|
8/19/2016 7:14:34 PM by Teronsuke
(Edited: 8/19/2016 7:18:35 PM)
Views: 1120
"535.... 536.... 537... Counting the steps from the plane's wreckage let her mind focus on something besides the cold wind cutting through her core. It was nearly a blessing as it numbed her, ribs broken from the crash, the meat of her left arm mauled and poorly bandaged after metal from the fuselage shredded her bicep. Bandages cut from seat covers bound up by a seatbelt strap help the arm snug to her front. Her plan had been a skiing and mountain climbing getaway, a vacation of a lifetime.
.jpg.aspx)
A groaning echoed off the surrounding rocks and ice as she made her way, step by step, down the mountain. Sun had set. It had been beautiful, but that was lost on her. All that mattered was shelter. In the distance, she saw hope: the dark opening of an ingress in the mountain face, a jagged cave where she might take refuge from the coming storm.
621...622...623...
Snow crunched under her boots as she neared the opening, shocked at the joy she could take in the simple victory of finding shelter. Her counting could stop. The last rays of the sun dropped behind the distant mountain peaks as she looked out of the cave at the path she had traveled. As she removed the cell phone tucked like a talisman inside her coat to see if there would be any potentially life saving connection possible to the outside world, she heard the groaning yet again, closer now. Behind her. Turning toward the darkness of the cave, she could smell it getting nearer, the animal smell of musk and hunger and rage.
A roar from the darkness met her as the phone crashed to the stony ground, shattering like her hope. The early bit of moonlight that crept over the mountains showed her that a beast had met her here, and that the cold of the Alps, the snow and peaks and torturous loneliness of being trapped here, was far from what she should fear most. "
|