Chapter Twenty-Six
Sommer
Friday, Dawn
When Sommer left the summit, life for Abbie and Marna was becoming more difficult with every passing minute.
The physical exertion, along with the limited water and electrolytes over the last two days, left their systems taxed even before the virus tried to expel every drop of moisture from their bodies.
Sommer had carried the gallons of water up to them, wearing her N95 and gloves. She treated it to make it safe to drink. But the bleach took a while to do its work, so the women would do without a little longer.
By the time Sommer arrived at the top, Marna and Abbie had used up the last of their stamina setting up their camp.
The tents were pitched close enough to allow for communication, yet far enough away to have some privacy as they dealt with their bodies.
They had chosen a flat spot next to shade trees, with the doors open and facing the fresh wind rounding over the top of the mountain.
Their sleep pads and sleeping bags lay out.
Sommer set up her own tent and left it prepped so that if one of them befouled their nest, they’d have someplace fresh to go. And Sommer wouldn’t be using it; she’d be moving fast to get help. She didn’t need to be encumbered by any extra weight.
Because Abbie and Marna couldn’t stumble but so far and make it back to their sleeping bags, the location they’d chosen provided each woman a screen of vegetation behind her to serve as her own latrine.
The wind that came over the summit would blow the smells and bugs away.
Sommer made them promise not to start a fire.
And not wholly believing that promise—especially Marna, who once she got something in her mind was harder to dissuade—took their fire-starting equipment and stuffed it in her pack.
But before she left, Sommer made sure the headlamps, flashlights, and emergency whistles were tied to their tents, within easy reach, so her friends could signal for help or scare away predators.
Sommer made sure she had her supplies in easy reach on her pack as she gave everything a last glance.
Both Abbie and Marna were behind their screens when Sommer called, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
If they were at home, Sommer would have insisted on taking them to the hospital for IVs. This was an anywhere emergency, not just a top-of-the-mountain emergency.
Sommer started down the trail, pushing off the thoughts of just how far twenty-six miles really was. A marathon run by elite athletes could be done in mere hours. On this trail, in the dark? Best-case scenario, maybe ten if she didn’t let up. More likely it would be closer to fifteen.
Daunting.
She wouldn’t think about it.
Her goal wasn’t the ranger station; she’d cut the trek in two. First, she’d make it to last night’s campsite. It was possible that there were people there. And surely, they’d help.
The bill of her cap made the golden globe of an almost-full moon hard for Sommer to see.
Sommer wore that cap to keep the moths from dive bombing her face as they danced in the light of her headlamp.
She trudged.
And trudged.
After her second near-faceplant, Sommer chose two sticks and made sure they hit solid ground as she moved along.
A twisted ankle, a blow to the head—there were other things to be worried about on this trek. She wondered what might be following her on the trail, which nocturnal animals were on the hunt.
Sommer had grown up camping in these mountains where the stories of the wild men were campfire staples.
These were men who left society and found their way into the mountains, where they lived off the land, hunting and foraging for wild foods, stealing from campers and summer cottages.
She was told you could see their shadows dodging from tree to tree, and that when you got that frisson up your spine, it told you you were being watched; more likely than not, a wildman was stalking you.
Sommer’s heart pounded so loudly against her sternum, she could hardly hear herself think.
Part was exertion; the other part was fear.
Sure, some of the risks might be immediate.
But the low-level hum of danger was sounding for her friends on the summit. She’d seen norovirus hit fast and hard, but nothing like what Abbie and Marna were navigating.
If Sommer were in their place, what would she be thinking as she lay on her bedroll looking out at the night sky, feverish, stomach cramping. Thirsty and unprotected.
She’d be terrified and desperate.
She was, in fact, both terrified and desperate for all three of them.
And a piece of her was glad for the fear because it fueled her system and spurred her on hour after hour after hour after hour down that trail.
Sommer trudged.
And trudged.
When she finally reached their camping spot from the night before, she forced herself to take off her shoes and socks and slowly eat some food.
She wouldn’t look at her watch.
She wouldn’t calculate the time it had taken to get this far.
She’d just keep going.
Restored by calories, hydrated with water that tasted of bleach, Sommer got her boots on and tracked down to where the stream needed to be crossed.
There she stopped, suddenly frozen in place.
Sommer was imagining falling into the water as Marna had. But in her mind, flailing under the weight of her pack with no one to help her like Abbie had helped Marna, Sommer would slide under that second fallen tree, trapped in the sieve.
She’d disappear because no one would look in a strainer to find her body.
Eventually, something would churn loose from her pack and float down the stream.
Eventually, her body would decompose, and there would be no more meat on her bone to hold boot shoe in place, no tendon to hold her tibia to her talus.
Would someone pick up the boot floating downstream and wonder where it had come from?
Sommer closed her eyes and shook her head to rid herself of the cobweb-stickiness of those thoughts.
She pushed away her inclination to wait for the sun to rise and light up the situation.
Climbing onto the trunk, Sommer gripped it in a bear hug with her chest on the bark while she clenched her thighs. In this way, Sommer inch-wormed her way slowly forward with only the tiniest progress with each movement, making sure she was well balanced before she slithered again.
When she finally dismounted from this last challenge, Sommer’s whole body was shaking. Her legs rubbery, she lowered herself to a rock and rewarded her victory with a protein bar so she could taste chocolate.
But soon thoughts of Marna and Abbie squatting behind their screens, purging their bodies, becoming dangerously dehydrated had her up on her feet and moving.
After a while, Sommer noticed the night sounds fading.
And with the day animals still asleep, Sommer could hear a steady woosh, then silence, and again.
There was a road to her left.
From where she was, Sommer couldn’t see any headlights. There was only the black of the shadows and above her the luminescent moon now slipping low over the treetops.
Sommer stopped at a rock, pulling out her phone to check her hiking app, locating the road, and calculating the distance.
It was one mile down the slope to the road and help, or ten miles down the trail to the ranger station.
There was a balance to be processed between safety and speed.
If Sommer left the trail and something happened to her, no one would know where to look, and equally dangerous, they wouldn’t know that Abbie and Marna were in desperate straits.
Getting to a rescue was so enticing; getting off this damn mountain would be so good.
Sommer’s brain was exhausted, and she wasn’t sure she could make a good decision. But surely whatever she came up with would be better than a coin toss.
Flipping to a topo map, Sommer needed to make sure the angle of descent was manageable, and she wouldn’t find herself on a cliff’s edge.
It seemed doable, and she made her decision.
Sommer shucked her backpack and began by making the kinds of trail markers she’d used at camp as a child, placing three sticks in an arrow across the path and pointing in her new direction.
One didn’t seem visible enough, even using thick pieces of dead saplings.
She made three.
Someone would have to step on them to move up this trail.
Next, she used a rock to hammer a pointed stick into the ground like a mini-flagpole. She pulled her hot pink trail tape out of her front pack pocket and tied enough streamers to her pole that it looked like a celebration.
No one could miss this.
On one of the streamers, she left a message about where she’d gone and why, about Abbie and Marna, her initials and the date so rescue could identify her.
Sommer stood back, looked at her effort, and thought that if anybody came up this trail for a hike — possibly that night or Saturday morning — they would find it, and they’d know to get help.
With her pack back in place on aching shoulders, Sommer started down the slope.
Here with no path, her feet were deep in leaf litter. She moved tree to tree, imagining herself an orangutan, gliding through the forest vine to vine.
Sommer heard a car nearby, but she didn’t speed up lest she wipe out so close to her goal.
Tree to tree, tree to tree.
Trudge.
Trudge.
Trudge.
When Sommer got to the tree line and no longer had that support, she sat on her butt and scooted along because the incline was too steep to be safe.
But she could see the black ribbon ahead, and she felt hope rising.
There, headlights bounced her way. Sommer dashed forward, both hands waving frantically.
But she was still lost in the shadows, a headlamp and dark clothes.
The driver drove on by.
After reaching the road, Sommer checked her map and started toward the closest building, a store a few miles farther on.
As she walked, she could feel her twin sister, Sloane, frantic for her safety.
The thought of Sloane worrying made Sommer concerned about the effect her fiasco was having on her twin’s nervous system.
They’d always been close and had always known when the other was in trouble.
“Sloane, you must be pinging loudly right about now.”
Sloane was on bed rest, ordered to keep herself calm lest Sloane’s twins come early. They were trying to avoid a long stint in the NICU.
Would this distress be dangerous to her babies?
As she walked, Sommer tried to send Sloane calming thoughts.
In return, Sommer got a headful of her sister’s true crime addiction.
Sloane would think Sommer’s present position was idiotic.
If this were written into a TV show, Sloane would be yelling at the screen that she shouldn’t be so stupid. “Don’t be out on a country highway as a lone woman hitchhiking, you dumbass.”
According to Sommer’s hiking app, it was still a long way to the store, and she was hitting her wall. So stupid or not, when the next car rolled by, Sommer tried to signal it to stop.
That car rolled on by.
The next rolled on by.
“This is getting scarier,” Sommer muttered to herself.
She’d never take this course if she didn’t think her friends were in such grave danger.
Sommer hated that her sister had planted those thoughts in her head, making fear tingle up her spine and down her limbs.
She thought of herself as a pretty brave woman. But alone on a mountain road without cell connection was where she drew the line.
“First purchase when I get home is an emergency satellite contraption,” she said.
As much time as she and her friends spent in the woods, she should have had one all along. But it also seemed like a luxury item when she had a hot water heater to fix.
Hindsight being twenty/twenty, it would have been well worth the investment.
“Live and learn,” she said.
As the third car drove by, Sommer started to cry.
So great, now she looked weak, scared, and sad. She was the perfect lure for the local serial killer.
A fourth car drove past, then hit the brakes so hard the tires shrieked in protest.
The passenger door popped open.
And Sommer jogged forward to stick her head in, seeing a mom-looking woman clutching her steering wheel to pull herself back upright.
“I’m having an emergency on the mountain,” Sommer explained. “Does your carrier have cell service in this area?”
“No cell connection in these parts,” the woman said. “Quick, quick, get in.”
Sommer pulled off her pack, slung it onto the floorboard, climbed in, and pulled the door shut. “I’m having an emergency on the mountain,” she repeated, clipping her safety belt in place. “I need to call emergency services. Can you help me get somewhere where I can make a phone call?”
“On it,” the woman said and took off at top speed, then slammed on her brakes.
Sommer stretched out her arms to catch herself on the dash.
The woman laughed nervously. “Look at that, you’re my lucky charm.
If I hadn’t stopped for you, those thirty seconds would have put me right in that deer’s path.
I swear to god I hate this patch of road.
I have since I can remember. I grew up just down the road and was out here to check on my grandma.
She’s doin’ right poorly,” she said as they waited for the herd to move across the road and up the slope into the woods.
“I’m sorry to hear,” Sommer said. She couldn’t believe the luck of being in a car and heading for help. Her exhaustion had chased her all the way down the trail, and it had finally caught up with her.
“Gives me the heebie-jeebies every single time, the cold shiver up my back since I was a tiny girl. I always think about dying when I’m on this stretch.
I swear this section of the road is haunted.
You,” the woman said, turning and really looking at Sommer, “look terrible, all covered in mud. What were you doing up on the mountain?”
“Oh, I’m sorry about your car.” Sommer could smell her own stench, so she reached out to lower the window.
“Never you mind about that. This car has seen a lot worse. Kids and a husband and such. How did you find yourself on this stretch of road?” Without waiting for an answer, the woman looked to the side. “Do you think that’s the last of them? I think that’s it.”
Once again, she pressed down on the gas like there was nothing she wanted more than to get out of the haunted woods.
The next blink of time was too much to process.
The woman’s scream.
A deer leaping over the car, its foot coming through the windshield behind the steering wheel.
A thunk. A thud.
An explosion of white.
Another deer that touched the car then fell away.
The woman shoving her door open.
Sommer’s body wouldn’t follow her brain's commands. Her hand wouldn’t reach out to make the grab. Her mouth chomped at the air without sound.
And then the driver was on the ground.
Sommer’s brain forced her into a freeze response.
And this time it was lifesaving.
Sommer had lived through the crash.
The woman had not.