Thank god I had on so many layers. If my flare didn’t bring anybody running, then my cold-weather gear was going to be the only way I would survive the night – if I survived it, that is.
It would be fuckin’ cold, but I was betting on ‘yes.’
Couldn’t let those wolf fuckers have the last laugh.
I just hoped neither the wolves nor the cold got my balls.
In the short term, though, there was another plus to all the layers: padding for my ass. The tree limb I was sitting on was fairly wide, but it was still pretty damn uncomfortable. I was sitting on it like I would a wooden swing; maybe later I would straddle it like a horse. Give it a shot at my balls, too.
Katie would have said something like, Take care of ‘em, Jack. I LIKE ‘em.
So did I. If I had to lose a couple of toes, so be it – I could walk funny the rest of my life.
Wasn’t gonna lose Bert and Ernie, though.
That was her pet name for the boys.
Mr. Snuffleupagus was her name for… well, you know.
God damn I missed her… though I was glad she wasn’t here now.
Although I would have given anything if she could have been.
My stomach growled, so I got out an energy bar and had a small dinner. I wasn’t sure how long I was going to be out here, so I had to ration what I had while still maintaining my strength. I washed the energy bar down with water from my water bottle.
The light of the sunset was completely gone, and the portions of the sky not covered by clouds were deep violet, fading to black. I knew you could see the Northern Lights from Denali – maybe I would get a show tonight along with all the exercise.
To amuse myself while I waited, I tried to pick out the constellations.
I’d known the stars practically all my life, back when my Dad (God rest his soul) had taught me on camping trips in Montana when I was a kid. I was an only child, so it was just me, the old man, and the universe.
But I was having a pretty hard time of it…
I knew this far north, things were going to shift around because of the latitude. And obviously I didn’t have a 180-degree view of the sky, what with the tree at my back.
But there weren’t any trees between me and the mountain, so I had an unobstructed view of half of the night sky.
And I’d be damned if I could see anything I recognized. Not constellations, not stars…
Couldn’t find the Big Dipper. Couldn’t find Arcturus. Not Rigel, not Sirius, not Castor or Pollux in Gemini…
There was some weird fuckin’ stuff up there, though. Clusters of stars right next to each other that I’d never seen before.
What the hell?!
The more I looked, the more confused I got. None of it made any sense.
Then, finally, I saw the edge of the moon rising over one of the canyon’s ridges.
Okay, maybe I can orient myself by the moon.
That went out the window about 15 minutes later, when half of it cleared the canyon.
For one, it was a lot bigger than it should have been. Now, I know all about the moon appearing larger than it should be near the horizon – optical illusions and all that.
But this time, it was significantly bigger than it should have been.
Not like, Oh, hey, the moon looks really big tonight.
More like, Holy shit, the moon’s TWICE the size it’s supposed to be.
But that wasn’t the kicker. I might have been able to convince myself that I’d just gotten concussed earlier, and that my vision was out of whack.
No… it was the red stripes and bands that convinced me something was seriously, incredibly wrong.
Red stripes like Jupiter.
Not like the Earth’s moon at all.
I stared at it over and over as it slowly crept over the ridge. I kept blinking my eyes, telling myself I was on shrooms or something.
But even that wasn’t the real kicker.
No… it was when the second moon came up over the ridge.
Yeah.
Two of ‘em.
And the second didn’t look like our moon, either.
It was pale blue and smooth as a billiard ball.
I just sat there, staring at the two celestial objects, mouth wide open.
The wolves began to howl beneath me, their snouts upturned to the sky, the noise echoing in the canyon around me…
…and I seriously began to question whether I had lost my fucking mind.
5
I went through what I knew – or thought I knew, anyway.
One: I had been in Denali National Park in Alaska, climbing the Moose’s Tooth.
Two: an avalanche had occurred.
Three: by all rights, I should have died – but I’d woken up completely unharmed.
Four: I had woken up somewhere completely different from where I’d started.
Five: the foliage was different here. Orange berries on fir trees was not something I’d ever seen before.
Six: I couldn’t recognize any constellations. In fact, I was seeing star clusters that I’d never seen anywhere on Earth before.
Seven: there were now two moons in the sky above me.
There were only a few conclusions I could draw from those points.
A: this was all one really lifelike dream and I just hadn’t woken up yet.
B: that goddamn chopper pilot had slipped me something that had taken 24 hours to kick in.
C: my college years had caught up with me in a big, big way, all at once.
D: I’d been abducted by a UFO and deposited on a different planet.
E: I hadn’t survived that avalanche at all… and wherever I was right now, it wasn’t Earth.
I knew all the options were crazy. Some more than others.
I could actually feel my mind slipping the more I thought about it.
But after I went round and round for a while, I knew those were the only options.
It couldn’t be A. I’d never had a dream this vivid before. I tried slapping myself multiple times – didn’t do squat.
B wasn’t a real possibility. Nothing
