Whiteout

by Adriana Anders

  “Then we keep moving.”

  “You need to rest, or we’ll—”

  Ignoring him, she skied ahead, leading the way. Stubborn woman.

  He grinned, the feel of it unfamiliar on his features, and took off. They’d been going maybe five minutes, skiing beside one another instead of in a line, when he slowed and half turned. “Speaking of names,” he said, enjoying the novelty of being heard after days of howling against the wind. “Angel’s pretty presumptuous, isn’t it?”

  “Huh?” She slowed to match his pace.

  “You live up to your parents’ expectations with that name?” He figured she had. Maybe she wasn’t saintly in the biblical sense, but she was kind, good, generous. And beautiful, though he worked to ignore the pulse of want that went through him, turning to stare at the increasingly textured ice. There was a pattern to it that reminded him of something. Striations breaking up the windblown desert. To avoid falls, they’d have to watch their pace with variations like these. He turned, thinking he’d mention it, but she was still laughing at his comment.

  “Ha! Right.” She pushed off hard, more confident on her skis than she’d been that first day. Graceful, in fact, and faster.

  They hadn’t heard the plane again, though the weather was holding, with the sun bright enough to warm the air and his body and even his insides.

  Who knew? Maybe they’d get those thirteen miles in today and make it to Volkov after all.

  He’d just set off when she screamed, loud, primal, and frantic, then disappeared—swallowed up by the ice.

  * * *

  For a few valuable seconds, Coop stared at the spot she’d just vacated, mind blank.

  It was fear that knocked him out of it, reaching in to twist his innards like a bony fist. Before his brain had begun to process things, he unclipped his skis and ran. Stupid, considering she’d just been eaten by the earth, but he couldn’t slow his pace.

  A crevasse, dammit. Those stripes. Though the ice appeared flat, there were deep cracks in it, hidden by newly deposited ice and snow. Where there was one, there’d be more, so he needed to watch his own footing—but faced with the prospect of losing her, stupid and fast was the best he could do.

  “Angel!” he yelled as he ran, burning with fear and adrenaline.

  Jesus. Please. Please. Please don’t. Please don’t.

  He leapt over a small, wavelike sastrugi and landed, grunting when his foot smashed through a layer of ice to dangle somewhere beneath. He grabbed ahold of the hard ridge in front of him and pulled himself out, losing valuable seconds. He shouldn’t be plowing into a crevasse field like a goddamn PistenBully. He should slowly, cautiously test every single inch between him and Angel.

  Fuck that. Momentum pushed him forward, jarring his brain and shoving every ounce of air from his lungs.

  He was up and running again before he could breathe or see straight or think long enough to let caution take over. Then, with shocking suddenness, his sprint ended, leaving him teetering on the edge of the hole that had taken her. In the split second it took to analyze what he saw—Angel alive, hanging from one bowed ski pole—he experienced countless thoughts and emotions. Lives, deaths, everything in between.

  Intestine-loosening relief.

  But there was no visible bottom to the crevasse. If she fell…

  She’s slipping. Her gloves weren’t meant to grip anything—they were for warmth. To hang like that as long as she had was a miracle.

  It couldn’t last.

  He dropped to his knees, too numb or buzzed on adrenaline to feel the impact. His body was nothing but a tool, like one of his drills, with one purpose: to save her. Beyond that, it didn’t matter. He could pop joints, rip tendons, tear himself open for all he cared, as long as he pulled her up in the process.

  Her ski pole, though it looked flimsy as a toothpick, was the lone item standing between her and death. It had somehow been wedged into the side of the gaping fissure, while the handle sat on top. Angel’s right wrist was still caught in the strap and all of it—pole, strap, swinging body, the ice around it—created a precarious sculpture that could crumble in the blink of an eye.

  One wrong move and she would be gone.

  He stilled, dared to breathe, and reached.

  He couldn’t think about how far the hole went. He’d seen crevasses as shallow as a few feet, while others were bottomless pits. Bottomless being relative, of course, when you studied glaciers. There’d be a bottom, it’d just be—

  He ripped off his bulky mitten and extended his arm.

  Too damn far. A shift to the side brought him closer to her hands, but also to the ice that held one side of that pole. Stretching hard gave him an inch. Still not enough.

  “Ford.” His name was a whimper. It tied his chest in knots and would have paralyzed him if his body had been human. But it wasn’t. It was machinery, doing its job. Stretch, reach, tighten, flex. Focused, strong. Single-minded.

  “I’m here, Angel. I’m with you.”

  “I can’t…”

  Don’t look at her. Don’t look. Don’t feel or think, just move. Do.

  “I can’t…can’t move my hands. Can’t…”

  “I know. Hold on. Just hold on. I’m coming to you.”

  And how the hell was he supposed to do that?

  Eyes moving lightning-fast, he took in details—some pointless, like the clear, glowing blue of the ice beneath the surface, others essential, like the harness still strapped to Angel’s middle. The sled was attached to her. Pulling her down.

  He didn’t have to see her eyes to know they were pleading through her dark goggles.

  “I’m sorry, Ford,” she sobbed. “So so so sorry.”

  His chest. Christ. Breathe.

  Another scan of the fissure showed a ledge on this side, maybe two inches wide. Without another second’s hesitation, he threw a leg over, found it, and shoved his foot onto the too-small surface. If he could jam his other leg on the opposite side… There it was, a crack in the wall. Worth the risk.

  A religious man would have prayed before extending his left leg and straddling the abyss. There wasn’t time for God. Coop just did it, letting out a harsh little breath when it stuck.

  He didn’t look down, didn’t worry about his own precarious position, but the precious moments he’d taken had been too damn long. As he watched, Angel’s hands slipped, her fingers twisted back. Only millimeters, but more than enough, since a fall would pull this whole thing down.

  “Breathe,” he said to himself, though when Angel obeyed, he realized she’d been holding it in, too. And then, because it seemed to help, he spoke again. “Need to cut through the harness. You hold on. Okay? That’s your only job.”

  She nodded so slightly he’d never have caught it if they weren’t hovering together in this still, silent limbo between heaven and earth.

  He reached into his pocket, removing his pocketknife and struggling to open it with his mouth, then leaned farther forward.

  “Just hold on.” He didn’t dare speak above a whisper.

  The air around them was as taut as the harness, suffocating and supporting as he grappled with the knife, nearly lost his hold, and seesawed forward before evening his weight out again.

  Instead of fighting through a second futile round of fumbling, he ripped his glove off with his teeth, threw it up and over the edge, and went to work bare-handed. The metal was shockingly cold against his fingertips, but at least sensation wouldn’t last once frostbite took over. He had to move fast. Wedging his feet farther into their cracks, he bent and sawed in earnest, staring hard at the strap that anchored her to this place.

  “Almost there.”

  A few hard swipes and suddenly the nylon slithered from his grasp, a creature sprung from a trap.

  Seconds later, the sled smashed into the depths, the sound deafening
enough to burst their bubble. He’d just taken in half a lungful of air when the pole came loose.

  The next fat millisecond stretched into eternity, and it was still too short. He reached for her hand and missed. His left foot skidded to the side. Angel’s body started its freefall.

  Inevitable and terrible, until she slammed against him.

  On sheer instinct, he wrapped an arm around her and swung them both to one side, flattened against the ledge.

  One second.

  Nothing moved.

  Another…

  Frantic, she yanked her wrist from the ski pole’s strap and chucked it up and over the side.

  The ledge shifted.

  “Up!” he yelled, though Angel couldn’t move from where he’d crushed her between his body and the wall. Working fast, he pulled himself from the crevasse, not for one second letting himself enjoy the solidity up top, and reached down.

  Angel gripped his left hand, glove to glove, flesh to flesh, bone to bone, so tight they’d grind to dust if one of them didn’t let go. She climbed, he heaved, and within seconds, she was up and over, rolling from the edge as it crumbled beneath them. The pieces fell, tinkling like fairy bells, though they should have tolled like a death knell.

  “You whole?” he asked quietly into the shocking silence.

  Their clenched limbs were links in a steel chain. Titanium, tensile and shatterproof. Impervious to the elements, incomplete without their other half.

  Her whispered “yes” ripped something loose deep inside his body.

  Chests heaving hard in synchrony, they lay together for a few seconds before he could work up the will to move.

  They needed to get away from the edge, though not too far. This whole place could be riddled with crevasses, a honeycomb of cracked ice.

  For once, he saw the ice the way most people did—a dangerous, lonely place to die.

  Something sounded from below, like the last hungry call of a predator, foiled by their escape. Her sled, shifting with a loud grinding noise before scraping its way down, down, down into the bowels of the ice sheet, the sound too small for such a cataclysmic event, slowly disappearing into nothing.

  He glanced at Angel. Both skis and one pole were gone, along with at least half their food, swallowed up by the ice gods in exchange for her life.

  For maybe the first time since his maiden trip to this continent, he cared more about what lay over the ice than under it.

  The vulnerability of that was terrifying.

  “Come on.” Her fingers loosened when she stood, leaving him to stare at his bare, red hand.

  “Ford.”

  He blinked. “Lost my glove.”

  “You took it off.”

  “Oh.” He shook his head, startled into action again when she handed him the missing item. “Thanks.”

  Using the ski pole to test the ice before him, he stepped away from the hole, finally seeing it in its entirety. Where Angel had fallen was the narrowest part of the crevasse. The rest of it split the world open in either direction, as far as he could see. Angel had no doubt disturbed the camouflaging crust of ice and snow when she’d fallen into it, causing something of an avalanche inside. If she hadn’t fallen in at that exact spot, if she’d walked five feet in either direction…

  A final, ominous groan echoed from deep in the giant crack, before leaving them in silence, broken only by the whistle of what, if Murphy’s law had its say, was sure to be another megastorm blowing up around them.

  Chapter 28

  Almost dying tasted hot and mineral, like rocks and dirt and rusted metal. Even after gulping what felt like a gallon of water, she couldn’t get it out of her mouth. Couldn’t wipe it from her lips or stop herself from gagging.

  Everything was so hot, she had no choice but to yank off her gloves and hat.

  A laugh escaped her, as abrupt and alien as a bark. Her head shook slowly from side to side as if in denial, but she was here. She’d seen it. Been it. She’d died. And come back to life. No, almost died. Although for a while, everything had hung in the balance.

  She’d hung in the balance.

  Flexing her bare hands, she stared as if she couldn’t quite place what they were and sank to the ground, surprised when her butt encountered Ford’s sled instead.

  “You okay?” Ford sat beside her and put an arm around her. Tightly.

  She leaned into the man who’d proved himself more solid than the ground they walked on.

  “I…” A slow turn brought them face-to-face, which didn’t tell her much. Instead of pulling his ski mask off to see his expression, she reached for her own. His hand was there to help her, then somehow his was yanked up and his mouth was there, hot and hungry on hers.

  The kiss was life-giving. It showed her just how real this was. How real they were. It proved there was blood rushing in their veins, life in their bodies. She wanted him. Badly.

  She pulled away, muttered something about the heat and moved to unzip her coat. Shook him off when he tried to stop her.

  “No. No, I need this. I need you.” Her hands scrabbled at his zipper, fighting him. “Need to feel…” She leaned in, with all the intensity in the world, as if she’d sucked it from the air. “Alive.”

  “We’re alive.” His big hands covered hers and pulled them to his chest. “But we won’t be if we get naked out here.”

  “If we…” She blinked and looked around. Her chest kept rising and falling like she’d run or, hell, fallen into a big hole in the ice. “Oh crap. What am I doing?”

  She hurriedly rezipped her coat, reached for Ford’s, and stopped when he did it up himself. “I’m sorry. I feel crazy. I could laugh or cry or… Doesn’t matter. Right. Right. Let’s go. Keep moving.” She stood up on wobbly legs, then sank back down again. “Whoa.”

  “You okay?”

  “I’m like rubber.” She braced herself to stand again and got a faceful of confetti-like snow.

  “We need to get inside.” He looked around. “I’ll put up the tent. You get in and—”

  “No. No, I’ll help. I can—”

  He squatted, framed her face with his hands, put their foreheads together, and spoke. “Let me do this.” If he were any other man, she’d brace herself for more. Arguments, reasoning, worries, pleas. But from Ford Cooper, those four words were enough.

  “Okay.” She nodded, sinking all the way down with relief.

  Eventually, the weather stopped cooperating entirely, sending her to her feet to help after all, which was far better than sitting and watching. They fought for control of the tent. Angel held it while Ford hammered his horizontal deadman stakes deep into the ice so they wouldn’t budge in the night.

  By the time they’d gotten it up and thrown their belongings inside, they had to bend double in order to move.

  She turned to dig up ice to pile against the fly, but he stopped her, stern, expressionless, and as unrecognizable as a yeti. They were covered in the stuff.

  “Go!” Too bone-tired to argue, she flopped inside as fast as she could. A pile of snow had already gathered on the floor of the tent. After shoveling it out with her hands, she set to work melting water for dinner. It wasn’t until he’d crawled in and zipped up behind himself, motioning for her to take off anything wet and get into their sleeping bag, that she let herself relax.

  “Hey.”

  Her eyes snapped open. Was she sleeping? She didn’t remember sleeping.

  “Here.” He slid in beside her, helped prop her up, and handed her a bowl of hot food. She shoveled it back as unconsciously as breathing.

  Once it was gone, she put the bowl down and looked at him.

  “How bad off are we?”

  “We’ve lost most of our supplies. Won’t make it with what we’ve got.” Her insides shrank up as he looked away. “I’m ditching the cores.”

 
“No!” Her response shocked them both. “You can’t.”

  “Why not?” He looked at her like she’d lost her mind.

  Had she?

  Hanging there in the void, with that solid-butter anchor dragging her into the depths, she’d felt nothing but a base animal fear—sharp and still and piercing. There’d been nothing human until he’d lowered himself in there with her. Even now, she felt changed.

  It wasn’t like the fears she’d cycled through when the accident had blown out her knee—that she’d never walk again, never cook again, lose her restaurant, her reason for being. Oh, and the man she’d thought she loved.

  This had been a dark, scrabbly, ferocious sensation, from somewhere deep inside. Survive, it demanded. Survive.

  Over and over again, this place had done that to her: broken her down into her most basic, vital components. Cells. Nothing but an Angel-shaped combination of cells. And they didn’t want to die.

  This time, something else had crawled out of that hole with her, a phoenix from the ashes. It felt dark, though it wasn’t really. It was simple, clean, real, and as pure as this pristine place. Rage. So strong it cauterized her soul, scabbed it up, and gave it purpose.

  Those evil bastards wanted the virus? Well, she had it. And she wasn’t giving it up.

  “I want to keep the cores” was all she said.

  Ford held her eyes for an uncomfortably long while. “All right,” he replied, no questions asked. “We keep the cores.”

  She nodded once and looked away, afraid of what he’d see in her face. Gratitude and affection, certainly—after all, she’d grown to like this man—but something else, too. Something she wasn’t ready to examine too closely, though if she was honest, she’d admit that it put an ache in her chest, scraped at her insides, and left her feeling raw.

  What made her hide, though, tender as a day-old bruise, was the realization that, of everything they’d gone through on this hellish journey, it wasn’t a near miss or a miracle that pushed her heart over the edge, but that simple acquiescence.

  Chapter 29

  Coop put his mouth to Angel’s ear. “You warm?”