They were nearly at the top. Sun and warmth had given way to compacted snow and clouds that engulfed the bus and reduced visibility to a mere few feet. The knot in her stomach tightened. Ali was ranting about Brits, Americans, and their apparent obsession with health and safety.
Sam was staring out of the window in terror. “So who will I be flying with?” he asked.
Ali gestured toward the well-built man sitting in the passenger seat at the front of the bus, who was hanging out of the window with his video camera and, inevitably, smoking a cigarette. “You’re with me. Kayla will be flying with Erkut, he will keep her safe,” Ali explained, winking at Kayla before taking a gigantic slurp out of the hip flask swaying steadily in his right hand. Erkut peeled open one eye and, by means of confirmation, allowed one corner of his mouth to curl upward in a semismile. He sniffed and readjusted himself in his seat, zipping his fleece all the way up to his chin and tucking his hands into the deep front pockets before closing his eyes once again.
Kayla couldn’t figure out whether she desperately wanted to arrive at the summit to escape the smoky and dingy atmosphere inside the bus, or whether she never wanted to move again. It’s quite frankly incredible that after everything that’s happened over the past couple of months, I’m still capable of such crippling fear. Sam appeared frozen to his seat, his fingers tightly gripping the sides, and the air felt thick and furry around them. Give me Mek the Bengal tiger over this, any day of the week.
Too soon, the ancient brakes screeched abruptly to a halt. They had reached the top.
Even though they hadn’t passed a single car or bus on the way up, the large paved area was full of people. It followed the natural shape of the mountain peak, with very little flat surface and plenty of slopes to run off. All over the widest point, paragliders were sprawled on the ground surrounded by their rucksacks and parachutes, absorbing the incredible views before they flew down to the ground like exotic birds. Some had brought picnics, others hip flasks, and everyone looked relaxed and happy. Kayla overheard one couple talk about the various locations they’d visited for this very reason.
“If it was that traumatic they wouldn’t do it twice, right? Just like childbirth. If it was that horrific, nobody would have more than one kid,” Kayla whispered. “I mean, Ali does this every day.”
“Yes. But Ali is bloody mental.” Sam shivered. It was extraordinarily cold, considering they were wearing shorts and T-shirts. Not the kind of numbing cold that stings the skin like a whip burn, but rather the shiver-inducing temperature usually present toward the end of British autumn. The regulars stared at the newcomers with a certain level of bemusement from behind the comfort of their windbreakers, hiking trousers and fleece jackets. Luckily, Sam and Kayla were soon provided with canvas flight suits to protect them from the mountain chill.
From twenty feet away Ali’s notorious guffaw ripped through the air. Kayla and Sam walked hand in hand back to the minibus, the supposedly safe place in which their easily torn parachutes were slung carelessly over the back of the moldy chairs, and stared in disbelief.
A mountain goat had broken in and perched right on the seat that held the equipment. Its huge brown eyes gazed dopily back at them, seemingly amused by their utter bewilderment. Ali was clutching his sides, doubled over with laughter, as Erkut tried to shoo the docile creature away before it could do any serious damage to the gear. It hopped out of the bus obligingly and trotted away back down the dirt track. Kayla began to wonder whether she was hallucinating. Am I really about to run off a cliff strapped to a total stranger? Did a mountain goat really just break into our bus? Will my mother murder me for running off said cliff without insurance? Probably.
And then the wind changed, and all hell broke loose. Apparently, the relaxed people hadn’t been chilling out at all—they’d been waiting for the gusts of air to switch to the right direction for their flight path. Clusters of pilots began gathering their belongings and loading up their backpacks in a bid to beat the rush, and the smiles and chitchat made way for looks of intense concentration and focus. Some held up flags in order to analyze the exact wind direction, while others ensured that all of the appropriate straps of their parachutes were securely fastened.
From behind her, Kayla heard the stomping of heavy boots picking up speed, and turned around just in time to see a flier take off. The wind caught in the fabric of his bright green parachute, lifting the black boots clean off the rubble they’d been running over. Instead of leaving the mountain face and starting to descend immediately, the lime green mass rose in the air and glided away toward the coast. For a moment nobody spoke. It was like staring into a log fire and becoming utterly entranced by the movement of the flames. They couldn’t tear their eyes away.
The silence didn’t last. The aggressive Turkish commands rang in Kayla’s ears as two pairs of hands grabbed her by the waist and hoisted her into the suit with the speed and precision of a Formula One pit stop. They then began strapping her to a fluorescent orange parachute that had last been seen beneath a goat’s backside.
“Okay. You’ll go now. Start here, please.”
“Wait, I thought Sam was going first?”
The instructor attached himself to the back of Kayla’s suit and gripped the ropes with both hands.
“There was a problem with Sam’s chute, you go now.”
“A problem? With his chute?”
“Go!”
“Now?”
“Now!”
“But wait, what do I do? Help! Oh my God! Wait!”
“Start running and don’t stop. If you stop, if you sit down, you will die. DON’T STOP.”
“But my shoelace is untied and my sunglasses are steamed up. I can’t see! What if I trip?”
“You will die. GO!”
So Kayla started running, because she knew if she didn’t shut down her thoughts and go, she never would. The last thing she saw before her three-sizes-too-big trainers began to pound the rubble was Sam, suffering from what appeared to be a violent panic attack.
And then she was flying.
About the Author
LAURA SALTERS is a twenty-something magazine journalist from the northernmost town in England. Run Away is her first novel.
www.laurasalters.com
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
RUN AWAY. Copyright © 2015 by Laura Steven. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition MAY 2015 ISBN: 9780062403582
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062403575
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