by Danika Stone
“I … I can’t … I can’t walk anymore.”
“Ash,” Vale warned, “you’re just tired. We’ll take a little break, then keep moving.”
“No. I mean I really can’t.”
Ash expected her to argue with him. (Vale always argued.) Instead, she was quiet for a long time. She checked the coals and the binding on his ribs. Ash’s breathing returned to seminormal. Eventually, Vale reshouldered her bag and cleared her throat. “Ready to go?”
“I said I can’t.”
“I know what you said, but that’s not a choice.”
He glared at her.
“You know, Ash. If you want me to be part of your D&D group, then you’d better keep moving.”
“Blackmail, huh?” Ash smiled despite himself, but it was a ghost of his usual grin. “Nice, Vale. Very nice.”
“I’m going to do whatever it takes to get us through.” She tightened her grip around his waist, and he winced. “We need to keep moving. We can’t give up, Ash. That’s not gonna happen.”
“See? Now that sounds like a true gamer.”
“Maybe,” Vale said. “Don’t think about the whole hike. Just this next bit. We’ve got to keep walking. You ready to go?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
One step after another took them away from the forest and the little lake where they’d spent the past two days. Every so often, Vale checked inside the pack. Crouching, she carefully pulled out the curled hollow of bark and blew on the embers. A thin line of smoke wafted to her nostrils. She leaned closer, adding bits of tinder to the glowing coals.
“Still burning?” Ash asked.
“Yeah. Just a bit, but it’s there.” Vale blew on the coal, and a tiny flicker of orange appeared. She looked up, catching Ash staring. “What?”
“Thanks.”
“Thanks for…?”
“For listening to my idea about the bark.” He tried to shrug, but the pain in his right shoulder stopped him. “Just … thanks.”
Vale shoved the items back into the pack. A bit of plastic tumbled out and blew away, but Ash didn’t bother to tell her. (He was not going to search for it at this point.) Finished, Vale stood and took her position next to his good arm. “Carrying the coal inside the bark was a good idea, Ash. It really was.”
“I know, but you didn’t have to take it. So … thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
And then they were walking again, and Ash had to focus on that, and nothing else. The last of the snow had melted since he’d made the ill-fated attempt at the summit. Though colder, it almost looked like the same autumn day as when they’d left. Ash frowned as he counted back the days. They’d come out on a Thursday and gotten separated from the others. Friday they tried walking south, and had narrowly avoided the avalanche. They’d found the little lake and the valley that night. And that night the elk came through the camp. Saturday morning he’d taken off on Vale and tried to climb the rock face alone. Ash winced. And I fell. He remembered little of the rest of that day, but he’d made it back to the camp by the lake that night. Vale had fixed him up. The next day had been Sunday, but with Ash in rough shape, they’d been stuck in camp. Even now, Ash found himself struggling to keep up with Vale’s pace, and he knew she was going slowly to accommodate his injuries. That made today—
“Monday,” Ash said aloud.
Vale looked up. “What’s that?”
“I was trying to figure out how long we’ve been here. It’s been four days total, but it feels longer.”
“That’s ’cause it always feels like time slows down when things go wrong.” She glanced up at him. “You ever been in a car accident?”
“Uh-huh. Once with my mom and Leo. Guy tried to drive across the highway right as we were coming past Coalhurst. Total wreck. Our car was trashed.”
“You remember much about it?”
Ash frowned as he was drawn back into the memory. It had been the year Ash was in eighth grade, his brother in sixth. He’d been sitting in the passenger seat, Leo in the back, as his mother drove down the highway. Ash remembered seeing the truck slow down at the Coalhurst crossroads; he remembered seeing the man look toward them. Ash could recall his mother saying: “Don’t even think about it, buddy…”
And the guy pulled out in front of them.
“Yeah. Guy drove straight out onto the highway without stopping,” Ash said. “Right in front of us. Worst crash I’ve ever been in.”
“How did it feel when it happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“That exact moment when the crash happened. What was it like? I bet you can remember lots about it.”
“Oh, okay. Well…” Ash frowned as he brought the image back. His mother had slammed on the brakes; the car swerved but couldn’t stop. The old beater truck pulled out farther, farther, until it was right in front of them. And there was the explosion of sound and movement. Everything came in flashes: The guy’s face through the windshield. His mother’s scream. Leo yelling. The searing pain as Ash was thrown against the seat belt. Flying glass and the roar of metal against metal. “It felt slow, I guess. Like everything was happening at once, but I had all this time to think about things. To remember.”
Vale squeezed his waist gently. “That’s what this is like. That’s why it feels like forever since Thursday.”
“But we’re going so fricking slow today,” Ash said with a weary laugh. “Sheesh! We can’t be going more than five K an hour.”
“Not walking speed. Time. The days we’re here. They feel longer, because they are longer in a way. We’ve only been here a couple days, but with all the trouble, we…” Vale’s words faded, and she pulled him to a stop. In the past few minutes, they’d wandered into an open patch, punctuated by lush bushes that varied in height from half a foot to well over six feet. “Do you smell something?”
Ash sniffed the air. “Uh … not really. No.”
“You sure? Like, something kind of rotten … foul.”
“You sure it isn’t us?” He chuckled. “I haven’t had a shower in like four d—”
Vale caught his arm. “Quiet!”
“What’s going—?”
“Shhh!” she hissed. “We need to be quiet. I just found the source.” She pointed out in front of them. “There. See?”
Ash followed the line of her finger to the hollow between two bushes. The second he caught sight of the ravaged carcass, adrenaline rushed through him. A dead elk lay, stiff-legged, across from them, the path where they were headed blocked. It looked so odd—legs outstretched—that for a second it seemed like a clipping error from a game. Then the stench wafted forward.
Ash’s stomach turned. “Ugh. That’s nasty.”
“I’m betting the bear I saw killed it. And that means it’s around here too,” Vale said in a low voice. “We’ve got to get out of here, Ash. Fast.”
Ash turned to look behind them and wilted. “Do we go back? Retrace our steps to the lake?”
“We can’t go back. We need out of the valley.”
“Then let’s keep walking. We can go around that…” He pointed to the dead elk. “And come around by those trees over there.”
“Let’s give it a try.” Vale’s arm tightened, his signal that she was ready to walk. They’d only gone three steps when Vale pulled him to a sudden stop. The abrupt movement caught him so unexpectedly that he let out a hiss of pain.
And then, strangely, something hissed back at him.
Ash gasped as a massive brindle-and-gray feline with black-tipped ears—four times the size of Vale’s cat—stepped out from behind the carcass. And then another … and another. Three pairs of eyes turned at once, watching.
Ash’s eyes widened. “What are those?”
“Shhh! They’re lynx.”
Seeing the three mountain cats standing only feet from them sent Ash’s heart into overtime. The trio stood in a clearing full of bushes, the kill a stone’s throw away from them. The bear who’d killed the elk was a
lmost certainly in the valley too, and likely in the berries, which left Ash and Vale with no clear exit.
The first lynx hissed and lowered its head.
“Vale…?”
“We should move,” she said in a barely audible voice. “Let’s just back away as quietly as we can.” Vale pointed to an open patch. “There.”
“Got it.”
With jerking steps, the two of them crept toward it. “We need to be very, very careful,” she said.
Ash shot her a worried look. “Obviously, but which way do we go?”
“South,” she said. “Just keep walking.”
They made it ten steps before they heard the bushes near the carcass rustle. Vale froze. Her gaze moved to Ash, wide-eyed and terrified. His hand tightened on her shoulder. Keep going! he mouthed.
Vale glanced back at the bushes, then shook her head. She pointed. “The lynx!”
Ash took another step, but Vale didn’t move. He tugged her hand. Come ON, Vale! he mouthed. We can’t STAY here! Eventually she took one step away. He pulled her again. They took two more steps. They backed up until they were ten feet from the source of the sound.
She shook her head again. “The lynx are right there.”
“I don’t care,” Ash whispered. “We need to—”
The rustling of the leaves interrupted them as the largest of the lynx stepped directly out of the bushes in front of them, blocking their path. Long seconds passed. It bared its teeth and hissed, the fur on its shoulders puffing. “We’re too close to their food,” Vale whispered. “We can’t stay here!”
“Then let’s turn around.”
The lynx growled low in its throat.
“But we need out of the valley!” she snapped.
If Ash wasn’t so panicked, he would have laughed. They were trapped by a gigantic house cat. If that wasn’t the stupidest way to die, he didn’t know what was. He swore.
The lynx hissed again.
Suddenly, Vale turned to him, the speed of her movement making him dizzy. “You okay to stand on your own?”
“Yeah, but—”
Vale carefully lowered the pack with the embers on the ground next to him. “Hold on,” she muttered. “Lynx are wild, but … they’re still cats.”
“What’re you—?”
Vale was already in motion. She lunged toward the massive cat, her arms swinging wildly. “GO ON!” she screamed. “Go! Get OUT of here!”
The lynx stepped back and hissed, its ears flattening.
“Get out of the way!” Vale roared. “Go on! MOVE!” She kicked at the bushes nearby, and the lynx backed up two steps. “GET OUT OF HERE!” She swung her leg again, and one of the nearby lynx—still feeding—darted into the bushes.
Ash’s eyes widened. One down, two to go.
Vale’s voice rose. “MOVE IT! I MEAN IT!”
The second lynx disappeared into the shadows of the forest.
“GO!” Vale screamed. “You GET OUT OF HERE BEFORE I GET THE SPRAY BOTTLE!”
With one last hiss, the largest lynx spun and darted away.
Three for three.
Ash began to laugh. “Spray bottle, huh?”
Vale grinned. “Improvising.”
“I like it.”
* * *
The searchers reached the valley just as the rain hit. They were far past the Alberta/British Columbia border. The terrain was rugged and bare, a snapshot of Canada’s not-so-distant past, when the First Nations peoples lived at one with the land and trappers had used this passage to move from the interior of BC to the trading hubs in Alberta. Today, the secret passages those first peoples had forged through these mountains were largely forgotten. It was a dangerous landscape. Untamed.
Grant McNealy, a Waterton park warden, slowed his steps before lifting a pair of binoculars to his eyes.
“You see something?” one of the volunteers asked him.
“Think so…” Grant frowned as he scanned the high alpine valley. The landmark he needed was a small lake, almost hidden by trees. That’s what the helicopter pilot, Amanda, had described. He turned the other direction, searching. “There,” he said, pointing west. “That little lake over there. A pilot reportedly saw what looked like the remains of a campsite.”
Grant took his bearings and marked his coordinates in his satellite phone, then blazed a nearby tree with a hatchet and flashing tape. Done, he headed directly into the dense forest. The same volunteer—a woman in her thirties—jogged up to his side.
“What lake is this?” she asked.
Grant’s gaze flicked up. He didn’t know her name, but she was familiar—one of the Lethbridge folk who’d shown up to help when the kids went missing. Warden Banks had assigned the woman to Grant’s group. “Doesn’t have a name,” he said. “Lots of ’em out here don’t. Probably has a number on a map somewhere, nothing else.”
“And you think that Ash and Vale are camped there?”
“That’s what Amanda told me she figured.”
“Amanda?”
“The helicopter pilot. She flew over the site this afternoon, but I won’t know if it’s a camp or not until I see the site myself.” Grant glanced over at her as the group trudged through the forest. The woman looked worried. “You know one of the kids?”
“I know both of them, actually.” She gave him a tired smile and offered her hand to shake. “I’m Janelle Holland. The kids were”—she winced—“are in my class. I volunteered to help find them.”
“Ah … sorry about that.” Grant nodded. So that was why Aya had assigned the woman to his team. “But signs are good. Amanda told me it looked like they had a fire going.”
“I hope so,” Janelle said, then fell back into line.
* * *
Ash’s lungs were on fire, his vision spinning unnervingly when they stopped on the sloping ridge on the far side of the valley to catch their breath. He glanced back at the expanse of forest and the small lake twinkling in the distance. He frowned. It seemed impossible that they’d only come that far. We’re not even out of the fricking valley yet!
“You okay, Ash?”
He turned, forcing a neutral expression. “Yeah. Fine.”
“Your ribs any worse?”
“Uh…” They were worse, but there was no use bringing that up. “Not really. Hey! That was a pretty close call with the lynx.”
“Yeah.” Vale laughed. “Glad my crazy cat-lady vibe worked.”
Ash laughed, then cringed. The grating felt like a blade caught in his side, turning at each breath. “That was cool how you chased them off,” he panted. “You were totally badass.”
Vale laughed tiredly. “Thanks.”
A distant rumble echoed over her words. Ash flinched and peered upward. Heavy rain clouds the color of his bruises filled the sky as far as he could see. Lightning flickered deep within the clouds as a second growl of thunder rumbled in from the east. Rain splattered Ash’s forehead and eyes.
He shook his head. “So tired of the rain.”
“Me too.” Vale sighed. “If you’ve caught your breath, we better start hiking again. The weather’s going to be trouble.”
“What do you mean?”
Vale pointed at the leaden sky. “That’s the start of a storm, not the end of one. More rain is coming … Maybe snow too.” Her arm around him tightened, and tears came to his eyes. “We have to move,” she said. “’Cause we’ll die if we’re stuck out here in the open.”
Ash hunched against the wind, tightened his grip, and forced his legs to move. “South it is.”
The rain started in earnest as they left the protection of the trees. The southwestern slope was a treacherous climb, and Ash’s vision seemed perpetually on the verge of winking out. Dark shadows crept in from his periphery, growing darker as the incline increased.
“Just a few more steps,” Vale said. “We can do this.”
Ash took another gulping breath—made hard by damaged ribs—and forced his body to comply. For what felt like hours, they
walked, the weather growing worse by the minute. Every so often Ash glanced back the way they’d come. Their progress up the slope seemed comically slow compared to his first ascent of the southern ridge. He wanted to go faster, but his body didn’t want to follow his orders. He stumbled as they reached a shale shoulder of the mountain, and he came down hard on his knees. Vale took most of his weight, but the sudden movement set off a wave of coughing.
“You okay?” Vale asked when he could breathe again.
“S-sort of,” he said. “Having trouble catching my breath.”
She held out her hand and pulled him back to his feet. “You want to take a break?”
“Maybe a little later.” The truth was, Ash was afraid that if he sat down, he’d never be able to get himself up again. He smiled through the pain. “Let’s keep going.”
The two of them took a handful of steps before Ash began to wobble.
“Whoa. Hold on there,” Vale said. “I got you.” She tightened her arm around his waist. It sent a stabbing pain through him, but his balance returned. “That better?”
“Y-yeah. Good.”
“You sure? We can stop for a bit. You’re not looking so hot.”
“You’re not either, Vale.” He snorted. “You fricking stink.”
She giggled. “Nice one. And I’d be offended if you didn’t smell ten times worse. Good to know your sense of humor’s holding up.”
“Always a good sign, right?”
“Right. But seriously, though … you okay, Ash?”
“Fine.” He took slow breaths until the darkness clouding his vision faded. “Just … need … a minute.” Ash glanced out at the valley, and his heart sank. Storm clouds filled the sky.
Ash turned back to Vale. “We should go,” he said. “It’s getting colder, and we’re walking slow.”
“We’re already more than three days late,” she said with a half smile. “Pretty sure another couple hours won’t make any difference.”
“Okay.”
By late afternoon the rain was coming down in a steady hum. Vale kept pausing to check the coals—adding tinder every so often. Ash prayed he wouldn’t fall each time she stepped away from him. The top of the ridge was a crumbling backbone of rock, leaving them scrambling over the boulders that marked the border between the valley they were in and the next one over. Ash leaned on Vale as they hit the top. His hunger was a physical ache in his gut, the urge to eat so intense he could hardly think. The spruce grouse and berries they’d eaten for dinner the night before were long gone.