Chapter 83 - The Alpine Shelter
We hit the frozen crust of the snowpack at terrifying speed.
The impact knocked the breath from my lungs in a violent gasp, but I kept my arms locked like steel bands around Lily, rolling onto my back to absorb the violent shocks as we plummeted down the avalanche track. Snow exploded around us in blinding white sheets. Rocks, ice chunks, and frozen scrub tore at the heavy fabric of my jacket, spinning us uncontrollably down the eastern flank of the mountain.
I dug my heels into the hard-packed drift, fighting against the centrifugal force that threatened to fling Lily from my chest. For fifty terrifying seconds, the universe was nothing but white noise, freezing wind, and the smell of bruised pine needles.
With a final, bone-crushing lurch, we slammed into the deep drift accumulated against the back wall of a stone structure buried in the snowfield.
The world stopped spinning.
Silence rushed in, heavy and suffocating, punctuated only by the distant, muffled thrum of Julian’s helicopter circling high above the cloud deck at the summit.
I lay on my back, gasping, cold air searing my lungs like broken glass. "Lily?" I croaked, my tongue swollen and dry. "Lily, answer me."
A small cough broke the silence. Lily shifted against my chest, spitting a mouthful of snow from her lips. "I... I lost my mitten, Mom."
A half-sob, half-laugh tore from my throat as I tightened my arms around her, kissing her cold forehead repeatedly. "We can get another mitten, baby. We can get a thousand mittens. Are you hurt? Can you move your legs?"
"I'm bruised," she mumbled, wiggling her toes inside her heavy boots. "Where are we?"
I pushed myself up onto trembling elbows, brushing the frost from my eyelashes. We were half-buried beneath the eaves of a subterranean stone emergency hut—an old shelter built during the Great Depression for winter mountaineers, completely hidden by the winter drift except for a low wooden door reinforced with iron crossbars.
The helicopter's searchlight swept the upper cirque high above us, illuminating the falling snow like millions of glowing sparks, but the thick overhang of the cliff face shielded our hollow completely.
Julian thought we were dead at the bottom of the gorge. Or he assumed we had been pulverized against the rocks.
I crawled to the shelter door, scraping away the hard ice around the latch with Arthur’s heavy silver ring. With a groan of rusted hinges that sounded like a gunshot in the silent valley, the heavy door yielded, opening into a dark, musky void that smelled of dry cedar and stale kerosene.
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I pulled Lily inside, shoved the heavy timber bar into the wall brackets, and collapsed onto the dirt floor.
We were off the mountain's crest. But we were miles from civilization, with an army of private contractors hunting our scent.
