Prey

That bear would find her here if she didn’t move.

Son of a bitch!

Abruptly she was mad. No, not just mad, she was furious. No way in hell would she lie here feeling sorry for herself and wait to die. It didn’t matter why she’d ended up in this position; if she gave up she was dead. Damn it, no one could accuse Angie Powell of lacking determination or sheer damn stubbornness. She’d get off this mountain if she had to crawl.

She sat up, slung the rifle scabbard on her back again, got her saddlebags. Mud had splattered into her mouth when she’d fallen the second time, so she spat it out. Then, on elbows and knees, she began crawling. She tried to keep her injured ankle from banging into anything because it hurt like a son of a bitch if she didn’t, but she kept going even when pain made her grind her teeth together.

She made progress, slow and steady and miserable, but progress all the same. Then her right hand hit nothing but air, and she stopped just short of tumbling over an unseen sheer drop. Panting, she eased back. What was she supposed to do now? How wide was this drop? Was she on the edge of a precipice? She waited for a flash of lightning, and after a few seconds of darkness realized that the heart of the storm had moved on, because the lightning wasn’t nearly as intense or frequent as it had been. Briefly she debated turning on the flashlight, just long enough to see what she was facing. Was the chance worth it? Right now, she was invisible; Chad had no idea where she was. But the flashlight might well pinpoint her position for him. On the other hand, she was stuck unless she could see what kind of obstacle was in front of her.

Before she had to make a decision, a flash of lightning very obligingly lit up the landscape for her. The drop in front of her was straight down—for a few feet. Three feet, max. Getting down without putting any weight on her right foot was going to be tough, but she wasn’t going to let this little cut in the earth stop her.

She dropped her saddlebags, heard them plop in the mud below. Then she unslung the rifle scabbard and carefully let it slide down. Then she turned around, spinning on her belly in the mud, and slid over the edge, her good foot feeling for the ground, her hands digging into the mud to steady herself until she had solid earth beneath her. She stood there a moment, balanced precariously, and took a deep breath. Maybe she wasn’t moving quickly, but she was moving in the right direction: down.

The mud beneath her feet shifted, and the world was yanked out from under her. Helpless, she simply fell. She slid and tumbled through the mud, grabbing at anything, everything, and finding only more slippery mud and the occasional rock. She tried to dig in her left heel, tried to jam her fingers into the earth, but she continued to slide and roll. There were rocks, and she tried to grab them, but they were there and gone so fast she couldn’t manage. The edge of one of the rocks sliced her palm; her head slammed dangerously close to another.

And then she stopped, her momentum halted by mud. She lay there, panting, and once again took inventory. No, nothing was broken. She felt battered from head to foot, but everything other than her ankle seemed to be functioning. How far had she fallen? The slope hadn’t been horribly steep, but it was steep enough. Her rifle and saddlebags—which held her flashlight, pistol, and protein bars—were up there.

She had a choice. She could crawl up, or she could crawl down. She could keep going, or she could retrieve her stuff.

Neither option seemed like a good one, but one was definitely worse than the other. She needed the saddlebags, needed her food and the pistol. She needed that rifle. She couldn’t leave her weapons up there.

It had been tough enough moving down the mountain with a damaged ankle; moving up was torturous. Her progress was measured an inch at a time, and every muscle in her body screamed at her to stop. She’d gotten banged up in the fall, and now gravity was working against her instead of with her.

What had taken seconds to do—fall—took an excruciatingly long time to navigate in reverse. She didn’t want to think about how long it took her to climb back up, so she didn’t; she just climbed. Every minute was precious, but she didn’t have any choice. She didn’t just crawl; she dragged herself up, a cursed inch at a time. She used her left foot to find purchase and push. She grabbed rocks with her bloody hands to keep herself from sliding back down. She clawed her way up, her fingers digging deep into the mud. Mud crept beneath her slicker, through her sweatpants, into her boots. Cold rain continued to beat down on her. All Angie thought about was her goal: her rifle, her flashlight, her pistol. Food.

Do it or die.

She did it.

A bush gave her something to grab on to; she clutched it, pulled herself up, and then she was there, at the small shelf that had fallen out from under her. She wanted to cheer, but she stayed quiet. Even when she’d been falling, she hadn’t screamed. Her survival instincts had kept her quiet—aside from the occasional thud—and they kept her quiet now. She’d celebrate later, when she was off this mountain.

She could reach her gear. She dug her left foot deep into the mud, bracing herself so she wouldn’t slide back down before she had a good grip on the saddlebags and rifle. They were both safe, just a couple of feet way from the divot in the slope. She felt a brief spurt of triumph as she grabbed the rifle and slung it over her shoulder, then the bags.

She might not have made a success of her career as a guide, but she had never been a quitter, and she wasn’t quitting now. It was tempting to sit down and rest, but she didn’t let herself, because she wasn’t a quitter.

Instead, she held on to her gear, positioned herself, and started a controlled slide back down the hill—on her ass, this time, half sitting so she had more control. Yeah, a controlled fall. She held the rifle up, trying to keep it out of the mud as much as possible, though she wasn’t certain how it could get any muddier than it already was.