Racing Storm Mountain, page 7
The other two were moving slower, maybe trying to figure out a seemingly safer way down the mountain. Kelton laughed as he zipped on ahead. Hunter acted brave and tough, but when it came to a rougher trail like this, he had nothing. Swann was braver than Hunter, but lacked Kelton’s skill. In only a few minutes Kelton had stretched out his lead to a distance of about two football fields.
This was good, because the trail ahead looked even more blocked than the route through the basin on the way up. Despite having to drive slowly, he’d make better time side-hilling it than through the very deep powder and the rest of the mess of very dense woods in the bottom of the valley. One thing his map didn’t prepare him for was the possibility that the road, even though it was on the map, wasn’t much of a road anymore, and had become quite overgrown. The trees were thinner up on the left slope. It was a little trickier side-hilling on the left side, but he took it relatively slowly, riding the brake to keep control. Again he settled into a pattern: blip, brake, step. Blip, brake, step.
A serious chunk of rock protruded from the snow ahead of him, dropping in a ragged cliff clear to the valley floor. He’d have to go over it. Carefully, he eased the front of his sled more toward the top of the mountain, giving it plenty of power, to fight his way up the steep slope. He smiled. His snowmobile was a beast, its track biting hard and scrambling up that mountain until he’d risen above the level of the rock obstacle. Then he was back to the steady side-hill move.
When he’d cleared the rock, he figured he’d ease himself back down. It didn’t make sense and wasn’t the safest to ride this high. Besides, the trail looked clearer ahead, and it would be fastest to ride ahead down on the floor of the valley.
His sled lurched a little, kind of a side slide that made his heart leap. He thought his snowmobile was rolling flat on the steep slope. That would lead to an uncontrolled tumble down the mountain. Then he heard the whumph sound, even over the engine noise and through his helmet. Above him a crack shot through the smooth surface of the snow, jagged like lightning. Another crack below him.
Kelton drew in a deep breath. He tried to speed up, tried to get away. “No, no, please,” he whined. This couldn’t be happening. Not when he was right in the middle of it. About thirty feet up the mountain, the snow seemed to explode. It was as if all that white had come alive, was furious with Kelton and rocketing at him, sliding away all around him. It rumbled, and his snowmobile turned all over out of control as the whole mountain seemed to shift. Kelton was caught in the middle of a massive avalanche.
He throttled up, trying to outrun the worst of it, but the snow slid right out from under his track and the sled was hard to control. Then a wall of white slammed his body and he flew off his snowmobile.
He screamed, hit the ground, tumbled. Dark, light, dark. Snow flew in all around him. Not like being in a blizzard, but like heavy powder clamping onto his body from all sides. The avalanche videos he’d watched told him to keep trying to swim, to chop his arms like doing a crawl stroke on the lake, in order to stay above the snow.
But he tumbled. It was impossible. He couldn’t even tell which way was up. Kelton screamed until he remembered something else from the video. He drew a deep breath, doing all he could to expand his body, his only chance of preventing his chest from being compressed by the snow, his only chance of being able to move or breathe the slightest bit.
And then it was dark. Very dark, and very cold.
MIKE IRONS SIPPED STRONG BLACK COFFEE FROM A battered old thermos as he sat on his snowmobile. A large bear of a man, he ran his fingers through his beard and then shook his papers. All racers had passed checkpoint two. All racers except for three twelve-year-olds. A kid named Kelton Fielding, a girl—the daughter of the rich actor who’d donated the prize snowmobile—Swann Siddiq, and Mike’s own nephew, his brother-in-law’s son, Hunter Higgins.
“Maybe they’re just messing around,” said the other checkpoint two volunteer, Allie Hennes, a certified paramedic and also a member of the McCall Area Snowmobile Club. “You know, kind of giving up on the race, zigzagging around. Snowball fights, maybe.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Mike said. “You’re probably right.” Still, something about this bothered him. He knew snowmobiles, and he knew this course. Even playing around, stopping once in a while to look at the scenery, those kids should have been coming into range by now.
“Or mechanical trouble,” Allie said quietly.
“Let’s hope.” Mike pulled out his radio and pressed the transmit button. “Checkpoint one, this is checkpoint two, over.” He released the transmit button so he could receive. After a long moment he keyed to transmit again. “Checkpoint one, come in, over.”
Finally the low static on the radio went quiet while someone else transmitted.
Two, this is one. Go ahead, over.
Mike couldn’t remember the name of the guy on checkpoint one. This was the guy’s first year volunteering to help with the race. “What is your location?”
Checkpoint one. All packed up. Just about to head back to town. It’s mighty cold out here, and getting colder. Weatherman says this storm blowing in could be a lot of snow. We plan to be warm in the bar by the time it gets too bad.
Mike whipped the radio around in an impatient circle, waiting for the guy to stop yapping. When he finally shut up about the bar, Mike radioed back, “Checkpoint one. Have a look at your list. Verify you’ve accounted for all racers.”
Oooookaaay, the man radioed back. Stand by.
Allie shot Mike a worried look. Mike tugged his beard. The checkpoint one guy was taking forever.
Checkpoint two, this is checkpoint one. I’ve looked our list over twice just now. Every racer who entered the race has cleared this checkpoint. Is there a problem?
Mike radioed back. “Could be. Stay on your station for now. The bar will have to wait. Checkpoint two, out.”
Had he somehow missed three racers passing through his checkpoint? All kids? What were the odds? He radioed to checkpoint three asking if his missing racers had come through, but not everyone had passed the third checkpoint yet.
He put the radio back in the pouch on his coat. “Allie, you get on your sled and you fly to checkpoint three. Keep an eye out along the way. You got the sled numbers of those kids from the list. Then check with the people at three. Maybe . . .” Mike shook his head. “Maybe the kids slipped by us in the crowd and we somehow didn’t get them checked in.”
“Yeah,” Allie said with a doubtful look. “Good luck.” She slammed on her helmet, jumped on her sled, pull-started it up, and sped off down the race trail. In the increasingly heavy snowfall, she faded quickly into the white.
Mike tugged his beard again, then pulled out his cell phone. Coverage out here was spotty at best. He tried calling the sheriff’s office. No luck. He and Sheriff Hank were old fishing buddies, so he tried calling the sheriff’s personal cell phone directly. Nothing.
He swapped out his cell phone for his radio. “Checkpoint one, this is Mike Irons, about to leave checkpoint two. You’re closer to town. Call Sheriff Hamlin. Tell him we might have a problem. He needs to meet me at your location ASAP. You stay there. I’m on my way to your position.”
Mike put the radio in his pocket, slipped his helmet on, fired up his sled, and took off best speed back along the racecourse. Yeah, this could be nothing. But Mike Irons hadn’t been snowmobiling this long without developing a certain sense for trouble. The weather was steadily worsening and this didn’t feel right. He was going to do all he could to make sure his nephew and those other kids were safe.
CHAPTER 7
“KELTON!” SWANN SCREAMED HOPELESSLY. THERE WAS NO way he could hear her through her helmet, over the noise of her snowmobile, and in that massive frozen cascade ahead of her. She stopped, to avoid driving right into it, and she watched Kelton struggle to drive out of danger. One moment he was on his snowmobile and in the next second both were gone, as though the snow had erased them from existence. She thought she saw him once after that, a flash of darker color in the middle of that blast of snow, but then all was white. “Kelton, no!”
It seemed to take a long time for the snow to finally settle, and once it had, Swann kept her eyes on the last place she’d seen a sign of him. Then she cranked up her throttle and sped toward that location as fast as she could. The valley was an even worse mess now than it had been before, a battle to move through. And when she finally reached the area where the snow had settled, she wasn’t sure at all where to begin looking.
Could he have survived being caught in the middle of that avalanche? If he was still alive, could he breathe under the snow? No way. It had to be impossible. How deep would he be? Where should she start digging? Even if she found the right place to dig, could she get him out before he suffocated down there?
Hunter slid up on his snowmobile, killed his engine, and scrambled to join her. “Oh no. Is he somewhere in this?”
“Yeah,” Swann pulled her helmet off. “I saw it all. It just clobbered him.”
“What do we do?” Hunter removed his helmet.
“Just start digging,” Swann had no idea what to do, but she knew they couldn’t wait around talking about it. She pointed to a certain spot on the slope. “Um, I’m guessing he has to be below that point. So let’s work kind of in a line, punch down into the snow the best you can. We’ll try to feel for him first. If you feel something solid down there, start digging. See what it is.”
Hunter nodded, and the two of them high-stepped through the deep snow to the place she’d indicated. She refused to check her watch and tried not to think about how long Kelton had been under. They punched the snow, trying to reach down to find something. But she couldn’t get her hand super-deep. If he was too low, she’d miss him.
Then he’d die down there.
“Kelton, can you hear me?” Hunter called out.
Swann frowned. “Do you think—”
“I don’t know if he can hear down there. If he’s even . . . I mean, I’ve never been buried like this. So I don’t—”
“Kelton!” Swann yelled. “Kelton, we’re coming for you. Hang in there.”
“Hey!” Hunter called out with such enthusiasm Swann looked up from where she was searching. “Look! Blaze-orange! The flag from his sled, maybe!”
“If it’s still attached to his snowmobile. If he is still with his snowmobile,” Swann said. “You go check it out. I’ll keep searching.”
They dug around and called for Kelton for what seemed like forever.
“Where is he?” Hunter shouted, digging with fury around the orange flag. Digging down, down. “Kelton, come on, try to answer me. Scream and maybe I’ll hear you and find you.”
The two of them kept digging. It was all taking far too long.
“Here’s the sled!” Hunter called out. He dug with greater speed and fury, grunting, rushing to move the snow. “Where is he? Where is he? He’s not here!”
Swann bit her lip. This was terrible. Kelton had wanted to go back. He’d warned about the danger of going ahead, and now he was gone. This was her fault. She might have basically killed him.
DARKNESS. COLD. WAS HE ALIVE? KELTON WIGGLED HIS toes in his boots. He groaned within his helmet. “Of course you’re alive,” he said to himself. “Otherwise how could you be cold?” Then he remembered that talking used up oxygen. He tried to kick, but his legs wouldn’t move. His arms were held fast too, his right arm stretched way back, kind of above his head, like he was raising his hand in class.
Why couldn’t he move? Was he paralyzed? Had he broken his back? Was that why he couldn’t move? Maybe that was stupid. If he’d broken his back, why did nothing hurt? But that’s what paralysis was, right? Something gets broken and you can’t feel anything.
He groaned, fought to move. “No, please,” he whimpered.
You can wiggle your toes in your boots. You can wiggle your fingers. You’re not paralyzed. You’re stuck in the snow. Working through the ideas in his mind helped him calm down, slow his breathing and the use of oxygen. How much useful air could there be inside the little space within his helmet? Not much. And no way air could get through all this snow.
Kelton Fielding had a few minutes left to live.
It was so cold. The snow, where it had blasted up his shirt on his back, where it had pushed down the tops of his boots, where it had slid up his sleeves and into his gloves, hurt so bad. It was absolutely freezing, but felt like it was burning his flesh, or cutting him, eating him. More than anything, he wanted to move to wipe the searing cold snow off his skin.
Maybe he’d die of the cold before he ran out of air.
What would it feel like to die of suffocation? Would it be like holding his breath underwater? That tightness in the chest, pounding in the head, fingers tingling, urgent desperation to burst with a gasp. Or would he simply get quiet and tired, maybe a little confused as the last of the air ran out?
His eyes stung. Would he use up air faster if he cried? Would they laugh at him when they found his body with tears frozen around his eyes and on his cheeks?
They’d notify his mom. The police would come to the house and she’d think he’d done something bad until the cop told her he was missing. By the time he told her that, Kelton would be long dead. Would she even miss him?
He sobbed. Would anyone miss him? Mom wouldn’t have to work extra shifts to buy him shoes or whatever. Wouldn’t have to worry about fixing him supper. Wouldn’t be angry about another bad report card.
He doubted anyone at school would miss him. Maybe Milo Tanner would say it was a shame he was gone. But the teachers wouldn’t have to lecture him about his grades anymore. Ms. Foudy wouldn’t be mad at him for talking during study time again. Hunter Higgins wouldn’t have to put up with his questions.
Hunter. And Swann. How big had the avalanche been? Were they buried alive, freezing and slowly suffocating in the dark right now like he was? They’d die too. Hunter’s family would be crushed. The whole school would shut down for the funeral. Swann’s death would be all over the news. Fancy Hollywood types would tweet about how sad it was. The articles would talk about the death of the daughter of the actor and actress, along with the son of the important local lawyer, and . . . and the other kid.
Thing was, Hunter wasn’t such a bad guy if Kelton really thought about it. He was patient when Kelton kept talking to him during study time. Hunter hadn’t ever made fun of him like Bryden or some of the other guys.
And Swann. Wow. Swann Siddiq. Even her name sounded like a song. And she looked like . . . an angel. With that completely black hair, and her dark eyes, that bright smile. And the girl had guts too. She hit that jump with no hesitation. Sure, she was rich. An off-the-charts SuperPop. But when she had been assigned to work with him in science yesterday, she hadn’t acted all superior or like working with him was super-terrible, the way McKenzie or Morgan might have done. Swann was either a great actress hiding her hate for him well, or she was kind of cool.
Now Kelton had led both Swann and Hunter out here to their deaths.
And who would feed Scruffy now? Would that little fuzzball be shivering out in the cold on his chain in his dirt spot, wondering why Kelton never brought him anything to eat anymore?
Kelton sobbed. “Sorry, little pup,” he whispered as he shivered. He was so sorry for so many things.
“THERE’S NO RECEPTION OUT HERE!” HUNTER SHOUTED. “That thing is useless! Help me dig!”
Hunter was right. Not one bar. Swann slipped her phone in her pocket and threw herself back into digging.
“He’s not down here!” Hunter shouted. “I’ve got the snowmobile, but he’s not here!”
Swann wiped her eyes. “We gotta keep looking. Look somewhere else. We have to look, like, everywhere.” She cursed. “How long has he been . . . How long’s it been?” She kept fighting through the deep snow, stopping every foot or so to reach down as deep as she could.
“I don’t know.” Hunter climbed out of the pit he’d dug around the snowmobile. He began scrambling like Swann. “He’s been under about two minutes. Maybe three.”
Swann shot Hunter a nervous glance. “How long can—”
“No idea.” Hunter crawled across the snow, trying to dig down with his legs and arms. “Keep looking. Kelton! Can you hear me? Try to shout!”
Swann could hold her breath for about a minute and a half, maybe a little longer if she was absolutely forced to do so. Three minutes? No way. More and more, she felt like they were searching, not for a guy from their class, but for a dead body.
She was breathing hard, heart pounding. Pushing through this deep snow required a lot of work. Was she slowing down? Was Hunter? Why? Because they were tired? Or because it was less and less likely that hurrying actually mattered?
“No,” she groaned through gritted teeth. She would not slow down, could not give up. She forced herself to take two more big steps. Her steps were too big, it turned out, because she lost her balance and fell over on her side, reaching out instinctively to break her fall, but of course her arm pushed right into the snow. And her fingers hit something solid that moved a little.
“What?” She slid closer to whatever was down there and started shoving snow away. “Hey, Hunter?” she said. She brushed away snow and found the black tips of a glove. She squeezed them. Fingers inside! The fingers wiggled. “Hunter!” Her scream echoed through the whole valley. “Found him! He’s alive! Get over here! Help me!”
Swann Siddiq ceased to exist. There were only her hands shoving away snow, moving in a blur, clawing at the white. “Kelton, we’re coming! Kelton, hang in there! Kelton, can you hear me?”
Hunter slid right into her and scrambled to push the snow away too. “Are we on top of him? Maybe we’re crushing him.”
