by Stone, Kyla
Milo shook his head. “Just really, really cold.”
Noah nodded, relieved. Milo took his pills every day like clockwork. Noah had given him his afternoon dose at noon. “Tell me if you start feeling sick.”
Noah checked his coat and scarf again. He was as covered as he was going to get. It still wasn’t enough. Noah unwound his own scarf and wrapped it around Milo’s head and face, creating a double layer of protection. Only his son’s dark eyes peered out at him.
Noah took after his Irish-American father, with dark brown hair but a fair complexion. Milo had inherited the olive skin-tone of Noah’s Venezuelan mother, with curly black hair and huge dark eyes that could swallow a person whole.
He looked more like Noah than his mother, and yet Noah saw glimpses of her in his mischievous expressions, in the way he tilted his head or bit his lower lip. His mannerisms were so similar, sometimes it made Noah’s chest ache.
A memory flashed through Noah’s mind. The last day he and Hannah had ever spent together was at Bittersweet Ski Resort five years ago—the day she disappeared.
He wished he could say they’d been happy that day. But the fight was already brewing between them, Hannah tense and Noah closed off. But they’d been happy for their son. On all those miserable sleepless nights, he clung to that truth.
They’d smiled and laughed and drank hot chocolate and ate warm gooey cookies out of a paper bag, Milo’s chubby face smeared with peanut butter and chocolate.
They’d introduced Milo to his first set of skis and the bunny slope called “Babies’ Breath,” where he’d fallen over and over, his bubbling giggles the glue that held their fragile bond together.
The photo of Hannah—the one he’d snapped on his phone that day, the last one of her ever taken. The one the media had plastered all over the television and internet, the one Noah printed on ‘Missing’ posters and tacked on every telephone pole for thirty miles.
She had been so beautiful. The snowflakes caught in the chocolate-brown strands of hair framing her delicate face, her cheeks pink from the cold, her emerald-green eyes matching that dark green suede coat he’d bought their first Christmas together, back when she still loved him.
Noah had done his best to build new, good memories over the bad ones, for both himself and Milo. They’d endured five years of hell together—both bereft, lost and unmoored, clinging to each other like drowning sailors.
“Dad?”
Noah clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering. “Yeah, bud?”
“I have to pee.”
“Okay, I’ll help you.”
“And I wanna go home.”
“I know, buddy. Soon, I promise.”
Quinn
Day One
“I—I don’t feel so good.” Gramps took off his hood and hat with a trembling hand and rubbed his bald head. He didn’t put his hat back on.
“Gramps,” Quinn said. Gone was her usual snark and sarcasm—her go-to attitude. Real worry strained her voice. “What’s wrong?”
The cold grew colder. The gray day turned dark. Snow had begun to fall. It spiraled from the slate-gray sky, falling thicker and faster with each passing minute until it obscured their view of anything down the hill.
They couldn’t see the lodge or the fire anymore, couldn’t see the crashed snowcat, or any people. It was like everyone had fled the ski resort and simply abandoned them. It felt like being totally cut off from civilization.
Gramps turned toward her, his movements slow and sluggish. His skin had turned an unhealthy gray, his eyes sunken. Gramps pressed both hands to his chest. “I feel dizzy. Like I’m going to lose consciousness. My shoulder and arm hurt.”
He’d had three heart attacks already. He was too stubborn to listen to anyone, not even the doctors.
Gram kept insisting he eat better, but he bought candy and chocolate and hid it. He piled butter on his spaghetti and ravioli. He drank too much Mekong whiskey. He’d been raised on little in Vietnam; he always said he loved America so much, he wasn’t going to miss out on any of her pleasures—especially food and drink.
“It’s your heart,” Quinn said flatly.
“It’s battering against my ribs a million miles a minute and won’t stop.”
Quinn let out a string of colorful curses.
Noah clapped his hands over his son’s ears. “Language.”
She rolled her eyes and didn’t bother to apologize. Her own heartbeat quickened. Worry snarled in her belly. “Gramps?”
“It’s—hard to breathe.”
She glanced back at Noah with accusing eyes. “He has a pacemaker.”
She knew that if this electromagnetic pulse had really knocked out her grandfather’s pacemaker, that alone wouldn’t cause a heart attack. Pacemakers helped keep the heart from beating too slowly, but it wasn’t keeping his heart beating.
But combined with incredible stress and the vicious cold . . . his heart was just too weak to handle the strain.
Whatever interest or excitement she’d felt were gone. Anger—and fear—flared through her. She waved one hand in the air, encompassing everything in one fell swoop. “It’s real. Whatever it is—it’s destroyed everything electronic. Including the thing keeping his heart working right.”
“Are you okay, sir?” Noah called.
“No, he’s clearly not!” Quinn said sharply. “His skin’s all gray, and he’s acting funny.”
“I’m just gonna . . . sleep awhile,” Gramps rasped. His breath was shallow and uneven. “Don’t mind me. I’m gonna dream up some tropical beaches, maybe a cruise, some fine ladies in bikinis to keep me company . . . don’t tell Gran.”
“You’ll do no such thing. You have to stay awake.”
“I . . . love you, con gái. Don’t . . . ever forget that.”
“Gramps! Stop talking like that! You’re scaring me.”
He groaned, mumbled something, and his head fell back and thudded against one of the metal bars.
Quinn shook her grandfather’s frail shoulders. “Gramps! Wake up!”
He didn’t respond. He was unconscious.
“How’s his color?” Noah called. “His breathing?”
“His lips are blue. His face is gray. I can’t tell if he’s breathing.”
She looked back at Noah, desperate for him to do something, anything—but the cop was as trapped as she was, stuck twenty-five feet off the ground, and yards away from her or her grandfather.
What was he going to do? What could anyone do? They had no phones. No way to contact anyone. No one coming to get them.
“I can’t wake him up,” Quinn said in a stricken voice. “I think he just had a heart attack.”
Noah
Day One
The sky was darkening rapidly, the temperature dropping with it. The snow fell fast and hard. Noah had to squint to see clearly.
“My grandfather is dying!” Quinn cried.
They couldn’t wait any longer. He hadn’t wanted to believe it before, but he couldn’t deny it any longer. The worst had happened—everyone, even Ski Patrol, had forgotten about them.
The truth was, with the threat of frostbite and hypothermia, none of them would last overnight in a snowstorm and subzero temperatures.
They had to find a way down to the ground.
“I know.” Noah tried to keep his voice calm and soothing, tried not to let the anxiety show. “We have to do something.”
“There’s only one thing to do, man.” Brock looked down. “Someone has to jump.”
Instinctively, Noah looked down, too. Vertigo plunged through him. He gripped the safety bar and swallowed hard. “Anyone who jumps is likely to break something. It’s steep here, at least thirty feet down. Maybe more.”
“Then what, man? What else do you suggest?”
Noah eyed the cable above them, tried to measure the distance to the next tower. Each of the towers had a narrow ladder attached for maintenance, repairs, and emergencies.
If they could reach the to
wer . . . but how? Go hand-over-hand across the cable like monkeys? With their numb, stiff fingers? What if he fell? What if Milo fell?
At least if someone jumped, they’d have more control over the fall, how their body landed. They could go get help and bring a rescue crew back up the hill.
Maybe this was the least-bad option out of several bad choices.
“My balls are freezing off, dude,” Brock said. “I’m not gonna sit here while our fingers turn black and our toes fall off. I’m gonna jump.”
“I’ll do it.” Noah was the cop. It was his job to protect everyone. He was the one who should put himself at risk to get help. Even though the thought of leaving Milo up here alone made him feel physically ill. “It should be me.”
“No way, man,” Brock said. “You’ve got the little kid you’ve gotta take care of.”
Noah swallowed. Shame pricked him. He’d pegged Brock as a shallow jock. He’d been wrong. “Are you sure?”
Brock nodded, his jaw set. “Man, I got this.”
“Make your body loose,” Noah said. “Roll when you hit the ground.”
Brock lifted the metal safety bar. He leaned down, fumbled with his boot, and snapped off his snowboard.
They all watched it fall through the air. The board dropped to the ground and landed in the snow with a soft thud.
Brock twisted around and lowered himself from the seat, using the crossbar just below the seat to hold onto. With his gloved hands gripping the bar, he hung by his arms.
He still looked a good twenty-five-plus feet above the ground.
“Close your eyes, Milo.” Noah unzipped his coat pocket and pulled out the small but powerful maglight he always kept with him, along with a folding knife attached to his keychain. He shone the beam at Brock to give him light.
The chair swayed beneath Brock’s shifting weight. Phoebe let out a tiny cry and seized one of the side bars to steady herself. She raised one hand and re-lowered the safety bar to keep herself from falling.
Phoebe started crying, sniffling and wiping at her eyes. “Be careful, babe.”
Brock looked up at her. His body swayed gently. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Brock Mason.”
“Gross,” Quinn said, some of the snark returning to her voice. “Just jump already.”
Noah watched, blinking against the snowflakes catching in his eyelashes, his hand over Milo’s eyes, and hardly dared to breathe.
Brock let go.
The drop took only a moment, a heartbeat, a sucked-in breath.
Brock landed feet-first. He tumbled awkwardly and collapsed on his back in the snow.
An unearthly scream shattered the air.
“Brock!” Phoebe shrieked.
Brock only screamed louder.
Noah leaned against the back of the chairlift and peered over the edge, shining the penlight and squinting in the twilight. The guy lay on his side in the snow, one leg stuck straight out, the other bent inward toward his chest.
“My leg! My leg!”
“What’s wrong?” Phoebe asked. “Are you okay?”
“I freakin’ broke my leg, man!” Moaning, Brock ripped off his gloves and fumbled for his leg, patting it to search for the injury. “I can feel—the bone! I feel it sticking out!”
Noah cursed under his breath.
Brock howled in agony. Even in the twilight, Noah could clearly see the dark stain spreading across the man’s snow pant below his knee. Something poked against the fabric over his shin—the broken bone.
Now what? They couldn’t do a thing for him up here. Brock couldn’t make his way all the way down to the lodge on a broken leg.
“We have to help him!” Phoebe cried.
“What the heck do you want us to do?” Quinn said. “Pray his leg knits itself back together in the next five minutes? Float down to him like angels of mercy?”
“You don’t have to be a jerk about it,” Phoebe muttered.
“Can you move at all?” Noah asked Brock.
“No!” Brock’s voice was high and strained, cracking in panic. “I can’t move! It hurts so much! I can’t frickin’ move at all. I’m dying! I feel like I’m dying, man! Help me!”
“Don’t look at it, okay? Try not to think about it. Take steady breaths. Can you look around for something to splint your leg with to provide you some support?”
Brock turned his head and vomited. He groaned.
“Try to stay calm. You need to lay down and elevate your legs, if you can. Maybe shovel some snow underneath your unhurt leg—”
“I can’t breathe!” Brock cried. “It hurts, it hurts so much!”
“He’s going into shock,” Quinn said.
“Brock!” Noah said. “Calm down. Take slow, steady breaths.”
It was no use. Brock writhed and screamed in agony. They could do nothing but watch him suffer in stunned horror. Noah held Milo’s head to his chest, covering his eyes and ears to shield him.
The minutes passed with terrible slowness.
Brock’s low, anguished moans were snatched by the growing wind whistling between the tree trunks, branches creaking. The snow came down fast and heavy, making it difficult to see.
Noah forced himself to look down again. “Brock! What are you doing?”
Brock had taken off his coat. He was spreading it over his injured leg. “I’m too hot. I’m burning up. I’ve got to save my leg, man . . . I got to save it . . .”
Fear spiked through Noah. “You have hypothermia, Brock. You’re not thinking straight. You need to put the coat back on. Cover your head with your hood. Find your gloves.”
“I’m just . . . so tired, man . . . I’ll feel better when I sleep . . .”
“You have to do something!” Phoebe said through hitching sobs. “Please!”
“Don’t fall asleep!” Noah shouted. “Stay awake! Stay with us!”
But Brock didn’t appear to be listening. His scarf had fallen off, exposing his face and throat. His head was bare. Without his coat to protect his core, his body temperature would drop to critical levels incredibly fast.
Brock’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he flopped on his back in the snow like a fish.
He’d passed out from the pain. Or succumbed to the cold. Either way, it was bad.
“Brock!” Phoebe stared down at her boyfriend in the twilight, tears streaming down her cheeks. “He’s dying! Brock!”
Arms extended, his bare hands stretched out like he was making a snow angel. Brock didn’t answer. He didn’t move.
Noah
Day One
Dread and dismay tangled in Noah’s gut. He never should have allowed Brock to jump. It should have been him. It should have been Noah.
The wind howled through the trees, whipping the heavily falling snow into a frenzy. In only a few minutes, it would be completely dark.
The fear rose up in him, the old familiar terror of high places, of falling. That familiar sickening lurch in his gut, the wave of vertigo.
It didn’t matter how afraid he was, how much he dreaded what was coming. Milo was so young, so small, so vulnerable. For his son, he would do anything.
He shimmied forward, leaned far over the safety bar, and unclipped first one boot, then the other. His skis fell away into the darkness. He unclipped Milo’s skis as well.
Slowly, he pushed himself into a kneeling position, grasping the nearest bar with his left hand. The chair wobbled. The lift creaked and swayed beneath his shifting weight.
“What are you doing?” Quinn asked.
“I’m going to get down and get us out of here.”
He couldn’t see her in the dark anymore. “Using the cable?”
“I just have to shimmy down to your chair, past it, and then to the tower. From there, I can climb down the ladder. It can’t be that hard, right?”
Quinn didn’t bother to answer. Her skepticism screamed loud in her silence.
A gust of wind blew down the hill, whipping stinging snow into his face. He b
linked against the onslaught. His lungs burned with every breath, his nostrils stinging.
The cold burrowed into his bones.
He handed the flashlight to Milo. His fingers felt stiff and awkward. He opened and closed his fists, working out the stiffness, willing feeling and warmth to return to his hands.
“Your job is to work the light, okay buddy? It’s an important job. You think you can handle it?”
Milo nodded solemnly.
“You feel okay?”
“I’m okay, Dad. Don’t worry about me.” Milo hesitated. “You can do it, Dad.”
Phoebe’s sobs had quieted to sniffles and hiccups. Quinn said nothing, but he knew she was watching his every move.
They were depending on him. Milo was depending on him.
He stood cautiously, shakily. The chair wobbled and lurched beneath him. His boots were slick on the metal. His feet threatened to slide right out from under him.
He grasped the center pole with both hands and craned his neck, examining the apparatus he was about to climb. The center pole above his head curved into an attachment to the thick steel cable, locking each individual chair into place. If he stepped onto the top of the chair back, he could reach the grip and the cable.
He would travel along the cable down toward Quinn and her grandfather. It was a longer journey, but gravity would be on his side. That was the hope, anyway.
Snowflakes collected atop the thick steel cable. The metal glinted in the beam of the penlight. It would be slick and hard to grasp.
If he removed his gloves, his skin would stick to the freezing metal, might even tear chunks off his palms. He glanced down at his hands. His gloves were leather, a definite advantage over nylon or some other synthetic, slippery material.
Noah was six-foot-one, a hundred and ninety pounds. In high school, he’d played varsity wide receiver and took the Fall Creek Wolves to the state championship two years in a row. Maybe he’d gained a little pudge around the middle in the last few years, but he kept himself in shape with weights, jogging, and twice-weekly racquetball.