Desolation Point (7 page)

Alex pulled out a pen and scribbled what little she could decipher of the lettering onto the back of her hand. She was reaching for her radio when she realized that Marilyn would still be in bed for a good few hours yet. Reluctant to make a nuisance of herself with one of the rangers whom she didn’t know, for something that could have a perfectly innocent explanation, she moved away from the truck.

“Probably nothing,” she said. “Kids with no backcountry permit.”

Her theory sounded reasonably plausible, and she picked up her pace as she passed the East Bank trailhead. The dawn chorus was starting early, countless birds waking to defend their hard-won territories with fierce song. She listened to the variations, trying to identify the species from what Walt had taught her. It was an effective distraction, allowing her to bury a little deeper the nagging suspicion that her
reasonably plausible
theory was utter crap. Permit-less kids might hide their truck, but they wouldn’t go to the trouble of hanging false plates. Staring straight ahead into the darkness, Alex found herself listening for noises other than birdsong, noises that might alert her to the presence of other people, that might tell her exactly who else was with her on this trail.

The sun had only been up for a few hours and the day was already too hot. For Sarah, taking a break was an ungainly exercise in finding a decent rock to sit on and then wrestling her pack from her shoulders, but her mouth was desert-dry, and sweat was soaking through the thin cotton of her shirt, so she persevered. It was a minute or two before she was able to drop her bag onto the ground and dig into it for her water bottle. Despite her thirst, she took care to limit how much she drank; the trail up to the summit was a notoriously dry one. With the last of the snow long melted from the lower peaks, there were no reliable water sources, and the route was taking her longer than she had anticipated.

Pressing the cool of her bottle against her forehead, she stretched her legs out in front of her and took a moment to catch her breath and enjoy the view. Some distance below the tree line, Ross Lake cut an azure swath through the valley, its vast shape defined by the mountains that rose sharply from its shores. At the campsite, she had only been vaguely aware of the true scale of the peaks, but from this higher position, the range seemed endless, soaring skyward with its summits carved out in glistening white against the sky. She felt incredibly lucky to have such a beautiful place all to herself, and the heat and the momentary discomfort faded into insignificance. She rummaged in the side of her bag, found a packet of dried fruit, and decided that this would be an excellent spot for a snack.

She had slept reasonably well, waking in good time to have breakfast and say good-bye to Zach and Johnno. Zach had given her his old transistor radio, insisting that they had no further use for it now they were “returning to civilization.” She had accepted it with good grace, not really expecting it to work on the trail but appreciating the gesture regardless. When she stowed her water back in its place, it knocked against the radio’s plastic casing, and she pulled the radio out, curious to see what stations she might be able to intercept in the middle of nowhere. Once she had fathomed how to switch it on, a slow turn of its dial brought her an earful of static. She winced, lowering the volume just in time to avoid a blast of some terrible heartfelt anthem that she recalled Ash once dismissing as
emo shite
. More static followed.

“—armed and dangerous. Public are warned not to approach but to contact the—”

The report faded into a buzz of white noise. Curious, she lifted the radio, angling its aerial to try to sharpen the signal.

“Once again, the violent hijack of—led to the escape—”

She snarled with exasperation. “Oh, you bloody thing, you start a good story―”

“In the direction of the—license plate—Hotel November Foxtrot. And now to other news. A seventy-seven-year-old man has defended his decision to marry a go—”

Finally admitting defeat, Sarah clicked the radio off. “I hope to hell that was a gold digger,” she muttered, fastening the top of her bag and then threading her arms through the straps to hoist it into place.

She stood slowly and turned to look back at the distance she had covered. The trail had been climbing for the last three miles, and the relative cool of the lower forest had given way to more exposed terrain. Somewhere off to her left, a marmot spotted her and barked a warning, its shrill yelps carrying easily across the meadows. She spun around to try to find it, and snapped a quick photograph of it standing up on its back legs to act as group lookout. With her attention still focused on her camera’s viewfinder, a sudden change in the light momentarily confused her, until she realized that the sun had gone behind a cloud. She lowered her camera to squint upward. Small white clouds were scudding harmlessly across the vast expanse of blue sky. The cloud that had dulled the sun moved quickly on, leaving untempered heat beating down on her once again.

“Onward and upward,” she declared brightly.

The marmot, almost as if it had understood her intention to leave its territory, frantically yipped its encouragement.

*

Alex was singing softly beneath her breath when the crash and thump of something unhurried, something undoubtedly larger than the deer and squirrels she had encountered so far, stopped her in her tracks. Her own progress, apart from the song she had been cheerfully but almost inaudibly massacring, had been largely silent. The forest had hemmed her in, its needle-covered trail muffling the sound of her footsteps while the hemlocks and cedars towering above her head allowed her to walk comfortably in dappled shade. For hours, she had been hiking without a care. Marilyn had promised to get back to her with any word on the mysterious SUV, but as time had passed, Alex had drawn the conclusion that no news was good news. Now she crept off the trail, carefully dropped her pack, and crouched low among a cluster of ferns that were thriving beside a small stream. Beads of water left over from early morning mists dropped steadily from their fronds, the intermittent splatter as they hit the ground not nearly loud enough to muffle the pounding of her heart.

Another thump and a snap of brittle wood, closer this time, made her head jerk up, her hand automatically reaching for the holster she no longer wore and the gun she no longer carried. She hissed a curse, pressing herself back against the rough bark of a stunted larch as if that would somehow let her merge into the very fabric of the forest. The ferns less than three yards away shuddered violently and she held her breath, only letting it out again when a large black bear emerged from the cover of the vegetation. It rose onto its hind legs, sniffing the scents being carried toward it on the breeze, before dropping again and moving quickly across the open territory, back into the safety of the trees.

Once it was well out of sight, Alex swayed forward onto her knees as she tried not to laugh too hysterically. She had seen bears before on numerous occasions; she gave herself a mental slap for having allowed her imagination to run roughshod over her common sense. She fastened her pack back into place and stepped gingerly out of the ferns onto the trail.

She had only been walking for a few minutes when she heard the dull rumble of thunder in the distance.

*

Sarah gave a cheer as she pressed her hand against the sun-warmed wood of the lookout station on the summit of Desolation Peak. The slatted planks of the shelter formed shutters, sealing the small building from intruders, and she traced the planks with her fingers, following them around until she came to three low steps that led to a secured door. The air was cooler with the altitude she had gained. The keen wind chilling the sweat that had stuck her hair to her forehead felt glorious after so long in the baking sun. She hurriedly shrugged off her pack so she could perch on the steps and catch her breath. Elation at having made it so far pushed aside the unease caused by the crack of thunder she had heard as she reached the summit. She drank sparingly from her last bottle of water, then propped it beside her bag and took up her camera instead. She felt the muscles in her legs protest at standing again so soon after she had promised them rest, but to the west a menacing blanket of gray cloud was swirling over the mountaintops, and she didn’t dare stay on the summit for too long, however much she would have liked to linger.

Through the viewfinder, she lined up a panoramic shot of the mountains whose names she had committed to memory: Mox, Redoubt, Spickard, Heart of Darkness. Layers of pristine snow softened the sharp edges of their summits, but their collective mien was one of hostility, the sweeping backdrop they formed undeniably majestic but unforgiving all the same. She gradually made her way around the shelter, any inclination to rush tempered by the sheer grandeur of her vantage point. Far below, with reflections of storm clouds boiling on its surface, Ross Lake seemed to stretch for an eternity, effortlessly filling the void where glaciers had retreated. Squinting hard, she tried to work out by which shore she had camped, before laughing at her own ineptitude and taking enough photographs to ensure that she had all of the possible options covered. An eagle circled overhead, its cry piercing the grumbling unrest of the threatened storm, while she crouched low and used a pencil and a scrap of paper to take a rubbing of the embossed US Geo Survey benchmark that was fixed onto a rock near the shelter.

Scrubbing her pencil across the paper, she wondered uncertainly why she hadn’t just taken a photograph. Her answer came as she stared down at the paper in her hand: an echo of Molly’s voice chattering with excitement as she ran her crayons across textured bark or stone walls to transfer their patterns onto her sketch pad. Molly would spend hours searching the garden for rough surfaces, only giving up when she finally ran out of pages in her pad. It had been Sarah who had first shown her little sister the trick…

The pencil dropped to the ground and Sarah blinked. Her fingers ached where they were clenched around the paper and her legs felt leaden and cramped; she had no idea how much time had passed. As she rubbed her eyes dry with her knuckles, the white of the paper in her hand suddenly darkened. She looked up at the sky, nervous tension twisting in her gut.

“Shit.”

If her exposed position had afforded her better protection, the rapid progress of the storm through the valley would have been truly spectacular to behold. She watched wide-eyed as a surging mass of charcoal-black cloud began inexorably to swallow up what remained of the blue sky. The sun submitted without a fight, plunging the summit into an unearthly twilight. That was enough to shake Sarah from her stupor, and she ran across to the lookout station, slipping and skidding on rocks already slickened by the first drops of rain. By the time she reached her pack, the mountains and lake she had photographed not half an hour earlier had vanished entirely. Mist drifted toward her, blurring the edges of the landscape, making everything instantly alien and unfamiliar. She quickly pulled on her waterproof jacket, drew the hood up, and fastened it tightly against the hail and rain that was now pouring down. The walls of the shelter were protecting her from the worst of the wind, so she huddled next to them, trying not to panic, trying to weigh up her admittedly limited options: to stay where she was or to attempt to make her way down.

A bolt of lightning split the sky, static electricity charging the atmosphere and making the hairs on her arms prickle. Thunder immediately followed in its wake, a furious percussion that smashed off the mountains. As the freezing rain lashed her, she tried and failed to prize open any of the shutters fastened across the windows of the shelter. The door would not budge an inch, even when she shoulder-charged it. Soaked to the skin and shivering uncontrollably, she winced at the electrified hiss and roar of the storm. She tried to console herself with her experience of the European Alps, reminding herself that even the most ferocious of storms there could sometimes burn out and pass over within minutes, sweeping out as abruptly as they swept in. In the absence of any real plan, that made her decision for her. She returned to the side of the steps, where she unfolded the survival bag she had packed almost as an afterthought, and she somehow managed to wriggle into it in spite of the wind ripping and tugging at the thick plastic. She tucked her hands between her thighs for warmth, raised her knees to her chest, and settled down to wait.

*

Through vertical sheets of rain, Alex could just about make out the shape of the small boat nearing the jetty on Ross Lake. A gust of wind barreled into it, throwing it wildly off course, until its skipper managed to correct its bearings and its tentative progress resumed.

“Hey there!”

Her hail carried on the wind, and one of the two young men waiting on the shore waved cheerfully as she walked over. The smile left his face as she drew closer, and he turned to confer urgently with his companion.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure the skipper’s done this hundreds of times,” Alex said, as soon as she could be heard without raising her voice.

“Sorry, we thought you were someone else,” the taller of the men said in a strong Australian accent, continuing to scan the trail behind her as he spoke. “Friend of ours—well, a friend as of last night. She went up Desolation on her own this morning, and…” He gestured in the direction of the mountain and then shrugged helplessly. Its lower slopes were barely visible, the summit completely shrouded by the storm.

His companion squeezed his bicep in reassurance. “We were going to go up after her,” he said, “but it got so bad we figured we’d only be causing more problems, and then there’d be three of us wandering aimlessly out there.” He opened his hands in frustration. “We’re fucking useless at this survival lark. We tried to phone the ranger station, but there isn’t a hope in hell of getting a signal in this.”