Page 3 of Trapped with the Mountain Man

Is that his name?

I try to yell my own - “Abby!” - over the sound of rain coming down all around us. He either doesn’t hear me or doesn’t care; it’s hard to say.

For each of his steps, I take two. The ground is slippery, and when I gain too much momentum, my feet slip out from under me. Hunter reaches to steady me with an annoyed grunt. Every time he turns around to check on my continued existence, he seems surprised that I’m not flailing around in the mud like an upturned turtle.

We walk silently. I’m thankful that he doesn’t want to make small talk because he doesn’t exactly seem like he’d be any good at it, and because I’m having a hard enough time finding my footing on the flat but soggy ground. When I slip again and land on my butt with a muddy splat, the bear-man turns and stares at me for a second instead of helping me up right away. He crouches in front of me and takes my face in his hands. Calloused palms tilt my face upwards and his eyes stare intensely into mine.

What’s happening? Is he going to kiss me? Do bears kiss? I hope I don’t taste like s’mores.

That’s the last thing I remember thinking.

Chapter 2

Hunter

“Is bears?”

Those are the last words the woman utters before falling limply backward. I catch her right before her back hits the muddy ground.

Before she closed her eyes, I could see that her pupils were dilated and she seemed disoriented. At first, I thought she was just clumsy, but her coordination has gotten worse as we’ve been walking. It could be hypothermia, exhaustion, or dehydration. Most likely, it’s a bit of each.

Great. What was her name? Amy?

I say it a couple times out loud, but she doesn’t respond.

I scoop her up and carry her back to the station. She wakes up from time to time, usually mumbling something about bears. I try to keep her awake and talking, but it’s difficult to focus on anything besides carrying her and her pack through the heavy rain. My boots slosh and stick in the mud. The flimsy hood of my poncho refuses to deflect a single raindrop, so they land like needles on my face and neck.

When I finally get her back to the station, the fire on the far side of the cabin is nothing but ash. There isn’t time to make another right now. It’ll have to wait until I get this woman out of her soaked clothing.

I tear off her plastic poncho, which is still muddy from her fall, and put her on the bed. She mumbles again but doesn’t move except for the violent shivers that course through her involuntarily. Her brown hair is matted to her cheeks and neck. When I push some of it out of the way, her skin is ice cold.

“Hey,” I say loudly with my face hovering over hers. She doesn’t respond, so I give her shoulders a shake and repeat myself.

Still no luck.

I’ve brought in dozens of these women off the trail the past few months…though most are in better condition than this. I don’t even need to open her bag to know exactly what book I’ll find right at the top. It’s the same shit over and over again. At the main station back in town, they call it The Summer of Lost Broads.

This is new though. I’ve never had one lose consciousness on me. And I’ve never had to undress one to ward off hypothermia.

Hopefully, this isn’t the start of The Winter of Lost Broads. I can’t take much more of this shit.

Once I get the woman settled under the blankets, I work on rebuilding the fire. The fireplace is right next to the bed, so she should warm up quickly once it gets going. Luckily, I chopped a ton of wood and brought it inside before that storm rolled in out of nowhere.

The phone line’s been out ever since the storm hit, so I use the CB radio to call back to town. One of the new kids from the rec staff answers and I tell him to go get his boss, Ryan Ehler, instead. The new kids come and go faster than these women do, and most of them don’t know the forest from their own ass.

“It’s Ehler. You holding up okay in this storm, Shaw?”

“Yeah, but I picked up a woman today out in the Double Spring Gap Shelter. She’s in rough shape, maybe hypothermic. She’s here at my cabin now, but the road’s washed out up near the creek so I can’t drive her back into town until it clears up.”

“Do we need to try to get a rescue helicopter in there? I can make some calls, but I don’t know if they can fly in this storm.”

I glance over at the woman lying in my bed. She’s more lump than woman right now – a pile of blankets with some brown hair sticking out the top. She hasn’t moved. If she is hypothermic, it’s probably just a mild case. The exhaustion is probably what really got to her.

“I doubt she’ll need an evac, but let the rescue team know just in case she takes a turn for the worse.”

“Sure thing,” Ryan says, “She got a name? In case anyone calls about a missing hiker.”

“Might be Amy. I’ll have to get back to you on that when she’s awake. Looks about mid-20s, five-foot-six, brown hair, probably 130 pounds.”

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