Chapter 19
As Zach emerged from the trees into the lower reach of the Bowl, he was the only living, moving creature.
To his right, above and below, were the remains of the second, larger avalanche. Parts of the slope lay scraped nearly to dirt. Boulders studded the path. Branches scattered throughout the devastation.
Yet there was still a vast amount of untouched terrain, all of it holding the promise that more could go wrong.
To Zach’s left lay the path of the first, smaller avalanche that had charged past the grove of trees. The termination point was impossible to discern because the two avalanche paths had crossed at the bottom of the Bowl; the larger swallowing the smaller.
There was so much space. So much to search. Everything quiet, obliterated, and irrevocable.
One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand.
His brain ticked through the facts he was sure of.
Shane and Jon had been buried in the first, smaller avalanche. Steve and Bram had picked up a signal and had been digging. Pike had been on his way to join them. And now no one was responding.
It was unnervingly similar to the logic problems his math teacher recently had made Zach’s class do. “If Z isn’t sitting next to W, X isn’t next to Y, neither Y or Z are next to V, and W should be on V’s left, what’s the order of guests, left to right?”
In real life, with real people scattered, with the slope laid out below him, tangibly showing the way things had played out, this particular logic problem felt far more straightforward than in his classroom.
The ease of his analysis, the way his mother’s training rose clean and simple, unsettled him.
It was as though he’d always been expecting something this horrific.
Expecting the world to break apart so completely that all responsibility would be left to him.
And now that it had, it was a relief that coated him in a strange kind of serenity.
Jon and Shane, caught first, could be buried anywhere in the smaller avalanche’s path.
But if Bram, Steve, and Pike had been searching higher in the path of the first avalanche, they would have avoided the second.
Which meant the three had to have been searching where the avalanches’ remains overlapped.
Yes, that all sounded correct. Where the avalanches ran together had to be where at least three, maybe even all, of the five missing men were located.
Given the huge spread of the debris, this didn’t narrow the search area to an easy span.
But even so, it was something. The only spot where there was a breath of certainty, and therefore the location it made the most sense to prioritize.
The first avalanche’s path cut near where Zach stood at the bottom of the pine grove. He decided to ski close to it as he descended, beacon on, in case Jon or Shane had been buried, undiscovered, higher up.
“Mr. Dowling,” he radioed, “I’m going to go along the path of the first avalanche to see if I can find anyone. There must be at least four buried at the bottom. Please follow. Over.”
There was a brief pause before Dave came over the radio. “Zach, do not ski down alone. I’m just—I’m getting—you wait. You wait.”
Something about being told what to do, about being bossed around by a not-his-father father, caused Zach’s hands to curl to fists in his mittens.
Dave was one of the adults who had done everything wrong. They hadn’t protected Zach, hadn’t protected Russ. What did they know? They weren’t like his mother, the other mothers.
And yet, despite all her teaching, Zach knew his mother wouldn’t want him to be brave like this. There was the potential to trigger another slide. There was the future difficulty of escaping the Bowl after he descended farther into it.
A melting longing, followed by indignant fire.
She wasn’t there to stop him. She wasn’t there to be the brave one.
Wasn’t there to help him. Because she hadn’t taken any of her own advice about caution, responsibility, or care.
He remembered her frightened expression as she watched him cross the avalanche path a year ago.
And yet, she’d left Zach and Bonnie alone to go on without her.
Zach gripped his ski pole in one hand, the probe in the other, and descended. He itched with anticipation of the telltale whumph sound; of the ground falling, pulling, destroying.
But there was nothing. No sound of buried air pressed from the snowpack. No ping from his beacon, which he’d switched to its widest spread of searchable distance. Just the soft hiss of powder under his skis and the falling snow. Intermittent howls of wind.
Despite his deliberate pace, despite the awkwardness of skiing while using his folded probe in place of his missing ski pole, Zach quickly found himself standing by the stilled mayhem of the spot where both avalanches had settled in the flat bottom of the Bowl, hundreds, maybe even a thousand, feet from its summit.
Up close the wreckage had a colossal scope he hadn’t been able to appreciate from above. Roots, clods of dirt clinging to them, twisted from the snowpack, presumably still attached to trees submerged under slabs. Gray boulders sat askew.
“No signal along the smaller avalanche path. I’m starting to search the”—Zach couldn’t recall the term he wanted, and paused— “the messy bottom part? Of the avalanche? Avalanches, I mean. Over.”
There was no response from Dave. Zach poked at the churned snow with his pole. It was the same consistency as the avalanche remains he’d been caught in; as hardpacked as if it had been condensed by a plow blade.
Debris field. That’s what it was called.
Zach clicked out of his skis. Beacon in one hand, probe in the other, pack on his back, he clambered onto the frozen slag.
In his head his mother mimed a grid search, showily running about fifty feet before turning and angling in the opposite direction, her footprints marking enormous W’s as she went back and forth, beacon held close to the snow.
Among the broken things, the rocks, the hard chunks of snow, it was difficult to move as precisely, as evenly, as his mother had demonstrated.
It was difficult to move quickly at all, his feet slipping, catching on rocks such that he tripped, fell on his hurt side, and lay stunned for a moment before getting up again to press forward.
He squinted ahead and around him through the snowfall to try to make out anything human.
Synthetic. Brightly colored. His breath huffed loudly in his neck gaiter.
It had grown very cold.
A drumbeat of “Hurry, hurry, hurry” pulsed through Zach as if he could hear the silently screaming men buried somewhere beneath him, could see their legs fishhooked over backs like scorpion tails.
It had been minutes. It had been hours. Time had bent. He should have noted when he’d left Russ and Dave so he could know how much fruitless time he’d already let go by.
So little air left for the buried to breathe. So much space to search, the irregular spread of the destruction at least the size of a football field.
Zach paused. A round, humped thing protruded from the snow ahead, a bit of neon orange on its surface. Zach moved as quickly as he was able toward the unnatural color and went to his knees.
It was the curve of a black-coated back; the neon orange the cursive name of the coat’s manufacturer printed between the shoulder blades.
Someone was trapped face down.
Zach threw his probe aside and unshouldered his pack. He clicked the handle onto the blade of his shovel and thrust it into the snow where the head had to be buried, judging by how the shoulders were positioned.
For a time there was only the chip, chip, chip of the shovel. Then a thunk as Zach hit helmet, rapidly digging around its bright yellow.
Dave went to his knees beside Zach, startling him with this sudden appearance. Zach’s focus on the buried man, the sound of the shovel, of his heart, had drowned out everything else.
Together, they scraped at the snow. Though Dave was older than Bram, he was still stronger than Zach, and soon Dave was able to lever his shovel blade under where the face was locked until the snow broke apart around it.
Sufficiently freed, the head turned toward Zach, and a face manifested out of the boy’s nightmarish visions.
Blue lips stretched wide around a frozen scream, the mouth packed tight with snow below the emptiness of reflective goggles.
Zach whipped off a mitten and hooked two bare fingers into Pike’s mouth, pulling out snow, and more snow, before a tongue punctured through, jaws able to move at last to cough out the snow that had been wedged there, hard as concrete.
Pike gasped. Spat. Wheezed a huge inhale of air.
Again with his strange, calm clarity, Zach saw the condensation in Pike’s nostrils had turned to ice, enough that it must have been incrementally thickening and suffocating him as he was forced to breathe through his nose.
Zach pinched Pike’s nose and snotted ice shot out. Pike heaved in air.
“Thank God,” Dave said. “Thank God.”
Together they shoveled until Pike was able to pull an arm loose, hand going straight to his mouth and further clearing it, clearing ice from his nose with thick exhalations and taking enormous, bronchitic breaths.
“You all right, Pike? Anything hurt?”
Pike shook his head, and when he spoke his voice was thin gravel. “I think I’m okay. I think. My God.”
Zach stood. “I’m going to keep searching, Mr. Dowling, all right?”
Dave didn’t respond, focused on freeing the belly-down Pike’s other arm.
Only a few inches down, really. Only a few inches deep.
“Wait one second, Zach, just one.”
Dave levered a chunk of snow away and Pike was able to push up, to twist into a half-sitting position, torso clear of the snow that had imprisoned him.
Dave unstrapped the avalanche shovel from Pike’s pack, clicked it together, and handed it to him.
“Can you get your legs out yourself, Pike? We have to try to find the others.”
Pike wordlessly took the shovel and began to stab at the snow covering his legs with frenetic violence.
“Okay, bud, how about I go this way”—Dave pointed—“and you search over there?”
Zach nodded and took to the snowpack, his beacon extended, his heart afire, now, with hope.
Because he’d found one. He’d found one. Five minus one equals four. Four more.