J Moncrieff - Return to Dyatlov Pass

“Jesus, Nat. It’s one drink. When did you turn into such a pill? Don’t know if you got the memo, but prohibition is over.”

“Prohibition never started here,” Igor said, to which both men guffawed like it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. Perhaps the altitude was getting to them both.

When the Russian returned with his bottle of hooch, hoisting it in triumph, an unearthly howl split the night. It made the hairs on the back of Nat’s neck rise, and she grabbed Andrew’s leg and squeezed it without thinking.

“Hey!” he yelped, squirming to get away from her.

“What the fuck was that?”

Only Igor took it in stride. “Wolves.”

“That was no fucking wolf. I know what a wolf sounds like,” Andrew said.

“Russian wolves, they are different.” Igor raised his hands to the sky. “My children of the night, what beautiful music they make.”

“Beautiful music my ass.”

Nat had to agree with Andrew. There had been nothing beautiful about that howl. It was entirely too close for comfort. “Do you think the rest of the group is all right?”

“Sure, they are all right. They have three powerful hunters. We have just each other. And this.” Igor took a long drink from his bottle before handing it to Andrew.

“I’m really sorry for fucking everything up, Nat.”

She patted Andrew’s foot, the only thing that was within reach since he’d moved away from her. “You didn’t fuck up anything.”

“I did, though. It’s my fault that we’re here while the rest of the group is having a roaring good time.” Turning the bottle over in his hands, he studied the clear liquid as if wanting to commit it to memory.

Nat pictured the dour Vasily, Steven the pessimist, and the tension that no doubt emanated from Joe. Though the separation increased her anxiety, in a way she was glad to get a break from them. So much drama. That was what always resulted when other people got involved with her projects. “I seriously doubt that. Have you met the rest of our group?”

Andrew laughed. “True. They’re not exactly party-hearty types.”

“We have the party right here. I brought it with me.” Igor gestured to his bottle, which Andrew was still regarding like a museum specimen. “Drink up, my friends.”

When Andrew passed the bottle to her, she took a long drink, the moonshine tracing a trail of fire down her throat to her belly.

Misery loved company, after all. And she was no party pooper.

Something was shaking her. Nat pried open her eyes and cried out when she saw the face looming over hers.

“Christ, you reek. Have you been drinking ?”

Indignant, she propped herself up on her arms, glaring at the intruder. “Maybe. What are you doing here?”

“While you guys have been having yourselves a party, we’ve been going through hell. You have to get up there, Nat.” Steven’s face was unusually pale, his lips set in a thin, white line. He looked like he’d seen his own ghost.

“It’s not that easy. What about Andrew? If he hasn’t recovered from his altitude sickness, we can’t move him.”

“Then leave him here.” Steven’s tone left no doubt as to what he thought of her closest friend. If her feet hadn’t been trapped in nylon, she would have kicked him. “But you’ve got to get up there right away. And bring Igor too. We could use him.”

“I’m not abandoning Andrew. What’s going on? What time is it, anyway?” It was gloomy inside the tent, with only enough light to cast half the mountaineer’s face in shadow.

“Not sure. I left as soon as there was enough light to ski by. Five, six? Possibly later. The sun seems to rise later here.”

Nat felt like she’d been run over by a horse-drawn cart and dragged for a couple of miles. Her mouth tasted of paste and bile. Lovely. She didn’t doubt she reeked. The reality that Steven had taken the risk of skiing alone to their camp slowly sank in. “What happened? Is anyone hurt?”

His presence in her tent meant that Joe hadn’t killed him, which she supposed was a relief. But had the trapper attacked someone else? “For God’s sake, Steven, this is no time to keep me in suspense. Tell me what happened.”

“We don’t know if anyone is hurt or not. But Joe and Anubha are missing.”

Her ragtag little group was decidedly more ragtag this morning than they’d been the day before. Nat didn’t think any of them had drank much, certainly not enough to have had a hangover, but Igor’s Russian hooch was strong. It wasn’t doing them any favors.

She looked at Andrew one last time, paying careful attention to his breathing. He no longer sounded breathless, and his eyes had some of their old spark back, but she didn’t want to take any chances. Lana would have insisted on giving him more recovery time, but desperation tended to blow caution out of the water. There was no way she would consider leaving him here by himself.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine, Nat. I promise. Don’t worry about me. We have bigger problems right now.”

She’d still worry about him, though. Of course she would.

The extra weight of her pack dug into her shoulders, making it more challenging to push off. She’d divided her producer’s things between her, Steven, and Igor, hoping to ease Andrew’s burden as much as possible. Her legs, which were already screaming at her, caught fire. She moaned under her breath.

Steven turned. “You doing all right?”

“I’m fine. Just sore.” She wasn’t going to complain about tired muscles, not when her dearest friend might be dying from altitude sickness or worse. Please God, don’t let him die. I’ll even believe in you if you don’t let him die. “Can you tell me what happened?”

Steven shrugged. “Not much else to tell. The Canadians got into it a bit with Vasily yesterday, and sometime after that, about when everyone was getting ready to call it a night, we noticed they were missing.”

“But—” Nat took a deep breath, forcing herself to speak slowly. Her lungs ached, and gulping the frozen air wasn’t helping. “But what do you mean, they ‘got into it a bit’? About what?”

She couldn’t imagine anyone getting angry enough at Vasily to argue with him. For one, the man hardly spoke.

“He wouldn’t let them set their traps. They didn’t take too kindly to that. I wasn’t real happy about it, either, to be honest. I could do with some fresh meat. This astronaut food is getting old.”

“What do you mean, he wouldn’t let them?” Nat tried to reconcile the image of the reticent man physically restraining either of the trappers and failed. “Did he sabotage their traps?”

“Oh no, nothing like that. If he had, it would have been him that went missing, I’m sure. But he went ballistic when he saw the traps, started screaming a bunch of stuff we didn’t understand. And unfortunately, we didn’t have Igor to translate.”

Sound carried well in the mountains. “Wouldn’t have mattered anyway,” Igor yelled up at them. “He doesn’t speak much Russian. The Mansi have their own dialect.”

Nat took another breath of ice, her mind racing. “But Vasily speaks English. That’s one of the reasons I hired him. Didn’t he say anything you could understand?”

“Not much. He was too upset. Something about it being someone else’s territory and they had no right. That’s the most I got.”

“Maybe they went to set their traps once Vasily wasn’t looking. Or went hunting. Isn’t that possible?” From what she’d seen of Anubha, the Canadian was a strong-willed woman. A woman who’d been hired for her hunting ability and survival skills. It was likely she hadn’t let the Mansi tell her what to do.