Track of the Beast: A Brock Stone Adventure

14- Avalanche!

The truck bounced along the rough mountain road, climbing higher into the Cascade Mountains. From his seat on the covered bed, Moses let out an angry shout and pounded his fist on the back of the cab. Since the joke Stone had pulled on his friends, Moses had refused to ride in the cab with the others. That would change if the low-hanging gray clouds finally cut loose.

“Sorry!” Stone called to his friend. “Nothing I can do about the condition of the road.”

“You could at least slow down for the worst of the bumps and ruts,” Alex grumbled. He too had been in a foul mood since leaving the girls’ school.

“You recall it was Constance and I who were nearly murdered, today? All you got was soiled shorts.”

“I did not soil my shorts,” Alex grumbled.

“You shouldn’t fret,” Constance said, patting Alex on the knee. “Anyone would be frightened if something popped up out of a tomb like that.”

“Not frightened so much as startled.” Alex didn’t meet her eye.

Out of the corner of his eye, Stone saw something move in the trees off to the right, heading toward them. He hit the brakes and the truck skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust.

Something huge and covered in brown hair trotted out onto the narrow dirt road. His heart skipped a beat. As the dust cleared, he finally got a good look at what barred their path.

“It’s gorgeous,” Constance gasped.

It was a huge bull elk, standing at least eight feet at the shoulder. Each antler must have been three feet long. It barely registered their presence as it crossed the road and moved off into the trees on the other side.

“Sure wish I had my rifle right now,” Moses said.

“You would not destroy a beautiful creature like that!” Constance exclaimed.

“You can bet your bottom dollar I would. That’s a whole lot of meat.”

The elk trotted away. In a matter of seconds, it had vanished from sight.

“Makes you think, doesn’t it?” Alex said.

“About what?” Constance said.

“How quickly something can vanish from sight out here. Or could remain hidden if it wanted to.”

“Quit trying to put a scare into me,” Moses said.

The roar of the engine drowned out Alex’s retort as Stone got the truck back in motion. As he drove, his eyes searched the forest. Alex wasn’t wrong. The elk had melted into the forest in an instant. This was not the domain of man, but of the creatures of the wild.

They wound along the narrow road and eventually emerged high on a steep mountainside. Here, logging had cleared away much of the forest. There would be nothing to arrest their fall should they leave the road.

Stone felt tension rising among his companions as they drove along mere inches from certain death. The dirt road was little more than a downward sloping dirt path. Without the protection of the trees, the elements had gradually washed it away. He glanced over and saw Constance holding Alex’s hand, her knuckles white from the tight grip she had on him.

“It will be fine,” Stone said, just as the rear wheels briefly lost traction and the truck fishtailed.

Constance let out a shriek.

“We’re all right,” Stone said.

“Up there!” Constance pointed up the slope. “Look out!”

Stone’s heart skipped a beat as he looked up to see a wall of boulders and logs bounding down on them like a cavalry charge. An avalanche! Knowing it was only a matter of seconds before the truck was knocked off the road and sent tumbling down the mountainside, Stone floored it.

The wheels spun on the hard-packed dirt before catching. The truck lurched forward and gradually gained speed. They hit a bump in the rough dirt road, the vehicle went airborne, sending an icy flutter through Stone’s gut. It hit the ground with an impact Stone felt from the base of his spine all the way to the tip of his skull. The truck bounced and the front passenger side wheel slid off the edge of the road.

Alex called out a warning and Constance let out a curse suitable for any soldier or sailor Stone had ever met. He maintained his calm and resisted the urge to overcorrect. The truck seemed to tip to the side. The drop seemed even more precipitous.

“Stone?” Alex said nervously.

Stone didn’t reply. Focusing on the task at hand, he managed to get all four wheels back on the narrow road. But they weren’t out of danger yet.

The avalanche was almost upon them!

Stone gritted his teeth and kept the pedal to the metal. The engine roared and the truck flew forward. The tumbling boulders and debris had kicked up a cloud of dust in their wake. It looked like a wall of death closing in on them.

Twenty feet.

Ten feet.

“We’re not going to make it!” Constance cried.

A boulder the size of Stone’s head flew through the air, hurtling right at them. Stone braced himself. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Alex shouted, Constance swore, rubble closed in on them. Safety loomed just up ahead where the road wound back into the shelter of the forest. They zoomed past the flying boulder with only feet to spare.

“Thank heaven!” Constance breathed.

And then something struck the rear of the truck and drove the rear wheels off the road. The truck tilted wildly, the wheels spun, trying to find traction. They slid and fishtailed as Stone fought to keep the vehicle from tumbling down the hill. They finally came to a stop just short of the forest. Behind them, the avalanche rolled along twenty feet from their rear bumper.

“That was close.” Alex closed his eyes and threw his head back. The motion caused the truck to tilt downhill.

“Hold still!” Stone warned. “We’re teetering on a knife’s edge here!” He assessed the situation. The truck was partway off the road. At the moment, they were perfectly balanced. But too much of a shift one way or the other and they would be in trouble. They would need to proceed with caution.

“What do you want me to do, Stone?” Moses shouted.

Stone glanced back to see his friend lying splayed out across the truck bed.

“Carefully pull yourself toward the uphill side.”

Moses did as he was instructed, shifting his full weight to the uphill side of the truck. Stone felt a slight shifting of the weight distribution, but their situation remained precarious.

“Constance, you climb onto my lap.”

The young woman’s cheeks went scarlet. “I absolutely will not!”

“We need to get your and Alex’s weight on this side of the truck.”

Constance appeared to debate this for a moment. Then she gave an affirmative nod. “Alex can sit on your lap.” Alex sputtered and protested, but Constance shushed him. “You are heavier than I. It will make for better balance.”

“Don’t you dare say she’s right,” Alex warned Stone. “Matter of fact, just don’t say anything at all.” His face as red as his hair as he clambered, crablike, over Constance, then shifted onto Stone’s lap. Alex was much too tall for his legs to fit below the steering wheel, so he settled for lying across Stone’s lap with his knees pulled to his chest and his head and shoulders stuck out the driver’s side window.

Finally, with the weight better distributed, Stone was able to get the truck back onto the road. Alex wasted no time scrambling back to his seat where he stared balefully out the passenger window. Stone was also eager to forget the entire incident.

“It’s a good thing you saw that landslide coming,” he said to Constance. “Without your warning, we would have been swept away.”

“Yes, that was well done,” Alex said, obviously relieved to have something else to talk about. “You really saved our skins.”

Constance looked down, bit her lip. “I have a confession to make. I didn’t actually see the avalanche. I cried out because I saw a huge, hairy man moving in the trees.”