He opened his eyes, and for a moment he thought the avalanche was still going – all he could see was even more white, and he felt, dizzily, like he was still tumbling down the slope.
But once he’d managed to get his bearings, he realized that if the snow was white, then he couldn’t be buried so deeply that the light didn’t penetrate.
He still didn’t know which way was up, though, and even if he wasn’t buried all that far down, there was definitely a fair bit of snow weighing him down.
Whatever was going on here, it probably wasn’t half as bad as what had happened to Poppy – and although on one level the thought had him in an absolute panic, on another level he was strangely calm. It was like another part of him had taken over control of his body and cut off all access to his emotions, knowing that it was the only way to save Poppy.
Max did have to admit to himself that he wasn’t sure exactly what the best course of action was. Growing up in an area without snow, he’d never really thought much about avalanche survival… which, he was rapidly coming to see, was a huge mistake.
Wiggling his arms experimentally, he found that the left one wasn’t quite so jammed as the right one. Hoping that this meant the left one was close to the surface, he wiggled it some more, working the snow as loose as he possibly could – before, suddenly, the snow gave way, and he found his arm flailing around in the air.
Relief hit him like a sledgehammer, the suppressed emotional side of him coming to the fore briefly. Now that escape was an option – or so he hoped, anyway – the full realization that he’d just been hit by an avalanche started to percolate into his mind.
But the job wasn’t even half done, yet – he still had to free himself before he could get to Poppy. And even though he was obviously close to the surface, the snow was pressing down on him more than he would’ve imagined possible.
Scrabbling around with his free arm, he worked to clear the snow away from his head, which, thankfully, was only just beneath the snow’s surface. It wasn’t until his face was clear that he realized his mouth was packed with snow, and he tried to scoop it out with his fingers, coughing and hacking.
The glare of sun on snow seared painfully at his eyes, and he squinted, letting his eyes readjust as he tried to make sense of his surroundings. The path of destruction carved by the avalanche made it hard to get his bearings, but he was fairly sure that he’d been carried maybe twenty yards down the hillside.
But that means that Poppy is under all that snow,he thought as he stared at the sea of white, his heart clenching painfully in his chest.
That just means that you have to move even faster,the calm part of himself replied… and, of course, it was absolutely right.
He dug with a speed and strength he wouldn’t have thought himself capable of, first freeing his right arm and then his legs. While he knew that he should’ve been numb from the cold, he felt fine – energized, even.
Quicker than he had hoped, he was free – and then he was moving away from the unstable avalanche zone and sprinting up the hill, his feet feeling like they were barely touching the ground.
“Poppy?” he called out when he reached the place he’d last seen her. “Poppy!”
He paused, waiting for a reply, a shifting of snow,anything… but the silence was deafening, with not even the twitter of a bird breaking the stillness. Even his voice seemed to get swallowed up by the sheer quantity of snow.
His stomach roiled as he started digging, hurling aside vast amounts of snow, pausing only to call her name and listen for a response. He was on the verge of throwing up from fear, but even a single second lost to his own body’s needs was a second that he could be freeing Poppy, and so he pushed it down, focusing his entire existence down to a single point ofdigandcall outandlisten.
A slight crunching of snow startled him to absolute stillness.
“Poppy?” he said, the word catching in his throat. “Can you hear me?”
He strained his ears, hoping against hope for something –anything.
But there was nothing.
“Poppy?” he said again, and the slightest movement in the far distance caught his attention. His head jerked up, just in time to see a figure melting into the distant trees.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Hey! I need help! Call an ambulance! Fire department!Anyone!”
But the figure was gone, and Max knew that they hadn’t left to get assistance. He hadn’t gotten a proper look at them – and he wasn’t even sure what had happened to his glasses in amongst everything that had just happened – but it had been obvious that they had no intention of helping.
Just some asshole who wants to rubberneck,he thought with a snarl, returning to his digging. He knew that he should call 911, but every second counted, and he simply couldn’t afford to take the time to make the call – not when it would take forever for anyone to even get out here. Poppy couldn’t wait for someone to make it out to a snowy hill in the middle of nowhere.
His fingers were getting so numb at this point that it took him a moment to register that they were touching something other than snow. He paused for a split second, barely daring to hope, before he redoubled his efforts, digging around the piece of material.
Heart sinking, he realized that it was Poppy’s purse… but still, that meant that she was close. Shehadto be.
How long has she been down there?he thought as he pulled the purse out and tossed it aside.How much air does she have?
Don’t even go there,came the grim answer, even as he found his fingers brushing against fabric for the second time.
This time, however, it was a glove – and it was covering a hand. A very cold, still hand. The fingers didn’t twitch even the tiniest bit as he touched them.
