Dead Summit: Containment

by Daniel Loubier

  A gunshot cracked through the trees and Grace turned to see where the men were.

  They were still a good distance from her and didn’t appear to be closing the gap. Grace felt even better about her chances of escape. She thought of Charlie’s smiling face and how proud of her he would be at this moment. She imagined running out of the woods, finally reaching the base of the mountain, finding their car and driving away. Charlie would be so happy for her.

  She crashed to the ground when something large and spear-like tore open her foot.

  Grace screamed in agony as stars entered her vision. She pulled her leg into her body and rolled back and forth on the forest floor. When her eyes could focus, she looked down and saw a broken branch about a half-inch in diameter protruding from her foot. It entered through her sole and only partially exited from the top. Blood had already soaked through her sock.

  Pain coursed through her body like a shockwave when she attempted to pull the branch from the bottom of her foot and she let go. She punched the ground several times and cursed her misfortune until finally she lay motionless on one side.

  Tears erupted from her eyes.

  This is it, she thought. I tried, baby. I’m so sorry… but I tried.

  Soon the men would find her and they would kill her.

  She would be reunited with Charlie, and the thought of seeing him again began to calm her and her breathing slowed. She didn’t welcome the thought of death, and she didn’t like the idea of being exterminated in the manner she expected, but she tried not to think about that and only of being with Charlie again, wherever he was.

  The sound of boots running over the hard ground was close and getting louder as they got closer.

  Then they stopped.

  As she lay on her side, a shadow fell over her. A man stood there and Grace turned on her back to face her pursuer. He aimed a long rifle at her.

  “Shhh,” the man said quietly. “This will be quick.”

  Chapter 13

  Shelly rehearsed her plan several times in her head before she left the bedroom. Robert hadn’t returned since their argument, which allowed her time to figure out her strategy. She didn’t have much of a plan, but there was enough of an outline to put it into motion. She would need certain things to fall into place in order to succeed, but that, too, was part of the plan; she would work her strategy one step at a time. If the first step was successful, she would continue with the next one, and so on. If at any point she failed, she would either regroup and rework her strategy, or abandon it altogether.

  She entered the common room and saw Robert piling what looked like every piece of evidence he found—clothing, shoes, hiking gear, mattresses, chairs—in the center of the room. He was taking every precaution, just as his father taught him, and leaving nothing to chance.

  Robert’s drive and unwavering determination were two of the qualities with which Shelly had fallen in love, and it made her sick to see him demonstrate those qualities in such despicable ways.

  With every step toward Robert, doubt began to creep inside and she questioned whether her plan held any merit. She began to reconsider her own actions, specifically what she was about to do, and whether or not she herself had become as cold, calculating, and manipulative as he.

  To defeat a monster, you must become a monster.

  Was that true? She had only the best intentions with her plan, but she was aware that, for it to work, people would likely end up getting hurt, and there was no guarantee that she would get the result she wanted. The result she needed.

  She would need to remain resolute, however, and to stay the course and not deviate. Adjust only as needed. Any hesitation or doubt in herself would lead her efforts to self-destruct.

  Robert heard her footsteps echo on the wood floor as she entered the common room and he faced her.

  “Oh, there you are.” He sounded out of breath. “Want to give me a hand with this?”

  The lack of any remorse in his voice confirmed her suspicion following their last conversation: he was gone. His heart was now with the cause and no longer with her.

  She had cried only a few minutes ago and now tried to erase any emotion from her face as she stared at him.

  “Sure.”

  “Good.” He continued to work as he said, “I’m piling everything here for now. When we bring the pallets up, we’ll stack it all on top and tie it down. Then we’ll drag everything outside to the lake.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Shelly went about the job without further discussion. She moved methodically, grouping items together and then stacking them accordingly. She ignored Robert’s extemporaneous musings and continued in silence. She hadn’t realized how robotic she had become, but Robert must have sensed it because he stopped and watched her.

  “Look,” he said, “I’m sorry. Okay?”

  He sounded sincere.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  She considered the question before answering. “Of course,” she lied.

  “Because you don’t sound like you mean it. It sounds like you’re just shutting me down.”

  She sighed.

  “I’m tired, Robert. I’m tired physically, I’m tired emotionally… I’m just done. All I want to do is finish what we have to do and go home.”

  She stared at him hard and watched him absorb her last words. She tried to measure the degree of disbelief in his eyes, if there was any. She had known this man almost twenty years, since he was only a child. If he had any uncertainty about her motives, it would show and Shelly would see it.

  She was relieved when she saw only complete faith.

  “I know,” he said. “It wears you down just getting up to this place. Then cleaning up, the stress of it all… it’s a lot.”

  He rested his hands on his waist and his head hung. Shelly sensed Robert was tired of more than just the physical work.

  “We can rest in a little bit,” he continued. “Surprisingly, there’s not much left to do.”

  “It’s not too late, you know,” she said. Robert’s eyes drifted wearily to hers. “We can still do the right thing.”

  He sighed.

  “And what’s the right thing, Shel?”

  “Come on, Robert,” she said gently. “You know… it doesn’t have to be like this.”

  “Shelly…” His face suggested exhaustion, but also something more. Perhaps wistful? Maybe he longed to be somewhere else? “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Right… but do you want to?”

  His head lolled backward and he looked to the ceiling.

  “What do you want me to say, Shel? That this sucks? Okay, fine. It sucks. Happy?”

  “A little,” she admitted.

  Then he shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. I can’t do anything about it now. We’re here. If anyone backs out, you know what will happen.”

  “Yeah,” her eyes rolled. “‘Leave no trace.’”

  “Exactly!” He then stepped past her toward the hallway. “Anyway, let’s continue. Surprisingly, there’s not much left to do.”

  Her effort to change his mind had failed, but in her defeat Shelly found the perfect opportunity to initiate her plan.

  “Well,” she said, “that’s the thing…”

  Robert’s brow furrowed.

  “Huh? What do you mean?”

  She exhaled long, focused her mind, and settled into the lie she was about to tell him.

  “You know that journal I found?”

  “Yeah…”

  Shelly reached into her pocket and held it up.

  “Turns out that woman who was here, the one we ran into…”

  “Yeah?”

  “She wrote in it.”

  Robert continued piling the evidence in the center of the room while Shelly spoke. “I thought you said it was some kid’s diary?”

  “Right, well, this woman must have found it because she wrote a ton of stuff.”

  Robert appeared unimpressed
and unhindered.

  “Okay, well… did she have anything important to say?”

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  He stopped. His body twisted and she could tell he started to become uneasy.

  “Christ, Shelly, tell me. What is it?”

  Shelly took another steady, rehearsed breath.

  “Apparently there’s someone else here.”

  His eyes widened and his voice dropped to a whisper.

  “Here? At the hut?”

  Shelly shook her head.

  “Not here. Definitely somewhere on the mountain, though.”

  He relaxed a bit. “Okay, so there’s someone else. Big deal. We’ll find that person and do what we have to do.”

  “Mm, I think that’s exactly what they want. For you to go find that person.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “He’s hidden.”

  “What does that mean? Hidden where?”

  “She doesn’t say. It seems that was part of their plan, though.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, if she was caught and…” her voice trembled and she paused before continuing. “…caught and killed, then this other person would wait until everyone was gone before making a break for it.”

  “Okay. And what if we find this other person?”

  “If you find him, then the plan is for her to escape while you guys go after for him.”

  He laughed. “That’s ridiculous. And how are they going to pull this off?”

  “She’s not very clear in the journal. Kinda cryptic, but I think I figured her out.”

  “Really?” He sounded doubtful. “How?”

  “Because I’m a fucking woman,” she said sharply. “I’m the only woman here. Takes one to understand what another woman is thinking.”

  His eyes averted hers in a moment of embarrassed realization. Then she added, “You assholes are actually lucky I’m here.”

  “All right,” he snapped. “You made your point. Now how do they seem so confident in pulling this off?”

  “The most I can tell is she was not meant to know where this guy is hiding. That way she can’t be used as leverage in the event she is captured and questioned.”

  Robert scoffed. “This is bullshit, Shel. She doesn’t…” He reached out a hand. “Let me read this thing--”

  She held back the journal. “I’m telling you, Robert. What she wrote is detailed enough that it leads me to believe they really thought this through.”

  He rolled his eyes in an attempt to act nonchalant, but the color in Robert’s face started to disappear and Shelly knew she had implanted a substantial amount of concern into him. The first part of her plan was already working.

  “You’re sure about this?” Robert asked.

  Shelly nodded.

  “I mean, there’s no way she was like, losing her mind or something, just babbling on like a crazy person? Remember, she was stuck in this hut for a long time with a bunch of dead people walking around. That alone could drive a person mad.”

  “I’m sure, Robert.”

  He again held out his hand. “Can I read it?”

  “You don’t trust me, do you?”

  “Shel--”

  “Look, I really don’t want to be here. We’ve established that. You and I…” There were a few moments where neither of them said anything, but they both understood. Then Shelly continued. “I just want to get off this mountain, Robert. I don’t care what happens to the girl or this other guy—you can all do what you want. I’m only doing my part and then I’m gone. All I’m doing is telling you what you need to know so it can be done and I can get the hell out of here. Period.”

  The last thing she wanted was for him to read the journal. She couldn’t let him. It would destroy her entire effort.

  Luckily, he relented.

  “So this is really happening?” he asked. “They’re going to try to get out of here without us knowing? How?”

  “Robert,” she said softly—this was the question to which she had meticulously pre-crafted a bullet-proof answer. She took his hand in hers. “They had help creating the strategy.”

  “What? How? From whom?”

  Just as softly, and as if it was the most obvious idea in the world, she said, “Why do you think we never heard from Roy?”

  And there it was—acknowledgement. Shelly could see panic swirling in his eyes as he fully believed her. His breathing quickened and he seemed scattered for a moment. His lips moved but he was unable to speak.

  “Roy told them all about the ground sensors,” she said. Every member of the containment team was aware of the sensors buried all over the mountain to track motion. Squirrels, chipmunks, and other small creatures weren’t heavy enough to trip them, but anything over a hundred pounds would be tracked.

  He took his hand out of hers and paced around the room while she continued the onslaught.

  “He told them which trails to avoid,” she continued. “How not to be seen. He told them everything, everything that would give them an advantage.”

  She watched as he nervously tried to rationalize the new information in his head.

  “People have cellphones, Robert. They may not get a signal up here, but their video cameras sure work. They couldn’t record this stuff fifty years ago. Imagine what they saw this time around?”

  Robert drove his fists into the sides of his head.

  “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

  “This person knows exactly how long containment will last, and when he’ll be able to escape. And if the girl is captured, Roy gave her instructions as well.”

  Shelly withheld further detail and let Robert wallow in his own paranoia. She knew he would have to call off the woman’s execution now. He would want to question her himself. And when that time came, Shelly would be ready to initiate the second part of her plan.

  Robert leaned over and looked as if he was going to be sick. He held a shaky hand to his forehead.

  “What do we do?” he asked. “It will take us hours to get down the mountain, to organize!”

  She clapped her hands rapidly. “Think, Robert! Where is the girl right now?”

  His eyes darted around, then he breathed out an answer.

  “Um… Tom and Kyle. They’re on their way up. They should be running into her.”

  “Hmph, we hope they run into her. For all we know, she might have already given them the slip.”

  He stared at her hard, then he reached for the pile of evidence and grabbed a chair by the leg. He launched it across the room in a fit of anger. “Goddammit!”

  “Call down to them,” Shelly insisted. “Maybe it’s not too late. Maybe they have her.” She paused briefly and watched with guilty enjoyment as Robert paced around the hut frantically before adding, “You just better hope they haven’t killed her yet.”

  Robert stopped and locked eyes with Shelly. The panic was not only there, it was overtaking him.

  She composed herself as he began to break. She had accomplished what she set out to do, and as much as it pained her to see the now former love of her life falling apart, she knew it was what needed to be done. His reaction had not quite been what she expected.

  It was even better.

  Robert raced across the room toward the table on which he had placed his radio.

  PART TWO: BEST FRIENDS

  Chapter 14

  As a young adult, Liam’s relationship with his father, Peter, could be described with any number of adjectives: cold, strained, resentful, spiteful, bitter.

  After having three daughters, Peter was thrilled to finally have a son who he could mold into a star athlete one day. It came as a great disappointment, therefore, to Peter when Liam decided to quit hockey at age thirteen. Against his father’s wishes, Liam hung up his pads and skates for good. Peter was hardly good at accepting his son’s choice and even worse at hiding his emotions.

  “I guess you’ll never learn to drive a car either because you’ll probably quit at that too,�
�� he had told his son.

  “I’m not quitting,” said Liam. His shoulders rolled forward and his voice sounded defeated. “I just don’t like it anymore.”

  “But you’re so good at it!”

  It was true. At thirteen, Liam had more talent, speed and better instincts than most kids playing for the high school. The only thing he lacked was size.

  “I’m too small, dad. I’ll get killed when I’m a freshman.”

  His father’s voice rose. “With that attitude you will!”

  Liam sighed. “Well, it doesn’t matter because I’m not playing.”

  “So that’s it then? You’re too afraid?”

  “Dad, please let it go.”

  Sadly, Liam loved hockey. There was a time when he couldn’t wait to play on the high school team (once he was old enough) and show the upperclassmen what he could do. The thrill of competition and victory was second to nothing else. He would miss it, but sports were his father’s passion, and Liam’s disdain for Peter’s interests precluded him from being able to enjoy playing any longer. To do so would feel like Peter had ‘won,’ that Liam was unable to make his own choices. By quitting, Liam drove a steadfast wedge in their relationship by taking away the one thing they both had in common.

  Peter raised both hands and said, “Fine, fine.”

  Although his father’s words seemed to indicate the argument was over, Liam knew better. He was sure his father was preparing a gut-punch as an end to the dispute.

  He was right.

  “Well,” Peter said, “your mother would have liked to see you play.”

  Liam’s mother passed away tragically when he was two years old. Comments like this dug under his skin and into his heart. They made him feel inadequate, like a flawed version of the son his father, and the mother he didn’t remember, always wanted. But whenever he felt he had made the wrong decision, that he should simply acquiesce to his father’s wishes, his three loving and very supportive sisters would remind him of how carefree their mother had been, and how her children’s happiness was the primary contributor to her happiness. Liam’s sisters reassured him that if hockey did not make him happy, then their mother would have supported his decision.