There had been some birds – I could see that from the remains of half a dozen small nests on the cave floor – but they looked like they’d been abandoned awhile.
I hoisted myself up over the edge and pulled my body through the four-foot-tall opening, then crawled over the remains of the nests. I got up onto my knees and realized, yes, hot damn, there was actually enough room for me to stand up all the way.
As I got to my feet, my eyes gradually adjusted to the dark and I could see more.
Turns out the cave extended pretty far into the side of the mountain. There was only enough room for me to stand for about 15 feet of floorspace; after that, the ceiling slanted down at an angle until it rejoined the floor about 40 feet back.
Fuck it – I’d take it. Best goddamn real estate in the world right now, so far as I was concerned.
Of course, that was just what was directly in front of me.
It got better.
To my right was a solid wall of rock that was flush with the right side of the opening in the cliff face. Couldn’t go that way.
But to the left, the cave continued deeper. It was a lot more cramped in that direction, but strangely enough… I could see a tiny bit of light coming from the very back. Just enough that I could see gray stone instead of pitch-black darkness.
Curious, I took off my crampons and walked as far as I could – which was about 20 feet. Then I had to squat down and kind of duckwalk under a three-foot-tall overhand.
Once I got past the overhang, the cave opened up again – and reflected light peeked through a two-foot-long crack in the ceiling above. It wasn’t directly exposed to the outside – there appeared to be a bit of an outcropping over the crack, hence why there was no direct sunlight coming through.
You gotta be fucking KIDDING me.
The back of the cave would be perfect for having a fire. The crack could act as a chimney so that smoke wouldn’t fill the cave and suffocate not only the fire but me.
It couldn’t have been any more perfect.
Shelter from the wind and rain…
Protection from the wolves and wild animals…
And the perfect fireplace.
It was almost like it was made for what I needed.
At that thought, I actually paused.
I had died.
I mean, I was pretty sure I had. I was slowly coming to terms with that… at least as much as I could.
Whatever the fuck had happened, I was here now.
And a couple of things had gone conveniently well for me.
For one, I’d shown up here with a number of my belongings from before – all my clothes I’d been wearing, plus anything that had been on my person when the avalanche hit.
I thought of the ancient pharaohs, mummified and buried in the pyramids, with all their gold and dead servants to accompany them into death… hell, they even brought their internal organs along with them in little pots.
Is that what happened with me?
I actually got to bring along some belongings that would help me in the afterlife?
If that was the case, I wish I’d been carrying a barrel of good bourbon.
Anyway, I’d woken up with some seriously useful tools. And then I’d stumbled on the perfect abode just a few hundred feet from where I’d wound up in this crazy world. Shelter, protection, fire.
That was insanely convenient.
On the other hand, if I had gotten a bunch of supernatural perks here in… wherever the hell I was… then the pros had to be weighed against all the cons:
Giant wolves.
Freezing cold.
No food.
Totally alone.
On second thought, maybe a cave and a few odds and ends weren’t such a great deal after all.
What it was, though, was a massive mindfuck. All this thinking about what had happened was making my brain hurt, so I quit thinking about it and set to work.
First thing I needed to do was get a fire going and see if I was right, if that crack in the ceiling would actually work as a chimney. Even better, the smoke could act as a beacon for anybody who might come rescue me.
I had the bird nests for tinder, but I needed real fuel.
So I pulled off my backpack and pulled everything out.
There was about 220 feet of rope, total… the tiny tent I’d planned on using during my climb… and a bunch of climbing equipment like belay devices, quickdraws, a screw holder, alpine draws – and best of all, a headlamp. I’d totally forgotten about it.
I clicked it on and shone it around the cave. Yup, just a bunch of rock and bird’s nests – no surprises. But the light would be handy when the sun went down.
I also dumped the bullets out of my waist pack and set them against the wall in a convenient hole. No need for those.
Without flares, the flare gun was useless, so I set it aside, too.
Obviously I kept the Craftsman and knife. I was going to need them.
I didn’t want to have to climb down every time, so I tied some rope around one of the larger boulders littering the cave floor. No way I was going to move that fucker with my own body weight.
Then I threaded the rope through my belay device. Now, a belay device is normally used to take up slack in a rope so if you fall, you don’t go far. With two climbers, one guy is the belayer and uses the device to take up the slack so the other guy doesn’t fall far if he slips.
With one climber, it’s a little more complicated – but this isn’t a class on belaying. Just know that you can also use a belay device to rappel down the
