9. Hadley #2
The sky is gunmetal blue. Pre-dawn. Stars fading. And directly above the cabin, maybe sixty yards behind us, the helicopter hovers. Stationary now. The spotlight locked on the roof. The rotor wash kicks up a tornado of fresh powder that glows white in the beam.
Banks emerges from the tunnel mouth behind me. Silent as a thing born from the earth itself. He pulls his rifle clear and rises to a crouch, scanning the forest with those pale, flat eyes.
The helicopter begins its descent toward the cabin.
Banks pulls me to my feet before I've finished catching my breath.
His hand closes around my upper arm and he hauls me upright with the kind of force that doesn't ask permission.
My legs buckle. My knees are water. He holds me there until my boots find purchase, then releases me and points into the dark timber.
"Tree line. Go."
I go.
The thigh-deep snow is crusted on top with a shell of ice that breaks under my weight with every step.
Each time I punch through, my legs sink to mid-thigh and I have to wrench them free before I can take another stride.
The effort is monstrous. Twenty seconds in and my quadriceps are screaming.
Forty seconds and I'm gasping so hard the frozen air feels like swallowing glass shards.
Behind us, the helicopter settles lower.
I can hear the rotor pitch change as it drops toward the cabin clearing.
Banks moves beside me, his rifle slung across his back, one hand hovering near my elbow without touching.
Ready to catch. He covers the same terrain in half the strides, his longer legs and raw power eating through the snow like it's ankle-deep instead of waist-deep.
We hit the trees and the canopy swallows us. Their is just snow dusting here, packed by wind and filtered through the spruce branches. I pick up speed. My lungs burn but my feet are the real problem.
My feet are the problem I've been ignoring since the cave.
The pink snow boots were a joke when I packed them.
Faux-fur lined, quarter-inch rubber soles, a brand logo stamped in metallic rose gold on the heel.
They cost four hundred dollars. They were never designed to keep anything warm below thirty-five degrees, and the temperature hasn't been above zero in sixteen hours.
Banks wrapped my feet in emergency heat packs and plastic bags before we crossed the bridge, and that bought me time, but time ran out somewhere in the tunnel.
I can't feel my toes. Not numb. Gone. The sensation stops at the balls of my feet like someone drew a line with a scalpel.
What I can feel is worse. A deep, grinding ache in the arches and heels that spikes white-hot every time my boots hit the ground.
The tissue between frozen and unfrozen is where the nerve endings are dying, and they're screaming their death song with every step.
I don't mention it. Banks has a wound leaking through his bandage and he hasn't said a word. I can keep my mouth shut about my feet.
We push deeper into the spruce forest. The trees grow tight here, trunks barely three feet apart, branches heavy with snow forming walls on either side of the narrow game trail Banks has found.
He moves with a certainty that shouldn't be possible in near-darkness.
Reading the terrain by slope and vegetation and some internal compass that never shuts off.
The helicopter lifts off behind us. The sound changes from the concentrated thudding of a hover to the sweeping rhythm of forward flight. It's moving. Searching.
"Faster," Banks says.
I push harder. My breath comes in ragged, visible bursts. The cold fills the space my layered clothing, finding the seams of Banks's spare jacket, threading through the damp fleece underneath. Sweat from the exertion freezes against my skin in a cycle that is slowly, efficiently killing me.
My right foot catches something buried under the snow. A root. A rock. Some ancient, invisible thing placed in this exact spot by a universe with a sick sense of timing. My boot locks against it and my momentum carries the rest of me forward while my leg stays behind.
The twist happens in my right knee. I hear it before I feel it. A wet, fibrous pop like pulling apart a chicken wing. Then the pain arrives.
I go down face-first. No grace. No attempt to catch myself. Just a full collapse, and the scream that leaves my throat is something animal. I bury it in the powder, biting down on frozen crystals, tasting dirt and pine needles and copper.
Banks is over me in an instant. Hands running down my leg, clinical and fast. When he reaches the knee I jerk away from him hard enough to wrench sideways.
"Don't touch it."
He ignores me. His fingers probe the joint through my pants and I stuff my fist against my teeth.
Pain is a living thing. It radiates from my knee in waves, pulsing up my thigh, down my shin, connecting with the dead-nerve agony in my feet until my entire lower body is one continuous frequency of wrong.
"Lateral strain," Banks says. "Not torn. Swollen."
"I can't stand up."
"You can."
"Banks." I push myself onto my elbows. My right leg won't straighten.
The knee is already puffing against the fabric of my pants, hot and tight and fundamentally broken in some way his quick field assessment isn't catching.
I plant my left foot and push. My right leg buckles before I get six inches off the ground and I crash back.
The helicopter is circling. The rotor noise swells, fades, swells again. Getting closer. Tightening the loop.
I look up at him. His face is a slab of granite in the pre-dawn blue, blood staining the tactical jacket at his ribs, his breathing barely elevated despite the sprint through deep snow. Behind him the spruce trees stand like sentinels. Silent witnesses.
"Leave me here."
His jaw flexes. Nothing else moves.
"Cover me with snow and branches. Keep moving. You know this mountain. You can make it to wherever there's a radio, and you can send people back for me."
"Stop talking."
"I'm slowing you down. I've been slowing you down since the icy cave and we both know it. If they catch us both, we're both dead. If you go alone, at least one of us?—"
"I said stop."
"Banks, please." I grab the front of his jacket. My frozen fingers twist into the fabric. "Please just go. I'll hide. I'm good at hiding. I hid for hours before you found me."
He peers down at me. The helicopter noise builds. The spotlight appears through the canopy, distant still but sweeping in arcs that are eating the distance between us. Snow crystals glitter in the moving beam.
Banks drops to one knee in front of me. He catches my chin between his thumb and forefinger. Tips my face up.
Those gray eyes are not negotiating.
"I don't leave people on the mountain."