by Edward Lang
Unless she had a little help.
Fuck.
There was a line I loved from Avengers, the first one, where Captain America tells Tony Stark that he’s not the kind of guy who would lie on the barbed-wire fence so his fellow soldiers could crawl over him to safety.
And then, of course, he does that very thing at the end of the movie, taking the nuclear bomb and effectively choosing to go on a suicide mission to save Earth.
I was faced with the same conundrum right now.
Earth didn’t need any help from me…
…but the woman I loved did. And she wasn’t going to make it without me crawling over the wire in her place.
I rapidly untied the knotted rope from the end of the regular rope.
I knew I was signing my death warrant, but… fuck it.
If Lelia wasn’t going to survive, I didn’t care to hang around this world anymore.
I’d lost one love of my life. I couldn’t take losing another.
“LELIA, USE THE ROPE!” I yelled as I threw it down, still attached to the stone, a good distance away from the tree.
Lelia saw it sailing down. The stone sank deep into the snow, but the rope flailed out after it, falling across the top of the snowdrift.
She understood what I’d done as soon as she saw it.
I didn’t have 130 feet of rope anymore.
I only had 100.
Ten feet too short to reach safety in the cave.
“JACK, NO!” she screamed in panic.
“HURRY!” I yelled. “THROW THE ROPE TO FIERIA AND HAVE THEM CLIMB IT!”
“BUT – ”
“DO IT!” I bellowed.
She scrambled over the snow, grabbed the rope, and whirled the rock through the air.
We had both practiced enough that she got it on the first try.
The rock sailed up into the air and into the cave.
Fieria scrambled, but then she threw down the end of the rope and braced herself.
It was only 30 feet – which meant the tail end of it was 10 feet above the ground – but they could climb the first 10 feet of the tree and then use the rope the rest of the way.
But they didn’t have much time.
The skiris were getting closer.
“HURRY!” I screamed.
Oona and Hala and Lelia helped the weaker ones up the tree, and from there they were able to grab onto the rope.
One by one they disappeared into the cave.
The weakest girl had to hold on to the rope as they physically hauled her up. As soon as she was good, someone threw the rope back out. Hala and Oona went next.
The skiris were almost at the end of the timberline.
Lelia was the last one on the ground.
The skiris emerged from the trees, roaring and snarling as they plowed through the snow.
“LELIA, GO!” I screamed at her.
She scrambled up the tree, grabbed the rope, and began to climb.
A skiris was right behind her –
She wasn’t going to make it.
“FIERIA, OONA – PULL UP THE ROPE!” I screamed.
They must have heard me, because suddenly the rope retracted into the cave, with Lelia scrambling up it hand over hand at the same time.
Her feet just barely kicked over the skiris’s claws as it swiped at the air beneath her.
I held my breath as she climbed up and disappeared into the cave.
I finally exhaled.
She was safe.
It didn’t matter what happened after this, as long as she was safe.
“I made it, Jack!” she cried out.
I couldn’t see her because she was in the cave, but I could hear her just fine.
“Good job, baby!” I yelled.
Then she started sobbing.
“Jack – Jack – ”
“It’s okay,” I called out to her.
“Jack – it’s my fault – ”
“No, it’s not. You had to save your friends.”
“But if I hadn’t gone down there, you would have the rope – ”
“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry, Jack – I’m sorry – ”
“It’s okay, Lelia. It’s okay. Everything is gonna be okay.”
“I love you, Jack!” she cried out, tears choking her voice.
“I love you, too,” I shouted. I smiled as my eyes teared up.
“Awwwww… how touching,” another voice called out.
Weaver.
I turned around.
About 200 feet away across the small plateau, Weaver was standing at the mouth of the ravine. His gun was pointed in my general direction, though not directly at me.
Behind him stood the rest of his skiris army.
“She’s gonna be sayin’ how much she loves me in just a few minutes,” Weaver said. “How much she looooves what I’m gonna give her.”
Then he gave a few obscene pumps of his hips just to drive the point home.
I walked over to the three-foot-tall boulder and squatted down behind it.
On the other side of the rock, between me and Weaver, the fire was still crackling.
Weaver laughed. “What, you want to get warm before I kill your ass?”
“Nope.”
“You seem awful fuckin’ calm for somebody who’s about to die,” Weaver said cheerfully.
Actually, I was.
I was at peace.
“Get over here, motherfucker,” he called out.
“No thanks.”
Weaver made a point of pointing the AR-15 and sighting down the gun barrel. “I said get OVER here, or I’m gonna kill you right here and now and throw your body over the side so your girlfriend can watch my boys down there rip you apart.”
“Unless you’re an idiot, you’re not gonna pull that trigger,” I said.
“Oh yeah? And why’s that?”
I pointed up at the mountain precipices all around us. “A gunshot could trigger an avalanche.”
Weaver’s eyes suddenly widened, and he looked up.
I knew he could see what I saw: huge tranches of snow precariously balanced atop the cliffs all around us.
“There’s a couple hundred tons of snow up there,” I called out. “Looks like it might have even snowed since I left.”
“You think you’re smart, don’t you?” Weaver snarled.
“Smarter than you.”
“Dumbass – I don’t need to shoot you to come grab you!”
He started across the plateau towards me, following the path I had plowed earlier through the snow.
I unzipped the pocket of my jacket and grabbed what I needed.
“Hey Weaver… when you died, you had your gun on you, right?” I called out.
“Yeah, and I’m gonna shove it up your ass and use your rectum for a suppressor,” he yelled as he got closer. “I doubt that’ll set off an avalanche. Be like a reverse fart with hot lead.”
“Did I tell you that I had a rifle, too?” I called out.
Weaver froze, then hastily brought his AR-15 back up to his shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I left it at the base of the mountain so I didn’t have it when I died.”
Weaver relaxed, the rifle dropping a few inches. “Then why the fuck are you tellin’ me?”
“Because I still had a few bullets,” I said as I reached around the boulder and dumped all six cartridges into the fire.
Weaver stood there, a confused look on his face.
I took that opportunity to duck back behind the boulder.
Then he realized what I’d done.
“YOU STUPID MOTHERFU– ”
That was when the gunpowder inside the casings heated up enough to go off.
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
Weaver dropped to the ground out of instinct.
The skiris did, too – I guess they’d been conditioned by Wea
ver shooting and threatening them with his gun.
A few of the bullets must have grazed the boulder, because I saw chips of stone fly.
I think one of the shots must have hit a skiris, because it howled bloody murder.
It would have been nice if it had hit Weaver, but that was a one in a billion chance.
Besides, trying to hit him wasn’t the reason I’d thrown the bullets in the fire.
The multiple explosions were.
Suddenly snow began to sift from the tops of the mountain peaks.
The tiny snow slides knocked loose more powder…
…until a block of snow suddenly collapsed and started sliding down the mountainside.
After that, all hell broke loose.
Snow rolled down the steep slopes, knocking loose more – tons of white powder triggering even more.
A rumble filled the valley.
“GODDAMMIT!” Weaver screamed in panic and fury.
I thought about staying there just to see him get washed away in a flood of snow – but I knew my moment of satisfaction would be fleeting. About one second, actually, before I got washed away, too.
So instead I ran for the cliff.
I knew logically that I was 10 feet short of what I needed to make the cave, but I figured I would try.
Miracles sometimes happened, right?
I’d wound up on this world.
I’d fallen in love.
And I’d found a reason to live again.
If that wasn’t a miracle, then I don’t know what is.
A deeper part of me knew. Knew it was pointless.
But, hey – I didn’t have anything else to do for the last six seconds of my life.
Strangely enough, I wasn’t afraid.
Knowing you’re going to die – that there’s no way around it – has a curiously freeing effect.
You accept it… and there’s peace.
Especially when you know that the person you love most is going to be safe because of what you did.
Besides, I’d died once in an avalanche before.
It hadn’t been that bad. I could do it again.
I reached the cliff.
Down in the valley, the skiris were all gathered around the base of the mountain.
They turned their monstrous heads up towards me; they could hear the rumble, though I’m not sure they knew what was going on.
Boy, somebody was going to be surprised in six seconds.
I turned, pulled taut on the rope, and leapt out into the void.
The last thing I saw as I kicked off was Weaver trying to aim his AR-15 at me.
That, and an enormous tsunami of white sliding down the mountain behind him.
His skiris were panicking, trying to run back into the ravine – but the wave of white was already blotting out the sky overhead.
As I jumped off the cliff, I saw the muzzle flash a split second before I heard the gunshots.
BLAM BLAM!
Thank God he was a lousy shot.
I disappeared over the edge of the cliff.
My boots hit the mountainside, and I kicked again.
I was going fast and furious, way faster than was safe.
Ha – that was funny.
With an avalanche about to kill me, I was worrying about ‘way faster than was safe.’
Suddenly I heard a familiar voice scream beneath me.
“JACK!”
I looked down, hoping to catch one glimpse of Lelia before I died.
What I saw both gave me hope – and terrified me.
She had tied the rope around her waist, and was leaning out almost 60 degrees from the edge of the cave.
The other women must have been holding the other end.
She waved her arms frantically.
“CATCH YOU!” she screamed.
OH SHIT –
That part of my brain that had accepted my death?
Now it knew there was a chance.
One in a million, but there was a chance.
And suddenly I was terrified – because if I fucked this up, not only did I die, but Lelia died, too.
I was actually more scared for her than I was for me.
And I was sort of angry at her – like, Don’t you know you could die?!
But maybe she was like me.
Maybe she didn’t want to live in a world where I wasn’t around anymore, either.
Please, Katie, I prayed.
Please – one last miracle.
I kicked off one final time and dropped through the air.
My boots slammed against the mountainside as I came to the end of the rope.
I had misjudged the distance.
I’d thought it was 110 feet down to the cave –
But it was more like 105.
Only five feet to go, not ten.
I heard the roar of the avalanche above me like a runaway freight train –
And I dropped down into Lelia’s waiting arms, twisting my body midair as I slammed into her.
The force knocked her off her feet, and she slipped, both of us slamming against the cliff –
But she hung onto me, and I hung onto her.
Suddenly stone scraped under our bodies.
The women in the cave were hauling up the rope.
Hands grabbed us roughly –
And a second later, we were inside the cave.
Suddenly a wall of white shot past the cave and blotted out all light.
The sound was like being under a ledge at the bottom of a giant waterfall. The sound was deafening.
It went on for almost ten seconds as we huddled in the dark…
And then suddenly the light came back again.
There was a constant sifting of powder through sunlight just outside the cave entrance, with occasional boulder-sized chunks of snow falling past…
…and then it all stopped.
I looked around in amazement at the women.
Their blue faces – some covered in fur wrappings – stared back at me in wonder.
All except for the most beautiful one, who burst out into tears.
“Jack!” Lelia cried out, sobbing.
I grabbed her and held her close to me and kissed her and cried like a fuckin’ baby.
And all I could think was, Thank you, Katie.
Thank you.
33
After a lot of crying and laughing and hugging – and there was a lot of it, since nine women had all worked together to save my life – we peered out the cave entrance to survey the damage.
Outside the cave, there was a massive expanse of new snow that had covered the floor of the valley. And I do mean covered. The trees closest to the cave were half-buried up to the treetops, and what used to be a 40-foot drop to the ground was now less than 15 feet.
That was 25 feet of snow now filling the gorge.
Lelia looked around, fear in her eyes. “Where are skiris?”
“Down there, babe,” I said, pointing directly beneath the entrance of the cave.
Her eyes widened. “Can they get out?”
“No,” I reassured her. “They’re dead.”
Remember what I said about how people can’t dig themselves out of avalanches? That the consistency of the snow is like wet cement that’s set all around you?
I didn’t care how powerful a skiris was – if it wasn’t less than a foot underneath the surface, there was no way it could push up through the snow on top of it.
And the ones I’d seen had been at the base of the cliff when the avalanche started.
They were buried under 25 feet of snow.
So was Weaver, most probably, along with the other 15 skiris who had been on top of the plateau when the avalanche started. They had borne the full brunt of its power – and had fallen 150 feet in addition to being buried under 25 feet of snow.
Which was a pity. I would have liked to have found Weaver’s AR-15 – it certainly would have been a nice tool to have out here.
Ah well. I figured
I might find it – and their bodies – in the springtime, when it thawed.
If springtime ever came… or if we stuck around here long enough to see it.
34
It turns out we did stick around, although springtime was still a good ways off.
For one, we had three new members of our group – Nakla, Aras, and Plom – who had been brutalized by Weaver. They needed time to heal their wounds, both physical and emotional.
At first the three women were scared of me, even though they had risked their lives to help Lelia save mine. It made sense: they had suffered horribly at the hands of another pale-skinned vaklik. But over time they gradually came to accept me, and even befriend me. They certainly had no problem learning English.
They didn’t enter into the ‘festivities’ I enjoyed with the other women, but they didn’t disapprove or fuss about it, either, and that was fine by me. I already had my hands full.
I think it’s probably every guy’s fantasy to have six gorgeous women who want to have sex with him. The one thing you’ve got to realize, though, is that it takes a lot of energy to satisfy six women. I was one busy fucker – literally.
Ah well. Quality problems.
Second of all, none of us particularly had the stomach for going off on some grand adventure. We had all nearly died facing down Weaver, and we needed our own time to rest and recuperate.
Fieria discussed it with me and the others. She said that she knew the larger tribe was still out there, and that there was the possibility of going to rejoin them… but that she was happy to stay where we were for right now.
Everyone else voted, and it was unanimous: for the time being, we decided to stay in the cave and the valley.
We were safe and happy, and that’s really all you can ask for in life.
And third of all… there was going to be a new addition to our group.
I noticed it one morning after having sex with Lelia. We were lying in the cave alone; the others had already set off into the forest to begin the day’s hunt and foraging.
“Too many berries,” I teased her as I pinched a bit of skin over her hip.
“What?” she asked, confused.
I laughed and decided not to be an asshole. I actually liked her with a little more meat on her bones; her already full breasts had grown even bigger, and I wasn’t going to complain about that.
“Nothing,” I said as I kissed her. “You have just gained a little weight – which is good.”