A Solitude of Wolverines

by ALICE HENDERSON

  Alex dropped the branch and moved away quickly. When the bear was out of sight, she stopped at the top of the cliff, listening. Only wind met her ears. She couldn’t hear any cries for help. If the man was dead, then he couldn’t radio his friends to reveal her location. And he had to be dead after a fall like that. But he could have radioed his location before the fall, and the others might have figured out where she was heading.

  But she had to take the chance.

  It was no longer just her life on the line, but the lives of all the animals back in those cages. If these men managed to kill her, then the hunters would arrive tomorrow and start killing all those magnificent creatures.

  She had to get to the radio and fast.

  Twenty-Six

  Alex reached the cleared path of the gondola and started up it. The snow was falling faster, and already two inches had accumulated. She stayed next to the trees, always watching and listening for any sign of the men.

  As she climbed, she thought about the polar bear and her destroyed trap. White hairs had been in the alligator clips. The sheer power of the creature that had splintered the wood and pulled the bait down from the chain had to be immense. She’d bet the hairs weren’t ermine but polar bear. And she also guessed that the people running the hunting ring had seen her destroyed trap and stolen the camera. If they’d just removed the memory card, she’d know for certain it had been human vandals.

  That had been more than a week ago, which meant the polar bear likely hadn’t been released for a hunt, but had escaped somehow.

  But who was the man she’d captured on camera? Was he one of the hunters, injured or lost during a hunt? Had SAR not been able to find him because these men had located him and brought him to safety?

  Alex climbed in the dark, the open expanse of snow to her right making it light enough to see easier than in the heart of the forest. As she gained elevation, she could hear another quad far in the distance, back toward the compound. It faded in and out of hearing range, never getting any closer.

  She wondered if it was Gary. She thought of his shifty behavior at the hardware store and later at the Snowline.

  She reached the first tower and paused to get her breath. At least the cold temperature meant she wasn’t going through her water too fast. She took a drink and continued on. The snow up here was deeper, almost four inches on the ground. She was grateful for the waterproof pants that snapped tightly around the tops of her boots.

  So far she hadn’t seen any sign that the men had been up here. No footprints or quad marks in the gondola clearing. No voices or radio sounds.

  She reached the next tower, starting to feel the effects of having eaten so little food that day. She’d had an omelet in the morning, and then the gorilla had eaten her apple. The gorilla. She wondered where it was, hoped that the men hadn’t spotted it again and shot it. Maybe all their attention was focused on Alex right now.

  At last she reached the gondola terminal and the restaurant came into view. The cloud layer had descended, mists swirling at the ground, partially obscuring the restaurant. She paused on the back side of the gondola terminal, surveying the restaurant for any sign of movement. She saw no one on the roof or milling around the maintenance shed. Of course, they could be standing out of sight just like she was or be hidden in the mingling cloud cover. She stood downwind of the restaurant and smelled the air. No hint of cigarette smoke. No sounds of coughing or cold feet stamping the snow.

  When she’d stood there for five minutes, not hearing anything, she decided to take the chance. Cautiously she crept out and angled toward the restaurant door. Luckily she had the set of resort keys in her pocket. If they’d been in her pack, getting into this building would have been a lot harder. She also had her wallet in her fleece jacket, she added mentally, for all the good it would do her. But it did mean that she had Ben Hathaway’s number if she ever got to a phone. Going through the keys, she found the right one and slid it into the lock as soon as she reached it.

  She opened the restaurant door and slipped inside, grateful for the warmth and the break from the wind. The building temperature was probably in the low fifties, but that was better than the high twenties outside. In case anyone came up here to check out the place, she went to one of the windows and opened it. Sliding out, she came around to the front of the restaurant again and replaced the lock, making it look like no one could be inside.

  Then she climbed back through the window and shut it. She hurried toward the radio room. Thankfully it had no windows. She closed the door and switched on her flashlight. She hadn’t worked a radio like this before. It was a push-to-talk base station two-way radio. She found the police frequency listed on an emergency contact clipboard hanging on the wall. Dialing the radio to that number, she put on the headset.

  The biologist before her had been taking weather readings during the recent winter, along with measurements of snow depth for his mountain goat study. As she switched on the power, she made a silent prayer that the radio’s backup fuel cells would still work. She didn’t relish the thought of cranking on the generator and drawing attention to herself. The dial glowed warm and gold as it came on, and she exhaled in relief.

  She radioed the police, hoping to hear the welcome sound of Kathleen’s voice, but a man answered. Alex glanced at her watch. Of course. It was night. Kathleen would have knocked off at five p.m.

  The radio crackled. “County Sheriff. This is Deputy Joe Remar.”

  Relief flooded over her as she pressed the talk button. “Joe! This is Alex Carter.”

  “Hey, Alex. I didn’t know you had a radio at the Snowline.”

  “I’m not at the lodge. I’m up where the gondola used to drop people off at the restaurant.”

  “What are you doing up there at night?”

  “I’m in trouble, Joe.”

  “What is it?”

  Not sure whom she could trust, Alex paused. Joe could be in on all of this. She decided to gauge his reaction. “Some men are hunting me.”

  “What?!”

  When Joe sounded genuinely shocked, she decided to take a chance on him. “They’ve got guns and I’m cut off from the lodge and my car. I don’t know how many of them there are. And I found the body of the biologist who was here before me. They killed him.”

  “I thought he’d gone back home.”

  “He didn’t, Joe. His body is hanging in a walk-in freezer.”

  “Jesus. I’m coming up there to get you. Are you in the old restaurant now?”

  She considered this. The thought of him showing up armed to get her off the mountain was a liberating thought. He could take a snowmobile most of the way up the gondola track if he had to, but it got too steep toward the top. So he’d have to hike the rest of the way up. That gave the men time to figure out where she’d gone. And if they didn’t figure it out, they might grow nervous that she hadn’t been caught yet and decide to move or destroy “the evidence.” All those creatures could die.

  To save time, she had to get down to where Joe could pick her up.

  “Joe, there’s more at stake than just me. The men up here have an illegal hunting club. There’s a compound on the ranch to the west of the preserve. It’s full of cages with endangered species. If they don’t find me, they’re going to get rid of all those animals.”

  “Jesus.” His disgust and horror sounded genuine, and she felt even better about trusting him.

  “You’ve got to send people over there to arrest those guys and then meet me.”

  “I can call the federal marshals.”

  Hope blossomed inside her at the image of police swarming into the compound. “Perfect.”

  “You want me to meet you up there?”

  Alex’s eyes fell on an aerial view of the Snowline Resort hanging on the wall. “Just a sec.” She stood up and studied it. Above the resort, past their northern property line, the old photo showed a radio tower with a road going up to it. She didn’t remember ever seeing a radio tower up there, but
the road was located parallel to one of the ski runs. If she could hike down the ski lift track and then cut across the mountain, she’d encounter the road.

  She returned to the radio. “Joe, do you know where the radio tower is up here?”

  He paused. “There was one up there when I was a kid, but it was dismantled years ago.”

  “Is the road still there?”

  “I’m sure it is, but I can’t vouch for its condition. It was pretty pitted and bad even before they tore the thing down.”

  “I think I can get to it. If I start hiking down that road, can you pick me up?”

  “I don’t know about you hiking. There’s a massive storm system moving in.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “The weather service underestimated it. It’s been upgraded. You could get lost or get hypothermia,” he told her.

  “I’m dressed for warmth. I’ll be all right.”

  “If you think so.” He didn’t sound too convinced. “I’ll have to check out a snowmobile, but it sounds doable. Do you have anything to protect yourself with?”

  “No.” She would have taken a rifle if she’d seen any guns at the compound, but she hadn’t.

  “You sure you don’t want to stay put until I get there? What if they find you on your way down the mountain?”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “I don’t like this,” he told her. “But I’ll be on that road as soon as I can, and I’ll contact the federal marshals right now.”

  “Thank you, Joe. You don’t know how good it is to hear your voice.”

  “You be safe.”

  He signed off and she powered down the radio.

  She had to get down the mountain fast. The lower she got, the closer she’d be to where Joe could pick her up. Hiking partway down the ski lift path and then cutting across was too slow, though, especially with how deep the snow was getting. She had to think of another way.

  She climbed out of the window, unlocked the door, and went back inside to lock the window. She didn’t want any of the men to find the radio and destroy it. She might need it again. Trying to figure out the fastest way down, she had an idea.

  Just a few hundred yards to the east was the ski lift track that she could take partway down. She headed that way. The clouds had grown so thick that she couldn’t see the lift at all, even though she remembered it was in plain sight from the restaurant. The clouds swirled in and out, and as she got closer, she spotted it.

  The cables were much lower than the ones that carried the gondolas up. All the ski lift chairs had been dismantled and taken down, but maybe she could somehow get down the mountain using the cables. This particular lift track could take her most of the way down, and she wouldn’t have to worry about leaving tracks. Then she’d have to cover only a small area on foot until she reached the radio tower road.

  Moving to the return terminal at the top of the ski lift, she found a pile of metal chairs, protected partially from the snow by the terminal’s overhang. She knelt down by them, finding their metal was rusty and twisted. It looked like they’d been dismantled for repairs that were never completed. Some of them were the old J-bar style of chair lift, just a pole that hung from the ski lift. It curved at the bottom where the skier was supposed to sit. But so many people tended to fall off this kind of lift that they’d been discontinued.

  She dug through the metal pieces. Maybe she could cobble together a makeshift device to travel down the cables. Because the lift was no longer operational, any existing chair she found wouldn’t be able to take her down, as they relied on clamping onto the braided line, which moved. Instead, she had to find something that could slide along the cable.

  Rummaging through the pile of dismantled chairs, she found a long, bent piece of metal. The top formed an upside-down U, and the bottom made a right turn into a flat bar. It was just long enough that she could stand on the flat part. All she needed now was to hang it over the cable. If she started her slide just after the first tower, it could take her to the second tower. She’d get hung up there, but hopefully she’d be able to move the piece of metal to the far side of the second tower and proceed that way all the way down to the bottom of the ski lift.

  The old towers all had climbing pegs on them for maintenance, so ascending wouldn’t be too hard. She tested the weight of the metal pole. It was heavy and unwieldy, but not too bad. She’d need a way to lift it up the tower, though. Climbing while holding on to it would be difficult.

  Her mind flashed to the maintenance shed and the climbing rope she’d seen there on her earlier visit. She jogged quickly back to it. Unlocking the door, she slipped inside, closing it behind her. Switching on the flashlight, she quickly located the coils of climbing rope on the shelves. She draped one coil over her shoulder.

  On the way out, the beam played over the box full of TNT. During a winter break while she was an undergrad at Berkeley, she’d worked at a ski resort at Lake Tahoe to earn extra cash. She’d hung out with the avalanche control team and knew a little about their methods. She lifted the lid off the TNT box, finding a satchel inside with some ready-made avalanche control shots, TNT sticks with fuses attached. Next to them she recognized a number of igniters, blasting caps that slid over the fuses and could be lit by yanking out a small cord. There were about ten charges in the bag and twice as many igniters.

  They looked like they had about a two-minute fuse on each of them, giving avalanche control experts time to light them, throw them, and then get to a safe distance. But if she were in a face-to-face confrontation with gunmen, two minutes would be too long.

  She found a folding knife on one of the shelves and used it to trim the fuses on three of the charges. She could always cut more of the fuses if she needed to, and keep the rest long for some future use. But having a few ready to go made her feel better. She trimmed them so only seconds would pass before they went off, giving her time to throw them and take cover.

  Gently she picked up the satchel and hung it over her other shoulder. Locking the shed, she walked back toward the ski lift, her boots sinking into the deepening snow.

  She had just started to tie the rope to the twisted metal pole when the sound of snowmobiles filled the night. The thick clouds made it impossible for her to see down the mountain, but it definitely sounded like they were coming up the gondola track. She could see diffuse light coming from that direction, a bright spot in the cloud that had descended over the mountain. Headlights. She had to work fast.

  Her cold hands struggled to finish tying the rope.

  Below her the engines cut out. She thought she had heard at least two. The riders had probably reached the point where it became too steep to take the machines higher.

  Voices cut through the dense cloud. “All the way up there?” a man said.

  “Remar says there’s a radio up there.”

  For a second she paused. Were they marshals? Had Joe decided to send them instead, in the hopes they could reach her faster?

  “And he’s sure she’s unarmed?”

  “She told him as much.” That was Gary’s voice. She recognized it.

  “Then this should be quick,” the other man said.

  Twenty-Seven

  A chill swept along Alex’s back, shock that Remar had betrayed her. The men didn’t have far to climb before they’d come into view of the restaurant, the shed, and the other ski lift. She’d be sitting out there in the open.

  She struggled to tie the rope onto the metal pole, forcing herself to be calm. The rope slipped off and was instantly caked in snow. Haste makes waste, she heard her grandmother say in the back of her mind. Taking a deep breath, she brushed off the rope and tried again. At last she managed to tighten it around the pole. Her fingers burned and ached from the cold.

  Now she just had to climb the first tower with it. Coiling the free end of the long rope around her shoulder, she dragged the contraption through the snow to the first tower.

  The men’s voices carried to her through the mist
.

  “Let’s split up,” she heard Gary say. “We’ll cover more ground that way.” Grateful the cloud cover was so low, Alex stared up at the tower. They would have spotted her by now if it weren’t for the mist. But it also meant she couldn’t see them. Voices carried much farther in the woods than they did in the city. It was hard to judge how close they were.

  Hanging the coiled rope over her shoulder, she climbed up the pegs to the top of the tower. Twenty-five feet up, she could no longer see the ground through the cloud. She threw the rope over the thick braided cable.

  Straining, she pulled on the rope to lift the makeshift metal chair. But she couldn’t get enough leverage. Cursing, she knew she’d have to climb back down. Holding on to the free end of the rope, she descended the tower, feeling the cold of the metal pegs even through her gloves.

  Jumping down the last few feet, she landed in the snow, nearly toppling off balance. But she managed to catch herself at the last minute. Wrapping the rope around her torso, she held on to it and started to take steps backward in the snow. The metal lifted, and she glanced desperately around in the fog, not hearing the men anymore.

  They must have been searching the buildings. She backed up toward the ski lift terminal, hoping that if one of the men came out of the mist they wouldn’t spot her right away. The clouds swirled and parted, and suddenly she heard the unmistakable sound of a rifle cocking. Whipping her head around, she saw Cliff standing there, the barrel pointed at her.

  “I’m gonna kill you this time,” he hissed.

  As he leveled the gun, she leapt into the air, letting the gravity of the makeshift ski chair lift her up. As the crack of the gun split the night air, she flew forward several feet as the metal came crashing back down. Rolling in the snow, she aimed for the long pieces of metal lying under the terminal. Cliff chambered another round just as her hands closed around one of the old J-bars. She hefted it up and swung it, connecting with his rifle just as it went off a second time. The shot was deafening, and the J-pole reverberated in her hands from the impact with the rifle barrel. The gun flew away into the snow, where it sank out of view.