“It’s all right.” It was Bert’s voice. He opened his eyes. His head was on her lap. Her throat was healed. She was in her clothes again, though her shirt gaped open and he could see the side of a breast above his face. She was mopping his forehead with a cold, wet rag.
Andrea and Bonnie were also alive again, both kneeling beside Rick. They wore clothes, but no packs. They were staring at him.
He suddenly had to vomit.
He lurched up and scurried away on hands and knees, but didn’t get far before spasms wracked him and he heaved. When he finished, he crawled backward away from the mess. He turned around and met Bert’s gaze. She looked worried.
“What happened?” Rick asked.
She shook her head. “I heard you groan. I looked back just in time to see you fall flat on your face.”
“Christ,” he muttered.
Bert passed a water bottle to him. He gulped the cold liquid.
“What was it?” Andrea asked.
Yeah, he thought. What was it? Exhaustion? Dehydration? The heat? He’d been feeling just fine before it happened. Having quite a pleasant, erotic daydream and suddenly it turned on him, twisted into something hideous.
As if all his worries about Jase, Luke and Wally had blasted to the surface and knocked him out.
Some kind of paranoia attack?
A premonition?
Rick felt a sudden chill.
That old John Newland show, One Step Beyond. People were always having dreams or visions foretelling disaster. ESP.
I’ve never had any ESP.
This was just my imagination taking a nose-dive.
“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I guess I just passed out.”
“Did you feel it coming on?” Bonnie asked.
“No, I was fine.” He shrugged. “I feel all right now.”
“We’d still better rest for awhile,” Bert said. Putting a hand on his shoulder, she guided him down. He stretched out on the trail and lay his head on her lap. She smoothed the damp cloth over his brow.
“Maybe we’d better turn back,” Bonnie said.
“If we’d stayed at the lake in the first place,” Andrea said, “this wouldn’t have happened.” She sounded angry, as if she held Bonnie and Bert responsible. “He could’ve fallen over the friggin’ side and broken his neck.”
“I’ll be all right,” Rick protested. “We can go on in a minute.”
“We’re still a long way from the top,” Bert told him. “I think Bonnie’s right. We should go back down to the lake. We can tackle this again first thing in the morning when everybody’s fresh.”
“Before it gets so hot,” Bonnie added.
“Really, I...”
“It’s settled,” Bert said.
Rick closed his eyes.
We’re going back down to the lake, he thought. I wanted to stay there in the first place.
He wondered if a scheming corner of his mind had staged the nasty little skit in hopes of getting the group to turn back. Slap Rick off his feet, everyone gets worried, hy-ho, hy-ho, it’s back to the lake we go.
It’s what you wanted. It’s safer there. The guys are up ahead, and it’s the guys you want to avoid, so it’s all working out great.
Great, except I conked out like a wimp, then barfed right in front of everyone...
Shit..
Way to go, Ricky-babes.
Hearing movement, he opened his eyes. And figured he saw a shadow. A darting figure disappearing behind a rock.
Gone.
A scrawny leafless tree dipping over the rock made short, jagged patches of shadow.
He peered into the shimmering heat. Nothing but rock and goddamn tree. He groaned, snapped his eyes shut and shook his head. When he opened them he saw that Bonnie and Andrea were both on their feet, turning away from him. Bonnie strode up the trail toward her pack. She must have thrown it down and come running back when he passed out. Andrea’s pack was next to Bert’s, only a couple of yards away. As she went to it, Rick lifted his head off Bert’s lap, hoping to orient himself because they didn’t seem to be on the trail.
They were at one of the hairpins where the trail turned back on itself. One wing of the trail stretched downward along the mountainside, one angled upward to meet another juncture far beyond the place where Bonnie was swinging her pack off the ground. Rick raised his eyes. The side of the mountain seemed to go on forever. The higher switchbacks were barely visible, faint pencil lines zigzagging upward.
He looked at Andrea as she sat down. She leaned back against her pack and stretched out her legs. She folded her hands behind her head. The side of her gray T-shirt, from armpit to waist, was dark with sweat. Turning her head, she smiled at Rick. “Too bad you didn’t flop a little sooner.”
“I don’t think it’s something to joke about,” Bert said.
“Who’s joking? Felt like I was crawling up the bunghole of the universe. A couple more minutes, they could’ve renamed it Dead Andrea Pass.”
Rick smiled at her, then put his head down. Bert’s hip bone was against the nape of his neck. She turned slightly, and the knob went away. She felt good under his head. He pressed his face against her, then winced and turned away as the hot belt buckle stung his nose. Bert laughed softly. “Not your day,” she whispered.
Nice view, though, he thought. If her shirt was open about one more inch, he’d be able to see her left nipple. If Andrea and Bonnie weren’t around ...
You’d better just forget about the goddamn nice views, he warned himself. They get you into nothing but trouble.
Bonnie appeared. She swung her pack to the ground not far beyond Rick’s feet, then sat down on a boulder with her back to the mountainside.
“That lake does look nice down there,” she said.
“Too bad we’re not in it,” Andrea muttered. “But at least we don’t have to—”
“What?” Bonnie asked.
“Something flashed up there.”
Bonnie twisted around and tilted her head back. “Where?” “Way up. There it is again.”
Rick felt a clutch in his chest. He sat up, scooted himself around in the dust until he was beside Bert, and searched the mountainside.
He too saw the flash. It was followed by a second blink of brilliant glare. Double-barreled, he thought.
“It’s the sun hitting something,” Bonnie said.
“A piece of glass?” Bert suggested.
“How about binocular lenses,” Rick said.
Bert moaned and started to fasten a button.
“Cripes,” Bonnie muttered.
“Those fuckheads are spying on us!” Andrea blurted. “Spy on this, you jack-offs!” She jammed her middle finger into the air.
Bonnie saw her do it. “Don’t!”
“Maybe it’s someone else,” Bert said.
“I don’t care who it is,” Bonnie said. “They shouldn’t be watching us with binoculars.”
“Scumbags.”
“It’s them, all right.” Rick had hoped that the boys didn’t know about Andrea and Bonnie. But they knew. And they were very interested, or they wouldn’t be studying the group with field glasses.
Andrea got up. She walked in front of Rick and sat down near the end of the lower trail, her back to a cluster
