Chapter 37
Liz woke to the howl of wind. Something cold and damp was pressing against her cheek. Thick with sleep, she reached out, palms meeting a tomb of wet fabric above her. The tent was buckling!
She fumbled in the blackness for her torch, while outside the wind shrieked and waves hurled themselves to shore.
Finding her torch, she filled the tent with light. She saw Joni sitting with her knees bunched to her chest, eyes squeezed shut, rocking.
“Oh! Joni! Are you okay? The weather will pass—”
Even as she said it, another rush of wind battered the tent, flattening it against them. Liz opened her arms above her head to keep the fabric from their faces. Then a shock of lightning filled the sky, illuminating the tent.
Joni shrank further into herself, head buried against her knees.
Liz silently counted the seconds that followed the lightning. A boom of thunder reverberated around the basin of mountains. She estimated that the storm was still a few kilometers away.
Suddenly the tent door was unzipped, fabric sent flapping by the wind. Liz raised a hand in front of her eyes as a torch beamed into the tent.
Rain drilled down on Maggie and Helena, who were huddled in the entrance.
“Our tent isn’t holding!” Maggie cried.
“It’s leaking, too! Everything is soaked,” Helena said.
“Get inside!” Liz said, shuffling over as rain sheeted in behind them.
They crawled into the cramped space and zipped the tent tight. There was barely space to move—the domed roof pressed to the crown of their heads. The air filled with the wet-dog stench of damp woolen socks and unwashed bodies. Everywhere was gritted with sand.
Lightning tore from the sky, illuminating the tent.
Liz began to count. After eight seconds an almighty crack of thunder struck the mountains, the amplified sound feeling physical in its strength.
Joni shrieked.
“Where has this storm come from?” Helena shouted. “Was it forecast?”
Liz’s skin prickled as she thought of the weather apps she’d checked, most of them showing the lightning icon.
The forecast had felt so unthreatening on-screen, just a tiny zigzag of yellow.
With a guilty swallow, she recalled the farmer’s warning.
A low pressure is coming. It will bring a storm tomorrow, she’d said. Tell your friends to turn back.
Only she hadn’t. She’d told them nothing.
Her cheeks flushed as she said, “Vilhelm told us all the weather was turning, didn’t he? I checked the forecast and it looked mixed—I told you that. I’d no idea it would be this bad. I thought the storm might not arrive—”
“Storm?” Helena said. “You knew there would be a storm?”
“We’d already set off and—”
“Wait, what do you mean, we’d already set off?”
The sting of guilt seemed to drive the truth from her mouth. “The woman I saw in the field on that first morning—she mentioned that the weather might turn.”
In the torchlight, Maggie’s face stretched in surprise. “You didn’t tell us.”
“I didn’t want to spook anyone. We were committed—”
“What did she say?” Helena demanded.
Liz flinched. “ ‘Tell your friends to turn back.’ But when she said it, the sky was clear. It looked perfect for walking . . . I—”
“Jesus, Liz!” Helena shot. “It wasn’t your call to make! It was for all of us to decide—as a group.”
“Then why didn’t anyone else check the forecast? I can’t be responsible for everything!”
The others blinked, as if surprised by her tone.
She shouldn’t have snapped, but sometimes Liz tired of being expected to take care of everything. “Look. I’m sorry. I really am. If I’d known it would be like this, I’d have turned back—”
A gust whipped down from the mountain, shouldering against them.
Liz knew she’d messed up, but right now they needed to deal with what was here. “It’s not safe to stay in the tents.”
“You want us to go out in that?” Maggie gawped.
“The tents have metal in the poles. They’ll conduct electricity.
” She’d treated a victim of a ground strike during her first medical placement.
It was horrific. The current had been so strong it had blown off their shoes, burning the soles of their feet and causing vicious thermal burns and lacerations across their body.
“We need to put on waterproofs and hiking boots—they’ve got rubber soles. ”
Everyone’s gaze lifted as lightning broke somewhere beyond them, illuminating the tent. Thunder followed only a moment later. The storm was close.
“Now!” Liz yelled.
Maggie and Helena scrambled from the tent, but Joni remained hunched in the corner. She was shaking. Liz placed her hand on her arm. “We need to go.”
Joni didn’t move.
“I’ll keep you safe, I promise,” Liz said, pulling Joni to her feet.
Outside, rain lashed at them as they pulled on waterproofs, tightened hoods, shoved feet into boots in a blur of weather and torchlight.
Liz was helping Joni into her wet-weather gear when Helena yelled, “The guy ropes aren’t holding!”
Running her torch over the bowing sides of the other tent, Liz saw the ropes hadn’t been pegged far enough from the tent.
She grabbed the nearest one and knelt on the damp ground, squinting against the driving rain, pulling the peg from the earth.
As she did, the wind billowed beneath the fabric of the tent, snatching the rope from her grip. It flew madly through the air.
“Look out!” she cried as the rope lashed back down, whipping the wet earth inches from Helena.
Helena lunged for the rope, and Liz held down the side of the tent while fixing the metal peg back in place. The ground was already sodden from the heavy rainfall, the pegs loosening in the earth. She’d no idea if either of their tents would stand up to the strong winds.
Once she was done, she turned on the spot, trying to think.
She knew they needed to get away from the mountains; electrical charges sought out the tallest thing—but they also sought out open space.
Most people weren’t hit by an actual bolt but by a ground strike, where the energy is discharged through the earth and transferred to whatever—or whoever—is nearby.
She turned and turned, her headlamp scanning the landscape. “I think there may be a cave at the far end of the bay, by Blafjell.” She’d seen a dark hollow earlier when she’d been swimming. “We can shelter there.”
She led them across the dunes. The rain was driving at them sideways, sheets of white illuminated in her headlamp. It was creating water runoff from the mountains, narrow streams threading down the rock face.
Wet sand sucked at her boots, her waterproofs flattened to her body by the wind.
A crack of lightning burst from the sky almost directly above them, followed by an almighty clap of thunder.
For a startling moment it was like daylight.
She saw Maggie’s eyes turn skyward. Helena was rooted to the spot, blinking rapidly.
Joni screamed and dropped to her knees, arms clasped to her head as if she’d been shot.
“It’s okay!” Liz shouted above the rain, gripping Joni’s shoulders. Guilt burned in her gut. “This way!” she called, pulling Joni to her feet and leading them to the far end of the beach, torchlight scanning the foot of the mountain, looking for the cave entrance.
Wind whipped the ocean into dark waves, flinging foam high into the night. Gusts tore through the dune grass, howling and wheeling against the mountain face.
“There!” she said eventually, shining the torch into a gap in the dark rock. “We’ll be safe inside!”