Avalanche

by Melinda Braun

  “You all right?” Carter poked his head in, then lifted up the lantern. After several hours, the fuel canister was almost depleted, but the faint light revealed Sid, his eyes squeezed shut.

  “What’s happening?”

  Carter crawled all the way in and moved the light over Sid, then pulled down the collar of Sid’s shirt. Veins bulged on his neck, and his lips looked bluish in the lantern glow. “Lack of oxygen. It’s getting really hard for him to breathe.”

  “What do we do?” Tony croaked.

  “In a few hours it’ll be dawn,” Carter replied. “We need to take turns staying awake and monitoring him. I’m going to go out and try again for a signal.” He backed himself out of the tent. “I’ll come back and sit with him.” He gave Tony a look. “You need to sleep too.”

  “I can’t.” Tony squeezed his brother’s hand as Carter left to go try his phone, and after a few seconds Sid’s coughing fit subsided. Tony tried to get him to drink something, raising his water bottle to Sid’s lips, but Sid turned his head away. “Drink something,” Tony said. “That’ll help.” He didn’t know if that was true, but it seemed like it would work on a cough. Or maybe that would only make things worse. A sort of helpless rage began to rise inside him. So this is what it’s like, he thought. This is what it’s like to watch someone you love suffer and know there’s not a thing you can do about it.

  “No,” Sid murmured. “It hurts. I can’t.”

  “You have to try. Help will be here soon.” He didn’t know if that was true either, but he would sit there and keep telling lies if he thought it would help. He would say anything. “It’ll be morning soon.” He began to talk, if only to take Sid’s mind off his pain. “Matt and Leah have gotten the call through. We just have to wait for first light, that’s all. Carter said they’ll send rescue. Carter knows. And then, they’ll find us and we’ll be out of here. Safe and sound. You just have to wait a little longer, okay?”

  Sid didn’t answer.

  “Just a little longer and we’ll be safe and sound,” Tony repeated, squeezing his brother’s hand as though he could create a pulse by sheer will. He would be his brother’s heart. He would pump the blood through his veins. Anything he needed to do. Anything at all.

  “Safe and sound.”

  • • •

  “Fine.”

  “Fine!”

  Tony awoke with a start. Sleep gummed his eyes, and he coughed, squeezing his brother’s hand in his. How long had he been asleep? Minutes? An hour? He had no idea. He leaned over Sid and held his breath, listening. Sid sounded wheezy, his breath coming in hard bursts, but it was steady. In the dark, Tony felt his brother’s wrist. Pulse faster than his, but not racing.

  “Just don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “You know what.”

  So that was it, Tony thought. Carter and Julie’s voices were loud, sounding so incredibly close to him he flinched. He wondered if he should do something, say something. Probably. But what?

  Outside, Julie laughed, high and shaky. “I have no idea what you mean, Carter.” She said his name like she was chewing on gravel, crunching down on the consonants. Listening to her, Tony thought she was delirious, feverish, or even drunk. Again, he wondered how long he’d been asleep.

  “Julie, why don’t you just rest.” Carter sighed, sounding like he was trying to placate a toddler.

  “And why don’t you just leave me alone, Carter. For once, please. Just. Leave. Me. Alone.”

  Whoa. Tony sat up. He dropped Sid’s hand and unzipped the flap, a poorly worded plea forming on his lips. “Uh, hey guys . . .”

  Carter and Julie stood in the moonlight. The wind had died down and the way they faced each other reminded Tony of a duel. They didn’t hear him.

  “I’m not going to keep going over this.” Carter crossed his arms. “I’m not gonna waste my breath. You haven’t slept. You’re tired and you’re not thinking straight.”

  “Typical Carter. Always ready to take charge, forever the perfect Boy Scout.” Tony heard Julie’s voice crack like the snapping of twigs. She let out a long breath—as if it had been trapped in her lungs for years. “Stop telling me why I feel the way I feel.”

  Carter shook his head, and Tony could have sworn he saw a light smile break his stern lips. “You were always a little rough in the morning—when you were still sleepy.” Carter chuckled softly—tenderly. Tony’s ears turned red at the sound. He tried covering his face with the tent flap. This was more than one friend arguing with another. A LOT more. Carter reached toward Julie’s check.

  “Don’t!” she snapped.

  Tony saw Carter’s shoulder’s drop, then his head turn away in shame. Tony didn’t really know either of them, or what had happened—was happening—between the two of them now. But what he did know was that Carter’s hesitant touch set Julie off. She lifted her chin and looked at Carter as if he had just kicked her puppy.

  “What are you thinking?” Julie shot back. “Dylan’s gone, and you . . .”

  “Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it,” Tony said, but it only came out in a whisper. “Please,” he added a bit louder.

  Julie buried her head in her hands. Carter stepped closer, then thought better of it. His boots crunch-crunched in the snow.

  “You took his beacon,” Julie whispered in muffled words, her eyes glazed over from either tears or exhaustion, Tony couldn’t tell. Maybe both.

  “Don’t you dare . . . ,” Carter began. He knew what was coming, and so did Tony.

  “You took Dylan’s beacon! You . . . did it on purpose?”

  “I didn’t,” Carter yelled back, but it sounded strangled, like he was choking on the words. “I didn’t take his beacon! He gave it to me! He knew what he was doing!”

  Tony swallowed hard. If Carter hadn’t asked them about their beacons, he wouldn’t have known Matt didn’t have one. Tony hadn’t even thought to mention it. But Carter yelled at Dylan and Dylan handed it over. If that hadn’t happened, Matt would have been the one who died. They never would have found him in time. Tony was suddenly dizzy at how one innocent comment had become the difference between life and death.

  “And now look!” Julie screamed, waving her arms as if she was trying to chop the air in half. “Now Dylan’s dead!”

  Carter crossed his arms, his lips pinched shut. Tony thought he heard him growl like an angry wolf, until, “Don’t you put your guilt on me! H-he was m-my f-friend too,” Carter stuttered. He pulled off his hat and held it in front of his face. Julie looked to the sky. Whatever guilt was nibbling at Carter, Tony knew it was devouring Julie in one nasty gulp. He decided he’d had enough as he crawled out of the tent.

  “Carter?” Tony said. “Uh, sorry. I, um, think I fell asleep.” He walked into the space between them, his back to Julie. “Carter, maybe you should sit with Sid for a while. I’ll stay out here.” Give you two a break, he added in his head.

  Carter didn’t reply, but immediately turned and headed to the tent, his face still hidden by his hat.

  Behind him, Tony felt Julie’s glare. It penetrated the back of his head, infecting him. “You shouldn’t have said that.” Tony turned his face up to the dark sky. The moon was now veiled with thin clouds, as if covered with tissue paper. “You shouldn’t have said that,” he repeated, louder. “It wasn’t Carter’s fault.”

  Tony turned around to face her and he felt his stomach sink like a rock dropped in a pool of water. Her eyes were bloodshot, her lips chapped, and her skin burned from the wind. She wasn’t exhausted, Tony realized. She was defeated—as if the mountains had beaten her, buried her under a wall of snow and she had no desire to dig herself out.

  Julie’s eyes opened wider. Then her mouth did, but a second later she shut it, clicking her teeth together. “You don’t know anything,” she finally said, but she didn’t sound so sure to Tony. With another choked sob, she turned and stumbled back through the drifts, heading toward the pines.

  “I know enough,” Tony wh
ispered, watching her go.

  THE HUNTER

  Location: 400 yards from the cabin

  The wind was heavy with burning, and the cat sneezed. It snorted its nose against the snow to remove the itch, and wiped one heavy paw across its muzzle.

  It did not like the smoke, and normally would have moved off, but it was the others that kept it close. Animals. Prey. A pack of four. One injured. Even from this distance and through the thick acidic air, the cat smelled it. Blood. Underneath everything it penetrated, and the cat salivated, tail twitching in anticipation. It watched the cabin from the thick cover of pines, high up on the slope. But it did not approach.

  Moonlight sparkled the fresh snow, silver glitter on white. Deep, inky shadows ran long between the trees.

  The voices were low, but growing louder. The cat watched as the herd bunched tight together.

  It would not attempt an attack on so large a group, so it sat and watched, waiting for the right moment. The cat rolled its long tongue, sweeping it out into a yawn, and curled up under the snow-laden boughs, tucking its long tail around it like a belt. It would wait and watch. The night would be long, but it was a patient animal.

  DAY 3

  MATT

  Location: Byers Peak

  Elevation: 9,500 feet

  Dawn took a long time to arrive, but the deep navy black sky eventually dissolved away, and a neon crack of green shone at the horizon line just before the glaring ball of sun rose behind it. Small clouds strafed the sky in powder-blue and cotton candy–pink shades, and by the time they finally escaped the boulder field, the sun was fully up. Matt couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so happy to see trees.

  “I need to rest.” He sat down by a scraggly-looking pine dusted in a fresh coating of snow. There was a sharp cheet above his head, and he stared up into the branches until a flash of red revealed a cardinal perched on a pinecone in the morning light, ruffling its feathers. He relaxed, but it made him anxious about what other animals were out here. It hadn’t concerned him before, but that was when he was in a large group of people.

  “Are there wolves in Colorado?”

  “Wolves?” Leah shook her head. “No. Not here. I don’t think there have been wolves in these parts for years. Coyotes maybe.” She gestured to a twisty but wide-looking streak of snowpack through the trees. It appeared to be a trail. “But there are bears. And mountain lions too.”

  “Mountain lions?” Matt’s voice shifted up an octave.

  “They’re rare.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s the bears you don’t want to run into. That would be very bad luck.”

  “Good to know.” Maybe he’d been thinking about it wrong. Maybe he wasn’t lucky at all. People would say he was lucky because he was still alive. But another way to look at it was that he was incredibly unlucky to be in this situation at all. It could have just been a normal ski trip. It should have been normal. Awesome and unforgettable, Matt thought, trudging on. His right foot throbbed—an increasing ache in his toes. He hadn’t waterproofed his hiking boots, and after an hour of trekking through snow, his feet were soaked. A soft hum made him blink. It grew louder. Music? Behind him, Leah was singing.

  “For the bears,” she explained with a grin. With a pink hat on, her red hair was almost obscene in the soft morning light. “To let them know we’re coming. You should sing too.”

  “I can’t sing.” He blushed, trying to remember where he’d heard the song. The melody was familiar. “What song is that, anyway?”

  “Don’t you know?” She swiveled her hips like a hula dancer. “‘Bump, bah dah dah! If you like piña coladas! Getting caught in the rain!’”

  His face reheated, watching her curls swing down around her shoulders as she shimmied a circle in the snow. “Don’t know that one.” That was half true. He had heard that song before. It was a song his dad would sing in the car, and now that he knew the words, he hated it. But he couldn’t think of another song he could sing, not even if his life depended on it. He started to laugh.

  “What? I’m that bad?” Leah scooped up a fistful of snow, and at first Matt thought she was going to pelt him with it. But she ate it.

  “No,” he said. “You sing good. I mean, you sing very well.” Another blush. “It’s just that’s the kind of music my parents listen to.”

  Leah shrugged. “Good music is good music.”

  “I guess,” Matt replied, then stopped. Two roads diverged. Well not roads, but trails. And there was no yellow wood, only white and black with streaks of green. “Which way?” he asked. “The one less traveled?”

  Leah pointed left. “How about that one?” Neither path had been traveled, at least, not by people. There were other tracks he thought he recognized—rabbits with their lopsided hop, deer with petite puncture marks, squirrels with baby-like handprints. “But I don’t know if it will make all the difference,” she added.

  “Robert Frost was probably drunk in the woods when he wrote that,” Matt said. “He liked his booze.”

  “Really? I didn’t know that.”

  “Great poet, but I heard he wasn’t the nicest guy.”

  “Sounds like my foster mom,” Leah said quickly. “Except she was only good at being a drunk. Not at any kind of poetry. At least, not that I’d ever seen.”

  Matt flinched. “Oh yeah?” He was afraid to say anything—almost afraid to even breathe. Usually when people offer up a confession like that, they are just getting started.

  “But man, she could put it away.” Leah tromped along, watching the clouds, which had thickened up again in the space of an hour. “Beer, wine, gin, whiskey, vodka. She was an equal opportunity drunk, but I think gin was her favorite.” Matt watched her watch the building weather. He wondered if that meant there would be another storm. “Which is weird, because she’d get all weepy and emotional. Normally, she was a total hard ass.” She stopped, eyes flickering at him expectantly, waiting for his reaction.

  “How long were you in foster care?”

  “On and off since I was little,” Leah said. “I’ll age out soon, like Carter did when he turned eighteen.”

  “Age out?”

  “When I become a legal adult. No more foster crap to deal with.”

  “Oh.” He hoped his face wasn’t as red as it felt. Even his eyeballs felt swollen and tight. “That’s good, right?”

  Her reply was too soft to hear, and when he opened his mouth, trying to think of the right thing to say, a distant rumble penetrated the quiet. And it wasn’t thunder. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Yes!” Leah leaped forward, ducking her head around for an open spot between the trees. “And I think it’s coming this way!”

  Frantic, Matt ran forward, seeing nothing but snow and bark and pine needles. White. Green. White. “We need to get out in the open! We have to make them see us!” He jogged sideways, looking for the most white space between the trees, and when he saw the huge fir tree surrounded by snow out in the open, it beckoned to him like a lighthouse. “There!” He knew if he could get to that tree and climb it, the people in the helicopter would see him. His parka and snow pants were navy blue and black, respectively, which was an unfortunate choice. At a moment like this he wished he was dressed head to toe in blaze orange. “C’mon Leah!” Adrenaline was everywhere, fizzing his blood to a boil, and despite his hunger, fatigue, and aching feet, he hurled himself forward, sprinting over drifts.

  You can do this, he thought. He was doing it, even though he no longer felt his legs move. His feet were hard stumps in his boots, but he kept running. Ten yards, thirty, fifty. Leah yelled behind him, but he couldn’t wait for her—the sound was louder—batabatabatabatabata. And suddenly it was there, streaking over the treetops, flashing red and white and silver between the clouds. Rescue. The call had gone through. They were coming.

  They needed something bright. Leah’s jacket was green, but her hot pink hat would definitely catch a pilot’s eye. “Leah!” Matt yelled. “Wave y
our hat!” He flapped his own arms, windmilling them as he burst onto the small clearing. The drifts here were ridiculous, but as he ran down the hill, he thought it looked like someplace skiers would go—a lot of deep powder and very few trees.

  The helicopter was still some distance away—flying parallel to the range—but Matt could see it wasn’t coming closer. It was moving off in the opposite direction. Maybe it will make another pass, he thought. Then he would have just enough time to climb to the treetop and shake the branches. They would have to notice that.

  “Matt!”

  “Hurry!” he hollered. “It’ll come back around!”

  “Wait! Don’t!”

  Ten yards. He was close; his feet sank into fresh powder that ended over his shins, the next step it went to his knees. But he didn’t stop. And with two more steps, his gloves brushed the snow-draped branches.

  “No!” Leah screamed.

  Instantly, the ground dropped out from under him. There was no ground, just a widening hole. And as he fell, momentum propelled him forward, flinging him deeper into the branches. “What the hell?” he gasped.

  The fresh powder around the branches had made a roof of snow around the lower half of the tree and right now Matt was crashing through it. Instinctively, his grip tightened, but the limb he grasped was flexible, bending, following him down as he fell. His brain commanded: Don’t let go. Don’t let go. He crashed against the main trunk, scrabbling with his left hand to hold on to anything that would keep him upright. Going headfirst would land him upside down in a pit of snow. No, no, no, no, no! This can’t be happening to me again!

  “Matt!” Leah screamed. “Grab the tree!”

  But he was still falling, kicking with his feet, as everything collapsed with him. Under the force of his weight, the branch he stood on broke, and he slammed down to the next one. Stay up. Stay up. Head up!