Racing Storm Mountain, page 14
“Not much,” she said. “I’ll put it in your plastic emergency bag.”
“And that inside your snowmobile suit,” Kelton said.
They packed snow over the remains of their fire and then parked the rented snowmobile inside the mine. “Thanks for getting us this far.” Swann patted the machine.
After a few pulls, they started Hunter’s snowmobile, then Kelton’s. Then came the hard part. “This is gonna hurt, Hunter,” said Kelton, “but I can’t figure another way to get you out.”
“Going to hurt?” Hunter grunted in pain. Then he fought hard to keep from screaming as Swann and Kelton carried him out of the mine.
“Keep moving,” Kelton said. “Let’s just get the worst of the pain out of the way all in one go.”
They did not have anything for Hunter to lie down on, so they tried the next best thing. Swann helped tie Hunter back-to-back with Kelton, using Kelton’s emergency rope.
“I’ll try to lean forward so you can lay back and keep your body and leg straight,” Kelton offered. “It’ll be awkward driving, and I can’t promise no bumps. But I’ll do my best. Swann, you want to follow and watch, make sure he’s OK?” Kelton pointed up the slope. “Getting around will be hard, but we know we basically gotta go that way, follow the pass in that direction, up over the top, down the other side. Eventually we’ll reach the creek at Stone Cold Gap, and after that, the trail. Then we’ll find help, no problem.”
“Easy!” Swann shouted.
Kelton and Hunter chuckled, but Kelton could feel Hunter shaking, feel his many little groans of pain. Of course, Swann had been joking about this being easy. Kelton knew very well that this was going to be the worst day of Hunter’s life.
Kelton driving his own sled, and Swann following on Hunter’s, the three of them set off on the long journey home. Kelton took it slowly, carefully scouting ahead for what looked like the smoothest way forward. But this was backcountry sledding through thick powder. It could never be a smooth ride. Kelton tried to use his upper body as a shock absorber system, doing all he could to reduce the impact of each bump.
It was mostly useless. Hunter groaned. He sort of hissed in pain. He whimpered. Several times he screamed. Kelton promised himself that whatever else happened, he would never in his life tell anyone about hearing Hunter cry.
Doing his best to keep his eyes on the trail, Kelton turned his head to call back to Hunter. “Hang in there, man. We’re coming up over the top of the ridge. Be heading back down real soon. I’ll get you out of this. I promise.”
Hunter only moaned. The guy didn’t even sound human anymore.
Kelton’s sled ran well, ripping through the newly fallen powder, steering smoothly around trees and rocks, pushing forward. For all the difficulty, he couldn’t help but love the feeling of power he controlled in this machine he’d fixed up and made to run. “Come on,” he said quietly to it. “We’re counting on you to bring us home. Just keep on going. Nice and steady, now.” Kelton blipped the throttle to get it up over a rise, and although the road was long, and they had a tricky basin to navigate, he was thrilled to see the downslope before them. The long way out.
With apologies to Hunter, he turned to look back and make sure Swann still followed them. She offered a quick wave, right with them. SuperPop could drive that sled.
The snow ahead was a collection of big puffs with some dark undersides. Could be rocky terrain. There was enough snow to make almost any area passable, but Kelton had to think about Hunter. He eased the sled around it, watching a big drop-off twenty yards farther to the left and picking up a little speed on a gentle downhill slope on the smoother path. This would work. They’d make it back.
EVEN THOUGH HUNTER’S FACE WAS HIDDEN BY HIS HELMET and he was bundled up in his snowmobile suit, the tension in his body was obvious. Following a few yards behind, Swann watched as he suddenly squeezed himself extra-hard about the shoulders or threw his head back, and a moment later she felt the bump that had knocked his leg around and sent that fresh stab of pain through him.
She followed Kelton around some rough-looking territory. “Geez, cut it close to the cliff, Kelton,” she said to herself. Nobody would hear her through the helmets and over the motor roar.
They were up over the top now and heading downward. She smiled. They were finally going home. Once home, she would spend hours safe and warm in her library. Maybe put on an audiobook. Something she’d listened to before, because she’d probably fall asleep.
The front end of her sled flew up, her engine whined louder. She was slipping backward.
To her left, the snow crumbled and fell away. Nothing beneath it! She screamed. This didn’t make sense. The front of her sled rose higher. She was sliding backward. A giant crack in the ground, to her left, and the snow falling down it, like sand through a sieve to her right. Her sled was sliding back into the crevice, big enough to swallow her and her machine.
Swann panicked and maxed-out her throttle. “Please! Go! Go!”
So much loose powder before her, all spilling down her snowmobile’s track into the pit behind her. She was losing ground. She couldn’t pull out of this. A thousand terrified thoughts flew through her mind in an instant. I’ll die Never see Mom and Dad again Never grow up This is going to hurt so bad.
KELTON FELT THE HARD ELBOW IN HIS RIBS, HEARD Hunter shouting. Afterward, he wasn’t sure if he could tell anyone exactly what had happened. He saw Swann, sled skis way up, backsliding into that crevice. And he moved without thinking. Braking hard, he untied himself from Hunter, Hunter untied himself, or they worked together. Then Kelton threw himself off his sled, rolling over the top of the snow to avoid the slow high step through the deep. When he was close enough, he stomped down into the powder and reached for Swann’s arm. “Grab on to me! Come on!”
SWANN FELT A HARD SLAP ON HER ARM.
Kelton had appeared out of nowhere, his grip an iron claw digging into her forearm, and her shoulder ached as he yanked her toward him. She ran, jumped, pulled on Kelton. His other arm slapped around her shoulders and pulled. Behind her, the sled’s engine whined higher. A thud. Crunch. Scrape. Finally a loud crash.
She hit the ground hard, landing on top of Kelton. When something like this had happened in Snowtastrophe III, the hero character looked into the beautiful eyes of the girl he had just rescued for a romantic moment before the two of them kissed.
There was no romance now. Landing on top of Kelton had hurt. And he groaned. Swann was pretty sure her knee had accidentally hit him where a guy hurts the most. There was no eye stuff because they both wore helmets. And helmets or not, there would be no kissing.
She climbed off him, moving up the minor slope away from the surprise gap in the ground. Idaho could be like that, a mountainous jigsaw puzzle of rocks, cliffs, slopes, and crevices. The snow hid a lot of it, and had almost taken her down.
Kelton groaned again as he slowly crawled through the snow after her, away from the crevice, smoke rising from the fire of the wrecked snowmobile below.
When they’d finally reached Hunter by Kelton’s sled, Swann removed her helmet. “I’m so sorry, Kel.”
Kelton took off his helmet. “Oh.” He spoke through pain. “I think . . . it’ll pass . . . someday. You probably would have been worse . . . if you had fallen.”
“What do we do now?” Hunter said quietly after a long quiet. “Three of us and one snowmobile. We can’t all ride one sled back. Especially not with my leg.”
Swann flopped over on her back, head resting on the freezing snow. A new shiver went through her. They were trapped again.
CHAPTER 15
YUMI CURSED. AGAIN. IT WAS THE THIRD TIME SHE AND Annette had managed to get her snowmobile stuck out here. She remembered her uncle Mike saying if you didn’t get stuck, you weren’t snowmobiling hard enough. Well, she wasn’t interested in sledding hard. All she cared about was finding her cousin and the other two.
Finally, they’d rocked the snowmobile and blipped its throttle, easing it ahead inch by inch until its track bit, and they were going again. In the past, Yumi hadn’t been interested in backcountry snowmobiling, but now she openly hated it. How could anyone think this was fun? She tried to push out of her mind the dark thoughts of all the horrible things that might have happened to Hunter and the others. The two of them had hurried to pack and head out even before they had light. Then they’d had to power through slushy mush in that shallow point in the creek to avoid the jump at Stone Cold Gap. She knew exactly where they had to go, but this was still all horrible. She and Annette rode out after them, crowded onto the snowmobile with both their fronts and backs laden by backpacks stuffed with supplies to help their friends. If there was still time.
Yumi drove that snowmobile up Storm Mountain farther and farther, hoping she was anywhere near where Kelton had led them. Stupid shortcuts.
“Yumi, look!” Annette shouted close to Yumi’s helmet as her arm shot forward, pointing up the hill. Before them, a definite column of black smoke rose into the sky. “Do you think it’s them?”
“A fire burning out here in all this snow?” Yumi shouted back. “Someone must have started it. Let’s go find out. Get that radio ready!”
Yumi cranked the throttle and sped up. Driving this wasn’t easy, but that column of smoke was like a magnet. More than that. Yumi had read about black holes, super-gravity events in space that sucked in stars, chunks of planets, even light itself. That was the kind of pull this smoke, this dark beacon possibly pointing the way to her cousin and best friend Hunter, had on her.
“Come on you”—Yumi cursed—“thing. Go!” She cranked the throttle, desperate to go faster and faster, up the hard slope.
“Do you think it’s Hunter?” Annette shouted to be heard through their helmets and over the engine buzz. “Like he started a fire to help people find him?”
“Don’t know!” Yumi yelled back. “Hope so! Just taking forever to get there to find out.” She didn’t want to tip the scales of fate by even mentioning what would happen if the fire went out and the smoke vanished.
“WE CAN’T JUST SIT HERE,” SWANN SAID. “IF NOBODY comes along, we sit out in the open and freeze? No way.”
Kelton sat sideways on the snowmobile seat, leaning over, head in his hands. “We can’t fit all three of us on one sled, especially not with Hunter hurt like he is. You want us to leave somebody behind? Leave someone to die, maybe? Or else somebody walks out of here alone, maybe back to the mine for the other sled, leaves the other two? But that could be just as bad for the walker. End up lost, then frozen, then . . .”
“So we’re just out of options?” Swann asked. “I don’t care. I’ll take the risk and walk out of here if I have to.”
“Swann, I can’t let you go. You know—”
“You can’t stop me either.”
“Will you two please shut up?” Hunter said. “You make my leg hurt even worse! Nobody is . . .”
He trailed off and they all perked up, hearing it at the same time, a faint buzzing, almost like a distant chain saw. Swann exchanged an excited look with Kelton. This wasn’t a saw. She’d become all too familiar with the sound yesterday and today. She’d heard it all over McCall through the winter.
“A snowmobile?” she asked.
Kelton sprang to his feet and looked around, as if trying to find the direction from which the noise was coming, but with all the echoes, it was difficult to figure out, sometimes, the origin of a sound.
At the top of the ridge, she couldn’t tell how far, came a flash of red and black, hard to see through a haze of blowing snow. But in the next instant it was clear. “It’s a snowmobile!” She jumped up and down, waving her arms over her head. Kelton did the same. “Hey! Over here! Help! Please help!” The sled stopped, little more than a dot in the distance.
“No,” Kelton said, desperation in his voice. “No, they have to see us. Please.”
All three of them yelled, Hunter lying in the snow, Swann and Kelton standing on top of Kelton’s snowmobile waving, hoping so much they’d be seen.
“YUMI, LOOK!” ANNETTE SCREAMED. “DOWN THERE! TWO of them, by that snowmobile.”
Yumi had seen them, of course. That’s why she’d stopped for a moment, to get a careful look and make sure it was real. Because what she thought she saw was only the greatest sight of her whole life. Her cousin could be down there.
“But why only one snowmobile? Where’s that fire coming from?” Yumi asked. “And I can only see two people? Do you see three people? Oh no. Did they lose someone?”
“Only two,” Annette said. “Let’s get down there!”
“Wait!” Yumi said. She pulled from her pocket the best handheld Motorola radio she could find at the lodge and checked to make sure it was on channel 9, the emergency traffic channel everyone was using on the search. She keyed the transmit button. “Emergency! Anyone on this channel. Please respond. This is Yumi Higgins. I think I have eyes on at least some of the missing snowmobile racers from the McCall Winter Carnival snowmobile race. I’m . . . I’m up on the old gold mine road between Big and Little McCall mountains. Ahead of us is a snowmobile and at least two people. There’s a fire coming from somewhere, smoke coming up. Can anyone hear me? This is Yumi Higgins. I think maybe I’ve found the missing racers.” Her voice tightened up as she finished. “I hope I’ve found them.” She let go of the transmit button so she could receive. “Come on, someone pick that up. Tell me I’m not totally out of range of—”
Yumi, this is your uncle Mike, the voice came on the radio, a little scratchy. I know about where you are. You sure it’s them? Over.
Yumi radioed back, “I’m not sure. I can see two people in the distance. One snowmobile. Something’s burning, maybe down over a cliff.” Had someone gone over the edge? Did the fire mark the worst? “I don’t know who it is, but I wanted to try to call for help while I’m at the top of the ridge. I’m about to head down to see if I can help. Um. Over.”
When you get to them, stay there! I’m on my way with help. Keep trying to call. Let them know they’re going to be OK. Over.
“Will do. This is Yumi Higgins, signing off. Um. For now.” To Annette, she added, “Let’s go see if that’s them.”
“HE SEES US!” SWANN SHOUTED. “HE’S COMING THIS WAY! He sees us!” She threw her arms around Kelton and squeezed. He nearly fell off the sled seat they were both standing on, but somehow managed to regain his balance to hug her back, if the one-armed squeeze could be called a hug. More just kind of an excitement thing than a hug. Grits and Pops didn’t hug. Not really. Grits and SuperPops? Impossible. For real.
Finally, she let go and jumped away, down off the sled and instantly down past her knees in the snow. Kelton watched the sled coming down the hill closer and closer. “I think there’s two people.”
“Seriously?” Swann asked.
“Hope they have an aspirin or something,” Hunter said.
“Hold on, Hunter,” Kelton said. “I think we’re finally going to get out of this.”
An eternal few minutes later, the snowmobile slid to a stop next to them. The driver pulled off his helmet. But he was a she. And she was Yumi Higgins. She took one look at Hunter, lying on the snow next to Kelton’s sled, and gasped, running to him. Annette removed her helmet too. “You guys OK?”
“Oh yeah,” Kelton said. “We’ve had an awesome time.”
“Hunter’s leg is broken,” Swann said. “He’s in a lot of pain.”
Yumi looked up from Hunter’s side, tears in her eyes. “What happened?”
“No big deal, cousin,” Hunter said. “Fell down a hole in the old gold mine.”
“You were in a mine?” Yumi shouted.
“We needed the shelter to warm up,” Swann said. “Kelton was pretty cold after we pulled him out from under that avalanche.”
“That second avalanche,” Hunter added.
Yumi hugged her cousin. “Higgins, you idiot.” She paused, bit her lip. “I’m so glad you’re alive. If you’d gone off and died, I would have killed you.”
Annette Willard, proud reporter for the school newspaper and website, watched it all, openmouthed. “Oh, this story is going to make such a good article.” She chuckled. “But first, we have candy bars, cans of soup, blankets, hand warmers, a thermos of hot cocoa, bandages, flashlights, dry clothes. All we could carry.” She joined Yumi at Hunter’s side, giving the guy a hug.
“You’re going to be OK, Higgins,” Yumi said. “Uncle Mike is coming. He’ll bring others.” She looked up at Kelton and Swann. “You’re all going to be OK.”
Kelton let out a long, relieved sigh. “Well, they might take a while. Meantime, I’m hungry.” He rummaged through one of the three backpacks the girls had brought. A little mini camp stove. A can of soup. Double Noodle! A can of baked beans. “Or what do you think, Hunter? Swann? Should we wait until we get back to eat?”
“Start cooking!” Swann said.
Hunter laughed and coughed, offering a thumbs-up.
Kelton started working on their feast right away, using his sled’s seat as their table. Swann stepped up, a huge smile on her face. She held out her gloved fist, and he bumped it, because in that moment, when they’d finally reconnected to the outside world, he couldn’t make himself care so much about the different worlds from which the two of them had come.
CHAPTER 16
A FEW WEEKS AGO, WHEN MOM AND STEVE WERE OUT late, Kelton had found a DVD of this old movie called Die Hard on Steve’s movie shelf. Mom would never have let him watch it if she knew. It was awesome-violent, but with a lot of adult stuff. At the end of the movie, after the terrorists were all defeated and the hostages rescued, the movie’s action hero guy and his wife were hanging around with a bunch of cops, police cars and ambulance lights flashing, safe again. That was the scene back at the snowmobile race starting line.
