One by One

by Ruth Ware

  “I’m so sorry.” Inigo at least has the grace to look embarrassed. “It was a total misunderstanding. I thought he was saying now or never, so I, uh, pushed off.”

  “So wait, some of you skied home,” I say slowly, “and some of you took the bubble back down?”

  Nods all round the circle.

  “Naturally we stopped for a bit at the big pine by the shortcut back to the chalet to see if anyone was catching up, but when we saw people traveling back down in the bubble, we skied down to the bottom of the lift,” Topher says. “So we waited there for another twenty minutes, only for the bastards in charge of the resort to close that lift too. At that point we concluded Eva had fucked off back to the chalet, but since we were now downhill from the chalet with no functioning lift, we had no choice but to ski down to St. Antoine and get the funicular back up.”

  “Okay… okay…,” I say, trying to make sense of it. “So the last time anyone is absolutely certain they saw her, she was skiing La Sorcière?”

  Ani nods, turning to Carl for confirmation, who says, “That’s the size of it.”

  “But La Sorcière was closed,” Topher explodes. “That was the whole fucking problem.”

  The whole fucking problem is that your colleague and cofounder is missing in extreme weather conditions, I think, but I don’t say it. I am thinking about La Sorcière, about its treacherous, icy slopes, and the way the loose powder builds up on the sheet ice beneath, making every turn a throw of the dice between a painful skid and a mini avalanche. I’m thinking of its brutal moguls, hidden by the drifting snow between, and the impossibility of even seeing the icy hummocks beneath their blanket of snow, let alone judging those knee-juddering turns in bad visibility.

  Most of all, I’m thinking of the sheer drop at the side of the run. A precipice lies just meters from the side of the piste in places; in conditions like this, you could simply sail off the edge into nothingness. That is why they shut La Sorcière first, out of all the runs in the resort. Not because they’re risk averse, or health and safety nuts, or don’t trust experienced skiers to navigate it. But because the twists and turns are a death trap in low visibility. But then I remind myself that the worst section of the drop is right at the start of the run, and Ani saw her skiing farther down. It’s a small comfort, but I’ll take whatever comfort I can get right now.

  “Has anyone tried her mobile?” I say. Inigo nods.

  “Several times. There’s no reception.”

  Danny comes out of the kitchen at that point, looking royally pissed off. What about my fucking risotto? he mouths at me over the heads of the guests, and I hurry across to him.

  “Eva’s missing,” I tell him in a low voice, and his expression switches instantly from irritation to concern.

  “What, really missing? Not just gone AWOL?”

  “I don’t know; it’s hard to tell. They’ve all acted like complete fuckwits. They split up, no one kept track of who was in which party, and Eva seems to have gone off by herself to ski La Sorcière.”

  “Alone?” Danny’s jaw drops. “But, there’s a red avalanche warning. Why the hell didn’t the pisteurs shut the run?”

  “Apparently they did. She must have ducked under the netting or something, or somehow got lost and traversed across to the wrong run.” Though I can’t think quite how that could have happened. There is no obvious interconnection between Blanche-Neige and La Sorcière. That’s part of the problem with the black run. It is hemmed in by a sheer cliff on one side, and a sheer drop on the other. There is no way out once you’re going down, it’s all twists and turns. “I don’t know. But Ani is pretty convinced she and Carl saw Eva skiing down it. I mean, I know she’s good, but that’s just foolhardy in weather like this.”

  Danny’s face is really grave now.

  “And no one’s seen her since?”

  I shake my head.

  “Do you think we should call the PGHM?” I ask. This is the specialist branch of mountain police who operate in the higher mountain ranges—a combination of gendarmes and mountain rescue.

  “I dunno,” Danny says. He pushes his bandanna up his forehead and rubs fretfully at the furrow between his brows, trying to think. “It’s not impossible she’s just got lost and gone down the wrong route. With the lifts shut it’d take her a while to get back. I reckon they’ll tell us to give it a few hours before we panic. Should we try the ski pass office first? Maybe they can tell us if her pass has been used on any lifts?”

  I want to kiss him. It’s not just a good idea, it’s a great one. But when I go to the phone in the lobby and dial the number on the back of the lift pass, I get only the insistent beep-beep signal of a busy line.

  I go back to the little group huddled in the lobby, who are looking hot in their ski gear, and increasingly worried.

  “We think the best thing is to check in with the lift pass office and see if Eva’s used her pass anywhere. I’ve tried phoning, but the line’s engaged, so rather than hanging around here, I think I’m going to hop down on the funicular and talk to the office in person.”

  “I’ll go,” Topher says immediately.

  “Do you speak French?”

  I know the answer before I ask the question, and his face changes to chagrin as he shakes his head.

  “I totally get why you want to help,” I say, trying to be gentle, “but I think it would be better for someone who speaks French to go. If she’s not used her pass, that’s probably the point where we need to report her missing to the police, and we’ll definitely need a fluent speaker for that. You should all change into dry clothes and get some food into you, and I’ll be back really soon. Meantime, keep trying her number.”

  They all nod, soberly.

  “I’d better tell Elliot,” Topher mutters, and I remember with a shock of surprise that Elliot was the only member of the group not skiing. He is still holed up in his room, presumably working on his coding update, or whatever he’s doing up there alone.

  They all disperse, talking quietly under their breaths to one another, and I grab my coat from the locker and hurry back to Danny to explain the plan.

  “So you’ll have to serve up alone, is that okay?”

  He nods.

  “Yeah, of course.”

  He disappears into the kitchen to begin plating up.

  I put on my coat and open the front door.

  LIZ

  Snoop ID: ANON101

  Listening to: Offline

  Snoopers: 0

  Snoopscribers: 0

  I am upstairs in my room changing out of my skiing clothes when it happens. At first it is just a noise, and then I feel the ground begin to shake, like an earthquake.

  I turn to look out the window. I see what looks like a wall of snow coming down the valley towards us. But not a wall—that implies something solid. This is something else. A boiling mass that is air and ice and earth all rolled together.

  I scream. I do the only thing I can, even though it is stupid. I fall to my knees with my arms over my head, as if that pathetic gesture might protect me.

  I stay there shaking for a long time, before I dare to get up, my legs trembling. Did it miss us? Did it stop?

  From far away I can hear other voices, shouts, screams, cries.

  Somehow, I force my legs to work, and I stumble out into the corridor.

  “Jesus Christ!” Topher is shouting. He is running towards the stairs. “What the hell just happened?”

  “Erin!” I hear from below. It is a bellow of fear from a voice I don’t recognize, and then I realize—it is the chef, Danny, calling for his friend. “Erin!”

  The corridor is full of terrified people. There is a smoke alarm going off, shouts of panic.

  Down in the lobby the chef is struggling with the front door, which has cracked and bowed beneath the weight of packed snow pressed up against it.

  “Don’t open the bloody door!” Topher yells. “You’ll let all the snow in!”

  Danny turns on him. His face is f
ull of fury.

  “My fucking friend is out there,” he spits over the scream of the alarm. “So if you want to stop me, mate, come and try.”

  He shoves again. The door gives with a shriek of protest, and a mass of snow and ice comes skittering into the lobby. The doorway is still blocked four feet deep, but Danny clambers up the bank and over the top, sinking into the debris. The last I see of him is his legs as he staggers off into the storm.

  “Oh my God,” Miranda is saying. She is holding on to Rik like she is drowning. “Oh my God. Oh my God. What if Eva’s still out there?”

  There is no answer. I don’t think anyone can bring themselves to say what they are thinking—which is that if Eva is still out there, she is dead. She must be.

  And maybe Erin too.

  “Is the building safe?” Rik says, with sudden practicality. “We don’t want to stay here if it’s about to collapse.”

  “I’ll go and turn off that alarm,” Tiger says, and she disappears into the kitchen. I hear her dragging a chair across tiles, and then the alarm stops. There is a sudden, shocking silence.

  “Okay,” Topher says. His voice is shaking, but it is so natural for him to take charge that he slips into the role. “Um, we should—we should check. We should check the building.”

  “The kitchen side isn’t too bad,” Tiger says as she comes back into the lobby. “I looked out the window. There’s a couple of windows broken in the den but the snow isn’t particularly high. It’ll be the living room side that’s suffered, and the pool extension.”

  “We should go upstairs,” Topher says. “Get an overview.”

  Tiger nods, and we all troop upstairs to look out one of the upper windows. What we see makes my knees go weak. We have been extremely lucky.

  The long single-story building to the rear of the chalet, which housed the swimming pool, has been crushed and obliterated. The roof has caved in like an empty eggshell. Beams and planks are sticking out of the huge snowdrift that has engulfed the extension. But the chalet itself is still standing. There is a mass of snow, sticks, and rubble piled up against the north side, but the structure has held firm. Just a few meters more, and Perce-Neige would have been matchsticks, like the swimming pool building. I can’t see any of the other chalets. The path to the funicular is covered with fallen trees and rumpled snow. The funicular itself is out of sight in the gusting snow. Erin is nowhere to be seen.

  And then I notice a movement around the side of the building. It is Erin. She is holding onto Danny and they are limping over the uneven, debris-covered surface, stumbling on the hard-packed lumps of snow scattered across what used to be the track to the funicular.

  They go out of sight beneath the shadow of the building. From downstairs I hear the screech of the buckled front door scraping against the tiles, and Erin’s sob of pain as she squeezes over the drift and down, inside the house.

  “Is it broken?” I hear Danny saying, breathlessly. As if instructed, we all file down the spiral stairs to stand in a concerned circle around Erin.

  “Is she okay?” Miranda asks, frowning.

  “What do you think?” Danny snaps. Erin doesn’t seem able to speak, but she holds up her hand. I’m not sure what she means, but her signal clearly conveys something to Danny, and he shakes his head angrily and stamps off to the kitchen.

  “I’m gonna get you some ice,” he calls back over his shoulder. “See if we can get the swelling down.”

  “I’ve got some arnica in my bag,” Tiger calls after him. I cannot hear Danny’s reply. It does not sound complimentary.

  “I don’t think arnica is going to cut it, Tig,” Rik says quietly.

  Erin is slumped on the floor of the lobby. Her face is gray. She looks like she is going into shock.

  “What happened?” Tiger crouches beside her, putting her hand on her arm. Erin looks up at her. She blinks dazedly. She looks like she is unsure why she is here.

  “Erin? Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know,” Erin manages. Her voice is shaking. “I was walking towards the f-funicular and I heard this n-noise and then it was like—it was like the mountain just came and swallowed the lift.”

  “You mean—the funicular is gone?”

  There is horror in Tiger’s voice, but her tone only echoes the shock I can see reverberating around the room.

  “Not gone,” Danny says, coming back with a bag of frozen peas. He scowls around the group. “But… yeah, buried. A big chunk of glass has been stove in. Shit. There might have been people in there.”

  “We should, like, call 999?” Ani says, and Topher nods emphatically.

  “Seventeen,” Erin says tiredly.

  “What?”

  “Seventeen,” Danny echoes. “That’s the French number for the police. But I reckon you should try one-one-two. That’s the international number, they’ll have English speakers.”

  Ani takes out her phone and then frowns.

  “I’ve got no reception.”

  “Transmitter’s probably down,” Danny says shortly. He is pressing the peas very gently onto Erin’s ankle. Her face has gone a strange yellowish white and her eyes are closed. “Try the phone on the desk.”

  Ani nods and goes across to the landline phone on the desk next to the stairs, but when she picks up the receiver her face falls.

  “There’s no dial tone.”

  “Fuck.” Carl speaks for the first time. His broad face is red. He looks angry. “Fucking hell, that’s all we need. Avalanche took the line out I guess. Has anyone got any reception? Anything at all?”

  There’s a momentary shuffle. Everyone feels for their phones. I get out mine too. The reception bars are grayed out.

  “Nothing,” Topher says. Others are shaking their heads.

  “No, wait.” It’s Inigo, his voice cracking with excitement. “I just got a bar! I’ve got one bar!”

  He dials and then waits, holding up his hand for silence. We all stay totally still, listening.

  “Hello?” he says. And then “Hello? Hello? Shit, they can’t hear me!”

  “Go upstairs,” Miranda says sharply. “You might get better reception with the extra height.”

  Obediently Inigo climbs the spiral staircase and goes to stand at the end of the corridor, at the long window that overlooks the valley, as if the visibility might somehow translate into better reception.

  “Hello?” we can hear him saying, and then “Yes,” and “Okay,” and “Chalet Blanche-Neige,” followed by some information about our situation. There are long pauses, and many times he says “Can you repeat that? I’m sorry, the reception is really poor, you’re breaking up. Hello? Hello?”

  At last he comes back down looking grave.

  “I lost reception in the end, but I spoke to the police operator, and I think I managed to give them all the details before I got cut off.”

  “Did you tell them about Eva?” Topher shoves in, and Inigo nods.

  “Yes, I told them that we lost our friend right before the avalanche and we don’t know if she’s still out on the mountain.”

  “Is someone coming to rescue us?”

  “I don’t know,” Inigo says, and he looks for a minute like what he is—a PA who has failed to get the result his boss wanted. “They said they’re under enormous strain, there are people trapped on lifts and stuff. I’m not sure—” His voice falters a little at Topher’s expression. “I’m not sure that people with food and shelter are their priority right now. They’ve got my number. They said they’d be in touch as soon as possible with more information.”

  “You mean we’re fucking stranded?” Topher explodes. “The fucking funicular’s down, Eva’s missing, and we’re trapped in this godforsaken chalet with an injured woman—” He indicates Erin. “We should be their top priority!”

  Inigo says nothing, he just shrugs helplessly.

  “Could one of us ski down?” Rik says, but Inigo shakes his head.

  “No, they were really clear about that. We should st
ay where we are. There could be more falls.”

  “Well, we can’t just stay here,” Topher says angrily.

  “You won’t be skiing on that piste, mate,” Danny says, looking up from where he’s tending Erin.

  “I’ll have you know,” Topher says, “I’m a boarder, and a damn good one.”

  “You could be Shaun White, mate, you still wouldn’t be going down there. You didn’t see it—it looked like a boulder field. There’s no piste left.”

  “So we’re stuck?” Topher says, furious disbelief in his tone. “And they’re doing nothing at all, while Eva could be out there under a thousand tonnes of snow?”

  No one answers. No one wants to say the fact that is obvious to all of us—if that is the case, there’s nothing he or any of us can do.

  ERIN

  Snoop ID: LITTLEMY

  Listening to: Offline

  Snoopers: 5

  Snoopscribers: 10

  I’m sitting in the kitchen, shaking. Danny has gone to get the first aid kit, and in truth I’m grateful to be alone for a few minutes. It gives me time to get myself back together.

  That noise—that horrific, deafeningly soft roar that has haunted my dreams for three years—for a moment I thought it was some kind of flashback, like PTSD. And then I glanced over my shoulder and it was real. A wall of white engulfing the valley.

  And the strange thing was, I felt nothing but peace, as it came towards me. It felt like justice. It felt like retribution. It felt completely right.

  For a moment I thought about opening my arms and letting it swallow me. Only it didn’t. It didn’t swallow me. It spat me back out. To this.

  “I’m gonna fucking kill them all.” The swing door bangs back, and it’s Danny, stomping in with the first aid box in his hand. “Fucking wankers every last one of them. You could’ve been killed, and he’s busy worrying about when his airlift is coming. You know he’s out there right now trying to get through to a private helicopter firm?”

  “They won’t do anything, even if he gets through,” I say. I change my position on the makeshift footrest Danny has set up in the corner of the kitchen, trying to ignore the pain shooting up and down my leg as I move it. “They can’t—not in this weather. Look at it.”