Extinction (5 page)

Her daughter, Anna, was higher up the mountain, skiing. Alyssa was a good skier herself, but Anna was something else – she’d started at the age of five and shown a natural aptitude for it. They went to the mountains every opportunity they got, which wasn’t as much as Alyssa would have liked. Her job was demanding, and there was only one of her, after all, but it was enough for Anna to have become pretty incredible for an eight-year-old.

The trips had started after the death of her husband, Patrick. He had contracted a rare form of degenerative disease at a shockingly young age, and Alyssa had nursed him for twelve painful months before – mercifully for him, agonizingly for her and Anna – he had quietly passed away one night. She had cried for hours – helpless tears, hopeless tears – but had gathered herself before Anna woke. She needed to be strong for her, and although both Alyssa’s parents and Patrick’s parents were a huge help, the fact of the matter – at least as Alyssa saw it – was that Anna was her responsibility, and nobody else’s. And she was now all that remained of Patrick.

Anna herself had found it hard to deal with her father’s death. He had been ill for some time and had not been involved in her upbringing during that final, painful year, but the gap that he left was difficult for a young girl to deal with.
Where’s Daddy?
she would ask incessantly, especially before bedtime, when he used to read stories to her before kissing her goodnight.
When’s Daddy coming home?
It was hard for Alyssa to explain, and Anna had cried for days, for weeks, and Alyssa had cried along with her.

It wasn’t until their first trip into the mountains, a few months after Patrick’s death, that Anna had started to come round. The magical quality of the snow, the serene peace of the valleys, the majesty of the mountains themselves had shown Anna another view of the world, perhaps of something beyond it, and given her hope; and Alyssa had felt it too, the pull of something beyond, the first faint rays of a life beyond the one that had been wrenched so terribly from them.

Alyssa and Patrick had been winter sports addicts – skiing, snowboarding, ice climbing; anything that could be done, they would do it. They had even met on a mountain, thousands of miles from home, and when holiday romance had bloomed they were delighted to find they lived only a hundred miles from one another back home. Alyssa’s first love was climbing, and had been since she was a little girl, but Patrick’s was snowboarding, and he had shown her everything he knew. They were wonderful years, those early years, getting away whenever work let them. She was an up-and-coming journalist, cutting her teeth on the local papers but determined to break into the nationals; he was an up-and-coming public prosecutor, destined for the DA’s office. But then Anna had come along, and it wasn’t so easy to get away any more. They hadn’t regretted it, not for a second; on the contrary, their years of adventure were simply put aside as other priorities took hold.

But when Patrick died, the first place Alyssa had thought to take Anna – after the worst of the grieving was over and behind them – was the mountains. If Patrick had loved them, she thought, maybe Anna would too. And she had, with a wild abandon, and for the first time in as long as she could remember Alyssa had felt free, the strains of her life miraculously lifted.

Anna had wanted to ski. She was adamant about that, having watched as people shot down the slopes, leaning first one way and then the other, slicing through the snow in graceful arcs.

Alyssa had taught her at first, and the first season had just been the basics – how to put on the equipment, how to stand, how to move, and then the first few tentative movements down the training slopes – and Anna had loved it. Alyssa had seen the excitement in her eyes, the joy of being a little girl that had been absent for so long, and had almost wept with happiness herself.

Further visits to the slopes had shown that Anna was moving beyond her mother’s teaching limits, and so Alyssa started to arrange more expert instruction. This was what had led them here, to the special training centre in the heart of the western mountains, where Anna was undergoing the first stage of selection for the national team. Alyssa was probably even more nervous than Anna was, but however Anna did, it didn’t matter. The girl was perfect whatever happened.

Alyssa, at a loose end for a couple of hours at the foot of the mountain, had decided to get a little exercise of her own, and the pull of climbing – the sharp surge of adrenalin flooding her bloodstream, the overcoming of physical barriers, the feeling of accomplishment when a wall, a rockface, a
mountain
, had been conquered – had been too much to resist.

The wall was a real battle, full of tiny holds that required all sorts of gymnastic contortions to reach; hard enough without the ice, nearly impossible with it. But she persevered, gaining an inch here, an inch there, pulling herself up the cliff face through sheer determination.

And finally she was there, levering herself on to the top shelf of rock where she sat for several moments to gather her breath. Then she got to her feet and gazed out across the glorious scenery around, above and below her.

She shielded her eyes from the sun, and could see the ski school on one of the slopes in the distance. Squinting hard, she could make out twelve kids, two assessors. She could even make out Anna in her bright orange parka, waiting at the top, listening to the instructions of the experts, and then she was off, skiing down the mountainside, and Alyssa’s heart filled with pride as she watched.

Anna was at the bottom of the slope just a few minutes later, an instructor was talking to her; Alyssa guessed – hoped – he was telling her how well she had done.

And then Anna and another little girl waddled away to the side, and waited for the chair lift to take them back to the top. Alyssa watched as the tiny chairs scooped them both off the ground, the lift operator closing the T-bar over them as it went on its way.

She stamped her feet and rubbed her arms; she was dressed for climbing, not for standing around watching, and her jacket and boots were back down at the bottom. She checked her watch. Just after half past one. Anna’s lesson was scheduled to finish at two, so she knew she’d have to start making a move.

She was considering whether she had time to climb down or whether just to abseil with the rope, when she heard it. The horrifying screech of tortured metal, then a gut-wrenching snapping sound that could only be . . .

Her eyes found the chair lift immediately, and she felt as if she’d been slammed in the stomach with a baseball bat. The chairs had stopped moving upwards, the cables immobile as the seats swung backwards and forwards underneath.

There was a double cable arrangement, and as Alyssa’s eyes scoured the length of the lift, she saw that one of the cables was broken, the snapping sound she had heard echoing across the valley. The chair next to the break hung precariously, sixty feet over the rocky mountainside. She stared more intently, shielding her eyes against the crystal-clear winter sun, and almost fell to her knees as she saw the little girl in the orange parka screaming as the chair started to tilt and slip from the cable.

Alyssa was at the training centre within minutes, having instantly launched herself from the cliff top, taking the hundred feet in just three bounds with the rope.

She now stood in a crowd of dozens, all looking up at the single chair as it moved further and further to one side, tilting towards the vertical, the two little girls screaming as they struggled to hold on.

‘That’s my baby!’ a woman to her left shrieked, hysterical. ‘That’s my baby!’ the woman kept on repeating, louder and louder, as her husband pulled her close, a look of terror on his own face.

The other chairs looked stable, not yet under threat from the broken cable, but the children were all crying, shouting and screaming nevertheless, their parents back on the ground shouting up at them, telling them to stay calm, help would come.

Alyssa told herself the same thing.
Keep calm. Don’t panic
. She knew shouting up to Anna would be useless. Even if she heard her mother over all the other noise, the blood rushing through her ears from the intensity of the terror would almost deafen her anyway.

Alyssa spotted the operator who had secured her daughter with the T-bar. ‘Hey!’ she called to him, pushing through the crowd towards him. ‘Hey!’ She grabbed hold of his thick jacket, turned him towards her. ‘What’s happening?’

He looked just as frightened as everyone else. ‘The . . . the cable’s broken!’ he stammered.

‘I can see that!’ Alyssa exclaimed, even as she heard the tearing of more metal, and turned to see the chair turn fully on its side now, the girls pulling themselves hard against the T-bar. Alyssa knew they wouldn’t be able to do it for long. ‘What are you doing to help them?’ she cried.

‘Mountain rescue are on their way,’ the operator managed, regaining some semblance of composure.

‘How far?’ Alyssa asked urgently. ‘How long until they get here?’

The man looked down at his feet nervously as the screams continued to echo across the valley. ‘An hour,’ he said finally.

Alyssa looked up at Anna in her bright orange parka, struggling to keep hold, to save herself from the sixty-foot plummet to what would undoubtedly be her death, and made a decision.

Just under two minutes later, Alyssa was halfway up one of the support posts that suspended the cables at regular intervals up the mountainside. It was an easy climb, as the posts had rungs for maintenance access, but Alyssa struggled to control her breathing, her heart rate skyrocketing as she kept the two little girls in her sights, gripping hard to the metal T-bar of the ski chair.

Down on the ground, she had announced what she was going to do – climb the support post, then pull herself along the intact cable until she reached the chair, secure her daughter to her, and then pull them both back to the post, where they would climb back down, but to her disgust nobody was willing to help. Not the chair-lift operator, not the instructors, not even the parents of the other little girl. All they wanted to do was hug each other, cry and moan, and hope a miracle would come along.

But Alyssa didn’t believe in miracles. A miracle hadn’t saved her husband from the disease that claimed him at the age of twenty-eight, and a miracle wouldn’t save her daughter now. She would have to do it herself. And she knew she would have to try and save the other girl too. She only hoped that the remaining cable wouldn’t break, and the girls would be able to hold on for long enough.

Alyssa was just securing herself to the cable at the top of the support post when it happened. There was another screech of metal and one of the chair’s attachments broke free from the stress of the twisted, unnatural position. The whole chair sagged and then jerked down, falling a few inches before stopping, the other attachments holding tight.

But the other little girl lost her grip and started the inexorable, fatal, slide down the chair seat, tiny hands scrabbling for something – anything – to hold on to, and then there was nothing, only sky. Alyssa closed her eyes as the girl’s scream pierced the cold mountain air, the crowd below too shocked now to make any noise at all, and then Alyssa heard a sickening
crump
, and the little girl was gone, quiet now, forever.

Alyssa opened her eyes and focused on Anna, who had instinctively reached out for the other girl, and Alyssa’s heart leapt into her throat as Anna, too, started to slide down the seat, towards oblivion.

Alyssa pulled herself on to the cable, upside down, her head towards her daughter, her legs wrapped tightly round the thick metal cable, and she started to pull herself along. She couldn’t fail. She
couldn’t
. Not after everything that had happened. It simply couldn’t happen.

From her position under the cable, she saw as Anna managed to grasp hold of the edge of the T-bar, her little body suspended now beneath the chair, legs kicking out over the empty expanse, tears streaming down her face.

‘Mommy,’ she cried in a scared whisper. ‘Mommy, please. . .’

Alyssa pulled herself along faster, the cable cutting through her trouser legs, blistering the skin. Just fifteen feet left . . . ten . . . five . . . She could almost reach her . . .

‘Mommy, please. . .’ her daughter begged, eyes going wide as her grip finally gave way, her little hands unable to hold on any longer, and the breath caught in her throat as she, too, fell from the chair, down into the freezing air, into nothing at all.

No!
Alyssa reached out one hand, both hands, just inches away as she swung down, supported by a single belt clip and the strength of her legs.

But it was too late, and she watched, sick and helpless, as her daughter, beautiful little Anna, whom she had promised to look after forever, fell sixty feet through the cold, empty sky.

Alyssa shot bolt upright in her bed, screaming, sweat covering every part of her body, shivering as if she was back there in the snow, the ice, the cold. The terror.

But it was just another dream, a nightmare, the same as she’d had ever since the death of her daughter three years before. They came less frequently now, but when they came, they were no less devastating.

She shook her head, and took a drink of water from the glass on her bedside table.

She jumped as the phone next to her started ringing, water spilling in her lap. She looked at the clock; it was just gone three in the morning. Who the hell could it be at this time?

Reluctantly, she picked up. ‘Yes?’

‘Alyssa? Is that you?’

The voice on the other end of the line was urgent, frantic, and the tone made Alyssa immediately alert. ‘Who is this?’ she asked.

‘You know who it is. Your old climbing buddy,’ the voice said nervously, and Alyssa knew not to say the name out loud. Whatever the problem was, it was obvious that Karl Janklow didn’t want his name spoken on an open line.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, puzzled. She hadn’t heard from Karl in years.

‘Are you still working for the
Post
?’ came the nervous reply.