Avalanche

by Cambria Hebert

  I lunged, catching them off guard. Spidey fired a shot, but it went wide. The sound boomed through the night and rumbled the ground underfoot.

  I kept going, not caring if I got shot. If I was going to die now, I was going to do some damage first.

  My body collided with his, and we both fell into a tangle of limbs. The weight of my body caused his to sink deeper into the snow, so I used the advantage, shoved up, and swung my arm down, jamming the pen in his neck.

  His eyes went wide with surprise, and the gun in his hand fell into the snow. Both hands came up to where the thin instrument stuck out of his flesh. Dark-red liquid seeped into his gloves.

  Hollow eyes grabbed me from behind and lifted me off. I started kicking and swinging my arms with everything I had left. The cold butt of a gun pushed against my temple, and I froze.

  Spidey stood, pulled the pen out of his neck, and threw it on the ground. I watched it hit the pristine snow, splattering it with dark spots.

  Well. That didn’t really go as planned.

  “You’re going to pay for that,” he spat.

  “Because dying isn’t already punishment enough?” I retorted. Then I kicked the man holding me in the shin. He grunted, but didn’t let go.

  Spidey walked over and punched me in the face.

  Yep. That whole men shouldn’t hit women thing?

  These two didn’t believe in that. Clearly.

  My head rocked on my shoulders, and my body went momentarily limp. The smear of something warm on my face brought me back. It was actually a pleasant feeling because I was so cold, until enough focus came back and reminded me if I was feeling warmth, it was likely blood.

  Whether it was mine or Spidey’s, I didn’t know.

  Lifting my head, I felt the heavy weight of death. Like it was already here, already trying to entomb me.

  A flash of something up above in the trees caught my eye.

  I blinked, trying to see through the falling snow and my blurred vision. Whatever it was moved again.

  Something familiar stirred inside me. Something that felt a lot like love.

  Liam.

  “I’ll see you in hell, bitch,” Spidey intoned and motioned for hollow eyes to put me down. He tossed me onto my feet near the edge of the drop-off, and I swayed.

  The sound of a breaking branch drew the men up short, and they both spun in time to see a blur shoot from out of the trees and cut over the snow in a quick motion.

  It was Liam. He came for me.

  There was no moment to feel any sort of elation, though. Him being here wasn’t a relief.

  It just made this situation all the worse.

  A fact that was undoubtedly proved when Spidey and his hollow-eyed friend lifted their guns and began to shoot.

  Liam

  These men were either stupid or just incredibly arrogant.

  Actually, nah. They were both.

  Their arrogance made them stupid. They thought they could waltz into my resort, ask a bunch of questions about my girlfriend, and none of my friends would raise a red flag.

  Assholes.

  On top of that, they thought they could take Bellamy up a mountain without anyone noticing or even stop to think about the footprints they were literally leaving behind them in the snow.

  If you hadn’t been looking out the window, you might not have noticed.

  The thought in my own head offended me.

  Yeah, well, I did, I snapped back.

  You knew a man was good and worked up when he argued with himself. I was beyond worked up. I was damn near frothing at the mouth.

  I saw which direction they’d been walking when I fled from her room, but by the time I got downstairs and into the instructors’ quarters, I was sweating through my shirt. What if in the time it took me to grab some gear and follow, they’d disappeared?

  What if I lost her all over again?

  What if I never see her again.

  The urgent, almost mind-numbing fear kept me moving, giving me a burst of adrenaline I hadn’t felt since I’d been competing in the winter Olympics a few years ago.

  I knew these mountains like the back of my hand. I’d grown up here, Alex and I had been all over the place as teens. I could use that to my advantage. These guys didn’t know this place. They didn’t know the mountain.

  My leg muscles burned from the effort of running up the mountain in the snow while carrying my gear, but I didn’t stop. Not even when I felt the familiar twinge of pain in my bad knee.

  You’re pushing yourself. You aren’t supposed to do that.

  I’d saw my fucking leg off before I let that injury slow me down. That voice of reason in my head? It could go fuck itself.

  I picked up the trail they left behind and followed it until we got past the black diamond markings. The beam of a flashlight was faint up ahead, so I knew I’d found them. I just prayed to God I wasn’t too late.

  I listened over the whipping of the wind for her voice, hoping to hear it, straining to pick out that familiar sound over my own ragged breathing.

  I knew they were going out of bounds the second the light disappeared into the trees. I also knew there was a drop-off close by, and it took everything inside me not to scream her name and warn her.

  I couldn’t give myself away. The element of surprise was on my side. I had to use it. It was all I had.

  My direction veered from the one they went in. Instead of cutting across like them, I went up, everything in me quivering with effort. Once I hit the trees, I started to descend in their direction. Listening as I carefully went through the trees, I hoped they also hadn’t changed direction and were heading straight toward me.

  A few moments later, I heard Bellamy shout, followed quickly by a gunshot. I started running, no longer caring about the noise I made or if they heard me coming. My snowboard was hitting against the ground and the backs of my legs as I ran. I nearly stumbled but righted myself before I fell.

  The snowboard hit the packed snow in front of me, skidding down the mountain a little ways before it hit a tree and stopped.

  What the fuck was I doing? Running down the mountain when I could be on that board. Hell, I was better on it than I was on my own two feet.

  I rushed down, braced my hand on the tree, and snapped my feet onto the board. My knee ached, but I ignored it.

  Once I was good and balanced, I cut through the snow, weaving through the trees until I nearly shot out into a clearing right before the drop-off.

  Reaching up, I grabbed a branch and stopped just in time to see some bulky guy in black punch Bellamy in the face.

  Rage so strong rippled through me my entire body shook with it. I told myself to calm down, to collect myself so I could think clearly. The man holding Bellamy tossed her. She nearly pitched right off the edge.

  The branch snapped under my grip, and thought was no longer an option.

  With an angry shout, I burst out of the trees, cutting over the powder with more control than I’d used in a long time.

  The sound of firing guns barely registered, but the way the ground shook under my board did.

  Fuck!

  “Liam!” Bellamy screamed, her voice echoing through the night.

  More gunfire went off, and I zigzagged down the distance between us as bullets peppered the snow around me.

  I watched through wild eyes as my girl leapt at the man who hit her, jumping on his back, and made them fall to the ground. As the pair grappled, the ground underfoot shook more.

  This wasn’t good. Not at all.

  They needed to stop firing those guns.

  As if they just wanted to be dickheads, a gun went off once more.

  Bellamy screamed, and I looked up wildly, nearly pissing my pants in relief when I saw she hadn’t been shot. The asshole shot right over her head, scaring the shit out of her and starting it all.

  The deep, angry rumble of the mountain sliced through all the other chaos.

  “Bellamy!” I roared.

  Ev
erything beneath us started to shift and give way.

  There was only one thing I could do.

  Only one way to not die in an avalanche….

  Outrun it.

  I flew past the man Bellamy had jumped on, cut my board into the snow, and sprayed a wave of powder at him and Bells. He let go of her to shield his face, and I kept going, knocking right into her, lifting as I continued to move.

  “Hold on,” I yelled, feeling her wrap her arms and legs around me.

  The next moment, the ground completely fell away and we were flying.

  Bellamy

  The ground beneath my feet broke apart and crumbled. One moment, I was standing on both feet, and the next, I was staring down where the ground used to be as chunks of ice and snow fell into a giant, loud cloud that was angrier than anything I’d ever seen before.

  Avalanche.

  Holy shit, we were in the middle of an avalanche.

  “Hold on!” Liam yelled, his voice barely even audible over the sound of the mountain roaring around us.

  The ledge stretching out over the drop-off shattered just as Liam leapt off, taking us airborne over the chaos. I didn’t look down. I couldn’t. Plastering as tight as I could to him, I felt the churning in the atmosphere around us, heard the shouts of the men who tried to kill us both.

  The ground came fast and hard. The jolt of Liam hitting the ground below us with the board made my teeth gnash together. A sound of pain ripped out of his throat, but his body locked up, exhibiting a level of skill and control I honestly couldn’t fathom.

  He continued to board down the mountain. I glanced up over his shoulder and gasped.

  Nature’s fury at its finest. That’s exactly what I was seeing.

  I’d heard the reports. I’d seen footage on TV. Nothing could ever do this justice. It was absolutely terrifying.

  It was like a tsunami of snow. The sound was deafening as I watched great amounts of white roll and rumble toward us. Everything it touched, it took over. Everything in its path was destroyed.

  It actually looked almost light the way the white puffed out and bloomed over everything, but I knew that was a lie.

  That snow was heavy.

  It was deadly.

  “Don’t let go,” Liam yelled, locking his arm around me as his lower body swiveled with the board.

  I clutched him tighter, unable to rip my eyes off the horrific monster literally chasing us down the mountain. It was gaining on us. I was slowing him down.

  “Drop me!” I screamed against his ear. “Put me down!”

  If he did, he could get away. He could survive.

  In response, his arm clutched me even tighter, to the point of pain.

  God, this man. Why couldn’t he understand that I didn’t matter? As long as he lived, nothing else mattered.

  The rumbling got louder. The spray from the rush slapped me in the cheeks.

  We’re not going to make it.

  We were too small, too powerless against such a force.

  “C’mon!” Liam grunted and swiveled his body in a different angle. I felt our position change, almost as if we’d somehow become airborne again.

  “Swim, Bellamy,” he bellowed. “Remember to swim!”

  And then the white swallowed us whole, crashing down around us, forcing us apart even as I screamed and tried desperately to hold on.

  My body was flung and bent. The loud roar of the avalanche became deafening… until everything went hauntingly silent.

  Liam

  The aftermath of an avalanche was jarring. What once was violent and explosive became impotent and peaceful.

  Even if you managed to survive, those first couple breaths made you question if you were dead. The silence. The endless white. The momentary detachment to everything around you.

  But then it came back just as violently as it all left.

  The silence is interrupted by the sound of your pounding heart, the pain in your limbs, and the ragged way you draw in a breath.

  “Bellamy!” I roared, launching up. The speed in which I sat up made me woozy, and I threw out a hand to steady myself on something.

  There was nothing.

  Nothing but a sea of white, a blanket spun by winter, covering everything as far as the eye could see.

  “No.” I gasped, forcing myself to my feet. My knee gave out and I fell, but I pushed back up just as fast.

  “Bellamy!” I screamed. My voice echoed through the air.

  I hoped it had been enough. Please, let it have been enough.

  The second I knew that avalanche was going to overtake us, I hit a natural bump in the mountain, getting some air as the white reached out its claws.

  I hoped I had enough air to not get pummeled completely. I hoped it gave us a shot of not being buried under tons of snow that packed down like concrete.

  After thirty minutes, the chances of being found alive in an avalanche decreased drastically.

  After three hours, you were as good as dead.

  “Bellamy!” I roared again.

  I had to find her. The clock was ticking. I wasn’t coming off this mountain without her. If she died up here, then by God, I would, too.

  Ignoring the searing pain in my knee, I jogged forward. My board was long gone. I’d probably never see it again.

  “Bells!”

  I staggered around, scanning the white, looking for something… anything.

  A sound, muffled and almost lost, brought my head around. I froze and looked in the direction I’d heard it come from.

  Cupping my hands around my mouth, I called out, “Bellamy?”

  A muffled yell replied.

  I took off, the sound below me. My knee gave out again, but I kept moving, rolling down toward the sound.

  The second I sprang to my feet, a slim, colorless hand poked free of the white. It wiggled and moved like a flag against the backdrop of night.

  A strangled sound forced up the back of my throat, and I croaked as I lunged, falling onto my hands and knees and clawing at the snow around that hand.

  She kept moving, her hand forcing down, coming back up, down again, until I could see her wrist and her other fingers poke free.

  I grabbed her hands and pulled, releasing a yell into the sky.

  Bellamy’s body burst up from the packed white, and I fell back, bringing her with me. She collapsed across my chest. Her gasping for air was the best sound I’d ever heard.

  “Thank you!” I rasped up to the sky. The stars blinked down at me. “Thank you.”

  Bellamy began coughing, and my focus shifted. Taking her face in my hands, I glanced up. “You okay? How bad are you hurt?”

  “Liam.” She wheezed. “Liam.” Her eyes became misty and a tear fell over her cheek. “I really tried to hold on.”

  A small laugh bubbled up in my chest. The pressure of it coupled with the profound gratefulness that she was alive hurt, but it was a pain I would carry the rest of my life if I had to. “I got you,” I said, collapsing back into the snow with a heave. “I got you now.”

  “You saved my life.”

  I lifted my head, meeting her eyes. “No, sweetheart. I got us pummeled by an angry mountain.”

  She shook her head. “You told me to swim. It kept me from getting stuck under there, right? You told me to swim.”

  In a burst of energy, I sat up to clutch her against me. “Yes,” I said, pressing a kiss to her forehead then to her nose. “Yes,” I murmured again and kissed her lips.

  It was one of the things always drilled into my head. If ever in an avalanche, swim. The snow, once packed, was nearly impossible to move. You had to swim to get out.

  Bellamy ripped her lips from mine with a gasp and sank into my chest. Her body was scarily limp.

  “Hey.” I pulled her completely out of the snow. “Tell me where you’re hurt.”

  “I-I’m not sure,” she replied.

  “Okay, let’s stand up. Take stock of how you’re doing.”

  “Liam?” She clut
ched at my arms before I could move.

  “Yeah?”

  Her eyes were so wide when she glanced up. “They tried to kill me. They were going to kill you.” Her lower lip wobbled, and I was lost.

  “Shh,” I crooned, pulling her back into me. “They tried, but they failed. We’re okay now. We’re both okay.”

  She gasped and shoved away from my chest. “Oh my God! They could still be looking for us. They’re still here!”

  I held her when she tried to scramble up. “Calm down,” I insisted. “Everything’s okay.”

  “No!” she cried. “Everything is not okay!”

  She was in shock. Her eyes were wild. Her lips were taking on a hue of blue I didn’t like.

  She had no gloves. No hat. And was dressed in a pair of soaking-wet jeans.

  I pulled her in, rocking her back and forth, holding as tight as I dared. I was incredibly afraid I’d hold too hard and worsen something that was already injured.

  Her teeth chattered and her body shivered.

  “Up,” I said, feeling the same urgency as when I rushed down the mountain, trying to get free of the avalanche.

  Without shelter and heat, she was going to die.

  Ripping the hat off my head, I stuffed it down on hers, pulling it so far down it nearly covered her eyes. Next, I pulled off my jacket and wrapped it around her, zipping it all the way up. “Put your hands inside against the lining,” I ordered. When she didn’t automatically obey, I took her hands and shoved them into the coat myself.

  “W-w-what about you?” Her teeth chattered.

  “Don’t you worry about me.” I assured her. “I’ve got snow in my blood.”

  Using my hands, I rubbed briskly up and down her arms, trying to get any kind of heat into her I could. She whimpered, and her body jerked back.

  My eyes narrowed, hands hovering over her body. “What hurts?”

  “My shoulder.” She looked toward her right shoulder. I glanced at it but couldn’t see anything because my coat was around her.

  My eyes roamed over her face. Her cheek was split. The blood was frozen on her face. Her eye was darkening, and one side of her lip was swollen.

  “He hit you,” I rumbled as my own avalanche of anger whipped up inside me.