by Edward Lang
I’d been at the bottom of the first wave.
I hadn’t been buried six inches from the surface, I knew that much. More like sixteen feet under.
Had somebody else dug me out, then, and dragged me over here?
The snow all around me looked completely undisturbed… like I’d been deposited here by fairies or angels or some shit like that.
So, no… nobody had dragged me here.
Had I broken anything, though? I had to have.
I tested out my arms and legs, flexing them one by one, checking for aches and pains.
Not a thing.
I felt great.
In fact, for a guy who’d just gotten slammed into by an avalanche, I felt fan-fucking-tastic.
The only thing that was remotely uncomfortable was the pack on my back, which I was still lying on.
This whole situation was impossible. I’d fallen over a thousand feet down a steep incline – I should have been a red smear on the mountain face, buried under six tons of snow.
And yet… here I was.
I gingerly got to my feet, half-expecting my body to suddenly snap in two, like a joke from God.
Just kidding, Jack – you’re actually FUCKED!
But no… I was fine.
And since I was fine, I had to get a move-on. With the sun going down, the temperature was going to drop fast, from the current ‘damn cold’ to deathly freezing.
The first priority was shelter. All my questions about how the hell I’d survived and where the fuck I was had to go on the back burner for a while.
Judging by my surroundings and all the weird-ass shit going on, I doubted my camp was anywhere within walking distance. Which meant I had to make do with what was on hand.
I scanned the trees 50 feet away. There were a lot of firs with bushy branches that I could cut off with my knife –
Wait – did I even have my knife?!
I had my backpack, I had my metal water bottle – I could feel the liquid inside sloshing as I moved –
I checked my supply bag.
Sure enough, I had my knife, my Craftsman tool, my matches, my flare gun, an assortment of protein bars – my letter from Katie, thank god –
And six spare bullets.
I’d carried them with me rather than leave them with the rifle at the base of the –
The rifle!
I looked all around me at the walls of the gorge –
Fuck.
No rifle, at least not that I could see.
That would have been too much of a miracle, I suppose.
It was enough that I had survived a thousand-foot fall and an avalanche without a scratch. Couldn’t exactly hope to have a hunting rifle, too.
Didn’t want to make this shit too easy.
Alright – I could use the knife and the Craftsman to cut off some limbs from the pine trees and create a lean-to – maybe even use that as a framework for a makeshift igloo. Pack it with snow for insulation and to keep the wind out. Just something to survive for the night.
I looked over at the trees as I started walking through the foot-deep snow –
And then I saw someone looking at me.
I stopped in shock.
I didn’t see much – just a figure in the shadows, hunched over near the ground, wearing furs from head to toe.
FURS?!
What the hell?!
Who the hell wore furs in an Alaskan national park?
An indigenous person? Inuit or Yupik, maybe?
…but all the ones I’d ever met in Alaska wore regular clothes. It was the 21st century, after all. Walmart was almost everywhere, and Amazon delivered everywhere they weren’t.
Was it a hardcore survivalist? Some wacko who wanted to go the full nine yards?
“Hey!” I called out.
The figure suddenly bolted. Turned around into the woods and fled.
“HEY! WAIT!” I yelled, and tried to run after him – but running through a foot of snow while wearing crampons for mountain climbing ain’t exactly the easiest thing in the world.
My peeping tom, though, was pretty goddamn fast. He basically disappeared into the shadows of the forest in two seconds flat.
Weirdest fuckin’ thing…
It might have been a walking stick, but I could have sworn he was carrying a spear.
Shorter guy, too. The bulkiness of the furs disguised it a bit, but he looked pretty small and thin.
I stumbled over to the spot in the trees where the guy had been crouched. The footprints weren’t much of a revelation. They were pretty big and bulky, but that made sense if he’d been wearing feet wrappings made of animal skins rather than boots with a sole.
So I probably had an honest-to-god survivalist wacko on my hands.
Maybe he’d seen my show.
Heh… probably not. If you were fanatical enough to run around in furs in Denali National Park with a spear, you probably weren’t going home to electricity and an internet connection.
But whoever it was could probably guide me the fuck out of here and back to civilization.
I was about to follow the tracks into the forest when something changed my mind.
Several wolves howled in the not-too-far-away distance.
A-ROOOOOOOOOO!
The sound made my neck hairs stand on end.
Chasing after some idiot in the dark suddenly had even less appeal that it did before.
And my idea for a lean-to rapidly evolved into something farther up off the ground.
I started scanning the nearest trees for something that I could easily climb –
And then I froze again.
These fir trees…
They weren’t like anything I’d ever seen before.
And I’d been to 70-plus countries and all seven continents.
They weren’t Frasier firs, which are most people’s idea of Christmas trees, but more like Eastern white pines, with long, thin needles. But there were plenty of branches from the ground on up, just like a Christmas tree.
The branches and needles looked the same, yeah – but these things had berries on them. Round, orange, waxy-looking berries about the size of acorns, growing at the junctures where branches split off from each other. They looked like miniature tangerines.
What the fuck?!
Apparently Denali had some seriously weird botanical shit going on.
No time for that, though.
Time to get moving.
Most of the trees were firs, with thin, springy branches and small trunks. Great for lean-tos, not so great for climbing. Damn thing would bend over under my weight, which would be no Bueno for avoiding wolves.
I went for a regular pine: a sturdy trunk with no limbs for the first eight feet, then sizable branches above that.
Normally it would have been a bitch to climb – but I had on crampons, which are basically spiked exoskeletons for your boots. If they could grab onto rock, they wouldn’t have any problem biting into tree bark.
But I couldn’t just use the crampons. That wouldn’t be enough – if the spikes ripped off the bark while I was climbing, I would fall right into the pack of wolves. Super no Bueno.
I couldn’t use the axes dangling from my wrists, either. They were good for punching through ice or grabbing onto rock, but the tree bark would just rip off under the tips of the blades.
What I needed was a get-up like one of those old-timey telephone linemen – guys who climbed telephone poles to fix the telephone lines, back before they used bucket trucks with extendable mechanical arms. In fact, they probably still used the old ways in rural areas that couldn’t afford a $200,000 machine just to keep AT&T customers happy.
Anyway, it worked like this: the lineman would clip a belt around him and the pole, leaving enough slack that he could lean back at about 45 degrees. Leaning back against the belt allowed him to apply a lot more force against the pole, and his spiked shoes would allow him to walk up the telephone pole.
Physics is fun. Except when it fuc
ks you. Like avalanches.
Except I’d survived an avalanche, so I guess physics hadn’t fucked me yet.
Back to the telephone lineman. Every ten inches or so, he would lean in and slip the belt up the pole – otherwise one end of the belt would be under your armpits, the other would be around the pole at your waist, and you couldn’t go any farther. So you had to keep slipping the belt up to keep on going.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have one of those belts.
But I did have plenty of rope.
I pulled off my backpack and pulled out about 50 feet of rope that I normally would have used as a safety line. I wrapped it multiple times around me and the tree, giving myself plenty of slack so I could lean back, and then tied it off.
Voila – instant telephone lineman belt.
I put on my backpack again, but with it sitting on my chest, since I knew I would need easy access to it soon.
Then I started climbing.
My crampons dug into the bark, I leaned back, and I took a step up the tree.
Easy peasy.
I would get about a foot up, then I would dig in the spikes on both feet, lean in for a second, and nudge the rope belt up the tree – usually about ten inches – so I could continue climbing.
Step, step – lean in, nudge rope up, lean back – step, step, repeat.
It wasn’t quite as smooth an operation as an old-time telephone repairman’s get-up, but I’d take it under the circumstances.
Sixty seconds later I reached the first limb. I could have lashed myself to that branch, if I chose – after all, I didn’t think the wolves could jump up that far (although I didn’t want to take the chance). But I didn’t want to stay there for the night. I needed something higher, in case I fell asleep and fell off the limb, God forbid. Even with safety lines attached, falling off an eight-foot-high limb would put me several feet off the ground, basically turning me into a meat piñata.
So I got up to the limb, sat on it, untied my impromptu belt made of ropes, repositioned it above the limb, and kept going.
I repeated the process over and over at each limb I reached, until I finally got about sixteen feet up the tree. Above that point, the limbs started getting flimsier, and I didn’t want to chance one breaking under my weight.
The rope belt would be a good primary safety, but I wanted backup. I took another rope, fastened it to my harness exactly like I would if I were climbing up a mountain, and tied it to the limb.
One safety line to the limb, and the belt around the tree. Redundant systems.
Later, I could lash the makeshift belt tighter so I wouldn’t slip off the limb if I fell asleep.
I was good to go.
Good thing, too, because that was when the wolves showed up.
I heard their barks and howls as I began securing the line to my safety harness. By the time I finished cinching the rope, they reached the tree.
God damn.
They were big motherfuckers. They might have looked like black-haired Huskies, but they were the size of Great Danes.
They ran around the tree in circles. Some stood on their hind legs and put their front paws on the trunk. Others jumped in the air, their jaws snapping.
When they stood on their hind legs, they were at least seven feet tall – and when they jumped, their jaws reached ten feet in the air at least.
If I had stayed on the lowest limb with my legs dangling off, I would have been a goner.
I couldn’t see much detail. It was twilight now, and we were deep enough amongst the pines that the shadows made it hard to see. Basically the wolves were just a bunch of dark shapes against the snow.
BIG dark shapes.
I’d never seen any wolves that big before, and I’d seen a few over the course of my television career.
It was kind of horrifying, actually. Made me wonder if there was a nuclear power plant nearby, and if any of the colossal fuckers down there glowed in the dark.
I was about to find out – about glowing in the dark, I mean – because the wolves didn’t seem like they were going anywhere. They eventually settled down and sat on their haunches, or slowly padded around the tree.
They were going to try to wait me out.
Good luck, assholes. Even if I die up here, I’m hanging out till the rope rots through.
Come back in another ten years or so.
I hoped the survivalist wacko had made it back to his prepper bunker alive.
I could just imagine him, heating up a can of beans and franks over a Coleman stove –
What am I saying? That guy was a fanatic. He was probably feasting on his own homemade moose jerky right about now.
I considered pulling out my flare gun and shooting one off.
I decided to wait until it was totally dark. I wanted the red flare to be fully visible from miles around and not get lost against any residual colors on the clouds.
Man, what my old producer wouldn’t have given to have a camera crew up in the trees with me.
Next up, on a very special episode of SURVIVE! – will Jack Harrington get his balls ripped off by giant wolves?
I never was much of a writer. I guess the promo people would have to pretty up the language for me.
Katie was good at that, too. She’d been the on-site producer for the show – the ones who went out in the field with me and the camera crew. That’s how we’d met.
How we’d fallen in love.
I could just hear her voice saying mischievously, Now, Jack, you know we can’t say ‘balls’ in the promo.
I grinned in spite of myself.
It was good to think of her and not have it hurt.
Guess I wasn’t going to be reading her letter tonight, though.
Thank god I had on so many layers. If my flare didn’t bring anybody running, then my cold-weather gear was going to be the only way I would survive the night – if I survived it, that is.
It would be fuckin’ cold, but I was betting on ‘yes.’
Couldn’t let those wolf fuckers have the last laugh.
I just hoped neither the wolves nor the cold got my balls.
In the short term, though, there was another plus to all the layers: padding for my ass. The tree limb I was sitting on was fairly wide, but it was still pretty damn uncomfortable. I was sitting on it like I would a wooden swing; maybe later I would straddle it like a horse. Give it a shot at my balls, too.
Katie would have said something like, Take care of ‘em, Jack. I LIKE ‘em.
So did I. If I had to lose a couple of toes, so be it – I could walk funny the rest of my life.
Wasn’t gonna lose Bert and Ernie, though.
That was her pet name for the boys.
Mr. Snuffleupagus was her name for… well, you know.
God damn I missed her… though I was glad she wasn’t here now.
Although I would have given anything if she could have been.
My stomach growled, so I got out an energy bar and had a small dinner. I wasn’t sure how long I was going to be out here, so I had to ration what I had while still maintaining my strength. I washed the energy bar down with water from my water bottle.
The light of the sunset was completely gone, and the portions of the sky not covered by clouds were deep violet, fading to black. I knew you could see the Northern Lights from Denali – maybe I would get a show tonight along with all the exercise.
To amuse myself while I waited, I tried to pick out the constellations.
I’d known the stars practically all my life, back when my Dad (God rest his soul) had taught me on camping trips in Montana when I was a kid. I was an only child, so it was just me, the old man, and the universe.
But I was having a pretty hard time of it…
I knew this far north, things were going to shift around because of the latitude. And obviously I didn’t have a 180-degree view of the sky, what with the tree at my back.
But there weren’t any trees between me and the mountain, so I had an unobstructed view
of half of the night sky.
And I’d be damned if I could see anything I recognized. Not constellations, not stars…
Couldn’t find the Big Dipper. Couldn’t find Arcturus. Not Rigel, not Sirius, not Castor or Pollux in Gemini…
There was some weird fuckin’ stuff up there, though. Clusters of stars right next to each other that I’d never seen before.
What the hell?!
The more I looked, the more confused I got. None of it made any sense.
Then, finally, I saw the edge of the moon rising over one of the canyon’s ridges.
Okay, maybe I can orient myself by the moon.
That went out the window about 15 minutes later, when half of it cleared the canyon.
For one, it was a lot bigger than it should have been. Now, I know all about the moon appearing larger than it should be near the horizon – optical illusions and all that.
But this time, it was significantly bigger than it should have been.
Not like, Oh, hey, the moon looks really big tonight.
More like, Holy shit, the moon’s TWICE the size it’s supposed to be.
But that wasn’t the kicker. I might have been able to convince myself that I’d just gotten concussed earlier, and that my vision was out of whack.
No… it was the red stripes and bands that convinced me something was seriously, incredibly wrong.
Red stripes like Jupiter.
Not like the Earth’s moon at all.
I stared at it over and over as it slowly crept over the ridge. I kept blinking my eyes, telling myself I was on shrooms or something.
But even that wasn’t the real kicker.
No… it was when the second moon came up over the ridge.
Yeah.
Two of ‘em.
And the second didn’t look like our moon, either.
It was pale blue and smooth as a billiard ball.
I just sat there, staring at the two celestial objects, mouth wide open.
The wolves began to howl beneath me, their snouts upturned to the sky, the noise echoing in the canyon around me…
…and I seriously began to question whether I had lost my fucking mind.
5
I went through what I knew – or thought I knew, anyway.
One: I had been in Denali National Park in Alaska, climbing the Moose’s Tooth.