by Lucy Snow
“You’re hilarious. People tell you that often?”
His eyes dropped for a brief second. “Still’s nice to hear.”
I narrowed my gaze. “I don’t really like you.”
“Luckily you don’t need to like me for me to save your life, then, yeah?”
“Great job of it you’ve done so far.”
“One second.” He held up a hand, pointer finger stretched out. “You said you didn’t like it when I called you ‘Princess?’ Could have fooled me, the way you’re acting.”
“Ugh!” I shouted, unable to control myself. I had no idea who this guy was and he already made me so mad. “I’ve had enough. I’m getting out of here.”
As soon as I closed my mouth I knew I had screwed up. The rumbling came fast and without warning, and I felt the bus lurch forward underneath us, and start sliding back down the incline.
Toward, I was sure, the cliff we’d passed by just before the accident.
“Shit!” I heard the man say, and before I knew what had happened next, I felt strong arms wrap themselves around me, and then I was flying again.
It was a short flight, and it ended when we crashed into the snowdrift just outside where the bus had most recently been. By the time I had opened my eyes and grappled to my feet, dusting myself off in between spasms of shivering, I watched the bus slide closer and closer to the edge of the cliff, the metal screaming in protest as it scraped against the ground, pushing the snow out of the way.
The bus came to a stop just at the edge of the cliff, and it looked like even looking at it funny would send it right over.
I didn’t realize it, but the man’s arms were still around me, and mine were wrapped around his neck. It was…much more cozy and intimate than I would have liked, but it really did feel…kinda good.
He was smiling, because of course he was smiling at a time like this. I shook my head. “It’s cold, don’t flatter yourself,” I said, hastily pulling away from him, fast enough that I already missed both the heat and the feel of his muscles against my body, keeping me, above all else, safe.
The smile disappeared as we separated, and he looked at me with a stern glare, one that spoke more volumes than I could count.
“We’re not out of this yet.”
I looked at him through the falling snow, trying to see just how serious he was. “What do we do?” I shouted, coming off as way more hysterical than I wanted to sound, but feeling just as scared as I sounded.
He looked deep into my eyes, his expression hard and humorless, like he was trying to understand me but not really caring about what he was learning.
“We have to get out of this snow. Get to some shelter.”
That made sense. I looked around, and couldn’t see much around us except the cliff, the road stretching back the way I’d come, and the road in front extending up the hill.
“There was nothing back there,” I said, pointing back toward the school. That must have been north.
“There isn’t supposed to be,” he said, waving me away and looking forward up the hill. “We have to go that way.”
“Just like that?” I asked. “Without knowing where we’re going?” I held out my hands. “This snow isn’t stopping any time soon, and I doubt anyone else is going to come down this road until the storm lets up. We can’t just walk to Meridian, you know.”
“We can’t stay here, Princess, it’s too cold and we don’t have any shelter.” He pointed behind us. “There’s nothing back there, we both drove that route before the accident. Our best bet’s moving forward.”
“I told you not to call me that.”
“Well, we haven’t been formally introduced yet, so I’m just going on the information I have.”
“I am starting to hate you.”
“The feeling’s mutual, despite my surprise.”
“Surprise?”
“I just saved your life.” He said it with a very confident air, which was tough to pull off in a storm like this. “I usually make it a point to save the lives of people I like, so this is a little strange for me.”
I shook my head, unable to deal with him right now. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Good idea.” He looked me up and down, a gleam in his eye. “Where’s the driver? I assume you weren’t the one running this operation.”
Oh shit, the driver! “I don’t know about him, he wasn’t here when I came to.”
He nodded. “May have been thrown clear, may have made a run for it.” He looked up, like he was trying to remember something. “I know just the place. Come on.” He started walking along the side of the road, leaving me behind with a pace that suggested he was no stranger to hiking through storms.
“Wait!” I said, running to catch up, careful not to trip and slide backwards like the bus just had. “Where are we going?”
He stopped and I watched his broad shoulders raise up slightly, like he was taking a deep breath before turning around. “To safety. It’s a bit of a hike. Are you gonna be alright?”
“I’ll be fine,” I said, putting on a brave face. “But we can’t leave yet.”
“Oh?” He turned around fully, and even though my hands were starting to shake in the cold, he stood rigid, like a statue, like he’d been in that exact spot since the beginning of time and had no intention of moving anywhere. “And why’s that?” He raised a hand up and caught some snowflakes on his fingers, brushing them together. “You do realize there’s a storm on, don’t you?”
“I’m well aware, thank you very much. It’s just that I need to get something.” His eyes widened. “From the bus,” I added, point back down the hill at the over turned bus on the edge of the cliff. He wouldn’t understand, and I didn’t want to even try to explain it to him. We’d only be in this together for a little while longer anyway.
He cocked his head to the side and squinted at me, then reached out and grabbed my head.
“Hey! What’re you doing?!” I said as I tried to shake him free, but he was too strong for me. “Quit it!”
He dropped his hands after running his fingers all through my hair, then pulling back and staring at them. “Doesn’t look like you have any open wounds, but it’s certainly possible you were concussed in the crash,” he said, matter of factly.
“I’m fine!” I snapped back, starting to balance between my feet. It was so cold, I couldn’t just stand here too long.
“Clearly you’re not, because you just mentioned something about going back,” he pointed behind me down the road to the bus. “Down there and into that for some luggage. Have you seen the cliff next to the bus?” He separated his hands, one as high as it went, the other as low as he could stretch. “I took a look over the edge. It goes down pretty fucking far.”
“There’s something I need in it!” Of course I couldn’t tell him what, he’d laugh at me, or worse, leave me here and save himself.
“Princess,” he held up his hand just as I was about to admonish him, “listen to me. Unless you’ve got a working car stuffed into your suitcase, or a helicopter, or a jet pack, or the fucking Starship Enterprise, or something else that can get us the fuck out of here right now, there’s no fucking way we’re going back into that bus. Do you understand me?”
“You don’t understand!” I protested, fighting back the tears that were just behind my eyes.
“I am very comfortable not understanding you right now,” he said folding his arms across his chest. “You’re not really making any sense.”
It was a standoff. We were both cold, the storm was all around us, snow coming down in buckets, the skies darkening, and neither of us were moving any more than we had to, each of us like stubborn children convinced that we were in the right.
Finally he broke the silence. “You know what? Fuck it. Come on. Because I haven’t nearly gotten myself killed enough today.” He stepped toward me, grabbing my shoulder as he brushed by walking down toward the bus. After a moment, I followed him, letting him pull me along by the hand after his hand
slid down my arm, secretly thrilled that he was at least giving me a chance.
It took us about 2 minutes to trudge through the thickening and hardening snow to get to the edge of the cliff. It felt weird, holding the hand of a guy that I didn’t know, but the heat that transferred back and forth between us during the walk felt really good, and it occurred to me more than once that it would feel pretty great holding this guy’s hand even if we weren’t stranded in the middle of nowhere while a blizzard threatened to kill us both.
Down, girl.
We stopped next to the bus and I reached out with my free hand to touch it, and he hissed at me, shaking his head. “You don’t want to do that,” he whispered when I looked at him. “We don’t know how precarious its position is. It could fall at any moment.”
I was sure it wasn’t all that, but then again I didn’t really know what I was doing in these kinds of survival situations, and whoever this guy was, he seemed to know a little more than me. I nodded.
He pulled on my hand and we turned to look off the edge of the cliff 10 or 15 feet in front of us. It went down pretty far, and off in the distance I could see an icy lake down below, ringed by tall trees that were covered in snow.
As if on cue one of the trees hundreds of feet below suddenly cracked under the weight of all the snow the storm had deposited and collapsed, falling over right onto the lake, crushing through the ice and leaving the top of the tree submerged. The sound of the falling tree echoed back to us and he whispered “look!” to me and pointed at the bus.
The reverberating sounds from the tree in the distance shook the bus, and I saw it move an inch or two closer to the edge of the cliff.
Oh shit, he was totally right. That bus was headed right off the edge and it was not safe for us to climb into.
Even if I needed to get Naomi’s diary from inside. I should have kept it on me. If it had been around my neck, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
The tears came quickly, and I tried to wipe them away before he could see them, but I knew from his softening look that he’d noticed. I wiped them away anyway, before they froze up and stuck to my face.
“There’s nothing we can do,” he whispered. “Let’s get out of here.”
“W-We have to try!” I blubbered. “It’s really important!”
“I’m sure it is, princess,” he said. “But whatever it is, it’s not worth dying over.”
And then, as if the discussion was already over, he pulled on my hand and we slowly walked away from the bus. Every minute or so I’d stop and turn around and look back at it to make sure it was still there — to make sure Naomi was still there.
It was just a stupid diary; but it was so much more than that. No one else would understand. I didn’t need anyone else to understand. I just needed to have it back.
I promised myself, right then and there, that I’d find a way to get it back.
He tugged on my hand again, squeezing his fingers around mine, and we started walking away, back up the hill.
“Where are we going?” I asked a few minutes later, after walking in silence.
“There’s a bed & breakfast a couple miles up.” He kept walking.
“How do you know that? What about your car?” He had to have gotten here somehow.
“Dead. Back there,” he waved behind us with his free hand. “I haven’t been driving it enough and the snow was too much.”
There was a story to that that I wanted to understand, but later.
“Does your phone work?” I asked, reaching into my pocket and thanking myself in retrospect for having zipped it shut before the accident. I pulled it out and unsurprisingly, didn’t get service here.
The guy shook his head. “I got nothing.”
“It’s not too far. We can make it. It’s the only stop on this stretch of the road.” He looked back at me. “Hopefully it’s not abandoned, but even if it is, as long as it’s still standing, we should be able to hole up there.” He looked up and opened his mouth, letting a few snowflakes collect on his tongue before closing It. “At least until this blows over.”
“How long’ll that be?”
He once again focused on the sky. “It’s moving real slow. Could be days.” He straightened up, and the softness in his voice disappeared. “We better get moving. No distractions, Princess. Once we’re out of the cold we can give each other our life stories, but for now, we’re marching. Got it?”
After a moment I nodded, letting the princess thing slide this one time.
Hand in hand, we silently hiked through the storm, leaving the bus and my sister behind.
CHAPTER 06 - EAMES
The hut was small and packed with people. Eyes from all over, almost all young children, stared back at me, filled with a mixture of hope and fear. I looked at the translator, who stared back at me.
Right, this was my show. “My name is Eames,” I said, trying to catch all of their faces while I spoke. I didn’t need to put in that much effort — nothing else was going on except me.
The translator spoke some words in a language I didn’t understand and then looked back at me. I had no idea what to say next.
An old lady stepped forward, her thin and bony hands holding a small plate between them, full of three piles of what looked like food — one green, one yellow, the other a brownish orange. Her eyes were full and strong despite her age. “Come,” the translator beckoned to me. “Take the plate. Eat.”
I reached out and took the plate, bowing my head in thanks. “Thank you very much,” I said, smiling. The old lady smiled at me, and gestured toward the ground to our left. “Sit,” the translator said as the old lady spoke a soft voice. “This is the best seat in the house.”
It wasn’t a seat — they didn’t have any furniture here aside from the stuff propping up the pots and pans they used to cook off at the far end of the hut. I knew from seeing other huts that the adults slept outside in the extreme heat and let the children take shelter inside.
I sat down and started to pick at the food, shocked at the amount of thick and dense flavor that jumped around my tastebuds despite how weird the food itself looked.
The entire family watched me eat. I was so hungry after the long trip to the village I’d gotten through two of the piles of food before I even noticed. They all watched me, the old lady especially.
I looked at the translator. “Why are they watching me eat?”
He didn’t translate that, but stared back at me, pointing at the plate. “That’s more than they have to share between them for an entire day.”
My draw dropped, and I stopped eating in mid bite. “No,” the translator cautioned, “you must finish. It is the way of things here. Guests get the best they can offer.”
“But this is too much!”
“Just eat it.”
I nodded after a moment and finished the meal, standing up and bowing before the old lady and giving her the plate back. “Thank you, it was wonderful.” The translator conveyed my message, and the old lady nodded.
We left the hut after that. “We can stay here the night, and keep moving after that,” the translator said, unpacking his bags.
I looked at him, my mind made up. “We’re not going anywhere.” I opened my own bag. “And you’re going to teach me their language.”