Free Anti-man by Dean Koontz

There were about two dozen of them, standing in an area where the wind seemed to have scoured away all but three or four inches of snow. I could not tell which of them was the one I had hit a glancing blow with the sled. They watched me, snorting among themselves and blinking their large, dark eyes.
        I turned back to the sled, muscled it up out of the snow and onto the undisturbed surface, its motor idling, the field on and holding it on the thin crust. I climbed aboard, buckled up, and started out again. I kept it at a decent twenty miles an hour as I had at first, and I kept it like that until I had come down through all the foothills and had reached the fence at the edge of the park.
        Beyond the fence, there was a plowed and cindered road banked with snow on both sides. I realized that I could not be far from the main gate where He and I had first entered. But, of course, it would be nothing but suicide to go back there. The World Authority coppers would be congregated at the first ranger station, would have secured that primary gate. All gates, in fact. If I were to get out, I would have to climb the fence.
        I lugged the sled to a clump of brush, brown and dry and dead from the battering of winter. I tucked it into them, then stood back and examined it. It was still noticeable from the road, I was certain. I went behind the bushes, dug out snow and threw it on the sled. Five minutes later, I was satisfied. The contours of its hidden shape were irregular and unnatural, but the smooth blanket of falling snow would take care of that in another hour. I went back to the fence and spent a good fifteen minutes climbing and falling off before I went over and dropped in the snow on the other side.
        On each of the fence posts, there was a small red plate with a number stamped into it. I checked the number on this one: 878. Now all I would have to do when I returned was get on this park access highway and follow the fence posts down or up until I came to 878. I felt proud of my ingenuity, so proud that I almost stepped out onto the road before I noticed the low, rumbling sound of an approaching jeep.

----

    VI
        
        I was standing in the snow bank that the plows had thrown up. I had not yet broken through to the road, and now I dropped quickly until I was snuggled down in a hole that would be invisible to the WA searchers. The sound of the jeep engine grew louder until, finally, I knew it was just beyond the bank. A powerful light swept over the snow as the vehicle moved slowly past. Could they know? Could they already know that I was leaving the park? Had they captured Him and-no, no. This was probably just a routine patrol. They would be looking along the perimeters of the park for any place where the snow bank might be broken, any place where we might have exited behind their backs.
        When the engine was sufficiently distant, I stood up and looked after the jeep. It was a heavy, truck-bedded vehicle carrying half a dozen armed WA troops. Then it turned a bend and was out of sight. Quickly, I broke through onto the road, then turned around to look at the hole I had made. It would do no good for them to see this, investigate, and discover the sled. I'd come strolling back, confident about fooling them, and they would be sitting in the trees with their guns ready, grinning with a satisfaction of their own. I set to work scraping snow off the front of the bank and packing it into the exit I had made. When the spot was well enough hidden to pass searchlight inspection, I crossed to the other side of the road, broke through the snow wall there, packed it behind me. Then, paralleling the road, but hidden by the wall of snow, I began walking back toward Cantwell.
        When I reached the town proper, the banks of snow along the roads disappeared, for full snow-removal operations were in effect in the city limits. Now I would have to walk in the open, out where I could easily be seen,