And it took hearing his own scream to make it all real.
My heart seized from the sound and the next thing I knew I was screaming too, pushing off with my legs until I was off the cliff face and on flat earth. I looked around me wildly, spotting the surrounding mountains that had emerged from the mist, the river and the valley below but not Dex. In the narrow crest we had found ourselves on, Dex suddenly ceased to exist.
“Dex!” I screamed from the bottom of my lungs, the word ripping out my throat.
I ran to where I had last seen him and found the truth too late.
The edge was too sharp, too near and I was standing right on it. My world began to slide beneath my feet, my balance thrown off.
I fought to run, to scramble back to the earth that wasn’t moving. I threw my body forward and to the left, trying to go for the most stable looking part of the cliff face.
I made it for a few seconds as my fingers tried to wrap around the edge of a jagged black rock, my feet scrambling wildly below me as they fought hard for something solid beneath them. There was nothing, the ground kept moving, a slide of rock and snow, a symphony of falling objects that was deafening to my ears as I held on for dear life, the world beneath me disappearing in a blink of an eye.
I managed to haul myself up as much as I could by my arms and pecs, my muscles screaming for me to stop. But I couldn’t. I was almost there. I was almost safe. I was almost still.
I swung my legs up and around, my boots catching on a side of snow and earth that hadn’t crumbled away. I leaned on my legs, hoping they had the strength to pull me up and I pushed away from the black rock, my gloves sticking to the snowy crevasses and being pulled off.
For one moment I had made it. I was hanging sideways but I wasn’t moving. I was staying put. It took that extra push to get myself from a horizontal position to a vertical one and what I should have done was put my trust in the rock that wasn’t moving.
But all my power, all my weight, went to my legs. And there was that horrifying instant, that first slip of earth beneath you, when you realized you made the wrong choice.
The ground fell away and there was nothing I could grab to save me from it. I felt my body fall, being swept downward in that brutally loud avalanche. I was bumped and thrown, not freefalling but dragged, like Mother Nature herself had reached out from the ground with stony fingers and pulled me down toward her belly.
I don’t remember ever coming to a stop.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Whiteout.
That’s what I saw when I finally pried my lids open, my lashes stuck together with the glue of tiny snowflakes.
White. White. White.
Where was I?
I rolled over with a groan and felt an explosion of pain in my side. I looked down and as my vision began to right itself, I saw a rock jutting into my stomach, protruding from the cold, snow-blown ground like a weapon.
I eased onto my back, the chill seeping through my jacket. My bare fingers tingled as I ran them over my body. I felt intact, nothing bleeding or broken.
But how did that explain the rich, acidic smell of blood in the air?
I slowly sat up, surveying my surroundings.
I was sitting on the barren, rocky ground up the side of a mountain. Snow swirled in the air from all directions, some of it falling on the icy white patches on the earth, the rest blown away like angel dust.
Because of the infinite white, I could barely make out a forested valley below, and across from me, in the haze of snowfall, a few jagged peaks.
Beneath me the ground sloped off gently, alternating between sudden drop-offs. Vertigo swept through me and I dug my frozen fingers into the hard ground, suddenly afraid I’d roll off the side and fall to my death.
A soft rumbling came from my left. I turned, painfully, my side still smarting, and saw a slight overhang where snow fell off in gentle lumps. My heart sped up a few beats.
I let out the breath I was holding, watching it freeze and catch in the air before drifting away, and noticed a trace of red where the snow had just fallen.
My bones seized with chill.
I peered at the red spot, my eyes widening as it began to spread and bleed across the snow.
Glancing up at the overhang where the snow had come from, I saw another clump of it come sailing down, landing on the red with a poof.
It too had a spot of red in it that slowly spread like a stain on a paper towel. Curiosity getting the better of me, I carefully got to my feet and walked over to the patch of silky wetness. Hunched over, I tried to figure out why the snow was bleeding. I felt a drip on the back of my neck.
I reached back with my hand and when I took it away, it was slick with blood.
Did I even want to turn around?
I did, anyway.
Above me was a limp, lacerated arm, its torn and bloody fingers dangling over the edge of the overhang.
Claws. Teeth. Blood.
Tearing. Gnawing. Eating.
The images and sounds ripped through my head in a flash of smoky darkness.
Dex! I remembered Dex.
My chest collapsed in on itself as I tried to recall the last time I’d seen him.
Where was he?
What happened to him?
I eyed the arm above my head and felt the world drop away beneath my feet.
I propelled my body up, grasping onto a rocky outcrop as a tiny bit more of the earth slid away beneath my feet. I was still on the side of this God damn mountain and it seemed no matter where I ended up, I couldn’t trust the ground.
I pulled myself up, amazed that I hadn’t been injured in the fall. It all came back to me. Dex. He had fallen away and then I followed suit.
I looked around me in a growing panic. Beneath was the river, cutting its way into the trees. Above me was a bloody limb.
The reality set in. The fear set in. It started in my bones, then made its way to veins, an icy, suffocating liquid that soon saturated every part of me.
This wasn’t fear for me. This was the fear for Dex.
Even though I felt I could ignore it all if I kept sitting the way I was, perched on a rock, watching over the world like a weary falcon, I knew I had to look up. I had to look at the arm. I had to make sure it wasn’t Dex.
Because if it were him…
I could barely swallow, my heart constricting painfully. I couldn’t think about it. I just had to see. I had to know. And then, if I was lucky enough, I could go on my way off the edge of the world.
I took in a deep breath and started climbing up the slope, the blood spattered rocks coming closer to me. My mind buzzed just behind my eyes, so many thoughts, so many fears at once that not one of them got through. I was in a text-book perfect state of shock and if I could survive this by just going through the motions, then that’s what I was going to do.
I made it to the top of the overhang, my eyes purposely avoiding the thing I came to look up. Instead I looked straight up into the sky and concentrated on the high clouds that moved swiftly, the winter sun that tried to punch through them. I tried to remember the moment, the last moment I’d have in my life before everything changed completely.
Closing my eyes, I braced myself and turned in the direction of the arm I’d seen.
I steadied my breath as much as I could, ignoring the weakness at my knees, and opened my eyes.
It was an arm all right. But it wasn’t Dex. The coat was an army green. Or it had been an army green because it had been ripped off at the sleeve. It lay there on the snow in a pool of its own blood, the redness still creeping along each crystal of snow, the warmth of it melting it on contact.
It was Mitch. I knew that hand, saw the way it had pushed back those very sleeves in anger, when it had pawed at me, when it pulled back at my hair in a vicious yank. I couldn’t say I felt bad but I wasn’t relieved either. Because even though Mitch was gone, whatever had done this to him, well that wasn’t gone at all.
And now I was alone on the side of a mountain with that beast somewhere nearby. Nearby enough to rip the limbs from an elephant-sized man.
Above all of that, Dex was still nowhere to be found.
I stepped away from the arm and looked up. I could see where I had fallen from, a narrow ledge of rock that sloped off as it went down. The path my body took was scattered with rock debris, marring the snow that barely clung to the ledges, but at least it was a somewhat gentle descent without too many obstacles in the way. It explained why I wasn’t in as much pain as I should have been, although I must have hit something that made me lose consciousness, albeit momentarily.
The world slowed down as I stood there, coaxing my brain to come alive, to push through the imposing panic and come up with some way out of here. I was on a mountain side. I had to get to the river. I had to get there alive. I had to find Dex. So what did I do first?
Well, I couldn’t find Dex if I was dead, so leaving the scene of the bloody crime would be the first step. I searched the terrain around me for some way down, then when I spotted an area where the descent wasn’t as steep, I went for it.
I was trying to be careful more than anything, but when I heard some rocks scattering from somewhere above my head, I threw caution to the wind and just started scrambling down. It was easier now that I didn’t have a backpack – I guess it had fallen off during the tumble – and that burst of adrenaline was keeping the pain at bay. The rocks may have scattered on their own, or it was the mark of the beast, searching for me, but I wasn’t going to stand around and wait to find out.
When the ground finally became flat again and it looked like I was on another plateau, that’s when I started giving it all I had. I ran as fast as my legs could take me, and now that I was away from the cliff face and couldn’t see the river, I could only head in the direction I thought the river would be.
I was running so fast, so blindly, that I almost missed it.
The shotgun. It was lying on the ground, looking like it was discarded in a hurry. I came to a skidding halt and then quickly scooped it up in my hands. This wasn’t the shotgun that Dex and I had taken from Mitch. This was another gun all together. I closed my eyes and quickly racked my brains for an explanation. Could Mitch have had another gun that we didn’t know about? Judging from the size of the pack he had on his llama and the fact that he was a psycho, potential-rapist and NRA-worshipping bastard, I decided that it was very likely. And now, the gun was with me and he was dead. For all his spewing about being a hunter, he was the one who got hunted in the end.
And I was next.
Knowing time was of the essence, I flipped open the action and checked to see if it was still loaded. I could only see the shine of one shell in there. Good, but I hoped there were more because when it came down to it, I would need as many chances with this thing as I could get. Hand guns I could do. I had no fucking clue how to wield this weapon.