by Danika Stone
Seconds passed. A minute.
Nothing happened.
* * *
With trembling limbs, Ash pushed with the last of his strength and reached the top of the cliff face. For a long moment, he couldn’t move. His energy was gone, body spent. Ash’s feet dangled precariously over the edge, and he lay folded in half, his upper body on the narrow horizontal ledge that formed the top of the ridge. On the other side was another valley, but the wind was flicking a haze of snow up, and he couldn’t see beyond a few feet in front of him. He was cold and wet, his body long past exhaustion.
Ash’s lashes fluttered closed. Just going to rest a bit … Get back my strength.
He might have stayed that way for a minute, maybe five. Time had lost meaning for Ash. Behind his closed lids, a game appeared. It was Builder Craft—something Ash had played obsessively as a child. The game allowed its players to create their own universes, shaping the world like blocks of clay under their virtual hands. Half-asleep, Ash imagined mountains rising cubically around him, and valleys falling down into the hazy far lands of unloaded data. Somewhere above Ash’s head, a pulsing hammer appeared. It hacked the ridge on which he lay. The rock broke into cubes, tumbling toward the valley. The hammer smashed down again. Ash twitched as more rubble fell to the valley below. It wasn’t until his body began to slide backward—headed for a fall—that he scrabbled for a new handhold.
“Sheesh!” he gasped. “What the heck?”
Ash took several icy breaths. He squinted down the other side of the ridge. With the rush of wind-blown snow, he might as well have been looking into a snow globe. He shook his head. The fog that filled his mind was still there, but it was tempered with adrenaline. Got to move. Pass out and I’ll die. With numb fingers, he tightened his grip on the rock, his gaze drawn inexorably downward to the last thirty or so feet he’d just climbed. At the bottom was a scree slope. The jagged rock varied in size from dinner plates to microscopic shards and many of these sharp-edged stones pointed up like teeth. Ash’s fingers tightened their grip on the cliff. Getting up had only been half the battle. Getting down would have its own challenges.
Think about that later.
Hands shaking, Ash reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He pressed on the power button, watching as it flared to life, the “low-power mode” appearing seconds later. Ash glanced at the battery meter.
12%
“Crap!”
Ten percent was practically shutdown time. At home, he’d plug it in and walk away at fifteen. But here on the mountain, Ash needed that 10 percent to last long enough to make the most important phone call of his life.
“Please just work…”
Ash waited as the phone searched for connection. There were several long seconds when nothing happened. Ash’s hand grew sweaty around the phone. Though the ridge led to a sharp peak, he was currently as high as he could possibly climb without ropes and carabiners. This should work, and yet—
A single reception bar appeared, and his breath caught. “Yes!”
He popped open the phone app and typed in 911. There was a long moment before it began to ring. The phone crackled, and the ringing stopped. Ash grinned as he waited for the reply.
Nothing happened.
He looked down at the screen. No connection available. His gaze flicked to the battery: 10%.
“No fricking WAY!”
Frustrated, Ash dialed 911 a second time. The bottom of one slick-bottomed Ked, precariously wedged in a toehold, began to slide, but intent on his phone, he barely noticed. Ash waited as it began to ring a second time, a third … Suddenly he heard a click.
A connection warning flashed on-screen.
“Not now!” Ash hissed. He stretched his arm out, trying desperately to recapture the wavering connection. If he could only get one call in, he’d—
Ash’s sneakered foot slipped.
Momentum pulled him away from the rock face. His center of balance shifted, and the phone tumbled through his fingers.
With a scream, Ash fell.
CHAPTER NINE
“Everything happens for a reason. The reason is a chaotic intersection of chance and the laws of physics.”
WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE PODCAST
WITH A SCREAM of fury, Vale crumpled to the ground. Tears streamed down her face. She put her forehead to her knees, and sobbed. All the disappointments of the past couple of days came boiling up to the surface. The fire was out. She was lost. She had no idea where she needed to go other than south, and—as of this morning—she was utterly alone. Ash had either walked out or gotten lost (a terrifying possibility). Either way he was gone. The pain of those two thoughts stripped her of the last of her dignity. Tears washed her face and hands, sobs choked her.
A single thought slowly pulled Vale from her panic. If I freak out, I’m NEVER going to get out of here. She lifted her chin and wiped her face with grubby fingers. Hiccups rippled through her chest as she fought for control. Ash may be gone, but there are searchers looking for us. A smoke signal will help.
She looked down at the foil and battery in her hands. For a gum wrapper to function as a lighter, you needed a narrow band at the center where the foil would overheat. Inspecting the thin metal strip, Vale realized that the section she’d ripped was too thick to connect. The wrapper was damaged, but still viable. She could fix it if she was careful.
Vale took a shaky breath. “Just need to slow down,” she said. “I’m rushing, and when you rush, you make mistakes.” She wiped the tears from her cheeks, took a slow breath and blew it out again. “I’ve got the tools for a fire. That’s more than most people have. Got to stop wasting time feeling sorry for myself, and fix this.”
She nodded to herself, then caught hold of the too-thick line of foil and carefully thinned it with the edge of her nail. Finished, she set it aside.
“More kindling means a better chance the flame will catch,” she said, her calm returning. She stood and walked into the forest where she’d searched for Ash. This time, her gaze was up in the trees. She gathered pieces of twigs and old-man’s beard. Returning, she crouched again.
“I can do this. I can,” she said fiercely. “I’ll make a smoke signal. Yes. That’ll help.” She nodded to herself. Her ankle was still too sore to hike all the way out of the mountains, but it would get better. In the meantime, she had plenty of wood in the valley. She had water to drink. She could last a day or two while her ankle healed. And if Ash was lost rather than simply gone, then the smoke could lead him back.
Yes, Vale thought, a smoke signal is a good start.
As her breathing returned to normal, she leaned close to the small pile of kindling and held the two ends of the foil on the battery above the lichen. She said a silent prayer as she watched it. Twenty seconds passed … thirty …
A bright flame blossomed in the center of the foil.
Heart pounding, Vale lowered it to the old-man’s beard. It spread slowly, and then jumped to life. Vale added more twigs. It grew brighter, moving from the twigs to the larger branches, and then finally to the coals that she’d allowed to go cold in her panic.
Vale leaned back on her heels. “There,” she said. “That’s the first step. I can do this. I can!”
With the campfire burning again, Vale crawled back to her feet. She looked around her. The lower branches of the nearby trees were all gone, stripped for firewood and shelter the day before, but there were plenty of trees to choose from a little farther out. She smiled.
“Just need to be smart and I’ll survive.”
* * *
Ash scrabbled blindly for handholds as he whipped down the bare rock face. One fingernail caught an edge and tore free. His knee smacked a jagged edge and flayed open. Skin tore from his cheek. It had taken him at least an hour to climb the last thirty feet of open cliff, three heartbeats to reach the bottom.
He slammed into the scree slope with both feet and rolled on instinct. The rocks were piled loosely like gravel, and they
gave under the pressure, dropping him another ten feet down the slope, but when he tumbled forward, he slammed his right shoulder down hard. A sickening pop echoed in his ears, pain arriving seconds later. He rolled down the slope. The shifting pebbles moved under him, the sheer force of his fall shifting the surface downward. Ash slid to a stop halfway to the trees.
Game over.
Ash lay on his back, staring upward at the bright blue bowl of the sky. Pain filled every part of his body. His arm flopped at a weird angle, something pressing up under the skin of his collar. His fingers were shredded from a thousand rock razors, his head aching. A single thought appeared: I’m alive. I didn’t die. It was impossible, and yet it was.
Ash felt like he’d been in a car crash. Inch by inch, he tested his body. Both feet ached from the impact, but neither felt broken. Same for his legs. Ash let out a sigh of relief. That’s lucky. He wiggled his hands. Both responded, though the palms of them were shredded from the rock, and two fingers on his left hand were missing fingernails; a third nail hung half on, half off. Deal with that later. He moved on to his arms. His left arm was fine, but tears filled his eyes as he tried to move his right. It dangled loosely, as if it had been torn from his chest, then taped back on. It didn’t fit properly anymore. He took a sharp breath. A stabbing pain arced through his side. His rib cage was a mass of agony.
Broken ribs, he thought. That’s going to make breathing an issue. There was a calm detachment to his thoughts that worried Ash. It seemed like he was on the outside the way he was in a game, looking down on his broken body—an adviser rather than a participant. Get up. Walk back to Vale, the other voice told him. There is no other way.
Using his left arm, Ash pushed himself upright. His right arm slumped down against his side in a way that left him fighting the urge to vomit. He breathed hard for several seconds as he waited for the feeling to pass. When it did, he forced himself to his knees. So far, so good. Keep going. He wobbled as he scanned the rocky slope. He had been lucky in his fall. A few feet one way and he would have hit the boulders. A few feet the other, and the cliff would have been too steep to slow his fall. Ash staggered. His right arm swung out, something grating under the skin between his neck and chest. He dry heaved. When he could breathe again, he reached for his zipper, but even undoing his jacket to check the damage was impossible. Gasping, he let go of the zipper.
This is so bad!
As the urge to vomit passed, he forced himself to search the area where he’d first hit the ground. There were bits and pieces of glass, a part of the battery, and nothing else. Without a metal detector, there was no way Ash was going to find enough of his phone to put it back together. The phone is dead, he thought. I’m going to die out here too. The realization was an afterthought. A side note on the bottom of a page. He sat down again, gasping as his broken collarbone stabbed painfully under the skin. For a long time, he stared at the scree slope. He didn’t move. Didn’t care.
Going into shock, the voice inside him announced. Sit here long enough, that’ll kill you too.
That was the dark thought that spurred him into action. Ash forced himself back to his feet. Wobbling, he took a single, jarring step, then stopped as his ribs screamed in protest. Keep going. He took another step. The pain lanced from shoulder to fingertip, and he wobbled, faint and out of breath. Move. You’ve got to MOVE. Ash took another step, and another, and eventually he made it to the trees. A familiar smell reached his nostrils, and he sniffed the air, then lifted his gaze.
Far down in the valley, a faint gray smear appeared above the lush green of the pine forest. Vale had a campfire burning. A faint smile flickered over Ash’s mouth, then faded away as the pain hit. He wished for one desperate moment this really was a game and that he could warp directly to her side.
Need to get back to Vale.
He gritted his teeth and took another step.
* * *
“What do you mean, ‘there was a signal’?” Debra cried. Her husband Brad reached out for her hand and squeezed. She clung to him.
“I mean,” Constable Wyatt explained, “that we’ve been monitoring all the satellite signals coming from the area of the park, and for a brief moment—around eleven this morning—they caught a cell phone signal.”
“But I thought you said that was impossible!” Brad interrupted. “I thought you said there was no cell phone reception inside the park.”
“There usually isn’t,” Wyatt said. “But sometimes, at the right height, in the right conditions, a phone can briefly connect. And if we’ve got a connection then there’s a possibility that—”
“But where did the call come from?!” Debra cried. “If it’s a phone, you’d be able to figure out where it came from, wouldn’t you? Using GPS?”
The officer steepled his hands on his desk. “The phone call was dropped a few seconds after it connected, so we couldn’t use GPS to get a location on it.”
Debra’s breath caught. “Oh my God. So you can’t even tell who was calling?”
“Yes and no,” Constable Wyatt said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means we don’t know who was on the line,” the officer said, “but we were able to trace the number. We are certain that the call came from Ash Hamid’s phone.”
Debra felt the floor tilt underneath her. “Then someone survived the avalanche. Vale or Ashton … at least one of them is still alive.”
Constable Wyatt nodded. “One or both, almost certainly.”
* * *
There was a benefit to hiking away from the trees near the lake. For one, it gave Vale a sense of where she was. Her mind made a map as she slowly gathered supplies. This valley was smaller than the one they’d come in from, but it had its own share of resources. Midafternoon, she’d found the first of them.
“Chokecherries!” Vale laughed as she limped forward.
In the southwestern end of the valley, the forest thinned, and a patch of berry bushes took their place. The berries were dark and bitter with a hard pit, like the fruit that gave them their name. Vale had never enjoyed them when she’d eaten them before, but after two days of fasting, her mouth flooded with saliva at the first taste. She grabbed a handful, chewing as best she could despite the hard cores, then spat the inedible pits out on the ground. She grabbed a second handful, eating more slowly so that she could get more of the berries into her stomach, which had awoken with the rumble of an angry giant.
For the next half hour, she ate her fill as she wandered farther and farther into the stand of berry bushes. Surrounded by the plants, she forgot the need for firewood or shelter or a way back home. Food! Vale had almost forgotten how good it felt to be full. The sharp flavor filled her mouth, and her stomach—full for the first time in days—stopped its restless cramping. If there’d ever been a meal to remember, it was this.
A sound nearby—something low and rustling—tweaked her attention. Vale lifted her head and listened. In the distance she could hear the trill of birdsong. The relentless wind. And under all of that, the small sounds of the forest.
Probably just the wind.
With her focus on eating, Vale took another handful of berries, munching them as she watched the woods. Minutes passed, but the uneasy feeling didn’t fade. A branch broke somewhere in the depths of the forest. She turned, searching for movement. Nothing moved. But the feeling was there, her senses sharpened into alertness.
“Ash…?” she called warily.
No answer.
The sense of being watched grew stronger. She took another furtive glance over her shoulder, then brought her attention back to the bushes. The chokecherries hung in bunches, some so ripe they were falling from the stems. Vale filled her pockets, then lifted the bottom of her jacket up to create a crude bowl and began to pick in earnest. Next time I come, she thought, I’ve got to bring one of the plastic bags. That way I can—
Another branch broke in the forest, this time a stone’s throw from her. Heart pounding, she
stepped back from the bushes. She leaned to the side, searching for the source.
There’s something out there. But what…?
Another branch broke—a little bit closer—and Vale hobbled a few steps farther out, trying to pinpoint where the sound had emerged. She had just opened her mouth to shout to Ash when the bushes on the other side of the glade rustled. A furry head emerged from the screen of bushes near Vale’s feet.
Adrenaline rushed through her body, and she stumbled back. Is that a badger?! Panicked, she dropped the edge of her jacket and the berries she had so carefully gathered tumbled to the ground at her feet.
The animal took another step out of the shadowy foliage. As it emerged, its blondish-red coloring appeared and Vale frowned in confusion. While the creature had the stocky body she expected from a badger, it had no distinctive black-and-white stripes marking its face. Vale had been camping and hiking her entire life. She knew badgers were dangerous. What is that?
It took two more steps forward, finally emerging into the light. Vale’s fear abruptly disappeared. “It’s just a marmot,” she said with a shaky laugh.
The size of a small beaver, marmots were reclusive burrow-dwelling creatures who posed no threat to humans. Vale grinned as she watched it move through the glade, oblivious to her presence. Seconds slowly passed. Vale was about to reach down to pick the berries up again when the marmot abruptly turned its head, as if hearing something Vale hadn’t. It scurried away from Vale.
She stared after it. I wonder what—?
A new motion to the far side of the berry patch drew Vale’s attention. Large and furry—a wall on legs—it pushed past the leaves out into the open. Vale’s stomach dropped.
Oh my God! That’s a bear!
CHAPTER TEN
