We’d been walking for a bit on uneven but slowly descending terrain when things suddenly took a turn for the worse.
For one, the land started sloping upward again, presenting us with a trail of ragged rock that seemed to spear out of the earth like teeth. For two, though the air was growing lighter and the clouds seemed to be passing farther above our heads, the ground beneath our feet had snow coming up to the tops of our boots. I could feel the icy chunks trickling down into my socks.
And then, as we were picking our way across the dangers, trying to find our footing on a ground that only grew steeper and slicker, we heard a terrible scream.
I had no idea what direction it came from, except that it was human and it was a human in utmost agony, a torturous pain that struck fear in the deepest recesses of my being.
Dex stopped dead in his tracks, almost falling back onto me. He leaned forward, hands grasping to the nearest rock and we both paused, waiting, listening, wondering.
The scream came again. It almost sounded like it was yelling “help” and it was loud enough that I couldn’t tell if it had come up from the valley, bouncing off the mountains, or was coming from somewhere nearby.
“Mitch?” I whispered. I couldn’t pick it out but it was certainly male. A male screaming for his dear life, a male who was getting ripped apart. And we now knew by what.
“All signs point to yes,” Dex said, his voice low. He adjusted his lean on the rock and we kept still for another minute, waiting to hear something else.
But it never came. To tell you the truth, it was enough for me. His scream nearly made me pee my pants, a fright that caused some sort of chill that began below my lungs and bled outward in a slow paralysis.
“What should we do?” I eked out.
“Keep going,” was Dex’s bleak answer.
He straightened up as much as he could on the slope without losing his balance and started going forward again. I followed right behind at a 45 degree angle, trying to avoid the rocks and snow that was inevitably pushed toward me. My fingers fumbled as I tried to gain traction on the ground, feeling lame and unfeeling in my gloves. My chest heaved underneath my coat, the cold air jarring my throat, the occasional breeze icing my nose and eyelashes.
“I think this is it,” I heard Dex say from above me. I paused and raised my head. He was quite a bit ahead of me but it looked like he was standing straight up on flat ground. “I can see the river!”
He sounded excited and that was enough for me to push through the next steps, hand above foot, rock and snow falling away from me as I climbed.
I was just reaching for the final boulder to get extra traction that would propel me to the top, when Dex walked a few steps away. He stopped.
Looked stunned.
And then disappeared entirely.
I had to blink hard. But he was gone.
And it took hearing his own scream to make it all real.
My heart seized from the sound and the next thing I knew I was screaming too, pushing off with my legs until I was off the cliff face and on flat earth. I looked around me wildly, spotting the surrounding mountains that had emerged from the mist, the river and the valley below but not Dex. In the narrow crest we had found ourselves on, Dex suddenly ceased to exist.
“Dex!” I screamed from the bottom of my lungs, the word ripping out my throat.
I ran to where I had last seen him and found the truth too late.
The edge was too sharp, too near and I was standing right on it. My world began to slide beneath my feet, my balance thrown off.
I fought to run, to scramble back to the earth that wasn’t moving. I threw my body forward and to the left, trying to go for the most stable looking part of the cliff face.
I made it for a few seconds as my fingers tried to wrap around the edge of a jagged black rock, my feet scrambling wildly below me as they fought hard for something solid beneath them. There was nothing, the ground kept moving, a slide of rock and snow, a symphony of falling objects that was deafening to my ears as I held on for dear life, the world beneath me disappearing in a blink of an eye.
I managed to haul myself up as much as I could by my arms and pecs, my muscles screaming for me to stop. But I couldn’t. I was almost there. I was almost safe. I was almost still.
I swung my legs up and around, my boots catching on a side of snow and earth that hadn’t crumbled away. I leaned on my legs, hoping they had the strength to pull me up and I pushed away from the black rock, my gloves sticking to the snowy crevasses and being pulled off.
For one moment I had made it. I was hanging sideways but I wasn’t moving. I was staying put. It took that extra push to get myself from a horizontal position to a vertical one and what I should have done was put my trust in the rock that wasn’t moving.
But all my power, all my weight, went to my legs. And there was that horrifying instant, that first slip of earth beneath you, when you realized you made the wrong choice.
The ground fell away and there was nothing I could grab to save me from it. I felt my body fall, being swept downward in that brutally loud avalanche. I was bumped and thrown, not freefalling but dragged, like Mother Nature herself had reached out from the ground with stony fingers and pulled me down toward her belly.
I don’t remember ever coming to a stop.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Whiteout.
That’s what I saw when I finally pried my lids open, my lashes stuck together with the glue of tiny snowflakes.
White. White. White.
Where was I?
I rolled over with a groan and felt an explosion of pain in my side. I looked down and as my vision began to right itself, I saw a rock jutting into my stomach, protruding from the cold, snow-blown ground like a weapon.
I eased onto my back, the chill seeping through my jacket. My bare fingers tingled as I ran them over my body. I felt intact, nothing bleeding or broken.