by Stone, Kyla
“Maybe something happened with the power,” said the older gentleman. His voice was deep and gravelly, and he spoke with an accent Noah couldn’t quite place. He looked Filipino, or maybe Vietnamese. “But they’ve got diesel generators.”
“I’m sure they’ll get things figured out quickly.” Noah projected his voice, kept it calm and steady. He was used to diffusing tense situations, to calming frazzled nerves at car accidents and talking down drunks itching for a fight at the bar. “The generator will kick on, and we’ll get moving again. I’m sure the staff are just distracted by the accident.”
The co-eds in front of him nodded and settled back in their chair.
The smoke from the crashed snowcat reached them, stinging his nostrils. He shivered. The temperature was dropping. Or maybe it just seemed colder up here, above the trees, exposed to the elements.
A strange low fog drifted between the pine trees along the ridge below them. In the distance, a bank of dark clouds roiled over the horizon from the west.
The snowstorm appeared to be ahead of schedule.
“I know her,” Milo whispered. “The blue girl. She lives at the end of our street, Dad. I see her getting in and out of a car sometimes. Or mowing the lawn in summer.”
Now that Milo had said it, Noah realized he was right. He recognized the girl’s grandfather too. He’d chatted with the guy a few times on evening walks with Milo, at the town’s single gas station, or in line at the hardware store.
“She’s a Riley,” Noah said quietly. He didn’t know the grandfather or the granddaughter well, but the grown daughter, Octavia Riley, was a troublemaker. He’d gone to high school with her—and arrested her more than once.
Noah studied what he could see of the chairs ahead of them. The next tower was after the college couple in the chair ahead of them, and beyond the tower were six or seven empty chairs and what appeared to be the top of the hill and the terminal.
Behind him sat the Riley girl and her grandfather, and then a train of empty chairs all the way to the loading zone at the bottom of the hill. Whatever they were testing, whatever malfunction they’d been worried about, they’d held off on letting anyone else on the lift.
That didn’t seem like a good sign.
“Dad,” Milo said.
“Yeah?”
“Look.”
There was something in his voice, a hint of apprehension, an edge of fear—that caught Noah’s attention. “What is it?”
“There,” Milo said simply.
Milo wasn’t staring down at the slope anymore. He was craning his neck up toward the sky. He pointed.
To the northeast, beyond the base of the hill, the huge brown lodge with the green roof, the parking lot, and ribbon of highway and woods, a small black object appeared above the tops of the pines.
A helicopter. But it wasn’t flying like any chopper Noah had ever seen.
It zoomed low, just barely skimming the trees. It was tilted at a weird angle, rotors spinning lazily—almost slowly—with no accompanying thump, thump, thump, no roar of the engine.
“Dad!” Milo cried.
Noah grabbed his hand.
They watched, horrified, as the helicopter spun crazily, drunkenly. It plunged toward the ground. Tiny people fled in all directions, scattering like ants from a kicked nest.
With a cacophonous screech of metal, the chopper crashed into the lodge. It plummeted through the roof, rotors churning, smashing through wood and mortar and glass.
Stunned, Noah stared open-mouthed.
Thick black smoke poured into the sky. Screams and shrieks of pain and terror echoed in the cold air. Flames exploded from the resort’s roof as more people spilled out the doors, desperate to escape.
“What just happened?” the girl in the hot pink coat cried. “That helicopter—it just fell! Right out of the sky! It just crashed!”
“Holy crap,” the Riley girl breathed.
“I want to go home!” Hot Pink said tremulously, wiping at her eyes. “I want off this thing. Right freaking now!”
“First the chairlift,” College Guy said, fear in his voice. “The phones. Then the snowcat. Now that chopper.”
“Something’s wrong,” the Riley girl said. “Very, very wrong.”
Quinn
Day One
Quinn Riley sniffed and shifted against the freezing metal seat of the chair lift. She shivered, her teeth chattering. She couldn’t remember ever being this cold.
Some sixteenth birthday this was turning out to be.
Gramps had brought her out here for nostalgia’s sake. Her mother rarely had the money to splurge on stuff like this these days. She splurged on other things, like her next meth fix and her crackhead boyfriend, Ray Shultz.
Which is probably why Gramps had wanted to take Quinn so badly. To make it up to her or something. Quinn was blunt to a fault and wore her feelings on her sleeve, but even she couldn’t say no to Gramps when he had his mind set on something.
So here she was, freezing her ass off on a stupid ski lift at a stupid resort in stupid Michigan—instead of spending the day far away from other humans, reading sci-fi novels or painting a mural on her bedroom wall.
But then her old, cracked Samsung phone had stopped working. The enormous groomer machine had smashed into that pile of trees. And the helicopter, crashing into the lodge like that . . .
It was surreal. Like something out of one of her favorite science fiction novels. She read all the classics she could—I, Robot, Ender’s Game, 1984, Snow Crash, Fahrenheit 451. She’d even read some of those crazy end-of-the-world books from Amazon.
The hairs on the back of her neck lifted. She pushed her blue bangs out of the way and stared back at the lodge—the smoke, the fire, the black and twisted rotors poking out of the roof like scorpion claws—until her eyes blurred.
Her heartbeat quickened. It was almost exciting. Finally, something crazy was happening in her stupid boring life. She’d spent her whole life in Fall Creek, a tiny rural township of less than a thousand people located in the bottom southwestern corner of Michigan in Berrien County.
Fall Creek was surrounded by lakes and rivers, farms and orchards and forests, with the beaches of Lake Michigan only a twenty-minute drive away.
Nothing ever happened here. Nothing interesting, anyway. Fall Creek didn’t even have a Taco Bell.
“Maybe it’s that thing that destroys all technology,” she said loudly, surprising even herself.
“What are you talking about?” College Boy asked dubiously.
“An electromagnetic pulse thing. An EMP. Or a massive storm on the sun that creates a super solar flare. It’s called a coronal mass election. They both take down the power grid. Permanently.”
Gramps put his mittened hand on her arm. “Quinn. Enough of that,” he said, stern but gentle. “No need to scare people.”
“Maybe they should be scared.” Quinn pointed down the hill at the black smoke billowing from the half-collapsed lodge roof. “That’s not in my head.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions, now,” said the dark-haired cop sitting in the middle chair, his little boy beside him. She’d recognized them immediately. They lived on Tanglewood Drive, the same street as Gran and Gramps in Fall Creek. Weird coincidence.
The cop was the husband of that woman who’d gone missing five years ago. She still remembered the woman’s name from the newspapers: Hannah Sheridan.
It wasn’t every day a woman disappeared in the tiny township of Fall Creek. Let alone disappearing on Quinn’s birthday.
She shrugged with a scowl, though she didn’t pull her arm away from Gramps. “Just saying. What else would take out everyone’s phones? It doesn’t make sense. Armageddon could be happening right under our noses.” Quinn shot a glance at the kid and grinned. “Maybe they’re all turning into zombies down there.”
The cop frowned at her. “Let’s not scare everyone, okay?”
“I’m not scared,” the kid said quickly.
“Look, my name is Noah Sheridan,” the cop said. “This is my son, Milo. I’m a police officer with the Fall Creek Police Department in Berrien County. Places like this, they prepare for emergencies. They’ll turn on the generator any minute now. Emergency services are already on their way.”
Quinn doubted it. The more she thought about it, the surer she was. Her mouth went dry. She wished she’d brought a water bottle with her. “With no way to call them? I don’t think so.”
Gramps shook his head at her. “Officer Sheridan is just trying to keep us calm. What good will panic do right now?”
Gramps was a good man. She loved her grandfather more than she’d ever let herself admit out loud. He was the soft-hearted one, not tough and snarky like Gran, like Quinn herself. She usually tried to restrain her sharp tongue with him, even though it wasn’t easy.
“Okay, Gramps,” she said with a reluctant sigh. “I get it. No one ever wants me to be right.”
He winked at her. “Certainly not this time.”
“My name is Phoebe,” said the blonde chick in the pink coat. “This is Brock.”
“Dương Văn Dũng,” said Gramps proudly, leading with his family name. “You may call me Mr. Dũng. This is my granddaughter, Quintessa. We call her Quinn.”
Quinn didn’t wave, just scowled. She hated that name, and she hated them all right now—even Gramps—for dragging her up here on her birthday, of all days.
She squished down further in her seat, trying to get comfortable. It was impossible. These stupid chair lifts were meant for only a few minutes of sitting, not for hours.
Fifteen minutes passed. Then thirty. They sat in the chairs. The lift didn’t move.
The pine trees along the hill rustled slightly. The red flexible fencing snaking the boundaries of the Rocket Launcher run rippled in the breeze. It got even colder.
The skiers at the top of the Rocket Launcher run had all made their way down the hill. She could barely make out the next chairlift across the slopes through the thickening fog, could just see the Ski Patrol workers surrounding the terminal, working on getting people down from the lift.
Good. It would just be a matter of time, then.
Down at the lodge, the screams and shouts continued, tiny people racing frantically around the lodge. But she heard no shrieking engines, saw no flashing lights.
No vehicles of any kind were moving down there.
Normally, a hundred calls would’ve gone out to 911 already. Even if everyone else had the same communications problem with their non-working phones, the ski resort employees would have access to a landline phone or a radio.
Even if they didn’t, someone would’ve hopped in a car and driven to the nearest police or fire station. It wasn’t like they were in the middle of nowhere.
The weird, nervous feeling in her gut intensified. A blend of uneasiness mixed with a dark little thrill. She didn’t want people to get hurt, but this sure wasn’t boring.
Blonde Chick—Phoebe—started crying and rubbing her eyes. “What if they’ve forgotten about us? We need to call for help. We need to make them hear us.”
“Good idea, babe,” Brock said. His teeth were so white and so straight. It was abnormal.
“Help!” Phoebe shouted.
The others joined in. Even Quinn gave in and yelled a few times. Why not? She was freezing. Her ears were stinging, and her butt was going numb. Beside her, Gramps shivered. He was too old to be stuck out here like this.
The wind snatched their voices. It felt like they were screaming into a white void of nothingness.
“Please!” Phoebe cried. “Will someone please help us!”
But no help came.
More time passed. She couldn’t see the sun through the heavy gray clouds, but it had to be well after two, maybe three. She was just guessing.
She didn’t wear a watch. She didn’t need one with her phone always with her. Until now.
Her stomach grumbled hungrily. The cold snuck beneath her scarf, tunneled its way into her gloves and boots.
“You’re a good girl, Quinn,” Gramps said quietly, so only she could hear. “You know that?”
She glanced at him. He was shivering harder than she was. She realized suddenly how old he looked—the dozens of fine wrinkles webbing his weathered brown face, the sagging skin around his kind dark brown eyes. He looked tired.
At seventy-three, he’d slowed down considerably since his last heart attack. He wasn’t skiing himself but riding the lifts with her, then taking them back down while she snowboarded down.
“You okay, Gramps?”
“Fine, fine.” He tried to stop himself from shivering, but she wasn’t fooled. “Don’t worry about me, con gái.”
He often called her that—daughter. She spent so much time at their house escaping her own mother, she might as well have been. Her grandparents had an open-door policy for her and even gave her a bedroom to decorate any way she wanted.
Which was more than she could say for the trashy trailer her mother lived in.
She worried at the piercing over her eyebrow with a frown. Her mother was the last thing she wanted to think about right now. She had enough on her mind already.
Like figuring out how to get off this chair lift from hell.
Her grandfather patted her arm. “I think I will just close my eyes for a bit.”
“Okay, Gramps,” she said, her chest tightening.
Noah
Day One
Noah was bitterly cold. His ears and nose hurt. Milo had to be freezing, but he didn’t complain. Luckily, Noah had made sure they were both dressed in heavy layers.
He tightened Milo’s hood strings and made sure his scarf covered the lower half of his face.
The wind was picking up, whipping around the trees, blowing the fresh powder and swaying the chairs gently. The cables creaked. To speak to each other, they had to raise their voices.
The unease he’d felt earlier had blossomed into full-on apprehension.
It was eerily quiet. No sounds from the lodge at the bottom of the hill. Only the soft whoosh of the wind, the occasional thump of snow falling from the branches.
This wasn’t supposed to be happening. This wasn’t how things worked. When something went wrong—a disaster, an accident, a crime—there were dozens, hundreds of emergency-trained personnel ready to jump into the gap.
He knew. He was one of them.
Where was everyone? What the hell was happening?
“Dad, I’m thirsty,” Milo said.
From his pocket, Noah pulled the small bottle of water purchased for a ridiculous price at the café earlier. It was three-fourths full. He handed it to Milo along with a granola bar he had in his pocket. He had fruit leather and a baggie of nuts as well.
Once upon a time, he’d been terrible at remembering stuff like that. Not anymore.
Milo drank a bit and handed it back. Noah licked his dry lips. He was thirsty. Hungry, too. But he needed to save it all for his son.
Noah squeezed Milo’s shoulder. “Help will be here soon. EMTs will save anybody who’s hurt. And Ski Patrol will come get us. We’ll be rescued and have a great story to tell Uncle Julian when we get back, okay?”
Milo nodded solemnly, his eyes big and dark in his small face. “How will we get down?”
A few years ago, Noah had taken part in a mock emergency drill at Bittersweet as part of their region’s emergency response preparedness protocols. “In a regular power outage, it’s pretty easy. They have diesel engines for backup juice. On newer lifts, snowcats can hook into the pulley system and drag each chair slowly down the hill until it’s safe to unload.”
“What if the snowcats and the back-ups don’t work?”
“Well, when Ski Patrol comes to our rescue, they’ll start at the top of the lift and work their way down in teams. A patroller will climb the lift tower and secure a rope to the lift cable with something called a T-seat, which is a one-person chair without legs. The patroller will scuttle down the tow
er rungs and drag the chair to us. They’ll secure passengers one by one in the T-seat and lower them to the ground with a relay system. They might use a body harness instead of a T-seat, but they can get everyone down, even when chairs get stuck above precarious spots like we are.”
“Okay,” Milo said, shivering.
Noah studied Milo, checking his vital signs, looking for symptoms of stress. It was second nature, even though Milo’s medication mostly allowed him to be a normal kid.
About a month after Milo had started kindergarten three years ago, he’d started complaining of stomach aches, lost his appetite, and was too tired to play with his friends at school. Then dark patches on his elbows, knees, and the back of his neck had appeared.
When a stomach bug quickly turned into severe vomiting, dehydration, and stabbing stomach pains, Noah rushed him to the emergency room.
The hospital had run a battery of labs on Milo’s cortisol, potassium, sodium, and ACTH levels before giving the diagnosis of Addison’s disease. Milo’s adrenal glands didn’t make enough cortisol on their own. Since cortisol regulated the stress response in the body, lifelong treatment to replace the hormone was critical.
Serious complications were more likely when Milo was under physical stress. An accident or illness could quickly escalate into adrenal crisis, a life-threatening situation which could lead to kidney failure, shock, and death.
Milo took hydrocortisone pills three times a day on a schedule mimicking the normal twenty-four-hour fluctuation of cortisol levels in the body. He wore a medical alert bracelet and kept a card on him describing his illness and the schedule and dosing of his medication.
They also kept an emergency dose of injectable glucocorticoid in a fanny pack that was either always with him or in the car. The pack also contained extra pills, snacks high in salt and sugar, and an electrolyte drink since Milo’s sodium and potassium levels were affected during stress; both were critical for the heart’s electrochemical system.
“Do your arms and legs feel tired or funny?” Noah asked him. “Any stomach pain? Dizziness?”
