Chapter 21 #2
Springing up from my spot on the ground, I pinched the dial to flip it back to the main channel before heading up to the summit again. There were people scattered everywhere, most tents already pitched and a few with their own makeshift hangouts facing out toward the view.
Talos was off to the side with Ivan, a healthy bonfire having been stoked in my absence, that was far enough away from everyone’s sleeping quarters, but close enough that the roasted smell of meat was wafting over the entire site.
His eyes immediately narrowed on me once I headed for him.
I waved the radio in my hand. “Here you go.”
He took it from me, glancing down at the changed station before saying, “All good?”
I grinned, not being able to help it from splitting my face in half. “Yup.”
He stared at me for another long moment, Ivan behind him propping up another log inside of the fire. “You sure?”
It was so obvious he wanted to ask me what the hell that was all about, why his boss was calling to talk to me privately, and why I’d come back with a skip in my step. All very valid curiosities that I wasn’t going to give a damn about entertaining.
I threw out a thumbs up instead. “Yup. You want help? I hear I’ve got a mean way to charcoal.”
“We’re good, thanks. Might want to go check up on your hiking buddy.”
“Okay,” I sang, backing away slowly. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”
Elaine was sitting on an elevated rock that was tall enough to let her long legs swing in the wind, a peaceful smile on her face while she watched the fading like disappear beyond the horizon.
“Hey, you.”
Her head snapped to me. “Hey! Did you get some good photos?”
“Oh yeah. I can’t wait to get these bad boys developed.” Pulling out the disposable from my pocket, I sat down next to her rock and leaned back, getting her in the shot before snapping a picture. “Gotta get some keepsakes for my scrapbook.”
“Oh, yeah! That’s so right.” She grabbed hers from her lap, turning it to me. “Say cheese!”
I threw up a peace sign, grinning wide enough to make my cheeks hurt. “Cheese!”
Her flash went off, and then she lowered it. “Excellent. Say, Marlow, we should totally exchange numbers when we get back to base camp. In case you want a copy of any of my photos for your scrapbook.”
“I’ll do you one better.” Shoving my hand into my pocket, I fished out my phone and turned it on. “Give me your number and I’ll text you. That way in case I die on the way back, you’ll have a space to send things to me in the afterlife.”
Her brow shot up. “Do ghosts have access to their texts in the afterlife?”
“Guess we’ll find out.”
I hardly slept at all, too excited for lunchtime to roll around and for Blake to join us up on the summit.
There wasn’t exactly much I wanted to show him up here that he hadn’t already seen a million times. Nevertheless, that wasn’t going to stop me from putting on my best tour guide persona and doing it anyway.
Thinking about being able to bask in his attention was substituting what little energy I’d gotten from my restless sleep.
We weren’t going to be doing much hiking today outside of traveling down to some of the lower shelves on the mountain face for better vantage points, so I wasn’t in danger of my low energy levels affecting me too badly.
Plus, bothering Talos about the time every nine minutes was the only other thing keeping me going at the moment. “Hey, what’s the time again?”
His shoulders rolled back slowly, a gesture I was becoming intimately familiar with as his way of trying to mitigate whatever agitation was currently trying to make its way to the surface over his very carefully crafted facade of indifference.
Funny how it was so easy to rile him. “Like I said the last time you asked, it’s not even eleven yet.”
“Right, right. But how close are we to eleven? Actually, how close are we to say... one o’clock?”
He slowly looked up from his notebook full of detailed records he’d been keeping the entire way up here. Line by line in very fine and straight-aligned print were notes about all of us and how we were doing—most likely to report back to Blake once we got back.
I had half a mind to tell him not to bother since the man of the hour would be here—hopefully—soon. Then again, I was trying not to assume Talos had overheard our conversation on the radio and was choosing to believe he was just as ignorant as the rest of our little party.
“At least three hours.”
I fought myself with deflating over the information.
Damn it, still so far away.
And that was with the caveat that Blake was traveling as fast as he thought he could. Or that he was even making his way up here at all.
The chances of him having been caught up with someone down at base camp were staggering—too much for me to really make any sort of bets either way. I had hope he would’ve radioed up to me to let me know by now if that were the case, however, it wasn’t like he owed me an explanation in general.
He wasn’t my boyfriend. He didn’t have to answer to me.
I chewed my bottom lip.
“Is there some reason you keep asking me about the time and why noon is so important to you?” he asked.
“Nah, just wondering. Heard one o’clock is the best time to get a good tan up here.”
He fitted me with a look of disbelief. “Right. Well, we’ll be heading down to the second point in five minutes. Make sure whatever you’re bringing with you is packed.”
Fuck, how was Blake supposed to know where we went when he got here and no one was around?
“How long are we going to be down there? Are there going to be people staying up here?”
He popped a brow. “Why?”
I gestured to our tents. “Hello, what if someone comes up to steal all our shit?”
“You think someone would spend six hours hiking up here on the off chance a big group has their stuff up here?”
“Yes, Talos. Did you not hear Elaine’s lecture about the dangers of bears?”
He sighed. “Ivan is staying up here. He also has bear spray and a horn.”
I made a show of wiping my brow, relief flooding through me again. “Phew! That’s a relief.”
Talos waved a hand at me. “Go pack your things. Make sure it’s light. The trek down there is a little precarious.”
“Roger that.” Maybe it was a good thing to not be here when Blake arrived.
As much as I wanted to be the first to greet him, allowing him to get his story straight in the presence of only a few people versus all of us, plus Talos, was the better idea.
He was already going to be put on the spot by his second, regardless, and at least if he was up here for a bit to help Ivan with camp, it would seem more like lending his hand and not something else, which Talos was no doubt doing to be suspecting the moment they came face-to-face.
I’d sneak him away once nightfall hit. No one would be looking for us then.
Elaine was already packing a small bag when I made my way over to her. She had a blanket spread out under her, cushioning her slightly from the rough terrain of the mountain’s face. There was a canteen by one of her knees, along with a half eaten bag of trail mix.
“Hey!” She waved. “Got all your stuff ready?”
“Yup. Still feeling good about our trip?”
“Oh, I’m over the moon. The last time we went down there, we got to see an eagle’s nest. Now, you may be thinking, Elaine, I thought eagles usually nest near a water source because they’re fishermen.
And to that I would say, I know! I did, too!
But I guess there is a small river that runs close to here that connects to the falls on the other side of the mountain that they use! How cool is that?”
Damn, actually that was pretty cool. “You’ll have to point it out to me once we’re down there. I have a friend that’ll go bananas if I send him a photo of an actual eagle.”
“Definitely. I promise I will. I’m going to be bringing my binoculars, so we can totally use them to scope out some of the trees where I last remember the nest being.”
“Perfect.”
“All right, everyone!” Talos’s voice rang out across the area. “Everyone heading down to the second vantage point, head this way. All those who are staying, check in with Ivan, please!”
“That’s us,” I said, offering a hand for her to take.
She slipped hers in mind, folding herself up from the blanket. “Thanks. Oh, I’m so excited!”
Her attitude was definitely infectious. Letting myself be pulled into it was enough to satiate the worry crawling up my throat at missing Blake. Maybe this hike would help me burn off some of this excess energy. Coming in hot the second I met him wasn’t exactly sexy.
After a headcount, Talos waved for all of us to follow, giving clear and concise instructions as we descended down to the narrow stonemade footpath along the side of the mountain face.
Only wide enough to travel down one-by-one, I held tight to the thin railing jutting out from the mountain’s side while we went, keeping my attention locked onto the man in front of me while following him.
More than once, I felt Elaine grip the back of my shirt to slow me down, patting me lightly when I obeyed and kept at least two steps between me and the man in front of me.
The problem with being tall I typically ran into more often than not, was overtaking people by accident.
Long strides tended to outdo even the most athletic ones more times than not.
When we finally reached the second vantage point, a rock shelf that was far smaller than the one up top and about a mile down from it, we collected together against the mountain’s face, keeping away from the edge until all of us were finally down the steps.
Our group was only about twelve people, which gave us all enough room to move around freely on the shelf.
The air felt a little denser down here, strangely enough. I pulled in a deep lungful, the scent of pines and dirt filling my nose. That rough kind of outdoorsy smell not many people tended to appreciate but was my absolutely favorite.
“Wow,” Elaine breathed out, her arm brushing against mine. She had her binoculars looped around her neck and was slowly bringing them up to her eyes. “Oh yeah, I definitely see an eagle’s nest.”
She inched her way over to the side of the dropoff, carefully keeping her steps small. While I wasn’t at all worried she was going get distracted with her binoculars and plunge over the edge from a bad foot placement, I still kept close to her while she moved, on the off chance something happened.
Like parts of the rock shelf crumbling or—
Something moving out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. Glancing over to my left, I spotted more movement, going completely still the moment I realized it was a fucking snake slowly climbing up the rock wall.
“Hey, uh, Elaine,” I muttered. “Remember what you were saying about those snakes that were super snake-looking with the reddish brown pattern that you said were up here?”
“Oh, yeah. Copperheads.”
Here was a little known fact about me: snakes terrified me.
It was a stupid fear left over from childhood after a bad run in with a garden snake my grandma kept fed in her herb bushes that one day crawled up my leg and into the cuff of my shorts and left quite a nasty bite behind before I could scream loud enough for my dad to come rip it off of me.
Since then, I’d steered very clear away from the things.
“Yeah, so. What happens if they start crawling toward you?” I asked, noticing the own rising octave to my voice.
Unfortunately, Elaine was far too busy with finding us the eagle nest to pick up on my impending terror. “Staying still is what I’d suggest. Not many copperheads up this way, though. The most we’d run into up here are Western Terrestrial Garter snakes.”
Okay, whatever the fuck that was. The longer the name, the more venomous in my opinion.
Who named a snake with more than two words?
“Elaine...”
She gasped. “There it is! And I think they have babies in the nest!”
“Yeah, okay, great. Maybe we should move, though.”
Holy fuck, it was coming closer.
The snake’s head reared toward me as I shifted my weight, its tongue darting out. It was long and fat, clearly well fed up here on whatever it was hunting. It’s beady eyes focused on me, tongue darting out one more time before it slithered forward and right to us.
“Oh, fuck!” I shoved her back toward the rest of the group.
She stumbled and caught her footing on a small divot under her foot, her heel stopping her from moving back any farther while her body shot back.
Recorrecting myself in order to keep her from falling right back onto her head and cracking it open on the rock, I snagged her arm and quickly tugged her forward, righting her suddenly.
“What the—”
“Snake,” I hissed, pointing.
“Marlow.” She laughed. “It’s okay, it’s just a garter—”
She didn’t get to finish her sentence as the world around me suddenly began to shift, falling away and growing smaller while my body pitched backward.
Belatedly, I realized I’d stepped far too close to the edge of the rock shelf when I’d righted her posture, the pieces under my feet crumbling and giving way before either Elaine or I could quickly move away from it.
Time slowed.
Her eyes widened as she registered what was happening, her hand snapping out far too late to try and catch me back, my body just out of reach.
In the back of my mind, I knew I was already dead. This was simply the build up to that untimely demise I was always staring down the barrel at but had no way of predicting when and where the final nail in my coffin would finally rest.
What a terrible fucking way to go.
“Marlow!” I heard Elaine scream.
That was the last thing I heard right before I plunged and hit the ground below.