by Cari Hunter
He stabbed three marshmallows onto sticks and distributed them. “Heard the weather forecast today, that’s all. They reckon we’ve got maybe another day like today before the rain sets in.”
She nodded. Marilyn had told her pretty much the same thing, except that Marilyn had given her a window of three days of good weather. “I’m going to set out early tomorrow, get back down before dusk. I don’t mind a bit of rain on the low trail out.”
“Torrential rain,” Johnno corrected her, “of Biblical proportions.”
With a frown, she raised her head to the cloudless sky, thousands of stars dizzying her for an instant. Night after night, the weather had been settled like this, but she supposed it had to end at some point. When she lowered her head again, her marshmallow was ablaze.
“Bollocks,” she muttered, and ate it anyway.
Johnno seemed to have caught the change in her mood and threw the packet of marshmallows toward her as a means of apology. “Oh, you ever tried a s’more?”
“A what?”
“S’more. Not as disgusting as it sounds, I promise you.”
Graham crackers and Hershey’s chocolate were quickly produced from their bear-proofed larder and Sarah watched wide-eyed as the alleged delicacy was constructed.
“Oh God, really?” Marshmallow and melted chocolate oozed from the center of the crackers and across her fingers.
“Delicious. Try it.”
She took a dubious bite and then a larger one. “Oh, yum.”
“One of this country’s finest culinary contributions,” Zach declared seriously and refilled her mug of tea. “To great adventures.”
All thoughts of bad weather banished, she happily tapped her mug against their beer bottles. “To great adventures,” she said, and stabbed another marshmallow.
*
“Oh, just one second…” Alex tightened the last rope across the flatbed of Walt’s truck and stood back to evaluate their handiwork. “Good to go, I think.”
Walt slapped the tailgate firmly into place and nodded his agreement. “Yup.”
“How many you expecting?”
“Marilyn reckoned on ten or so. Less if the weather breaks.”
“Set to, on Thursday.”
“Yup.”
Alex cast a glance over her camping gear, somehow squeezed in between several large blocks of wood and all the tools of Walt’s trade. “I should get two good nights out there at least.”
He followed her gaze, one gloved hand scratching through his unkempt beard. “You watch, mind. It’s gonna be earlier than Thursday, and it’s gonna break hard.”
Even after so little time in his company, she knew better than to argue with him. For days, the weather had been hot and humid, clouds threatening to mass in the late afternoons but then dispersing as if only a preview of a main event yet to come. Despite the twinge of unease that his warning instilled, she was loath to cancel a hiking trip that she had been looking forward to all month. From what Walt had told her about the winters up here, there would be precious few opportunities for her to access the higher trails in the coming months.
They were both heading into the North Cascades National Park, where Walt regularly gave wood carving demonstrations to tourists and where Alex had barely begun to explore the myriad tracks and trails that weaved their way through thousands of acres of protected wilderness. Walt, who knew certain areas of the park like the back of his hand, had spent hours poring over maps with her, pointing out the less well-known routes, useful water sources, and natural places to find shelter. He had never asked and she had never told him, but somehow he knew how important it was that she find the confidence to strike out on her own, and the only caution he had ever voiced was in regard to the weather conditions. It was Walt who had suggested leaving well before dawn, and she knew that was for her sake not his. The head start she would gain on the first trail would give her the option of continuing to the summit that same day, cutting her trip slightly short but ensuring that she didn’t miss out on any part of the route she had chosen.
He opened the driver’s door and gave a thin whistle between his teeth, prompting Kip to scramble into the cab. “East Bank Trail, then?” he said as Alex pulled her door shut.
She smiled, relieved that he wasn’t going to try to talk her out of her plans. “Just kick me out somewhere near One Thirty-eight.”
“Got your radio?”
She patted the conspicuous bulge at her hip. The two-way had been a gift from Walt, and it was open to one of the public channels used by the park rangers. “Present and correct.”
“Not been up Desolation for a while. Let me know if you carry on up there today and I’ll square it with Marilyn.” He shifted the truck into gear. “Wish I was coming with ya.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She waggled her eyebrows at him. “And let that poor woman down? You know she’ll have been up all night baking brownies.” The crush that Marilyn Eagle had on Walt was the stuff of legend.
The truck bounced through a pothole that Walt made no attempt to avoid or slow down for, and the impact jarred Alex’s teeth.
“Sorry ’bout that,” he said amiably.
“No, you’re not.”
He grinned. “I was apologizing to Kip.”
*
“About here okay?”
“Wh―?” Startled, Alex turned toward Walt when she realized he was slowing the truck. She had been staring out the window at the scenery as it passed by. Silver light flooded down from a full moon, giving a ghostly hue to the blackness of lakes that she could just about detect through the rolling forest. Waterfalls tumbled from unseen sources, and unidentifiable nocturnal creatures dashed away from the truck’s approach to take shelter among the trees. Although she had driven this route on numerous occasions, it had always been in the daylight, and now she felt like a privileged guest in some strange, secret version of what should have been familiar surroundings.
It seemed as if they had only been traveling for a few minutes, and yet Walt was already unfastening the ropes from around her kit.
“Sorry.” She jumped out to help him. “Not been much company, have I?”
“When I first came here,” he said, his voice his usual leisurely drawl, “all’s I did was stare. Felt like there was just too much to take in, like I didn’t deserve to be here. Been here fifty-seven years now. Still feel like that some days.”
She nodded, her throat tight. “Thanks, Walt.”
He made a gesture as if to dismiss himself as nothing but a sentimental old man shooting the breeze. “Trailhead’s that way. Let me know where you’re at.”
“I will. Say hi to Marilyn.”
This time his gesture was far less polite, and Alex laughed, waving through the cloud of dust as he accelerated away. She adjusted her pack, altering the strap lengths to find a comfortable balance, and then checked her watch. The official distance to her first campsite by Ross Lake was sixteen miles, and she wondered whether it really was an option for her to continue to the Desolation summit that same day. With a shrug, she decided that over thinking the matter would only result in her rushing or getting stressed. She would hike at a decent pace, try to judge the weather, and see how she felt.
Standing alone by the side of the road, she took a deep, slow breath. The sharpness of pine resin intermingled with the earthier scents of vegetation decaying underfoot. Water trickled over rocks somewhere off to her right, a constant melody that sounded at once amused and ethereal. She set off walking past a beat-up old Jeep, feeling light-headed with a mixture of nervous anticipation and simple happiness.
A skittering through the fallen leaves made her pause just as she reached the trailhead. She tiptoed in the direction of the sound and then crouched low to pan her small flashlight across the ground, but it picked out little from the shadows. She shook her head at herself.
“Not gonna get past halfway if I go chasing after every little critter,” she muttered, feeling faintly ridiculous. She was turning back toward t
he trailhead when the glint of metal caught in the beam of her light.
“What the…?”
No one would have seen the truck from the road, and it was unlikely that she would have noticed it either, had she not wandered slightly out of her way. Midnight black and obviously a victim of some rough handling, the SUV had been concealed in a large patch of undergrowth. She cast her flashlight over it, picking out the numerous dents in the bodywork, tires that were only borderline legal, and a side window that was splintered like a spider’s web. It certainly wasn’t the vehicle’s value that had motivated such an effort to hide it away. She knelt by the rear bumper, flicked a finger beneath a loose corner of the truck’s license plate, and pried the plate upward. The original plate beneath the false one had been hacked at with something sharp before the owner had given up and tied the upper one into place.
Alex pulled out a pen and scribbled what little she could decipher of the lettering onto the back of her hand. She was reaching for her radio when she realized that Marilyn would still be in bed for a good few hours yet. Reluctant to make a nuisance of herself with one of the rangers whom she didn’t know, for something that could have a perfectly innocent explanation, she moved away from the truck.
“Probably nothing,” she said. “Kids with no backcountry permit.”
Her theory sounded reasonably plausible, and she picked up her pace as she passed the East Bank trailhead. The dawn chorus was starting early, countless birds waking to defend their hard-won territories with fierce song. She listened to the variations, trying to identify the species from what Walt had taught her. It was an effective distraction, allowing her to bury a little deeper the nagging suspicion that her reasonably plausible theory was utter crap. Permit-less kids might hide their truck, but they wouldn’t go to the trouble of hanging false plates. Staring straight ahead into the darkness, Alex found herself listening for noises other than birdsong, noises that might alert her to the presence of other people, that might tell her exactly who else was with her on this trail.
Chapter Four
The sun had only been up for a few hours and the day was already too hot. For Sarah, taking a break was an ungainly exercise in finding a decent rock to sit on and then wrestling her pack from her shoulders, but her mouth was desert-dry, and sweat was soaking through the thin cotton of her shirt, so she persevered. It was a minute or two before she was able to drop her bag onto the ground and dig into it for her water bottle. Despite her thirst, she took care to limit how much she drank; the trail up to the summit was a notoriously dry one. With the last of the snow long melted from the lower peaks, there were no reliable water sources, and the route was taking her longer than she had anticipated.
Pressing the cool of her bottle against her forehead, she stretched her legs out in front of her and took a moment to catch her breath and enjoy the view. Some distance below the tree line, Ross Lake cut an azure swath through the valley, its vast shape defined by the mountains that rose sharply from its shores. At the campsite, she had only been vaguely aware of the true scale of the peaks, but from this higher position, the range seemed endless, soaring skyward with its summits carved out in glistening white against the sky. She felt incredibly lucky to have such a beautiful place all to herself, and the heat and the momentary discomfort faded into insignificance. She rummaged in the side of her bag, found a packet of dried fruit, and decided that this would be an excellent spot for a snack.
She had slept reasonably well, waking in good time to have breakfast and say good-bye to Zach and Johnno. Zach had given her his old transistor radio, insisting that they had no further use for it now they were “returning to civilization.” She had accepted it with good grace, not really expecting it to work on the trail but appreciating the gesture regardless. When she stowed her water back in its place, it knocked against the radio’s plastic casing, and she pulled the radio out, curious to see what stations she might be able to intercept in the middle of nowhere. Once she had fathomed how to switch it on, a slow turn of its dial brought her an earful of static. She winced, lowering the volume just in time to avoid a blast of some terrible heartfelt anthem that she recalled Ash once dismissing as emo shite. More static followed.
“—armed and dangerous. Public are warned not to approach but to contact the—”
The report faded into a buzz of white noise. Curious, she lifted the radio, angling its aerial to try to sharpen the signal.
“Once again, the violent hijack of—led to the escape—”
She snarled with exasperation. “Oh, you bloody thing, you start a good story―”
“In the direction of the—license plate—Hotel November Foxtrot. And now to other news. A seventy-seven-year-old man has defended his decision to marry a go—”
Finally admitting defeat, Sarah clicked the radio off. “I hope to hell that was a gold digger,” she muttered, fastening the top of her bag and then threading her arms through the straps to hoist it into place.
She stood slowly and turned to look back at the distance she had covered. The trail had been climbing for the last three miles, and the relative cool of the lower forest had given way to more exposed terrain. Somewhere off to her left, a marmot spotted her and barked a warning, its shrill yelps carrying easily across the meadows. She spun around to try to find it, and snapped a quick photograph of it standing up on its back legs to act as group lookout. With her attention still focused on her camera’s viewfinder, a sudden change in the light momentarily confused her, until she realized that the sun had gone behind a cloud. She lowered her camera to squint upward. Small white clouds were scudding harmlessly across the vast expanse of blue sky. The cloud that had dulled the sun moved quickly on, leaving untempered heat beating down on her once again.
“Onward and upward,” she declared brightly.
The marmot, almost as if it had understood her intention to leave its territory, frantically yipped its encouragement.
*
Alex was singing softly beneath her breath when the crash and thump of something unhurried, something undoubtedly larger than the deer and squirrels she had encountered so far, stopped her in her tracks. Her own progress, apart from the song she had been cheerfully but almost inaudibly massacring, had been largely silent. The forest had hemmed her in, its needle-covered trail muffling the sound of her footsteps while the hemlocks and cedars towering above her head allowed her to walk comfortably in dappled shade. For hours, she had been hiking without a care. Marilyn had promised to get back to her with any word on the mysterious SUV, but as time had passed, Alex had drawn the conclusion that no news was good news. Now she crept off the trail, carefully dropped her pack, and crouched low among a cluster of ferns that were thriving beside a small stream. Beads of water left over from early morning mists dropped steadily from their fronds, the intermittent splatter as they hit the ground not nearly loud enough to muffle the pounding of her heart.
Another thump and a snap of brittle wood, closer this time, made her head jerk up, her hand automatically reaching for the holster she no longer wore and the gun she no longer carried. She hissed a curse, pressing herself back against the rough bark of a stunted larch as if that would somehow let her merge into the very fabric of the forest. The ferns less than three yards away shuddered violently and she held her breath, only letting it out again when a large black bear emerged from the cover of the vegetation. It rose onto its hind legs, sniffing the scents being carried toward it on the breeze, before dropping again and moving quickly across the open territory, back into the safety of the trees.
Once it was well out of sight, Alex swayed forward onto her knees as she tried not to laugh too hysterically. She had seen bears before on numerous occasions; she gave herself a mental slap for having allowed her imagination to run roughshod over her common sense. She fastened her pack back into place and stepped gingerly out of the ferns onto the trail.
She had only been walking for a few minutes when she heard the dull rumble of thunder in the distance.
>
*
Sarah gave a cheer as she pressed her hand against the sun-warmed wood of the lookout station on the summit of Desolation Peak. The slatted planks of the shelter formed shutters, sealing the small building from intruders, and she traced the planks with her fingers, following them around until she came to three low steps that led to a secured door. The air was cooler with the altitude she had gained. The keen wind chilling the sweat that had stuck her hair to her forehead felt glorious after so long in the baking sun. She hurriedly shrugged off her pack so she could perch on the steps and catch her breath. Elation at having made it so far pushed aside the unease caused by the crack of thunder she had heard as she reached the summit. She drank sparingly from her last bottle of water, then propped it beside her bag and took up her camera instead. She felt the muscles in her legs protest at standing again so soon after she had promised them rest, but to the west a menacing blanket of gray cloud was swirling over the mountaintops, and she didn’t dare stay on the summit for too long, however much she would have liked to linger.
Through the viewfinder, she lined up a panoramic shot of the mountains whose names she had committed to memory: Mox, Redoubt, Spickard, Heart of Darkness. Layers of pristine snow softened the sharp edges of their summits, but their collective mien was one of hostility, the sweeping backdrop they formed undeniably majestic but unforgiving all the same. She gradually made her way around the shelter, any inclination to rush tempered by the sheer grandeur of her vantage point. Far below, with reflections of storm clouds boiling on its surface, Ross Lake seemed to stretch for an eternity, effortlessly filling the void where glaciers had retreated. Squinting hard, she tried to work out by which shore she had camped, before laughing at her own ineptitude and taking enough photographs to ensure that she had all of the possible options covered. An eagle circled overhead, its cry piercing the grumbling unrest of the threatened storm, while she crouched low and used a pencil and a scrap of paper to take a rubbing of the embossed US Geo Survey benchmark that was fixed onto a rock near the shelter.