Fellowship Fantastic

by Greenberg, Martin H.

  “Sorry,” Lucinda said almost immediately. “I mean, I think that’s what they call this stretch—Oh My God Road, because of the drop-offs and views.”

  “And there’s a town on it?” asked Carmen.

  “No, it follows a string of passes. We intersected it near the north end, just south of a pass leading to Pyrite, Colorado, the pizza town.”

  “Wait a second,” exclaimed Gabe, bringing the map up close to his face in the dim light. “This says the Pyrite pass is at 11,628 feet.”

  “No wonder the snow’s getting so deep. That’s pretty fricking high,” grumbled Ian without taking his attention from the road.

  “We should turn around,” said Lucinda with concern.

  “Where?” complained Ian. “There hasn’t been an intersection or driveway or scenic lookout or even a discernable wide space since we got on this road. I don’t think there’s room to turn around.” He gave the car a bit more gas to help it reach the top of the latest rise.

  “C’mon, guys,” whined Dweezer. “There’s no reason to panic . . .”

  “Holy shit!” Ian braked before he was even able to discern if the dark shapes in the road were boulders or something else. As the Outback sloughed sideways on the dipping roadway, he saw a half dozen massive elk bolt off the side of the road, downhill. There was a cacophony of screams and expletives as the car tilted sharply downward, but deep snow muffled the bumps and clatters that would otherwise have accompanied the crash as the car slid front-passenger side first off the roadway and downslope, unintentionally following the frightened elk until the elk cut sharply left and scampered into the darkness. Ian prayed for a stand of aspens to cushion the car’s slide, but knew that they were above the treeline. There was a bang, more shouts, and the sound of crumpling metal as the side of the car hit a large boulder. The car spun 180 degrees before jarring to a halt.

  There was a moment of stillness before Dweezer spoke. “OK, now you can panic.”

  Ian killed the engine and sniffed the air for any sign that the gas line had broken or the tank had ruptured in the brief slide down the mountainside. He did not smell gasoline. “Is everyone okay?”

  Fortunately, they had all been belted in, so the worst of it was a bump on Lucinda’s forehead caused by a thwack against the side window. Although Gabe fussed over Carmen with almost manic concern, there appeared to be no major injuries.

  “What do we do now?” asked Lucinda finally.

  “It’s still snowing hard out there and it’s bitter cold and windy,” replied Ian, taking leadership as always. “We stay with the car. Always stay with the car.”

  “Does anyone have any food?” asked Gabe. “Carmen should eat regularly for the baby’s sake.”

  Everyone shook their heads no as Dweezer fumbled in his pockets. “I’ve got these,” he said finally, holding up a small tin.

  “Mints?” said Lucinda, squinting at the tin in the gloom of the car, lit only by the backseat light.

  “Caffeinated mints,” replied Dweezer.

  “Of course,” said Lucinda. “All real food has sugar and caffeine in your world.”

  “Uh . . . actually,” stammered Dweezer, “they’re . . . uh . . . sugar-free.”

  “Carmen can’t have caffeine in her condition,” murmured Gabe, “or artificial sweeteners.”

  “Well, the rest of us should all have some,” said Ian. “It’s going to be a long night and we should stay awake.” He turned to Gabe. “Kiss Carmen good night and turn off the light. We can’t run down the battery.”

  Ian turned on the car for five or ten minutes every hour to run the heater. He also flashed the headlights and beeped the horn in bursts: three shorts then three longs then three shorts—a clear S.O.S. for anybody watching or listening. When he tried to start the car at 4:00 AM, it would seem to catch, but stall out. He stopped trying before he wore down the battery—they might desperately need the horn or lights to summon help later. So they all sat in the dark and waited for dawn.

  Dawn arrived as a pale whiteness on the other side of the windows. That’s when Ian realized why the car hadn’t started on the last attempt. The car had been buried by the freak early-season snowfall; the engine wouldn’t run because the tailpipe was clogged. They had to be almost at the top of the pass to get so much snow that the car was buried and packed in that tight. Ian rolled down his window and crawled out of the vehicle, digging down into the snow to clear the exhaust system and the headlights, then clearing both of the downhill-side doors.

  Everyone took care of their biological functions and surveyed their situation. Gabe, the driver most used to snow conditions, attempted to get the four-wheel drive vehicle to move, but they gave that up quickly as a hopeless task. Dweezer stomped out an S.O.S. in a relatively level patch of snow a couple hundred yards from the car, while Lucinda and Ian made their way back to the road. Ian cursed his choice of rental vehicle. Between the snow and the bland whiteness of the car roof, they were practically invisible from the nearby road, much less from the sky or distant peaks. Still, they laid Lucinda’s scarf in an arrow shape across the top of the snow on the road, so as to point any snowplow that might pass toward their wrecked vehicle.

  “It’s a shame that there’s not one of those snowplow poles nearby,” remarked Lucinda, her breath fogging the air as she panted in the unaccustomed altitude. “It would make a great place to attract the plow’s attention. Maybe we should hike down the road to the nearest one and pin a note and something colorful on it.”

  “Nah,” replied Ian. “I didn’t see one of those poles since before we took the turnoff onto . . .” His words slowed to a stop and he stared at Lucinda. “Oh my God,” he whispered.

  “I don’t think that’s the road’s real name. The guy at the gas station on the way up just called it that when we were asking directions.”

  Ian began wading through the waist-high snow, rushing in slow-motion back toward the car. “No, not the name of the road. I mean, oh my God!”

  When Ian got to the car, he lunged into the open downhill door and grabbed at the map, clutching it with snowy, numb fingers. He punched at their location, snow dislodging from his finger and wetting the map. “Look what it says. Look what it says.”

  There was a collective gasp from Carmen, Gabe, and Dweezer, and then Ian dropped the map back onto the seat of the car.

  “What?” demanded Lucinda as she struggled to see inside after having made her way back to the car behind Ian. “What?”

  Ian turned to face her. Despite the cold and exertion, his face was almost as white as the surrounding snow. “The mountain pass road is closed from November thirtieth to April fifteenth. There’s no plow coming. No passing traffic.”

  “And no one knows we’re here,” said Carmen, her eyes filling.

  “My wife is correct in every way,” mumbled Gabe in a monotone. “We won’t even be missed at home for a week.”

  “But when they plow the road to the cabin, they’ll see we turned off . . .” exclaimed Lucinda, an edge of fear growing in her voice as she spoke.

  Ian shook his head. “No. Our tracks on the road up above are buried in snow. There was probably a lot less snow back at the turn-off, but enough to cover our tracks.”

  “Cell phones?” asked Lucinda.

  Gabe spoke up. “No signal. Tried mine last night and again this morning.”

  “What are we going to do?” Lucinda whispered.

  “We stay with the car,” replied Ian, his voice firm and authoritative. “We still have some means to stay warm and to signal for help. You don’t go wandering off into unknown territory in the cold and the snow when you still have a place to hole up safely. We stay with the car.”

  So they huddled in the car, running the heat occasionally, though less often than during the colder night, and signaling with the horn whenever the vehicle was running or anyone heard or imagined they heard anything that might suggest help was nearby. Dweezer tried to get the group to play Oh Hell! with a pack of cards he ha
d found in the pocket of his jacket, but no one was in the mood for games. They searched the rental car and, of course, found nothing except a book of matches in the corner of the glove comparment. Dweezer joked about burning the deck of cards one an hour to stay warm, but no one laughed.

  Night came. It was frigid but clear, not that anyone was admiring the sparkling majesty of the Milky Way. Then came another day, with no change, except they were hungrier, thirstier, and colder than before.

  Shortly before sunset, Ian suddenly sat up straight. “Dweezer, give me your deck of cards.”

  “You wanna play?” asked Dweezer as he fumbled about for the deck.

  “No. I’ve got a plan.” Ian grabbed the deck and opened the car door. He shook out some of the cards and slathered them with grease from the door hinges as the others stared at him in confusion. Finally he looked up at them. “The tree line is twelve or thirteen hundred feet downhill from us—a quarter mile. I’m going to use the cards and the grease and the matches to set a tree or more on fire.” Without waiting for a response, he started wading downhill through the snow.

  Lucinda extricated herself from her body-heat conserving huddle with Gabe and Carmen and rushed after Ian, grabbing his arm. “Wait. It’s almost dark. We’ll be fine overnight. You can go in the morning.”

  Ian kept trudging. “The light from the fire will carry farther in the dark.”

  She kept with him. “But you won’t be able to find your way back uphill to the car. You’ll freeze in the snow. Besides, the smoke will show better during the day.”

  Ian shrugged, but did not slow down. “If I get a good fire going, it will still be smoking in the morning.”

  “You’ll die.”

  “Maybe. Maybe we’ll all die. It’s my job, it’s my responsibility to make sure that we don’t . . . that all of us don’t.”

  Lucinda grabbed his arm again and held fast as she stopped, forcing him to stop and turn toward her. “Get over it, Ian. You’re not the party leader. This is no time for your chauvinistic heroics. This is real life. It’s not like splitting the party in a game—you could freeze to death in the dark.”

  Ian shook off her arm. “I was driving. I was in control. It’s my responsibility.” His eyes flicked uphill. “They’re my responsibility.”

  “Dweezer was mapping. Besides, this isn’t the squad. We’re just acquaintances. We’re people you’ve barely met.”

  Ian tilted his head to one side. “I’ve spent more time with you than my parents in the last two years. I’ve fought along side of you, defeated monsters with you, had drinks with you in roadside taverns, done great deeds with you. I don’t do that with people I know from home or work. You are my friends.”

  Lucinda simply stared at him for a long minute, then took a step backward. “After the fire starts to die down, we’ll flash the lights and sound the horn every ten minutes until you’re back.” Then she turned and headed uphill to the car.

  The first trees Ian found were short and twisty and far apart from one another, so he pressed on down the steep slope, slowing as it got darker and it was harder to see where he was going. Finally, he arrived at a stand of trees tall enough and clustered sufficiently together that he might be able to get a decent fire going.

  It was tough. The tree branches were covered with a thick layer of snow and his first two attempts were extinguished when snow from higher branches put out the small flames he had kindled. Finally he learned to grab the tree branches as high up as he could and swing rhythmically until they whole tree swayed enough to dislodge the worst of the snow.

  When the chosen signal tree finally did catch, Ian stayed next to it as long as possible to warm his numbed and wet body as light and flames leaped into the sky. The fire burned in earnest only for about fifteen or twenty minutes before the lack of dry fuel and the snow blanketing surrounding trees prevented it from spreading to the entire stand. As the minor conflagration began to die out, he turned back uphill toward the car. He followed his own trail through the drifts, gasping with exertion in the thin cold air. Although his trail was easy to follow, he still appreciated the signals from the car every ten minutes. It was the only way amid the frozen, painful, and life-threatening horror of his climb up the mountain that he could tell he was making any progress.

  It was, he guessed, just shortly before dawn when he pulled himself up to the door of the car and pounded on it for the gang to let him in. The door opened and he was dragged into the car. Lucinda and Carmen did their best to warm him by removing his wet coat and rubbing his arms while Gabe shifted to the front seat and started the vehicle up, turning up the heat full blast and directing it at Ian’s face and hands. In his relief and fatigue, Ian was about to drift into an exhausted sleep, when a shot of adrenaline coursed through his body. He bolted upright.

  “Where the hell is Dweezer?”

  Carmen looked at him with alarm. “He wasn’t with you? He’s not taking a leak or waiting outside for a few minutes while we get you warm?”

  Ian shook his head in confusion. “He wasn’t with me. Lucinda knows he didn’t come with me. She followed me for a bit and then came back to the car.”

  Lucinda interrupted Ian. “We didn’t think he left with you, but about two hours ago he said he was worried that you were too tired to make it back, so he was going to meet you on the trail and help you back up the hill.”

  “I never . . . I never saw him.”

  “Maybe he got lost,” whispered Carmen, in clear distress.

  “No, no . . . You can follow the trail in the snow even in the dark . . .”

  Gabe turned his head to look into the back seat. “I’ll go looking for him.”

  “No,” gasped Carmen.

  “No,” said Lucinda firmly. “Your wife is correct in every way. It will be dawn soon. We’ll look in the morning.”

  Fog enveloped the car at first light and the snow started up yet again not long after. Ian made a brief reconnoiter downhill, then uphill from the car. A trail on the roadway suggested that Dweezer had continued on along the road toward Pyrite, but Ian knew he couldn’t follow in the deep, soft snow—he was too exhausted and when he could feel his feet, which wasn’t often anymore, the pain was excruciating. Lucinda offered to go, but Ian wouldn’t let her. Gabe offered, but Carmen clung to him fiercely. Then the snow got even worse and they all hunkered down in the car, huddled together to keep warm.

  The gas ran out that night. Conversation ran out shortly after. There was no more joking bravado, no more grand plans of daring, no more talk of games. There was just a fellowship of friends holding on to one another against the cold as they looked into the face of death because they had ventured into the cold unprepared on a quest . . . for pizza.

  Ian heard the helicopter first. He disentangled himself from the body-heat preserving group in the back of the car and flung himself toward the steering wheel, honking out a distress signal with hands he could no longer feel. Then there was a flurry of lights and voices and paramedics and the next thing he knew he awoke in a hospital bed, warm, but unable to feel his hands and feet and afraid to look to find out why. A deputy sheriff sat reading a magazine in a straight-backed chair nearby. He looked up as Ian stirred.

  “How . . . how are . . .” Ian croaked, his throat raw.

  The deputy smiled. “Lucinda is already up and about. Carmen had the baby—a girl. They’re in Gabe’s room. He’s about the same as you.”

  Ian wasn’t sure what that meant and he was much too frightened at what the answer might be to ask.

  “Who . . . who saw the fire?” Ian rasped out.

  The deputy looked perplexed. “I don’t know anything about a fire.”

  Ian was confused. Maybe he was hazy from drugs. It didn’t make any sense. “But . . . but then how did you find us?”

  The deputy’s eyes flicked downward. “It was Dwayne.”

  Ian shook his head to try to clear it. Who the hell was Dwayne? He thought hard. Dweezer. Nobody really named their kid Dweezer
. “Dweezer made it to town?”

  The deputy looked away at the far corner of the room. “No. It’s the damndest thing. One of the plow guys found him sitting in the middle of the road into town, the one that intersects with the road you all were on. He was just sitting there, frozen solid, clutching a map, a coupon, and a twenty dollar bill. The map had a big ‘X’ on it and writing along the edge.” The deputy hesitated before continuing as Ian’s eyes filled with tears. “It said ‘My four best friends are trapped in a car off the road at the X. Find them and buy them a pizza for me.’ ”

  They had a funeral for Dweezer on the field of battle of the forty-second level of Armies of Blood, Fire & Magic, with a salute of fireballs high in the sky and a pyre inside the courtyard of the Fortress of Krakatoa. The squad was all there, dressed in their finest, carrying no weapons. One at a time, they all spoke their thanks and their good-byes to Dweezer.

  In the midst of Lucinda’s final words, the squad was attacked by about thirty avatars, apparently run by players too young to understand loss or too soulless to understand friendship. The marauders had, no doubt, heard of the online funeral and were looking for mischief and an easy kill, and they thought that they had found both when Lucinda did not stop her words to take a defensive stand. The attackers rushed in to take whatever was left from a squad that had already lost more than the attackers could ever know.

  That evil plan failed when the attacking marauders were in turn fallen upon by hundreds of others in the gaming community who had secreted themselves away, sworn to protect the sanctity of the ceremony and the sacrifice of an adventurer for his friends. Each of the miscreants was slaughtered and left to rot. The bodies were looted and the weapons, gear, and magic items taken were consumed in the hot flames of the pyre for Dweezer’s avatar.

  That’s what a fellowship of friends does: protect one another.

  SWEET THREADS

  Jody Lynn Nye

  “Indeed, what could be finer than a warm September day with the sun shining, money in our pockets, and full packs upon our backs?” Olgrun asked, spreading his arms out expansively. His creased, pleasantly ugly face beamed out from under his unruly thatch of black hair.