Chapter Two
“Did you hear that?”
Lazarus Fortney looked at his two brothers for confirmation.
Jeri shook his head, but Dante tipped his ear to one side as if he were listening.
Their attention was snagged by a cacophony of squawking birds that had been frightened from their roosts.
“Well, there’s definitely something out there. I hope it’s not a damn grizzly,” Dante replied. “We need to get off this bloody mountain.”
Their snowshoes made for relatively easy walking, but the conditions were deteriorating fast. Much faster than they’d expected. They needed to get out of there; fast.
Lazarus frowned and stopped, forcing the other two to come up short behind him. “Seriously, that sounded like a scream.”
The three of them stayed quiet and strained to hear, but it was hard when the wind was blowing a gale all around them.
“Nah,” Jeri began after a couple of minutes. “It must have been the wind. God knows it’s howling loud enough to…” He stopped speaking when, during a mere fraction of a second when the wind died a little, there was a distinctive yell. And it was definitely human.
“Shit, I heard it that time,” Dante declared. He looked at his compass. “It came from the northeast, and it sounded like a woman. Who the fuck would be out here in this weather?”
“Someone in trouble, if I had to guess,” Lazarus replied. “Come on, we need to check it out.”
The three of them trudged through the deepening snow as quickly as they could, listening as they went for any further sounds, but there was nothing.
“Hello?” Lazarus shouted as loudly as he could, even though his booming voice was mostly stolen by the wind. “Is anyone there?”
They stopped and listened for a reply, but none came.
“We might have been mistaken,” Jeri commented after they’d been walking for a good ten minutes. “I’m pretty sure we’d have come across someone by now.”
Dante disagreed. “We all heard that last shout, and we each thought it sounded human. Let's give it another five minutes. It’s not like we’re veering way off course. Just heading sideways a little.”
“Keep your eyes peeled,” Lazarus directed. I’ll check ahead, you two cover the left and right. If someone’s in trouble, they might be buried in the snow. In this blizzard we could almost step on someone before we see them, but I’d hate to find out there was a tragedy up here which we might have averted.”
The other two grunted their agreement and they all continued trudging through the abysmal weather conditions.
“Look! Over there!” Dante cried a couple of minutes later, pointing to a blur of red that was careening in the wind.
“Shit!” Lazarus cursed. “That looks like it used to be an emergency tent. Keep looking. We can’t be far off.”
“I think I can see something,” Jeri called a few minutes later. “What’s that over there at two o’clock?”
Dante and Lazarus followed the direction of his finger.
“I think you’re right,” Dante replied. “I can just about see something yellow in the snow.”
The three of them hurried over what was no more than a speck of rapidly disappearing color, mostly covered in snowfall.
“Fuck, you’re right, Dante. It is a woman.” Lazarus brushed flakes away from a face which was far too pale, except for her lips which were a worrying shade of blue. “Let’s get her up.”
“Miss! Miss?” he called, tapping lightly at her cheek. There was no response. “Jeri, can you try to check her out, so we know if it’s safe to move her?”
Jeri dropped to his knees in the drifts and brushed off her legs and torso as best he could. He pulled off his glove and pushed his hand underneath her coat. “She’s got a decent core temperature still,” he told his brothers. “But her lower half isn’t adequately covered so she’s losing heat fast.”
“She’s not a rookie. See the quality of her gear? Looks like she must have got caught out by the weather or something,” Dante added as he took the GPS unit out of her lax hand and slipped it into his pocket for safekeeping.
“Pull her back, gently, Laz,” Jeri directed. “It looks like her foot might be caught in something. He pulled up her first leg and brushed more snow away from her boot on the other as Lazarus caught the woman under her arms and eased her back slightly while Dante helped Jeri.