Apocalypse Weird: Reversal (Polar Wyrd Book 1) by Jennifer Ellis Read Free Book Online Page B

think we need to go and lay waypoints. Hopefully this stupid thing will at least allow us to retrace our steps.”
    They continued on for a bit, stopping every hundred yards or so to call for the others, only to have their words thrust back at them in the storm. The wind, while still whipping into the hood of her parka and making her eyes water, was positively balmy by Arctic standards at times. But then it would shift direction to come from behind them and become icy again.
    “The wind is all wrong,” Soren muttered after a bit.
    Sasha knew the prevailing winds at the Arctic were the Polar Easterlies, which blew east to west—the icy winds that were currently slamming them from behind—but the warm winds were blowing west to east. She had assumed that this happened sometimes in storms.
    “You’ve never seen this before?” she asked.
    “Never,” Soren said firmly.
    “Do you want to try getting a radio or sat phone signal from here?” she asked. Looking for the others in this condition was, in her opinion, as good as useless.
    “We haven’t come far enough to be out of the lee of the mountain,” Soren replied.
    They continued on until Tundra came to an abrupt stop, barked, and veered right, almost throwing Sasha off the sled.
    “Soren!” she cried, but it was too late, Soren’s yell of surprise came an instant later, and she felt movement in the rope around her waist that attached her to Soren.
    “I’m falling! Plant your ice axe!”
    Falling? Into what? A crevasse? Why would there be a crevasse here? Where were they? Sasha fumbled with the axe that Soren had fastened at her waist. The rope snapped taut, and Sasha was jerked off the sled onto her knees, and started to slide in the direction of Soren’s yells. She reared up and drove her ice axe as deep into the snow as she could. It caught and held. The weight of Soren’s sudden stop on the straps of her harness almost took her breath away, and she nearly released her grip on the axe. She could feel him scrambling about on the other end of the rope to get a foothold, the rope alternately slackening and pulling tight. Her ice axe was too loose and she could feel it carving a trench in the snow as inch by inch she was dragged towards Soren. But if she pulled it out and drove it in again, she could be pulled over the edge too.
    Her hands were slick in her mitts. She tried to think. She was still attached to the sled and Tundra. If Tundra went the other direction, his weight would help.
    “Tundra. All right. Gee!” she ordered, trying to mimic Soren’s tone when he gave commands. Tundra gave a yip of confusion, but she felt the sled start to move, in the right direction, she hoped. Her axe was cutting a swathe in the snow now as she moved towards the crevasse at an ever-increasing pace. She started to panic. She and Soren would die blind at the bottom of a crevasse.
    Suddenly, the pull on the rope slackened and she stopped moving.
    “I’ve got my own axe in the wall of whatever this is.” Soren’s voice sounded faint. “But I don’t know how long it’ll hold.”
    Sasha was jerked in the other direction. Tundra had managed to pull the sled around and start to barrel back the way they had come.
    “Tundra! Whoa! Sit. Stay,” she yelled.
    The pull stopped, and now with Soren holding some of his own weight, the added support of the dog and the sled, as well as her own ice axe, Sasha felt a bit more stable.
    “Is it a straight drop?” she called to Soren. “How close are you to the bottom?” This was a stupid question of course. Without sight, how would he know how close he was to the bottom?
    “It’s pretty straight, maybe eighty degrees,” he said. “And it’s weird. It’s not a crevasse. It’s like a crater or a pit or something. The side is mud or dirt in spots, and it stinks. My axe is starting to slip. Plant a screw, the longest one you’ve got, and hook me to it.”
    Sasha yanked an ice screw from the gear belt Soren had insisted she