We’d been walking for a bit on uneven but slowly descending terrain when things suddenly took a turn for the worse.
For one, the land started sloping upward again, presenting us with a trail of ragged rock that seemed to spear out of the earth like teeth. For two, though the air was growing lighter and the clouds seemed to be passing farther above our heads, the ground beneath our feet had snow coming up to the tops of our boots. I could feel the icy chunks trickling down into my socks.
And then, as we were picking our way across the dangers, trying to find our footing on a ground that only grew steeper and slicker, we heard a terrible scream.
I had no idea what direction it came from, except that it was human and it was a human in utmost agony, a torturous pain that struck fear in the deepest recesses of my being.
Dex stopped dead in his tracks, almost falling back onto me. He leaned forward, hands grasping to the nearest rock and we both paused, waiting, listening, wondering.
The scream came again. It almost sounded like it was yelling “help” and it was loud enough that I couldn’t tell if it had come up from the valley, bouncing off the mountains, or was coming from somewhere nearby.
“Mitch?” I whispered. I couldn’t pick it out but it was certainly male. A male screaming for his dear life, a male who was getting ripped apart. And we now knew by what.
“All signs point to yes,” Dex said, his voice low. He adjusted his lean on the rock and we kept still for another minute, waiting to hear something else.
But it never came. To tell you the truth, it was enough for me. His scream nearly made me pee my pants, a fright that caused some sort of chill that began below my lungs and bled outward in a slow paralysis.
“What should we do?” I eked out.
“Keep going,” was Dex’s bleak answer.
He straightened up as much as he could on the slope without losing his balance and started going forward again. I followed right behind at a 45 degree angle, trying to avoid the rocks and snow that was inevitably pushed toward me. My fingers fumbled as I tried to gain traction on the ground, feeling lame and unfeeling in my gloves. My chest heaved underneath my coat, the cold air jarring my throat, the occasional breeze icing my nose and eyelashes.
“I think this is it,” I heard Dex say from above me. I paused and raised my head. He was quite a bit ahead of me but it looked like he was standing straight up on flat ground. “I can see the river!”
He sounded excited and that was enough for me to push through the next steps, hand above foot, rock and snow falling away from me as I climbed.
I was just reaching for the final boulder to get extra traction that would propel me to the top, when Dex walked a few steps away. He stopped.
Looked stunned.
And then disappeared entirely.
I had to blink hard. But he was gone.
And it took hearing his own scream to make it all real.
My heart seized from the sound and the next thing I knew I was screaming too, pushing off with my legs until I was off the cliff face and on flat earth. I looked around me wildly, spotting the surrounding mountains that had emerged from the mist, the river and the valley below but not Dex. In the narrow crest we had found ourselves on, Dex suddenly ceased to exist.
“Dex!” I screamed from the bottom of my lungs, the word ripping out my throat.
I ran to where I had last seen him and found the truth too late.
The edge was too sharp, too near and I was standing right on it. My world began to slide beneath my feet, my balance thrown off.
I fought to run, to scramble back to the earth that wasn’t moving. I threw my body forward and to the left, trying to go for the most stable looking part of the cliff face.
I made it for a few seconds as my fingers tried to wrap around the edge of a jagged black rock, my feet scrambling wildly below me as they fought hard for something solid beneath them. There was nothing, the ground kept moving, a slide of rock and snow, a symphony of falling objects that was deafening to my ears as I held on for dear life, the world beneath me disappearing in a blink of an eye.
I managed to haul myself up as much as I could by my arms and pecs, my muscles screaming for me to stop. But I couldn’t. I was almost there. I was almost safe. I was almost still.
I swung my legs up and around, my boots catching on a side of snow and earth that hadn’t crumbled away. I leaned on my legs, hoping they had the strength to pull me up and I pushed away from the black rock, my gloves sticking to the snowy crevasses and being pulled off.
For one moment I had made it. I was hanging sideways but I wasn’t moving. I was staying put. It took that extra push to get myself from a horizontal position to a vertical one and what I should have done was put my trust in the rock that wasn’t moving.
But all my power, all my weight, went to my legs. And there was that horrifying instant, that first slip of earth beneath you, when you realized you made the wrong choice.
The ground fell away and there was nothing I could grab to save me from it. I felt my body fall, being swept downward in that brutally loud avalanche. I was bumped and thrown, not freefalling but dragged, like Mother Nature herself had reached out from the ground with stony fingers and pulled me down toward her belly.
I don’t remember ever coming to a stop.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Whiteout.
That’s what I saw when I finally pried my lids open, my lashes stuck together with the glue of tiny snowflakes.
White. White. White.
Where was I?
I rolled over with a groan and felt an explosion of pain in my side. I looked down and as my vision began to right itself, I saw a rock jutting into my stomach, protruding from the cold, snow-blown ground like a weapon.
I eased onto my back, the chill seeping through my jacket. My bare fingers tingled as I ran them over my body. I felt intact, nothing bleeding or broken.
But how did that explain the rich, acidic smell of blood in the air?
I slowly sat up, surveying my surroundings.
I was sitting on the barren, rocky ground up the side of a mountain. Snow swirled in the air from all directions, some of it falling on the icy white patches on the earth, the rest blown away like angel dust.
Because of the infinite white, I could barely make out a forested valley below, and across from me, in the haze of snowfall, a few jagged peaks.
Beneath me the ground sloped off gently, alternating between sudden drop-offs. Vertigo swept through me and I dug my frozen fingers into the hard ground, suddenly afraid I’d roll off the side and fall to my death.
A soft rumbling came from my left. I turned, painfully, my side still smarting, and saw a slight overhang where snow fell off in gentle lumps. My heart sped up a few beats.
I let out the breath I was holding, watching it freeze and catch in the air before drifting away, and noticed a trace of red where the snow had just fallen.
My bones seized with chill.
I peered at the red spot, my eyes widening as it began to spread and bleed across the snow.
Glancing up at the overhang where the snow had come from, I saw another clump of it come sailing down, landing on the red with a poof.
It too had a spot of red in it that slowly spread like a stain on a paper towel. Curiosity getting the better of me, I carefully got to my feet and walked over to the patch of silky wetness. Hunched over, I tried to figure out why the snow was bleeding. I felt a drip on the back of my neck.
I reached back with my hand and when I took it away, it was slick with blood.
Did I even want to turn around?
I did, anyway.
Above me was a limp, lacerated arm, its torn and bloody fingers dangling over the edge of the overhang.
Claws. Teeth. Blood.
Tearing. Gnawing. Eating.
The images and sounds ripped through my head in a flash of smoky darkness.
Dex! I remembered Dex.
My chest collapsed in on itself as I tried to recall the last time I’d seen him.
Where was he?
What happened to him?
I eyed the arm above my head and felt the world drop away beneath my feet.
I propelled my body up, grasping onto a rocky outcrop as a tiny bit more of the earth slid away beneath my feet. I was still on the side of this God damn mountain and it seemed no matter where I ended up, I couldn’t trust the ground.
I pulled myself up, amazed that I hadn’t been injured in the fall. It all came back to me. Dex. He had fallen away and then I followed suit.
I looked around me in a growing panic. Beneath was the river, cutting its way into the trees. Above me was a bloody limb.
The reality set in. The fear set in. It started in my bones, then made its way to veins, an icy, suffocating liquid that soon saturated every part of me.
This wasn’t fear for me. This was the fear for Dex.
Even though I felt I could ignore it all if I kept sitting the way I was, perched on a rock, watching over the world like a weary falcon, I knew I had to look up. I had to look at the arm. I had to make sure it wasn’t Dex.
Because if it were him…
I could barely swallow, my heart constricting painfully. I couldn’t think about it. I just had to see. I had to know. And then, if I was lucky enough, I could go on my way off the edge of the world.
I took in a deep breath and started climbing up the slope, the blood spattered rocks coming closer to me. My mind buzzed just behind my eyes, so many thoughts, so many fears at once that not one of them got through. I was in a text-book perfect state of shock and if I could survive this by just going through the motions, then that’s what I was going to do.
I made it to the top of the overhang, my eyes purposely avoiding the thing I came to look up. Instead I looked straight up into the sky and concentrated on the high clouds that moved swiftly, the winter sun that tried to punch through them. I tried to remember the moment, the last moment I’d have in my life before everything changed completely.
Closing my eyes, I braced myself and turned in the direction of the arm I’d seen.
I steadied my breath as much as I could, ignoring the weakness at my knees, and opened my eyes.
It was an arm all right. But it wasn’t Dex. The coat was an army green. Or it had been an army green because it had been ripped off at the sleeve. It lay there on the snow in a pool of its own blood, the redness still creeping along each crystal of snow, the warmth of it melting it on contact.
It was Mitch. I knew that hand, saw the way it had pushed back those very sleeves in anger, when it had pawed at me, when it pulled back at my hair in a vicious yank. I couldn’t say I felt bad but I wasn’t relieved either. Because even though Mitch was gone, whatever had done this to him, well that wasn’t gone at all.
And now I was alone on the side of a mountain with that beast somewhere nearby. Nearby enough to rip the limbs from an elephant-sized man.
Above all of that, Dex was still nowhere to be found.
I stepped away from the arm and looked up. I could see where I had fallen from, a narrow ledge of rock that sloped off as it went down. The path my body took was scattered with rock debris, marring the snow that barely clung to the ledges, but at least it was a somewhat gentle descent without too many obstacles in the way. It explained why I wasn’t in as much pain as I should have been, although I must have hit something that made me lose consciousness, albeit momentarily.
The world slowed down as I stood there, coaxing my brain to come alive, to push through the imposing panic and come up with some way out of here. I was on a mountain side. I had to get to the river. I had to get there alive. I had to find Dex. So what did I do first?