They passed the point where her car had gone over the embankment and Nash paused, letting the snowmobile idle. It was the first time she’d had a real good look at how far she had fallen. She couldn't see the car anymore because it was buried under snow. What she did see was the patch of broken branches that led all the way down to where her car now sat. Her heart pumped in her chest just thinking of how bad it could've been and how grateful she was to be alive.
“Is that thunder?” Harper asked. Nash quickly got off the snowmobile and looked around. He didn't say anything, because he didn't have to.
“That's not thunder. That's an avalanche!”
“An avalanche?”
Her whole body began to shake as she heard the rumbling from above increase. Of course, she knew that avalanches were possible this time of the year in this area. Nash had said as much the other day. She just didn’t think it would actual happen to her. Most people worked in the higher elevations and it didn't become an emergency situation like it could be right now.
“Where's that coming from?” she asked.
“Here. Right above us, it sounds like.” His face was ashen as he ran back to the snowmobile and climbed aboard, firing up the engine and then looking around again. “I can't tell if it's falling in front of us or behind us. The positioning of where we are makes it hard to tell.”
“We have to get out of here!”
Nash ignored her. There was something about his face that told her he was deep in concentration, deep in trying to figure out how to save them. Survival mode.
She had no idea what to do. She decided the best thing to do was to stay quiet and let Nash, the professional, figure this one out for the both of them.
The sound of thunder rumbled and rolled and grew louder.
“What should we do?” she cried.
Nash still said nothing. He listened and then he gunned the engine of the snowmobile and started to turn them around.
“We need to head up the mountain.”
He was just about halfway around making a circle before big clumps of snow started raining down on top of them.
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
He gunned the engine and guided the snowmobile into the tracks he'd already made on the way down the mountain. It was a good move, Harper realized quickly. They were moving much faster than they had on the way down when he’d been moving through virgin snow.
A large tree snapped and fell just inches behind them and along with it came a tidal wave of snow. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that the snow filled the roadway behind them. More snow was falling in front of them, making it hard for Nash to maneuver the snowmobile.
“Hold me tight!” he yelled. “Hold me as tight as you can.”
There was a clearing ahead of them that veered off to the left and then went down. Nash looked above them and then glanced over his shoulder at her.
“How well do you know this mountain?”
“I know this road.”
He turned down the embankment that veered left.
“Does this lead anywhere?”
“The river.”
“We’re going to have to chance it. Don’t look back.”
She wrapped her arms tightly around him as she leaned up against him. Resting her cheek on his back, she said, “I did. Not good. Can you go faster?”
As they plowed their way through the snow, the snowmobile bounced up and down and jostled her about. Memories of her tumbling in her car and having items in her car go airborne and hit her filled her head. Her body lifted off the seat of the snowmobile a few inches before she settled back down with a thud. Nash gunned the engine and they flew over a pile of snow.
The thunder grew louder until it almost sounded like a freight train passing by. Harper knew it could only mean one thing. She thought of her grandmother as she heard the twigs and branches behind them snapping under the weight of the snow that would soon be upon them. With her face planted to Nash's back, she had a bird’s eye view of trees tumbling over to the side of them in the wall of snow and white filling her view.
“Nash!”
Nash gunned the engine again, and it whined under the stress he was giving the snowmobile.
“Hold tight! There is an overturned tree in front of us!”
Harper gripped his waist tighter. She was afraid to look over her shoulder to see just how close the wall of snow was to the snowmobile.
Nash expertly navigated the snowmobile over the felled tree, leaving them airborne yet again for a few seconds, but it slowed them down enough to allow the avalanche to gain on them.
Harper closed her eyes and held her breath as she held on tight to Nash. Even through his jacket she could feel his muscles bunching as he held the handles of the snowmobile and maneuvered it. And then the snow was raining down on her face in clumps. Her heart hammered in her chest as she opened her eyes and saw the wall of snow right on that their heels.
“We are going to die.”
She heard the engine rev and felt Nash’s arm move as he pushed the engine to a higher gear. “Not if I can help it!”
And then the wall was upon them, engulfing them until Harper was forced to close her eyes to keep snow from pelting her eyeballs.
“Nash!”
She felt the back of the snowmobile lift up awkwardly high and then felt her body being thrown until she was tumbling. She desperately tried to grab on to Nash but the force was too strong for her to grip his jacket with the force of the avalanche. She tumbled in the snow as more piled on top of her,
