Page 53 of The Mountain
I open my eyes, take a steeling breath, and glare resolutely at the snow. Ice crunches beneath my boots, my mind whirring as I scan the rubble, eyes roving back and forth, back and forth. They could be under my very feet and I wouldn’t know it.
“God help me,” I whisper, and it’s an angry prayer, clouding the icy air in front of my face for a moment, then dissipating. I don’t dare say the rest, not even in my head—a torrent of doubt and curses and suppressed rage. I grind my teeth, then take anothertentative step, ignoring the angry tears threatening to blur my vision.
And then I hear it—the faintest whimper, a muffled movement. I still, barely breathing as my vision sharpens, homing in on a spot some ten feet ahead. Yes.There. Snow shifting, the faintest movements beneath clods of ice and mounds of powder.
I move, every muscle in my body flaring to life, adrenaline bursting through my tissues, filling my veins. I fall to my knees beside the mound, fearful of crushing whoever is beneath, and then I’m digging, clawing with my gloved hands, pulling, pulling, pulling until my lungs are burning and my eyes are stinging and my throat is raw from drawing in the cold air.
“Help,” I shout, not daring to look away from the snow. “Guys. I’ve found someone…”
I don’t look to see if they’re coming. I know they will.
And I dig. And dig. And dig.
My gloves drag against something smooth, something distinctly not snow, and I nearly forget to breathe. Navy blue shows through the white—the technical fabric of a coat or ski pants. For a brief moment, I think I’m too late. That whoever was moving before is gone, that I wasn’t quick enough.
And then movement. Snow crumbling away as this stranger emerges from the rubble, clawing his way free with shaky limbs, drawing in rasping breaths.
“James…” he rasps, trying to rise to his feet, then falling back in the snow. He stares blankly at me through broken goggles, his helmet caked with snow. Some of the snow on his jacket is pink, hinting at injuries hidden beneath, but he doesn’t seem tonotice them. “James,” he says again, fumbling at something in his jacket. “James.”
There’s an almost desperate keening to that name, like it’s a prayer or a plea.
I stare at him in panic, not knowing what to do next.
“Here. I’ve got it.” I nearly collapse in relief at the sound of Liam’s voice, at the feel of his shoulder knocking against my own.
He throws off his gloves, brushing the stranger’s hands aside as he unzips the man’s jacket pocket and pulls out a rectangular device the size of a smartphone. A transceiver, I realize, when I see the words ‘search’ and ‘send’ clearly printed next to a blue switch. Wordlessly, Liam pulls some safety lever, then flicks the device to ‘search’.
There’s a moment of tense silence, the three of us staring at the tiny screen, the only sound the stranger’s raspy breaths and the gentle crunch of snow as Antoine, Eddie, and Seth carefully join us. And then the screen flares to life, numbers and arrows showing the direction and distance to one person, then another, then another.
My mind races, cataloging the numbers, the directions, trying to visualize where each person is likely to be on the slope. I watch, gripping my board so hard that my fingers ache beneath my gloves. When the screen cycles back to the first instruction, I lift my head, meeting Liam’s gray eyes with my own, and I know he’s thinking the same thing I am.
Four people. There are four more people. Four guys buried in a snaking zigzag pattern down the mountain. I don’t know how long a person can survive buried beneath snow—don’t evenknow what the chances of surviving an avalanche like this are. Logic would say it can’t be good odds, though.
Liam’s lips press into a grim line. I lift my chin, my shoulders straightening.
A miracle. That’s what it would be.
Except, we’ve found one of them, and he has a transceiver. There are five of us. Five guys capable of diggingnow, searchingnow, without having to wait for ski patrol to arrive.
I look to Antoine, then Eddie, then Seth, and something like hope bubbles up in my chest. Because if a miracle was ever possible, it would be now. With them. With these four guys who have become even more than brothers to me in the past couple weeks.
“Right, guys. Here’s what we’re going to do.” My voice cracks like a gunshot against the snow. Confident. Fearless. An echo of a time before my world shattered in fire and metal and smoke. “We’re each going to take one person. Eddie, Antoine—give me and Seth a ski pole. They’ll have to do since we don’t have probes. Liam, you stay with the transceiver—you know how to use it—and you tell us when we get close to our person.”
Liam purses his lips, then gives a slow nod of agreement, eyes flickering with approval. “I think that’ll work,” he agrees.
I turn to the stranger, to the poor guy whose friends are buried beneath the snow. It doesn’t take much for me to imagine how he’s feeling, not when I’ve been there, one of the few, sitting on the wreckage. A survivor.
“Do you have a cell phone?” I ask.
The stranger blinks at me in bleary-eyed confusion, then nods. “Yeah.”
“Call ski patrol,” I tell him, because he needs something to do. A sense of purpose.
He shivers, hands trembling as he searches for his phone. His lips are turning blue, eyes glazed as he stares up at me. I’m no medic—barely passed first aid training, actually—but even I can tell he’s going into shock. That he’s at risk of becoming hypothermic if we don’t get him out of the snow. But he’s going to have to wait.
“Here,” I say, shrugging out of my coat, then wrapping it around his shaking shoulders. He’s closer to Eddie and Liam’s size than my own, and it swallows him up like a blanket. “Now you hang tight.” I give him a tight smile and he returns it with a blank, dazed stare. “We’re going to do everything we can to find your buddies.”
Four years ago, I would have told him everything was going to be alright, and I’d have believed it too. Just like I believed in my own invincibility.
