Vince May - Presumed Dead

Looking around, she tried to figure out where she was. Stretching high above was the almost sheer face she’d just fallen down. Far to her left and right were outcrops of jagged rock, whilst below all she could see was a gentle white slope, disappearing out of view into the darkness. She could tell by the sheer scale of the landscape and the feel of the air that she was in the Alps, but where exactly, she didn’t have a clue. There was one thing she was sure about though: realistically, she was going nowhere but down.

Carefully she rolled over, and with a groan, stood up leaning heavily on her walking pole. Her legs and pole sunk straight into the soft snow. It was obvious she wasn’t going to be able to walk on this stuff. She started to make her way down the incline on her bottom with a shuffling motion, digging the heels of her boots into the snow to control her speed as she went.

As she gradually slid and shuffled down the slope, the snow started to get harder and more crystalline until it finally gave way to solid ice. Sliding down was easier now, faster, but she’d only gone a short way when she realized the surface of the glacier was embedded with small shards of granite that were ripping at her hands and the soft flesh of her buttocks.

She tried to stand again, but each time she took a step, her rubber-soled boots slipped and she fell. She realized walking was going to be impossible, so pulling the arms of her fleece jacket down over her hands, she set off down the ice on all fours, trying to avoid the worst of the sharp stones. She knew that if she followed the glacier down, it would eventually lead into a valley, and a valley in these parts invariably meant people and help.

She slipped and crawled and slithered for over an hour, constantly looking down the slope in the hope of seeing some end to the massive river of ice. The protection of the fleece she’d pulled over her hands worked at first, but before long the cloth was shredded and her flesh was gashed and bleeding. On top of that, despite all her exertion, the intense cold was starting to affect her. She was deeply chilled. Her bare legs, her hands, her face, especially the tips of her ears and nose, were painfully frozen and she was starting to become disorientated.

Once she thought she saw a light below in the distance, but she slipped, and by the time she’d recovered it was gone. Then, after a few seconds, it was there again!

Soon she could make out a wooden hut perched on a huge pile of boulders with light streaming from its solitary window. The final path to the hut was up a steep stairway formed from flat granite blocks. Looking up with despair, she wondered how she was ever going to make it. Gritting her teeth, she eased herself down and sat on the bottom step, then gradually, one step at a time, hauled herself up until she was leaning against the small wooden door in a slowly accumulating pool of blood.

Mechanically, with the ground now tilting left and right below her, she raising a frozen, bloodstained fist and pounded on the door with what little strength she had left.

After a few seconds, Alice felt the door swing open. She was just trying to form the words, ‘Help me,’ when the floor of the hut came rushing up and hit her in the face.

Philippe Dulac felt a massive adrenaline rush and lunged forward to catch the woman as she pitched forward into the hut, but was a fraction too late. Kneeling down, he slipped her backpack off, picked her limp body up out of the doorway then gently laid her in the warm bunk, which up until a few moments earlier, had been his. He could feel she was chilled to the bone, so covered her with blankets before putting a pan of water on his gas stove.

As it heated, he gently uncovered each of hers limbs individually and checked her over carefully for injuries. He figured she must have been in a nasty fall. The parts of her that weren’t cut or grazed, were covered in fresh bruises, and both her eyes were blackened.

Now that he was starting to recover from the initial shock of finding her at his doorway like that, he was mystified. How on earth did she manage to get all the way up here in ordinary walking boots, he wondered. He brushed the long, blond hair away from her face and washed the dried blood from under her nose and the corners of her mouth. After that, he lifted each eyelid, then manipulated her bruised jaw, checking for breaks. Nothing too serious, he thought, only cuts and bruises. She was lucky. The most important thing now is to get her warm. He noticed her wedding ring and judged that she must be in her early thirties. He also judged she must have been a very beautiful woman… before this.

As he touched her battered body and set about tending her wounds, she moaned and writhed in painful delirium, throwing her head from side to side. She was still freezing cold when he finished cleaning and dressing the worst of her injuries, so he took her boots off and carefully slipped her into his thick padded ski suit. He added a second pair of his own socks over hers, then climbing onto the bed beside her, covered them both with his sleeping bag and blankets.

Wrapping his arms around her, he carefully pulled her in close to his chest, trying to transfer as much warmth from his body into hers as he could. The warming-up process was obviously accentuating the pain in her damaged limbs, because she shuddered and moaned in agony before eventually falling into an uneasy sleep.

All the time she writhed in distress, Philippe comforted her by stroking her hair and whispering soothingly in her ear, like a mother comforting a sick child. When she eventually warmed up and lapsed into a more peaceful sleep, he started to relax, and before long, was asleep himself, still cradling her in his arms.

Ross was feeling much better following his telephone conversation. The problem he’d had earlier with Alice didn’t look like it was going to affect things much after all, and he was quite happy that now he’d brought Alex up to speed, things would be taken care of in the mountains and he could relax.

He’d decided on a stylishly cut dinner jacket and bow tie for the party tonight. What he liked to think of as his roguishly handsome, Rivera look. Checking his reflection in the bathroom mirror, he touched up his dark, wavy hair with a little gel and straightened his tie. Not bad, he thought, not bad at all for a man of fifty.

Venturing out on deck, he accepted a drink from a passing waiter then made his way up to the party and mingled with the other guests, most of whom he knew. He was just thinking about going below to try his hand at one of the tables when Bonatti strolled over to him with a small, bespectacled, prematurely balding man of about forty, and introduced him.

‘Ross, meet David Wiseman from New York. He tells me he’s your wife’s nephew.’ Having done his duty as host, Bonatti wandered off.

Ross didn’t like the look of those sharp little eyes and was uncomfortably surprised to find the man’s handshake less nondescript than his appearance suggested. He was immediately on guard. ‘I though I’d met all my wife’s family,’ he said, ‘and I don’t recall the name Wiseman.’

‘I guess maybe I didn’t make myself clear to Mr. Bonatti, David said with a broad Bronx accent. I’m not related to your present wife… I’m your first wife, Freda’s, nephew.’

Ross’s stomach did a back flip and his heart felt like it was bouncing all around the inside of his rib cage. Being a gambling man though, he had a well developed poker face and stayed as solid as a rock. The ice in his drink didn’t even clink against the glass. ‘This is a surprise,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I knew dear Freda had a brother who’d emigrated to the States, but I understood he’d died relatively young.’