Chapter 32
Each sound was his father and Pike in pursuit, or the monster cracking its knuckles.
Every time the storm combed through branches to whistle Zach heard his father’s fury, heard the breath of a beast. Because Bram and Pike might soon be behind him.
Because whatever had been in that clearing, whatever had killed the elk, had torn Ginny’s middle, had to be out here.
One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand.
Zach knew life hid under the deep drifts. Pictured snakes, chipmunks, marmots, bears, all sleeping, all warm and full and safe. And right now Bonnie was sleeping, too, tucked into her bed.
He compulsively checked the GPS to confirm the route and Russ’s cell phone to see if he’d descended far enough to get a signal.
About a half hour after leaving the hut, the slow creep of the coming sunlight allowed Zach to pick out a few blue plastic diamonds that showed where the trail undulated ahead along distant slopes.
Within an hour he had enough light to spot a refuge under the ground-skimming skirts of an immense pine.
Leaving his skis and poles on the trail, he parted the branches and scrambled beneath it, limbs closing behind him like a curtain.
Sitting against the pine’s trunk on a dry bed of needles, he ate a snack and glugged water, glad for the brief respite from the wind and falling snow, eyes closing at the relief of it.
But they must be awake by now. They might already be following his tracks down the trail. They’d be faster because they were bigger, stronger, could follow in his wake rather than having to figure out the route themselves.
Why had he stopped, why had he risked resting?
Zach shook off his lethargy and reemerged into the storm, flakes spinning into his collar and melting along his neck.
A half hour of skiing later and he stood at the edge of the same steep, almost treeless expanse he’d crossed the year before with Bonnie and his mother.
He hadn’t thought ahead to this part of the trail.
On the way up the snow cover had been so thin patches of dirt peeked through, the slope made completely powerless and forgettable.
But the sight of it snowed under thickened his throat.
Zach squinted across to where his mother had waited, watching, hollowed by the memory of how even then, with so much less snow, they’d dug a pit to test the dangers.
The wind whipped over the open space, made visible in twirling coils of flakes that skittered along the snow’s crust. Above, the cornices were immense, weighed down with the new powder.
To cross this treeless zone, to keep moving toward help despite clear signs of avalanche danger, would be both courageous and completely idiotic. Zach slid a few steps backward, the reality of his situation making him feel faint.
He lifted Russ’s phone, moving it up, down, around to try to catch the gauzy tip of a signal at a just-right angle. But there was nothing. No reception. No way forward. And he couldn’t go back.
What now? The meadow was an impassable river.
Zach dazedly checked the GPS as if the earth might have somehow shifted in the seconds since he’d last looked, and traced the steep contours reflected there.
Hiking up the slope to cross above or skiing down to traverse below were exhausting, risky prospects.
Not only was the terrain steep but there was no guarantee he could safely pass.
The GPS read two below zero. Even getting his feet wet at these temperatures could mean hypothermia. Frostbite. And without aid and comfort, either of those might mean death. Something as simple as a twisted ankle and he might be lost forever.
Zach acknowledged the limits of his own ability to think, to plan, frightened as he was.
He’d forgotten the meadow. What else might be slipping through the gaps?
The memory of Ginny’s body was a cruel reminder that there might not just be dangers he was failing to assess but evils waiting that he had never even conceived of.
Half of the money Bram had talked about was Bonnie’s.
He needed to get to her. Needed to run. But even the longing that screamed at him to reach his sister, protect her, couldn’t shove him onto that meadow.
Not with all his mother’s careful consideration of the trail here the year before.
Not when Shane’s loosely broken body twisted in his past.
He’d be no good to Bonnie if he let himself be swept away.
Yesterday Zach had lulled himself into thinking he’d had no choice.
No responsibility. That it was safe to ski the Bowl because others said it was safe.
Because they said it was logical. But there was no such illusion now.
No diffusion of responsibility. It was an impossible traverse because he’d done the mental math and simply couldn’t accept the risk.
There was no way through. No way around.
He closed his eyes. Tried not to cry.
He had to go back. He had to hope Russ or Dave would emerge from their drugged state and he could corner one of them alone and play the recording.
At some point one of them would go outside to get food from the outdoor pantry or to use the outhouse.
Zach could hide easily enough along the tree line, watching and waiting.
It wasn’t a good plan, wasn’t a totally thought-out plan, but it was the only option he could see. And it felt physically impossible to simply wait, trapped with his back against a clearing of impenetrable snow.
He took another drink from his water bottle, then packed it.
Took his skins out of his bag and hurriedly attached them to the bottom of his skis for ascent.
Then he followed his own tracks up the trail, faster now despite his uphill direction because he didn’t need to use the GPS and markers to locate the path.
Faster because he’d already broken trail.
Before each bend Zach paused, listened, his skin tingling with animal terror over the possibility that Bram and Pike might be around the next corner, or the next, following him, chasing him.
He had to get off the trail. Had to figure out a way to get back to the hut without risking running right into his pursuers.
Again he looked at the GPS. On the downhill side, a precipitous drop.
A granite outcropping on its uphill flank.
No, he couldn’t travel off-trail here. But, yes, there!
The terrain leveled off ahead in a way that should allow him to cut up off the trail, travel parallel to it in the woods, out of sight, toward the hut.
He put away the GPS and resumed moving uphill.
How to hide his tracks leaving the trail?
Only the day before yesterday he’d described the options to Russ as he’d told him about Gray Rabbit: walk in a stream, travel where the snow was already heavily tracked, hide your tracks in someone else’s, backtrack, jump far enough off-trail your tracks weren’t noticeable, hide somewhere so close to the trail your tracks would go unnoticed.
He’d have to be observant. Find an opportunity.
And he’d forgotten about the shelter. He could hide in the shelter he’d dug out with Russ. Was it close enough to the trail that Bram might not notice the curve of his tracks toward the tree?
A distant noise, and Zach froze, head ticking around as though it was the second hand on a clock, trying to ascertain the source. A light, crunching sound, its direction impossible to discern, which at first seemed to come from behind him, then above, then ahead, as if he were being circled.
The monster.
No, noise could travel strangely outside, move unpredictably in the snow. It wasn’t that he was being hunted, it was that his senses weren’t reliable when it came to pinpointing a sound through wind, weather, and distance.
Which wasn’t particularly comforting.
A voice reverberated through him, far away but distinct, and so recognizable Zach felt acid rise in his throat.
It was his father. And if he was talking, it meant he wasn’t alone.
Zach felt fully prey now. More than he’d ever felt playing Gray Rabbit.
He trembled, dropping his poles then scrambling to pick them up.
Where to hide that they wouldn’t find him?
How to hide so they wouldn’t see his tracks?
The question, so theoretical only a moment ago, now constricted his chest, his lungs.
He spun through the list of strategies he’d listed for Russ, but there was nowhere to jump, no tracks to hide his own in, no stream to wade through.
His mind leapt to the spot a few minutes back—or how far back? He wasn’t sure, with the way his thoughts tumbled, the way his body shook—the spot where he’d looked at the GPS, with that drop on the downhill side. Could he leap over it in a way that left no sign? Hide out of view?
Again a voice rang out and at the sound of it Zach changed direction and rushed downhill, scanning for the place he remembered thinking was too dangerous to go off-trail.
Was he really going to jump off there now?
Behind him voices echoed through the trees, still unintelligible but louder. Closer?
He went around one bend, another, and then, yes—on the long, straight stretch of trail ahead, there it was. He leaned, trying to look over the ledge, careful not to step out of his own tracks.
The drop was so sheer Zach couldn’t see where he would land.
A dark gray boulder next to the trail vanished out of sight along that drop, reassuring evidence that something, at least, had found earth below.
It might work. But it wasn’t without risk.
There had to be powder down there next to wherever the boulder rested, but there might also be a felled tree.
He cowered at the idea of impaling himself on a jutting branch.
Or it might be so steep he rolled uncontrollably.
And yet, in the thick weave of trees it was unlikely to slide, and if he did jump far enough without marking the snow, if he did land safely—anyone skiing by, anyone not expecting a person to fling himself bodily over an unknown edge, would only see tracks pointing ahead, and trackless snow to either side.
Zach hurriedly released his bindings, throwing one then the other ski carefully over but to the right of where he wanted to end up. His poles followed. After a moment’s thought he threw his backpack as well, hoping that none of the items slid downhill, or would be buried too deep to recover.
That was everything. It was his turn. Zach planted his feet, swung his arms and leapt across the untouched snow and over the edge.