She gulped another hit of her drink. Bésame… Bésame mucho… That damn song, and her drunken mother… she couldn’t shake the tune out of her mind. Maybe if she walked around?
As she gazed out of the window, the deepening colours left her cold, reminding her she actually used to hate that old shirt of George’s and how Annette got upset whenever he wore it. She shivered a little, and turned back to the fire to see the untended flames were dying. Like her marriage. She bent over to pick up the poker but her gut wrenched and her throat gagged and, suddenly, she threw up uncontrollably into the fireplace.
The fire sputtered… the embers dimmed to black-red… but as the steaming stinking liquid evaporated, they flared up more fiercely than before and the flames erupted afresh.
Isabel wiped her mouth against the back of her hand and turned back to the computer, and the remaining clip.
She pressed ‘play’.
56
ISABEL NEEDED TO get down to Manifold, and it had to be tonight. Every hour mattered. Even tomorrow morning would be too late.
Why on earth had she come here with no phone… no fucking anything? She kicked herself. How ridiculous. How reckless.
With her head in her hands, she took deep breaths and calmed down a little, thinking it through. In daylight, even through snow, she knew that four hours at the most would get her to the town. That’s how long it had taken her last year. But at night? Six hours? Eight? She had no way of knowing. It was 5 PM already and she no longer cared how awe-inspiring the sunset might be, just that it might eke itself out a bit longer so she could trek as far as she could before dark. After that…
She had no time to lose.
Quickly, she prepared her backpack. Even though the trip wouldn’t last more than a few hours, doing most of it in pitch dark would have its challenges. She snapped open the lid of the emergency box and saw the yellow EPIRB on top, the Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon. She mulled over triggering an immediate distress signal for Search and Rescue. But with time so critical—with every second counting—she was certain she’d get herself to Manifold faster than hanging around up here wondering, but not knowing, if someone had picked up the signal while that… while Ed… and Niki…
The two Secret Service agents who had packed the emergency box for her were also keen mountaineers and had made the trek to the town themselves, plotting every mound and creek, almost every tree and burrow, and had printed and laminated the whole thing onto the mountain map sitting below the EPIRB. Even more thoughtfully, they’d uploaded a digital version of it onto her combination GPS satellite tracker/EPIRB. The device was working—she checked—and she stuffed it into her front parka pocket, together with a compass, just in case. Into various pockets and zips in her backpack, she slotted signal flares and matches, a whistle, a foil space blanket, a sleeping bag, a fluoro-orange plastic undersheet, chemical hand warmers, a collapsible hand shovel, a first aid kit, a miner’s lamp to strap on her forehead over her pull-on cap, a waterproof flashlight, a coil of rope, a roll of duct tape, a penknife and spare batteries.
Isabel wasn’t taking anything for granted, the way she’d done with Ed. She also shoved in an extra pair of mittens, hat, and even a second windbreaker—it didn’t look remotely like it could rain, but if she slipped into a creek she could freeze to death without a change of top clothes. The pack was already bulging, and that was before cramming in food and water.
By the time she’d finished, she’d also scoffed down a full mug of the hearty pumpkin soup she’d been simmering to avoid having to carry too much, but even so she threw in a couple of ring-pull cans of tuna and spaghetti, and some Mars bars. Accidents easily happened in the wild, everyone knew that.
As she hoisted the pack on her back, it wrenched her backwards a step or two. She steadied herself, deciding she’d have to rethink the contents. She shucked the bag off onto the floor and wolfed down more soup while she pulled out what she thought she could risk leaving behind.
Winter, she knew, was prime time for dehydration. The colder it got, the harder the body needed to work to maintain its temperature and the extra energy demands called for water to fuel them, and plenty of it. So damn the added load, she decided, and stuffed two extra bottles inside even though they were in glass, not plastic.
57
DAISY WAS NO longer at Daisy’s Bar & Grill but Brad kept everything else at Andy Goodman’s after-work hangout the same: the Millers on tap, the long-necked Buds, and the kettle-cooked peanuts in the unsanitary bowls that customers slid along the bar to each other with a traditional mountain holler.