Then the rock explodes in my hammer hand, leaving me clutching a handful of sharp pebbles. The surprise makes me slip from my little climbing pockets. I land hard on both feet. Pain shoots up from my left foot, my vision flashes white, and I stagger backward. I’m grateful when Sebastian catches me, preventing me from falling on my back or hitting my head on the opposite wall.
“Crap,” he mutters.
“You are the master of understatement, Bash.”
The rock I was using is harder than anything we have in our packs, and we both know it. The secret squirrel rescue squad will slide down here any second, and our race will be over, and then Bailey will die, all because I fell into a stupid crack in the snow.
My partner’s expression brightens. “Maybe…”
He holds his arms out toward the walls, flattening his palms against the ice on both sides. Then he does a cheerleader spread-eagle and smacks his running shoes against the ice. He sticks that way for a minute, manages to shimmy up until he’s maybe six feet off the ground. Then he reaches a spot where the walls are farther apart, and suddenly he can go no further.
“Double crap.” He lets himself slide back down to my side, landing with a thump.
I can’t stand it. I pull the windbreaker out of my pack and put it on, but underneath, my clothes are wet. My goosebumps have goosebumps. I can feel the seconds ticking by. Team Seven is getting farther and farther behind. Does anyone care that we might die down here?
Then my cold brain flashes on a stunt my brother Aaron and I used to pull in the hallway of our house. “I think you have the right idea,” I tell him. “But it’s going to take both of us.”
He stops in the middle of pulling on his own windbreaker to raise an eyebrow.
“Sit down; I’ll explain.” I plop down in the snow and stretch out my legs.
He looks down at me, shakes his head, and zips up his jacket. “I’m already freezing.”
“I am too. Sit. Put your back against mine before we both succumb to hypothermia.”
Reluctantly, he does, and I feel everything in his pack clank against the equipment in mine. Duh.
“We’ll have to take off our packs, put them on our fronts.”
“What?” he says from behind me. Then, “I get it; I get it.”
We both move our packs from back to front, and I’m reminded of moms carrying their babies around in kangaroo pouches like this. Then we press our backs together and extend our legs out to the walls. I can easily reach the wall closest to me with my knees bent. I feel a steady pressure from Sebastian’s back against mine.
The last time I did this, the back of a small nine-year-old boy was pressed against mine. Aaron. I have never gotten over the fact that the last big-sister words I spoke to him were, “Get out of my room.”
Get out of my room! How many times a day do we say things we’d regret if we knew they were the last words that person would ever hear?
Sebastian’s head knocks into the back of mine, and I remember that even if I am a terrible person who deserves to die frozen in a crevasse, my partner hasn’t done anything to justify that fate.
“Ready?” I say.
“Let’s link arms.”
“Good idea.” We both thrust our arms backwards and link elbows. I make my hands into fists and pull them forward again, solidifying our human bridge. “Much stronger. Ready to try?”
“It’s better than freezing to death down here.”
We each push off our respective walls, pressing hard into each other. We take a few tentative steps up the wall. It’s awkward because unlike the hallway walls my brother and I scaled, these are not smooth and consistent. The pressure makes my left foot hurt like hell. When I clench my teeth, I feel the gash on my chin open up. A warm wetness slithers down the front of my neck.
“Keep going?” Sebastian asks.
I can tell he has his teeth clenched, too. We are about six feet above the ground.
“I can if you can.”
The muscles in my legs are already starting to tremble. The soles of our running shoes are pressed against slick ice; the only thing keeping us suspended is the pressure we are exerting against the crevasse walls. Why the hell didn’t I think to pack crampons?
“Only thirty feet to go.”
He doesn’t have to remind me how far we will fall if we can’t pull this off. While my brother and I fell onto the hallway carpet at home, here Sebastian and I will crash land on the unforgiving ice again, and we won’t have cushioning snow falling with us this time. Then we’ll have a lot more than minor cuts and a sore foot to complain about. If we’re alive to complain at all.
We’re about twenty feet up when the lessening pressure of our buttocks against each other tells us that the walls lean out further up here. Our legs are pressed straight out; our knees are rigid.
“Shit,” Sebastian growls.
My thoughts exactly. But I clench my fists against my sides and pull harder on his elbows.“Don’t stop.”
A glop of snow falls into our faces as we near the top and we both spit and cuss for a few more steps up. The distance widens a few more inches. We quiver against each other with the stress of maintaining our rigid posture. We are now linked by our elbows held out to the sides, with only our upper bodies pressed against each other. But finally, my toes are just beneath the rim.
And then it occurs to both of us that we are stuck. We may be up, but we are not out. And how can we get out when the only thing keeping us suspended is our mutual pressure against each other’s bodies? If we release the tension, we will fall to our deaths. Clearly hypothermia has robbed us of the ability to do long-term planning.
Every muscle in my body is screaming. The ache in my left foot has been eclipsed by the cramps in my arms from having my elbows stretched behind me in this medieval torture position. I know Sebastian can’t be in much better shape.
“Down again?” he asks.
No way. We will eventually die down there of hypothermia. Assuming we have enough leg strength to make it back to the bottom. There has to be a way out of this dilemma. Sebastian has our climbing rope in his pack. I frantically search the wall my running shoes are pressed against. And see nothing but ice and the dirt beneath it.
“See any rock big enough to tie off to?” I ask.
“No.” He shifts, lessening the pressure on my left shoulder. I can’t help giving a little yelp of fearas our body bridge threatens to collapse.
“Sorry,” he says. “Had to test something. There’s a branch by my right foot.”
“A branch?” That doesn’t sound too hopeful.
“I think it’s actually a small tree. Or it used to be, before it got broken off. It sticks out about a foot.”
“Hold on tight. I want to see it.” I pull my arms forward to grip elbows tighter, then shift my head back onto his shoulder and arch a few inches to see his feet on the opposite wall. He’s right; sticking out of the snow to the right of his foot is what looks like a small tree that got sheared off. It’s two inches thick at most.
It’s an unlikely candidate for our salvation, but it’s all we’ve got.
“Shifting back.” As I move my head back against his, we slip an inch, making us both gasp.
“I can’t reach that tree with a hand,” he tells me. “We’d fall before I could grab on.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” I say dryly. “I was thinking of using the rope. Can you get it out of your pack?” My muscles are beginning to quiver. I don’t know how much longer I can keep up this human bridge act. I bet Sebastian is thinking the same thing.
“Working on it. Have to unlink my right elbow.”
Which means my left. Which is damn scary when you’re suspended forty feet in the air. “Let me do it.”
I say a quick prayer—If You’re There, God, This is the Time to Prove It—and then I slowly uncrook my left arm and reach down, my cramped fingers crawling across the slick fabric of Sebastian’s windbreaker and then his wet shirt underneath, feeling his ri
gid muscles, seeking the smooth, hard edge of his belt. His shoulders press harder against mine and I’m finally able to slip my fingers beneath the nylon webbing. I clamp my hand around the belt and brace myself. “Now.”
He moves his right arm, making our body bridge bounce slightly. I close my eyes. Supreme Being, Are You Paying Attention? The walls of the crevice are shimmying now like they’re belly dancing, but I know the rock and ice are not really moving. It’s my legs. In fact, my whole body is going into spasms.
Stop it, stop it, stop it! I jam my feet against the wall and try to imagine I am a steel beam. Flat, strong, steady.
“Got it,” he reports. He moves some more and I pray some more.
“Tying a loop,” he mutters.
His head moves, and I understand he’s using his teeth to assist. After what seems like six months of jerking and slipping and tensing, he says, “Done.”
“Can you lasso the tree?” Please God.
“Wish me luck. First throw.” His right shoulder jerks. Our heads slip from their braced positions.
And then we fall.
Chapter 11
I want that insane screamer to just shut the hell up. We are still in a narrow space, there’s not enough room for all that noise. When we hit the wall and the shrieking stops, I realize I am cursing myself. I have only my fingers threaded through Sebastian’s belt, and now I clutch it for dear life, but his shorts are sliding down under my weight. In a few seconds he is going to be naked from the waist down and I am going to be dead. It is a miracle we both aren’t dead already, but he obviously managed to hook the damn tree and hold onto the rope, even if the move did break our bridge.
I am making sounds that aren’t even close to words, and clawing up with my free hand to grab onto anything, which turns out to be the tail of his running shirt. It’s stretchy, though, so it doesn’t do much to relieve my anxiety. It’s likely to strangle him before it rips and we both fall to our deaths.
Whose stupid idea was this, anyway?
Sebastian grunts something.
“What?” I manage to yelp.
“Climb. Up.” Sounds like he’s talking through clenched teeth, and as a matter of fact, I can see that every muscle in his body is clenched. Climb up what? The wall we are dangling from is ice and rock, and almost as slick as glass.
We slip an inch farther and both gasp simultaneously.
“Now!” he yelps.
The only thing to climb is Sebastian. So I do. Feeling like a cad only out to save herself, I swing my foot up on top of his, catch hold of his windbreaker and monkey my way up his back, whacking both our bodies repeatedly with all the gear in my pack on my chest. When my arms reach his shoulders, I cling for a minute, checking out the edge of the crevasse a few feet above my head. We are hanging from the rope, and the tree—more of a twig, actually, is bending under our weight. Any second now, the rope will slip off.
Sebastian groans beneath me.
There is only one way. “Sorry. Sorry.” I keep apologizing as I shimmy up, grabbing him around the forehead and hauling my knees up to his shoulders. Then, placing my hands against the wall, I move my feet up to his shoulders—“Sorry”—and finally I reach the edge and manage to pull myself up, dislodging a small avalanche of snow and pebbles onto my partner’s head. “Sorry!”
The twig bends more, the rope slips more, and Sebastian slides down another couple inches. I throw myself down in the snow, bruising my left breast on the aluminum water bottle in my kangaroo pack, and grab for the rope. I barely have the fingers of one hand around the braided nylon when the little tree snaps. The rope nearly yanks my shoulder out of its socket. I quickly apply the other hand, too.
Sebastian’s weight slides me halfway off the edge. From here I can see all the way down to the bottom of the crevasse, and I have the sickening feeling we will both soon be there again. I curl my feet, digging the toes of my running shoes into the snow.
Bracing myself as best I can, I close my eyes as I slip closer to the edge.
“Whatever you’re going to do, do it quick,” I hiss.
I feel him swing on the rope, and I envision him bracing his feet against the wall as he walks up. His weight drags me closer to the abyss.
I have a quick and cowardly thought about how easy it would be to simply let go. Then at least one of us would live.
My next thought is that there’s a big difference between being alive and being able to live with yourself. Gritting my teeth, I try to imagine my body weighs a ton. I dig in my running shoes, my hipbones, my pack, and press as tightly to the ground as I can while trying to ignore the screaming burn in my arms and shoulders and back muscles and the icy lumps that are gouging my armpits and groin. The pack scoops snow up into the neck of my jacket as the rope steadily pulls me into the crevasse. My shoulders are off solid ground. I’m half suspended over space, waiting for the final yank that will be the end.
There’s a heavy crunch on the ice next to me and Sebastian’s weight shifts off, but I still can’t move because I’m balanced so precariously. I slide another inch forward toward my certain death. This swan dive will end with my skull on the rocks.
Then a strap digs into my shoulder and next, my pack clobbers me in the throat as Sebastian hauls me backwards.
We both fall in the snow and lie looking up at the unfamiliar stars that appear between gaps in the swirling clouds. There are no words for what we just went through. For several minutes we lie side-by-side on our backs, panting in unison. Gradually my heartbeat returns to normal.
“Is that the Southern Cross over there?” I point.
“No clue.”
Buzzing radiates down from the heavens. “The drone?” I ask.
“Sounds like it.”
“What the hell has it been doing? I’m surprised a team of Navy Seals didn’t slither down that crevasse to haul us out.” I’m still jittery with adrenaline flooding my body.
“Maybe it didn’t see us fall,” he suggests. “Maybe it got lost in the fog.”
“What kind of tracking is that?”
After a pause, he says, “The inept kind?”
It crosses my mind that maybe the plan was to leave us in the crevasse. Maybe that was The Threat that the secret squirrels kept mentioning. But who would be behind that plan—the race officials? And why?
It seems more likely, but perhaps even more unsettling, that the Secret Service is simply incompetent. Don’t trust what anyone says, only what they do. At any rate, right now I’m glad the rescuers didn’t show up.
“We still have a chance of winning,” I say.
Sebastian raises an arm to study his wrist device. I turn my head to look at him, knowing we’re both wondering how much time our little rabbit hole escapade cost us and if we could still possibly be contenders.
And then we both find this so funny that we sit in the snow laughing until we realize that we are going to freeze our sweaty asses off if we don’t get moving. We are both shivering.
He stands and pulls me up. He chafes my arms with his hands, which feel like icicles sliding over my skin. When he plants a quick kiss on my lips, I start to feel a little warmer.
We both dig for our energy gel in our packs, stamping in the snow to regain control over our rubbery legs.
As we squeeze the last of the sugary glop into our mouths, I gaze into his eyes, trying to decipher what’s going on inside his head.
Bash lowers his gel tube. “I’m glad we didn’t die today, partner.” He holds out a fist.
I bump it with my knuckles. “Me, too.”
Chapter 12
Moving in full darkness, slipping and sliding, we ascend the remaining two miles of slushy snow slopes, moving in and out of swirling clouds, following the line on our wrist devices. Finally, we spot the checkpoint, all lit up, on what looks to be the summit. When we get there, we realize that the camp is actually set up a little way down from the high point, which overlooks a crater buried in dirty gray snow, with only a few wisps of st
eam escaping here and there. I guess I was expecting molten lava, scarlet and bubbling and spitting rocks into the air. But Mount Everett is a dormant volcano, and dormant means sleeping. I guess that’s what Everett is doing, taking a nap right now.
Team Seven is now in fourth place, which is uber-depressing. Third belongs to a pair of runners I’ve never even heard of, Gabriella Taylor and Tober Collins, who make up Team Eight. In second place is Team Five, Marco Senai and Suzana Mistri. And—of course—the team of Cole and Rossi is in the lead.
The reporters and cameras are waiting for us as we run into camp. They surround us as we emerge from the medical tent. The Prez’s son is always worth covering, even when he’s in fourth place.
“What happened in that crevasse?” they all want to know. We are glad the secret squirrels help us ditch them outside the mess tent.
It seems as if the newsquackers believe we intentionally tumbled down the crevasse just to get some quality time to ourselves.
Miss Perfect left me peace roses this time. They sit on the table next to my plate. Blossoms with creamy centers, petals warming outward to gold and then to a rosy pink at the curled edges. Their perfume is divine, especially in this glacial environment, and they are so beautiful they make my heart ache. For some inexplicable reason, they remind me of Maddie.
I have an elastic wrap on my left foot—not sprained but strained, say the docs, and GluSkin holding my small chin gash together. Sebastian’s temple received more GluSkin, so we both have big red glue welts on our faces.
The camp is shrinking in size, along with the number of competitors, but here on the snowy flanks of the volcano, it’s also less flimsy, with all the tents tied to wooden platforms. Tonight, the mess tent feels almost cozy with just the two of us (and two of our Secret Service minders, of course). We are told that the other teams have already eaten, and everyone is waiting for us in the media tent.
“You still have a little time to eat,” the officials assure us.
Thanks so much. No pressure to gulp down our food or anything.
Race with Danger (Run for Your Life Book 1) Page 11