The Call of the Mild

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Gus’ fingernails dug into the soft leather of his armchair. His muscles were screaming with pain, but he would not relax his hands. Not until the chopper lifted off again and took him out of this hellhole.

“That’s a good grip you’ve got there,” Shawn said. “If you apply a little more pressure, maybe your flesh will bond with the leather of the seat and you’ll become one with the chopper. Then they’ll never get you out.”

“If that’s what it takes,” Gus said.

“But if you’re going to expend all this energy to stay on board, you might as well wait until you actually need to,” Shawn said. “Like when the door is open.”

Gus lifted his eyes from their firm fix on the floor and saw that the door hadn’t slid open yet. None of the lawyers had gotten out of their seats. In fact, they were all still jabbing away at their miniature keyboards.

Gus forced his fingers to relax and felt a wave of relief run up both arms. “They don’t seem worried that they’re about to be dumped out in the wilderness.”

“Which is a sign that we shouldn’t be, either,” Shawn said. “They know Rushton a lot better than we do. He probably plays this kind of prank on them all the time. We’ll sit here for a few minutes, and then once everyone has had a chance to panic, we’ll lift off and head to our real destination.”

Gus nodded. That made sense. It was the only thing that made sense. Because the other lawyers were just sitting there working away, as if they knew enough not to be alarmed. He loosened his death grip on the armrest a little more and felt the blood tingling painfully back into his fingers.

Until there was a thump from outside and the helicopter rocked on its skids. “What was that?” he demanded.

Shawn glanced over Gus and out the window. “Nothing.”

“That wasn’t nothing,” Gus said. “I know what nothing feels like. It feels like nothing. That felt like something. Which means it couldn’t be nothing.”

“It’s just the pilot,” Shawn said, checking the view out the window again.

“He’s leaving?” Gus said. His breath was coming in short gasps now. “The pilot is abandoning his helicopter? How can we get out of here? Does anyone know how to fly a chopper?”

“Relax,” Shawn said. “He’s not leaving. He’s just…”

“Just what?”

“Unpacking.”

Gus forced himself to turn his chair so that he was facing the window. The pilot had opened a cargo door at the back of the chopper and was pulling out a series of large backpacks.

“What are those for?” Gus said, not wanting to hear the answer from Shawn any more than he would accept it from his own brain.

“I believe they’re called backpacks,” Shawn said. “You strap them on your back and carry things in them.”

“Maybe you do,” Gus said, his fingers reflexively clutching the armrest again. He risked another glance out the window. The pilot was closing the cargo door. At his feet was a line of eight backpacks: seven made of beige nylon stretched over metal frames, the last in blindingly bright green.

And still the rest of the lawyers didn’t seem to notice that anything out of the ordinary was happening. They kept texting away. Until the flat-screen went on in an explosion of static.

Oliver Rushton smiled warmly at them from the safety of the TV. Gus felt an irrational burst of rage. He wanted to reach into the screen and pull Rushton through, wheelchair and all, and leave him on this desolate mountaintop.

“Greetings, friends,” Rushton said. “I understand that the area you’re in is one of the loveliest parts of California. I wish I could be there with you today.”

“I wish you were here instead of me,” Gus muttered.

“It’s a constant challenge for me to come up with fun, creative, exciting retreats for this team, but I think you’ll agree that this is the best one ever,” Rushton said. “Because this retreat will not only test your strength, your intelligence, and your stamina, but it will also forge new bonds of friendship and trust. Here at the top of this mountain you are all individuals with your own agendas. By the time you reach the bottom, you will all be a family.”

“I had a family once,” Gwendolyn said. “I didn’t like it much.”

“So she auctioned off their organs and sold the rest off for medical research,” Balowsky said.

“I made a sacrifice,” Gwendolyn said, pointedly refusing to waste a glance at her colleague. “I chose to put my career-I chose to put the needs of this firm-over my own personal life. And that remains my intent. I want to work for this firm, I want to work for you, Oliver. But I don’t need these people to be my family.”

“I understand,” Rushton said.

Gus had been assuming that Rushton’s appearance was a pretaped video. But of course he was speaking to them live via videoconferencing. Which was excellent news, because it would give Gus a chance to plead his way out of this.

“But a firm can’t work as a group of individuals,” Rushton continued. “You need to be able to function as a team. That’s why I’ve designed this retreat. Because, as I said, by the time you reach the bottom of the mountain, you will be a family. Or you will all be dead.”