Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sommer
Friday, mid-morning
Sommer had been sitting very still in the woman’s car for over hours now.
With that stretch of time, she had recalibrated, assessed the situation, and formulated the plan, which was non-action.
Sommer had been stunned as a deer hoof bashed through the windshield and then jolted by the blast of the airbag.
Her brain stuttered in the next few seconds as the deer slid off the car hood and another brushed by the frame and dropped to the ground.
The woman opened her door and died.
Right in front of Sommer’s eyes.
A hasty choice. And death.
The woman lay dead right by her door. She hadn’t taken a single step when she went down because when they hit the pole, they dropped the electrical line.
The main thing Sommer had to do in this situation was to sit extraordinarily still and not touch anything metal.
After all these hours, Sommer would have thought she could decompress, rest, and be ready for action as soon as the opportunity came.
That might have been true for the first hour.
Less so in the second hour
But now that she was moving into the heat of the day, being trapped in the car was torture.
Abbie and Marna were still in dire straits on the mountain, and Sommer was stuck in place until someone drove by.
She would have thought that after all these hours, someone would have come by.
All those cars she heard that morning must have been heading to work.
Sommer hated the idea that no one would pass again until the shifts were over and they drove home again.
And if they came by, would they recognize the danger of the line lying across the road? Or would they, too, get stuck in this situation?
Sommer reached up to her billed hat and pulled off her headlamp.
All she could do was watch and wait, and when someone came, she’d flash SOS to try to warn them away.
Sommer was exhausted after the long night of full-effort hiking and the aftereffects of adrenaline.
Yet, she couldn’t close her eyes, couldn’t sleep. She needed to be focused and ready to protect people on the road.
And in her sleep, she might shift and die.
Sommer wasn’t an emergency responder. She was making an educated guess about her situation. Much of her education had come from the driver’s body lying in her view.
That she shouldn’t put one foot on the ground at a time when a line was down was something she’d seen in a meme on social media. It didn’t tell her what to do if she was stuck in the car.
Stuck. In. The. Car.
Hours ago, Sommer had rolled her fingers into the fabric of her hiking pants and held her elbows tight to her ribs, sitting like a statue, so she didn’t risk touching metal.
It wasn’t only her life at risk.
If Sommer were killed, and there weren’t any hikers that reached the summit and found Marna and Abbie, her friends, too, could die.
Sommer felt the weight of her responsibility.
And she could feel her twin, Sloane, freaking out.
As twins, they had always been so close they finished each other’s sentences.
They had always known when the other was in danger and often acted in time to save the day.
But no matter how freaked out Sloane got, there was no way Sloane could send any help their way until Saturday night, more likely Sunday morning, when Sommer’s itinerary said she should be home.
If she were electrocuted and couldn’t tell the tale, at the least Sommer had left the marker with information on it.
You’d have to be a zombie walking through the woods to miss it.
Sommer had hope because she was forcing herself to have hope.
“This trembling has to stop,” she told herself aloud.
Sommer was doing a lot of out-loud self-talk. It ranged from placating to motivational to angry. But it all happened within the tight confines of her posture.
Her hips and knees ached.
Her muscles burned.
Sommer hoped her discomfort was from sitting still for so long and not the telltale signs that she, too, was getting sick. This was not the time for anything to exit her system as a projectile.
A cough barked out of her throat. Then she sucked in a deep, stuttering lungful of air, only to cough it out again.
The downward thrust on her diaphragm pressed miserably against her bladder.
She had to pee.
Her need to pee took up a lot of mind space.
For a moment Sommer considered trying to ease her pants down, ease her hips off the seat, and pee where she sat.
But wouldn’t it put her in even greater danger?
Wet mats plus electricity seemed equally dangerous as touching metal.
In her mind, Sommer gamed it out: the liquid conducted the electricity, resulting in a deadly zap to her hoo-hah.
Is that how they’d eventually find her? Pants down and a barbequed beaver?
Sommer wanted to laugh at the absurdity, but she could already feel an overflow dribble.
“Please,” she whispered for the umpteenth time without any explanatory ask. “Please.”