Page 52 of The Mountain
No, thank you.
Eddie stares at the group’s retreating backs with visceral irritation, then turns to glare at us. “Aghh. See. You guys are sooo slow,” he hisses.
“Oh, please,” Antoine snorts, reaching up to pull his goggles down over his eyes. “I don’t see you jogging.”
Except when he says jogging, it sounds more like ‘shogging,’ and I can’t help but grin stupidly at the sound of it.
When I first moved in, his accent annoyed me. Not because I didn’t like the sound of it, but because it made me feel so stupid.Dense. Dumb as a box of rocks. I could only understand about half of what he was saying.
Now…
My cheeks heat as I remember the way he sounded last night, his voice raw and thready, English and French mixing together. I still hadn’t understood much of what he’d said, but I’d understood his meaning well enough. And I liked the way it sounded.
“Shit. They’re already dropping in,” Eddie whines.
I look up, squinting against sunlight and sparkling snow to the point where the ridgeline crests, to the swooping cornice overhanging Backyards, about a hundred feet away. A few weeks ago, making that drop had been terrifying, even with Liam at my back telling me what to do. The sight of it still makes my heart race and stomach drop, but it’s a good feeling. Like how I used to feel before a mission.
At least at first.
I watch as the fifth guy drops off that cornice, pushing hard enough with his skis that the thin edge breaks away. He gives a grunt of surprise, then laughs, appearing moments later in an explosion of powder farther down the slope.
“Fucking newb,” Eddie gripes, adjusting his skis where they rest on his shoulders and lengthening his stride. “He completely munted that cornice. Probably going to snowplow down the whole fucking run.”
Behind him, Liam shakes his head, turning to share an amused look with Antoine.
That’s when it happens.
I feel it before I hear it, a shuddering vibration that strikes to my very bones, like God himself has hit the earth with an anvil, smiting us all just like my parents always said he would.
The mountain roars, a threatening rumble at first, then explosive and deafening, shattering the barrier betweenhereandnow,thenandthere. Somebody screams. Something tears—metal or trees, ice or flesh. Above us, the sky is clear as cut glass. Only I’m standing still, my feet rooted to the trembling snow-covered earth. No rolling vehicles, no dust, no burning oil.
My vision clears, the mist of memory fading away. Below us, the mountainside has been stripped away, layers of snow and ice cut like frosting from a cake, revealing rock and ragged tree stumps among boulders the size of cars. No, not boulders, I realize. Snow. Ice. And farther down, the avalanche still screams, gathering speed and sending white clouds into the blue-morning sky as it strips the mountain bare.
“Fuck. Fuck.” Eddie is next to me, his gloved hand gripping my elbow. I’m not sure when he got there, but I’m grateful to havehim beside me, grateful for his almost painful grip tethering me to the mountaintop. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Mon dieu,” Antoine rasps, close at my back, and Liam gives a pained, wordless sound in reply.
“Those… those guys…” Seth’s voice rises in pitch at the end, and he presses his gloved hands to his face. “Oh my god. Those guys.”
My earlier panic settles, heavy as a boulder in my stomach at Seth’s words. Like one of those ice-boulders strewn on the mountain below, cold and dangerous. There are men trapped in there. I’d seen them just moments before, seen their smiles and excited determination.
There had been smiles that day in the desert, too. Men brimming with the excitement of a new mission and a sunny day. I’d pulled them all out. Man after man. A hero, they’d called me, and given me a medal. I’d shoved it in my childhood desk at home and refused to look at it.
My legs move before I realize what’s happening, boots breaking through clods of ice and crud as I throw myself over the broken cornice, clambering down the path the avalanche stripped bare. I grip my board in both hands, using it like a staff to steady myself on the uneven terrain.
“Matty!” Eddie’s voice calls out at my back, a distant sound, dim against the drumming of the blood in my ears.Move, move, move, my heartbeat seems to say, sounding like my first drill sergeant. All the while, my eyes scan the broken snow, searching among ice and branches for any sign of life. The color of a jacket, a ski, a pole. Anything.
“Matty, it’s not safe.” Liam’s voice cuts through the hum of my thoughts like a knife, and I turn to look back up at him, at thefour guys peering down at me from the ridgeline, their faces cast gold in the rising sun. “There could be another slip,” he shouts.
My chest squeezes at the sound of fear in his voice, an almost sickening pang of gratitude hitting low in my gut. This could have been him. This could have been us. If we’d gotten up the mountain faster, if we hadn’t stopped to catch our breath, to talk, to look at the view.
If those other guys hadn’t rushed past us. If they hadn’t come up the mountain today…
I turn back to the wreckage below me, to the impossible expanse of broken snow, stretching endlessly to the base of the run, and squeeze my eyes shut. Four years ago, I would have prayed. Did pray, actually, as I crawled through metal and glass and dirt. A miracle, they’d called it.
But it wasn’t a miracle for Samuel. Or John. Austin had a girlfriend and kid back home. What kind of god would take a kid’s father from him?
No, it was just pure luck, and we were all just dice rolling in one messed-up lottery. If there was a god, he hadn’t been listening that day.
