Month: May 2022

Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

As the tent walls darkened around him, Christopher found himself thinking about the past. He wondered if his family had arranged a funeral for him by now. What would people say about him?

He had been to funerals for people he didn’t care for very much. He had an uncle in particular who was a mean drunk. Christopher’s cousin, Susan, had spoken very eloquently about Uncle Dale. Christopher had come away wondering if, perhaps, he had misjudged the old man, at least until he overheard Susan talking about him later in the evening, when everyone had been through a few drinks.

Christopher didn’t think anyone would be speaking ill of him. He didn’t have enemies, so far as he knew. He got along. He was nondescript. If they remembered him for anything, it would be his childhood. And really, they wouldn’t be remembering him; they’d be remembering his brother. They’d be remembering the aftermath that was the rest of his life.

“Christopher kept his head down and stayed out of trouble,” they’d say. “He did his best to make his parents happy. He did well enough at his mundane job that they kept him around, but he was never going to be in upper management, was he? Not in his character.”

He tried to think of the hyperbole they’d use in his eulogy. He couldn’t come up with much.

There’s a kind of cowardice, he thought to himself, that’s not impressive or exciting, like deserting the army the night before the battle. It’s more like failing to stand up to the crowd that you know is wrong. Failing to stand up to anyone, for anything. Just doing the minimum that you think the people in your life want you to do.

He tried to think of a time when he had taken a risk. Nothing since childhood. Children have no conception of risk, they just act and find out later whether it works out or not.

He sat up in the dark. This was it. He was in the middle of the biggest risk of his life. Even this wasn’t entirely his own choice. He had been tossed out of the sky into this ridiculous situation. Every choice available was a bad one. Rot underground or go look for someone in the empty wilderness?

He sat for a while, cross-legged in his sleeping bag with his hands in his lap. His thoughts turned in circles of irritation and despair and self-loathing. He realized he was shivering, his body heat not being captured fully by the sleeping bag.

He fumbled for the lantern and lit it. Fuel was one of his most limited resources. He put on his layers and stepped out into the dark, the lantern providing a little orange bubble of illumination around him. He tried to remember where the closest trees were by the position of the rock and the tent, and trudged off with hatchet and sled. His aim wasn’t perfect, but after a couple minutes he came close enough to the pair of birches to see the lantern light glinting in the snow on their branches.

He went to work, chopping all the dead wood and more besides. He stripped papery bark, slipping it into the pile of wood on the sled.

Back at the tent, he cleared more space in the snow with the collapsible shovel. The air was still, and the sky was clear. The stars were unbelievably bright. It seemed almost offensive to drown them out with a fire, but he was shivering again as he cooled from the work of chopping wood.

He was confident using the flint now, but he lit the fire with a rolled-up piece of birch bark in the flame of the lantern. The shredded bark burned quickly, setting the smallest branches alight, which slowly ignited the larger branches. He split the wettest wood into thin pieces, and only put it on once the rest was blazing. He sat on a low part of the boulder and felt the heat on his face and hands.

The stars were still bright, even with the sparks and smoke and light of the fire rising up to meet them. The bonfire was bright enough that he could see a wide expanse of snow, glittering in every direction. The trees lurked out in the half-dark. Much further away, the sky was revealed to be not quite true black, where Christopher could see the faintest outlines of the mountains, shadow on shadow.

He breathed deep, taking in the strong smell of smoke and his own sweat, and the bright cold air. His thoughts had felt frantic in the tent. Out here, they evaporated. He thought of nothing but these smells and the stars above and the cold smooth hardness of the rock where his fingers ran along a sharp edge. It was the melancholy peacefulness of being completely alone, completely comfortable in nature. It was something he had never felt before.

For a moment, he didn’t care about what had happened or what would happen. He could choose to do anything he wanted.

He realized that he had never really taken choice seriously, as an idea. There were always choices, but there was also always the path he was “supposed” to take. The choices, the crazy possibilities of the world, always seemed like furniture: something to make the place seem a little more interesting. He had a path laid out for him, and the other options were just to look at.

The default path, the reasonable path, was to go back to bed. He would wake up in the morning, pack his tent and his things and trudge his way back to the bunker. He would have just barely enough food. He’d get there and he’d clean himself off. He’d eat a feast of dull and carefully preserved food. He’d sleep in an uncomfortable bed and it would feel amazing. He’d wait out the cold and snow of the winter. Maybe, when summer came, he’d venture out again.

That was the safe path, and he hated it.

The next dot on the map was the same distance as the bunker. Even if he went back and started out again, he wouldn’t stretch his supplies that much further. He was limited by the backpack and the sled, and the amount he could reasonably haul along with him. There was still some faint hope that somebody was out here searching for him. He doubted they would still be searching months from now, when the spring thaw came.

He could at least make a better eulogy for himself, even if he was the only one who knew it.

He sat until the fire burned down to coals, staring up at the stars. When the cold brought him out of his reverie, he doused them and went back into the tent. He undressed and shivered in the sleeping bag until his body heat warmed it up.

He slept, deeper and more peacefully than he had in years.

The next morning, he hummed to himself as he cooked his meager breakfast and packed his things. He hiked north, away from the bunker. The overcast had finally passed. It was sunny, if not particularly warm. It was the kind of winter day that looked perfect through a window, but had a bit of a bite when you were out in it.

He took his time, using the snowshoes to stay on top of the heavy snow. By mid-morning, the land was rising slowly. There were a pair of mountains that had grown closer in the past few days of his trek, though he hadn’t known it with the storm and the poor visibility. He could see a wide gap between them, and peering through was a third peak. That was the one that was oddly broken-looking, as though the top half had been split down the middle. He wouldn’t have to go that far, but it was the perfect landmark to aim for to get to the next dot on the map.

The trees grew more dense again, blocking his view, but he felt confident he had his bearings. He took frequent breaks, snacking and drinking. He tried not to linger over the three remaining jerky bars in his pack.

It would take days to reach the dot. When he arrived, he might have a long and grueling search. For now though, he only had to maintain his course as well as he could. Since the land was relatively flat and he had his compass, that was trivial. He had attention to spare for the birds flitting in the trees, or the occasional shelf mushrooms or bright lichen decorating a trunk.

It came as a complete surprise when he discovered a heavy stick stuck in the ground in his path. On its sharpened upturned end was a rabbit carcass, neatly skinned, gutted, and ready to cook.

<< PREVIOUS ] [HOME] [ NEXT >>

Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

Christopher awoke, aching and feeling like he hadn’t slept at all. Light was just beginning to suffuse the sky. The world was blanketed in knee-deep snow that had settled in layers: dense near the ground, fluffier and lighter above that, with a hard crust on top that broke apart under his feet. The net result was exhausting to wade through. He was grateful to have his snowshoes. He wouldn’t get anywhere trying to trudge around in boots.

He packed his things, eating one of the jerky bars as he worked. His brain shifted into planning mode. He had packed extra supplies, but he had also expected to be at his destination by now. The storm and his detour chasing shadows in the forest had not helped him stay on schedule. He knew it was foolish to expect anything to go to plan when he was alone in the wilderness and so inexperienced, but his general sense was that everything was going poorly. If he didn’t find anything of value, his return would take longer than the outgoing journey. If he really wanted to plan for the unexpected, he was well past the point when he should turn around and go back.

However, he was close, perhaps only a couple hours away from the dot on the map, assuming he was correct in interpreting his surroundings. He could see that the land rose to the north. There was a hill there that looked like it rose above the treeline. He would make that his first destination.

He broke camp while the sun was still hovering at the horizon. His snow shoes distributed his weight enough that he mostly didn’t crack the crust of the snow, and he made good progress until he got to the steeper, rockier crown of the hill, where he had to take them off and scrabble his way up. At the top, he found that he did have a fantastic view of his surroundings. The low sun splashed rosy color across the snow-covered landscape.

The forest grew sparse on the other side of the hill to the north-east, which was the direction he wanted to travel. It opened up into the familiar flat, boulder-strewn terrain he knew from the area around the bunker. Further afield, a pair of small lakes flashed in the light. They looked to be iced over, but the snow had blown over them in drifts, and there was bare ice in the middle. They matched a place on the map that was further east than Christopher had expected, but that put him even closer to his destination than he had thought.

He descended with more confidence in his location, if not in his choices. He traveled over slight rises and descents, with only occasional trees and rocks to break up the monotony. He chose a path around the lakes. It would be a gamble to test the ice, and the edge of the water was hidden by the snow. If he took the path between them, he might very well not know he was out on the ice until he fell through.

The sun still showed late morning when he began to think he was close to his destination. Now came the tricky part. There were no particular landmarks close to the dot on the map. The contour lines were unlabeled, but Christopher thought they probably showed either twenty-five or fifty feet of elevation difference. If the second dot was a bunker like the one he came from, it could be hidden in a fifteen-foot-high escarpment and not show up on the map.

He began to walk slower and meander back and forth. The terrain looked about the same as it had all morning. A small entrance might only be visible from a specific angle or vantage point. His bunker door hadn’t exactly been hidden, but it would certainly be easy for a traveler to overlook.

When the sun reached its zenith, he stopped to eat and drink. His life consisted now of the study of trees and rocks. Nothing else interesting presented itself. His supply of homemade red ribbons was running low, but he decided to use them to demarcate his search area.

He tied them as high as he could on half a dozen trees, to create a rough perimeter. He found himself glancing skyward more and more, all too aware of the passage of time. He hiked to a large rock that stood somewhat close to the center of the area he had marked off. The land was flat. He could see each of the trees with ribbons in the branches from this vantage point. There was no structure. No big cliffs or changes in elevation. If there was something to find here, it was hidden under the snow.

Christopher imagined hatches set flat into the ground, or in some narrow crack that wouldn’t be visible until you came right up to the edge. He knew it was time to turn around and start going back. It was time to give up this ill-conceived plan, do his best to get back to safety, and try to come up with a better one. But he kept searching.

It was mid-afternoon when he slipped and fell hard onto his left side. As he rubbed his bruised elbow, he was thankful that at least he hadn’t landed on his injured leg. Then he felt the ground beneath him. At first, it felt like yet another boulder, picked up thousands of years ago by some glacier, and then placed back down in the long, slow retreat northward. But the flat surface of this rock was oddly pitted. When he scraped away the snow, he saw that it was an aggregate of fine rocks embedded in rough gray substrate. Worn and buried, but easily identifiable as concrete. He used his collapsible shovel to clear more snow.

This had clearly been one large slab at some point, but it was now broken into several pieces, each one meters long. They weren’t flat, they were embedded in the ground at slight angles. In many places, they were blackened or large pieces appeared to be missing.

Once he knew what he was looking for, he began to find more pieces scattered further out from the broken slabs. He went back to his viewing rock, not too far distant, and looked at the area he had excavated from the snow. There was a slight depression there, perhaps only a foot or two lower than its surroundings, although it was hard to tell beneath the snow. There had definitely been a structure here. Perhaps a doorway to something underground, with an angled descent to a hidden entrance?

For a few minutes, Christopher was lost in the exhilaration of the find. It felt like he had accomplished something entirely by his own wits and effort, and in spite of conditions that were far from ideal. That feeling faded quickly as he thought about the implications.

It was a ruin. Whatever had been here was now destroyed. By the looks of the charred concrete, it had been done thoroughly and on purpose. The damage didn’t look recent. But who would put these structures out here, and who would go to the trouble of destroying them? Some sort of military testing ground? Rich people building fallout shelters in the wilderness, and then changing their minds? It only added more confusion to his vague ideas about the intact and well-stocked bunker he had come from.

He sat on the central rock and unfurled his map. He marked an X over the dot with his pencil. Equidistant from him now were the bunker (the dot furthest south), and another dot to the north.

He thought he ought to feel something; anger or disappointment. He felt numb. There was some daylight left, but he unpacked the tent and set it up next to the big rock at the center of his search zone. He opened his pack and took out supplies. It was clear that he had been lying to himself. He had less food than he thought. At the rate he had been consuming it, it wouldn’t last the entire trip back to the bunker. Less than half of the rice and beans remained, and he had only five more jerky bars.

He made a fire and cooked a smaller portion of rice and beans. He refilled his water bottle, cleaned his utensils and packed it all up. It was routine now.

As the sky darkened, he got into the tent and tried to go to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come.

<< PREVIOUS ] [HOME] [ NEXT >>