ahead without watching my back. That will get me to Noah faster than anything else.

As I head back toward the shout, I suddenly hear another. Followed by another gun shot.

I start running now. They are not shooting at me. They’re fucking shooting each other. I overestimated my enemies, I thought they were splitting up as some form of advanced tactics. But no, they must have argued amongst themselves over what to do. Should they leave Noah and run? Should they stick together? Should they split up? It wasn’t a strategic decision they reached together; they argued with each other, and unable to reach a consensus, they split up. Now they’re shooting at each other.

I reach the top of a hill, and I see a dark figure running, full speed ahead.

I crouch down beside a tree, and I steady my rifle against the trunk. I aim at the figure--who definitely doesn’t see me--and I fire at his center of mass. He collapses down into a heap.

I stand still and wait. By firing, I just gave away my location. If the other guy is still alive, he’ll--

Three gunshots crack out from the distance.

“Jack!” an unfamiliar voice shouts. “I’m a cop! He’s got me pinned down, clear my flank!”

It could be a trap, I realize, though the guy I just shot dead probably wouldn’t have sprinted straight into me like that if it was a trap. I heard the choppers earlier--it probably really is a cop.

I move forward, keeping my eyes open for whichever kidnapper is shooting at the cop.

“He’s taking cover behind a tree,” the cop shouts. “Flush him out!”

Two more gunshots go off, and then I hear the telltale click click of an empty magazine.

“Fuck! Man!” a new voice shouts. “I’m sorry I shot you, alright? I just wanted to get away, you weren’t supposed to be there!”

“You shouldn’t have kidnapped my fucking son then,” I shout. “Now I’ve got an axe to grind with you.”

I pull out my axe. “Literally.”

I stalk toward where his voice came from.

“I know where Brody’s going!” he says. “I can help you find him.”

The cop laughs from the distance. “The fucker shot me, Jack. If you kill him, I’ll claim it was self-defense.”

“Where is Brody going?” I shout.

“Take me with you, I’ll show you.”

“Tell me!” I shout into the darkness.

I’m still moving closer toward his voice. I’ve strapped the rifle to my back, and my axe is in my hand.

I see him. He’s got his back pressed against a tree, and his gun is still in his hand.

“You got no bullets,” I bark.

I see him spin toward me, holding the gun out.

I move toward him, holding the axe up. “When I started competing,” I say, “the axe throw was not my best event. But I’ve had years to practice, and now I rarely miss.

“Fuck, man,” he says. “I’ll help you! I swear! I was doing this for the money, but it got too fucked up, I shouldn’t have--”

I throw the axe.

It slams into his shoulder, pinning him to the tree.

“Fuck! Ahhhh! Shit!” he wails, reaching for the handle.

“Pull that out,” I say, rushing toward him, “and you’ll bleed out!”

“Shittttt!” he whines. “God, it fucking hurts!”

His hand is hovering over the handle, but he realizes I’m right. His best bet at this point is to hope the rest of the cops catch up to him before he dies of his wounds.

“Cop man,” I shout over. “What’s your name?”

“Willis,” he says.

“Willis,” I shout. “This guy tried to kill me, so I had to fight back. I missed his heart though, so he needs medical attention.”

“Got it,” Willis says. “I do, too. I radioed in. Backup should be here in 20 minutes. But Jack, there’s a snowstorm coming...you’ve gotta get your son before it hits.”

I reach the asshole pinned to the tree. I stare him down.

“Where is Brody going?” I hiss, getting right up in his face.

“I don’t know!” he says, his voice dying into a whimper. “I--I--I was bluffing so you wouldn’t hurt me!”

I put my hand on the handle. “I’ll pull this right out of you, I swear to G--”

“Okay!” he shouts. “A few miles north of Anchor Point...there’s--there’s--there’s a small dock. Aldus told us there was a small boat there. We radio from there, and some guy picks us up in the gulf. We only were supposed to do that if the roads were blocked!”

“Anchor Point then?” I ask.

He nods. “I swear.”

“Willis,” I shout. “You sure you’re good here? I’ve got this asshole pinned to a tree.”

“I’m good,” Willis shouts back. “Go get your son, man!”

I fucking will go get him. From Brody’s dead hands.

“Wait,” Willis shouts.

I turn around and see him limping toward me. He’s got a hand grasping his leg as he hobbles from the darkness.

“Yeah?” I ask.

“What’s a lumberjack without an axe?” he asks. “You may need that thing.”

He points to the axe jammed into the asshole’s shoulder.

“If I remove the axe, he’ll bleed out,” I say.

“Nah,” Willis says, grabbing the handle.

The asshole’s eyes bulge, nearly bugging out of his sockets. Willis grunts and pulls the axe out. The fucker squeals and collapses to the ground.

Willis tears off a strip of cloth from an already torn shirt. “I wrapped up my own leg, I can wrap up his shoulder.”

He gut punches the guy, then head butts him, and he goes out cold. “That’s how doctors did surgery back in the day.”

I laugh, and Willis starts to wrap the cloth around the guy’s shoulder and armpit. Once it’s secure, he hands the bloodied axe to me with an extra strip of cloth.

I wipe off the axe, smile down to WIllis, and set out back onto Brody’s trail.

The snow starts to fall after about 20 minutes. It falls hard. It’s the storm Willis warned me about. Good thing I have the axe, the rifle is fucking useless with such low visibility.

The snow is falling so hard that I doubt the cops can keep going. Only a man running for his life, and a father hunting for his son, could continue on through such a storm. The father will always win in this situation. At least when I’m the father.

The wind is cold and icy, sucking the warmth right out of me, but I trudge on. Unfortunately, the snow quickly erases Brody’s tracks.

Another 20 minutes, and the wind is blowing so hard that I fear I’m somehow not even moving forward. It feels as if with each step, my boots are slipping across the snow as the wind blows me back. Like I’m walking on some eternal and frozen treadmill. But if I’m at a standstill, then Brody’s weak ass will be moving backward.

No, in reality, I’m moving at a snail’s pace, and Brody will have stopped for shelter. All I have to do now is keep steady and make slow forward progress, until I spot his fire. The visibility is total shit, but the path forward--even without any tracks to follow--is obvious. The foothills are becoming mountains already, and there’s only one real way to go forward without climbing gear.

I need to get there fast. Noah is just a small kid, and the cold could be just as dangerous to him as Aldus or Brody. I can’t count on Brody’s survival skills to get me out of this.

I lose track of time. It’s as if the cold sucks out my perception of the minutes passing. Each cold, icy slap of wind makes me painfully aware of each step, and time seems to grind to a halt. I can feel my feet getting numb too, even through my thick boots. I have the mental fortitude to go on until my body literally collapses, but I may not come out of this with all of my toes.

I clutch the axe, squeezing so hard my forearms bulge. Even through my gloves, my fingers are going numb. Working the grip of the axe can hopefully keep the blood flowing.

One advantage of the numbing cold is my shoulder wound. I can’t even feel it anymore. Maybe it is infected, and maybe it hurts like hell, but it’s so cold I can’t even feel it.

Finally I crest a hill, and there’s a plateau for as far as I can see. If I was Brody, I’d set up camp somewhere around here.

The trees are all but gone now--a few sparse and wispy ones cling to the rocky ground--and were it not for the choking fog of the howling snow, I could probably see Brody from a mile away. As it is, he might be a few hundred feet in front of me, unseen.