HANNAH
A watch alarm was beeping. Someone was being sick. Loudly, close by. Several people were sprawled at odd, impossible angles over the uprooted coach seats. Blood pooled in eyes and dripped from gaping mouths.
Hannah noted this dispassionately, clinically. Her father’s nature kicking in, her mother would have said. Always able to detach. Sometimes, this lack of emotional empathy made life difficult. Other times, like now, that side was useful.
She unclipped her seatbelt and eased herself out of her seat. Wearing the belt had probably saved her life when the coach tipped over. It had rolled twice down a steep slope, causing most of the carnage, and then come to rest softly, propped half on its side, embedded in a snowdrift.
She hurt. Bruises, scrapes, but nothing seemed to be broken. No massive bleeding. Of course, she could have internal injuries. Impossible to know for sure. But for now, in this immediate moment, she was okay. Or as okay as she could be.
Others were moving. Hannah could hear groans, crying. The hurler had stopped, for now. She looked around the coach, assessing. There were a dozen students on board. They hadn’t really needed such a big coach, but it was what the Academy had provided. Of the students, she’d say almost half were dead (mostly those who hadn’t bothered with their seatbelts).
There was something else, Hannah thought, as she took in the scene. A problem she hadn’t fully comprehended yet. Snowstorm outside, coach tipped over and half buried in a drift. What was it? Her thoughts were interrupted by a voice shouting:
“Hey. HEY! Can someone help over here? My sister, she’s trapped.”
Hannah turned. At the back of the coach an overweight young man with a mass of dark curls was crouched over an injured girl, cradling her head on his lap.
Hannah hesitated. She told herself she was just gathering her wits, preparing. Not that she was hoping someone else would
move forward, step up, so she didn’t have to. She didn’t like close physical or emotional contact. But no one else was in any fit state to help, and as she had medical knowledge, it was her duty. She started to move forward, awkwardly, stumbling her way along the lopsided gangway, stepping over bodies.
She reached the man and his sister. Straight away, she could tell, as they said in the movies, that the girl wasn’t going to make it. This had nothing to do with the stuff Hannah had learned in the classroom during her medical training. That was just a plain, honest gut reaction. Hannah was pretty sure the girl’s brother knew it too, but he was clinging to hope, as people do in these situations, because it was all they had.
The girl was pretty, with pale skin and thick, wavy, dark hair. The sort of hair Hannah had always wished she’d been blessed with, instead of the fine, mousy strands that she could never do anything with and always ended up yanking back into an untidy ponytail. Hannah realized it was probably odd to feel envy when the girl was dying, but human nature was unpredictable.
The girl’s eyes were glazed, her breath short and wheezy. Hannah could see that her left leg was trapped beneath two coach seats that had been forced together in the crash. A mess of mangled metal and crushed bone; she probably had multiple fractures. But the blood loss was the real problem, and that was before you got to the wheezy hitch of the girl’s breathing, which made Hannah think she could have other, less visible, injuries. Those were the ones that would get you. The British princess—Diana—had died from a small tear in the vein of her lung that no one knew was slowly, fatally, bleeding out.
“We need to get her leg free,” the man was saying. “Can you help me move this seat?”
Hannah looked at the seat. She could tell him that it wouldn’t make any difference. She could tell him that the best he could do would be to stay here with his sister for however long she had left. But she remembered her father telling her: “In extreme situations, feeling like you are doing something makes a difference psychologically, even if it has no effect on the outcome.”
She shook her head. “We can’t move the seat yet.”
“Why?”
“It may be the only thing stopping that leg from bleeding out more than it is.”
“Then what?”
“Are you wearing a belt?”
“Err, yeah.”
“I need you to take it off and make a tourniquet here, above the knee. Then we can try to move the seat, right?”
“Okay.” He looked dazed, but nonetheless fumbled beneath his coat to take off his belt. His stomach spilled over his jeans. His sister stared up, lips moving but unable to force words out. Every effort concentrated on fighting the pain, sucking in those vital gasps of oxygen.
“You look a little young for a doctor,” the man said, handing her the belt.
“Medical student.”
“Ah, right.” He nodded. “One of Grant’s.”
The Academy did not specialize in medicine. Generally, it specialized in parents rich enough to buy their offspring an obscenely expensive college education. But a few years ago it had been chosen by the Department as the location for a new medical research center. An extra wing had been built and Professor Grant, one of the world’s leading virologists, installed to oversee the development. Now, brilliant young students from around the world were selected to study at the isolated mountaintop campus.
“Wrap the belt around here,” Hannah instructed. “Pull really, really tight. Okay. Good.”
The girl groaned a little, but that was a good sign. If she was still conscious enough to feel discomfort, her brain hadn’t started shutting down yet.
“It’s okay,” the man whispered into the girl’s hair, tucking some of his own dark mane behind his ear. “S’okay.”
“Right,” Hannah said. “Let’s try and lift this.”
The man laid his sister’s head gently down and joined Hannah in trying to heave up the coach seat. It was no good. It creaked and gave a little, but not enough. They needed another person. Two to lift. One to pull the girl’s leg out from underneath the twisted metal.
Hannah could hear more voices, movement around the coach, people coming to, ascertaining whether their companions were still alive, or not.
She turned and yelled: “Hey, we need a hand here! Can someone help?”
“Kind of busy over here,” one smart Alec from further up the coach replied.
But then a tall, slim figure stood and made his way toward them. Pale, short blond hair, matted on one side with blood. It looked bad, but Hannah knew that even small head wounds bled like bastards.
“You called?” His voice was cultured, with a slight German accent.
“We need some help lifting this chair so we can free her leg,” Hannah said.
The blond man looked at the girl, then back at Hannah, and she saw the cool appraisal in his eyes. She shook her head slightly and he nodded, understanding.
“Right then. Heft-ho!”
Hannah allowed the two men to do the lifting while she eased the girl’s leg out from underneath the seats. It took a couple of attempts, but finally, the leg was free.
The girl’s brother moved his sister to a slightly more comfortable position, whipped off his jacket and placed it underneath her head. Beneath his coat, he was wearing a baggy sweatshirt that read: Excuse me for a moment while I overthink this. Weird, Hannah thought, the small stuff you noticed.
She felt a hand touch her arm and turned back to the blond-haired man. Aryan, Hannah thought. He’d look at home in lederhosen and a hat with a feather in it.
“How many do you think are dead?” he asked.
“Four or five—others may be injured.”
He glanced at the girl and nodded. “D’you remember what happened?”
Hannah tried to think. She had been sitting on the coach, dozing. It was snowing heavily outside. A horn blare. A squeal of brakes and suddenly they were swerving off the road, rolling and rolling, and then blackness. Crazy that they had even tried to make the journey in this storm, but the Academy had been eager to get the students out to the Retreat. To safety.
“Not much,” she admitted.
She looked around the coach again. Her eyes skirted over the bodies, the people sitting around, moaning, crying. She was trying to recall what she had missed before.
The coach had landed, tilted on its right-hand side. From where Hannah stood, looking up the coach toward the driver’s cab, the windows on her left were intact, facing up toward the darkening sky. Snow whisked around in lacy sheets, large flakes already beginning to settle. The worst of the damage was on the right: crushed metal, smashed glass. That entire side of the coach was buried in a thick drift, meaning…
The door, she thought. The door is buried. We can’t get out.
“We’re trapped,” she said.
The blond man nodded, as if pleased she had reached the same conclusion. “Although, even if we could get out, we wouldn’t last for long in these conditions.”
“What about the emergency exit?” Hannah asked.
“I have already tried that…it appears to be jammed.”
“What?”
The man took her elbow and guided her a little way along the coach. On their left, three steps led to the toilet and another door.
A sign above it read: in emergency pull red handle. push door to exit. The blond man pulled at the handle and pushed at the door. It didn’t give.
He stepped aside and gestured for Hannah to attempt it. She did. Several times, in increasing frustration. The door was stuck firm.
“Shit,” she cursed. “How?”
“Who knows? Perhaps it was damaged in the crash?”
“Wait—” Hannah remembered something. “Shouldn’t there be a hammer on board, to break the windows?”
“Correct. That is the other conundrum.”
Hannah frowned. “What d’you mean?”
The man stepped back and pointed toward a case mounted just above the windows on their left. Where the hammer should be there was an empty space.
“There should be another up here, for the skylights.” He gestured toward the roof. “That has also been removed.”
Hannah’s head spun. “But why?”
The blond man smiled without humor. “Who knows? Maybe some Arschgeige stole them for a prank. Maybe no one checked this coach before it left—” He let the sentence hang.
“We need to call for help,” Hannah said, trying to batten down the panic.
Which was when the other realization hit.
“Our phones.”
All phones had been confiscated when the students boarded and stowed away with the luggage. No communication en route.
No one must know where they were going.
Hannah stared at the blond man. No way to call for help. No way of knowing how long it might take for rescue to come. How long until they were missed? And even then, who would come to their aid in this storm?
She glanced back out of the windows, looking toward the sky. Already snow was piling up, cutting out the faint gray light.
They were trapped. With the dead. And if rescue didn’t come soon, they would be buried with them.
MEG
Rocking. Gentle at first. A lullaby. Rock-a-bye baby. Then harder. Rougher. Her head banged against glass. Her body rolled back the other way and she was falling. Onto the floor. Hard.
“Ow. Shit.”
Her heart spiked and her eyes shot open.
“What the fuck?”
She rubbed at her throbbing elbow and stared around. Her eyes felt like someone had rubbed grit into them. Her brain felt like wet sludge.
You’ve fallen out of bed. But where?
She sat up. Not a bed. A wooden bench. Running around the side of an oval-shaped room. A room that was moving from side to side. Outside, gray sky, swirling flakes of snow. Glass all around. Nausea swept over her. She fought it down.
There were more people in here, sprawled on the wooden benches. Five of them. Bundled up in identical blue snowsuits. Like her, Meg realized. All of them here in this small, swaying room. Buffeted by the wind, snow caking the glass.
This isn’t a room. Rooms don’t move, stupid.
She pushed herself to her feet. Her legs felt shaky. Nausea bubbled again. Got to get a handle on that, she thought. There was nowhere to be sick. She walked unsteadily to one side of the room-that-was-not-a-room. She stared out of the glass, pressing her hands and nose against it like a child staring out at the first snow of Christmas.
Below—way below—the snow-tipped forest. Above, a frenzy of flakes in a vast gray sky.
“Fuck.”
More rocking. The roar of the wind, muted by the thick glass all around, like a hungry animal contained behind bars. Fresh white splatters hit the glass, distorting her vision. But Meg had seen enough.
A groan from behind her. Another of the blue-clad bodies was waking up, unfurling like an ungainly caterpillar. He or she—it was hard to tell with the hood on—sat up. The others were stirring now too. For one moment, Meg had an insane notion that when they turned their faces toward her they would be decomposed, living dead.
The man—mid-thirties, heavy beard—stared at her blearily. He pushed back his hood and rubbed at his head, which was shorn to dark stubble.
“What the fuck?” He looked around. “Where am I?”
“You’re on a cable car.”
“A what?”
“Cable car. You know, a car that hangs on cables—”
He stared at her aggressively. “I know what a cable car is. I want to know what the hell I’m doing on one.”
Meg stared calmly back. “I don’t know. D’you remember getting here?”
“No. You?”
“No.”
“The last thing I remember is…” His eyes widened. “Are you…are you going to the Retreat?”
The Retreat. The deliberately ambiguous name made it sound like a health spa. But it didn’t imbue Meg with any feelings of well-being. On the contrary, it sent schisms of ice jittering down her spine. The Retreat.
She didn’t reply. She looked back outside.
“Right now, we’re not going anywhere.”
They both stared into the gray void, more patches of snow obscuring the glass. A snowstorm. A bad one.
“We’re stuck.”
“Stuck? Did you say we’re stuck?”
Meg turned. A woman stood behind her, around her own age. Red hair. Pinched features. Panic in her voice. Possibly a problem.
Meg didn’t answer right away. She regarded the other people in the car. One was still curled up asleep, hood over his face. Some people could sleep through anything. The other two—a short, stout man with a mop of dark curls and an older, silver-haired man with glasses—were sitting up, stretching and looking around. They seemed dazed but calm. Good.
“It looks that way,” she said to the woman. “Probably just a power outage.”
“Power outage. Oh, great. Bloody marvelous.”
“I’m sure the car will be moving again soon.” This from the bearded man. His previous aggression had dissipated. He offered the woman a small smile. “We’ll be fine.”
A lie. Even if the car started moving, even if they reached their destination, they were not going to be fine. But lies were the grease that oiled daily life. The woman smiled back at the man. Comforted. Job done.
“Did you say we’re on a cable car?” the older man asked. “I don’t remember anyone mentioning getting on a cable car.”
“Does anyone remember anything?” Meg asked, looking around.
They glanced at one another.
“We were in our rooms.”
“They brought some breakfast.”
“Tasted like crap.”
“Then…I must have fallen asleep again—”
More confused looks.
“No one remembers a thing after that?” Meg said. “Not till they woke up here?”
They shook their heads.
The bearded man exhaled slowly. “They drugged us.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the red-haired woman said. “Why would they do that?”
“Well, obviously so we wouldn’t know where we’re going, or how we got here,” the short man said.
“I just…I can’t believe they would do that.”
Funny, Meg thought. Even now, after everything that had happened, people struggled to believe the things that “they” would do. But then, you can’t see the eye of the storm when you’re inside it.
“Okay,” the bearded man said. “Seeing as we’re literally stuck here with time to kill, why don’t we introduce ourselves? I’m Sean.”
“Meg,” said Meg.
“Sarah,” the red-haired woman offered.
“Karl.” The short man gave a small wave.
“Max.” The older man smiled. “Good to meet you all.”
“I guess we’re all here for the same reason, then?” Sean said.
“We’re not supposed to talk about it,” Sarah said.
“Well, I think it’s pretty safe to assume—”
“To assume makes an ‘ass’ out of ‘you’ and ‘me.’ ”
Meg stared at Sarah. “My boss used to say that.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Used to annoy the fuck out of me.”
Sarah’s lips pursed. Max broke in. “So, what do you…I mean, what did you all do, before?”
“I taught,” Sarah said.
Quelle surprise, Meg thought.
“I used to be a lawyer,” Max said. He held his hands up. “I know—sue me.”
“I worked in bouncy castles,” Karl said.
They looked at him. And burst into laughter. A sudden, nervous release.
“Hey!” Karl looked affronted, but only mildly. “There’s good money in bouncy castles. At least, there used to be.”
“What about you?” Meg asked Sean.
“Me? Oh, this and that. I’ve had a few jobs.”
A gust of wind caused the cable car to sway harder.
“Oh God.” Sarah clutched at her neck. She wore a small silver crucifix. Meg wondered how many more reasons she could find to dislike the woman.
“So we’re an eclectic bunch,” Max said.
“And ‘ass’ or not, I assume we’re all heading to the Retreat?” Karl said, raising his bushy eyebrows.
Slowly, one by one, they all nodded.
“Volunteers?”
More nods. Only two types of people went to places like the Retreat. Volunteers and those who had no choice.
“So, is now the time to discuss our reasons?” Max said. “Or shall we save that for when we get there?”
“If we get there,” Sarah said, looking at the steel cables above them nervously.
Sean was eyeing the sleeping figure in the corner. “Do you think we should wake up Sleeping Beauty?”
Meg frowned. Then she stood and walked over to the prone figure. She shook his shoulder gently. He rolled off the bench and hit the floor with a thud.
Behind her, Sarah screamed.
Meg suddenly realized two things.
She knew this man.
And he wasn’t asleep. He was dead.
CARTER
“There’s a storm coming in.”
Carter groaned and rolled over on the sofa. He knew that voice. Caren. With a C. As she had told him at their first introduction. Like it made a difference. Like he was going to send her a frigging Christmas card.
“You know, Carter, a hangover isn’t going to get you out of the grocery run.”
Caren sounded perky. She always sounded perky. Carter wedged one eye open and stared at her. Yep. Running tights, vest, hair pulled back into a bouncy ponytail. She was probably on her way to the gym. Carter closed his eyes and buried his face in a stale-smelling cushion.
Caren continued her aural assault. “We need to be stocked up, in case the storm cuts us off again.”
The sound of the fridge opening and closing, chopping and the whirr of the food processor. Then a clunk as Caren plonked a glass down on the coffee table next to him.
“Drink. It’ll help.”
Carter peered out from behind the cushion. A glass of reddish liquid sat on the table.
“Bloody Mary?”
Caren raised an eyebrow and stalked off. Carter pushed himself into a sitting position, reached for the drink and took a swig.
“Jesus!!”
Fire in his mouth. Burning. Christ, the burning! He sprang to his feet and ran for the sink. He spat out the fiery liquid, turned on the cold tap and wedged his mouth underneath, gulping at the ice-cold water. Finally, he splashed his eyes and face and stood, dripping, over the floor.
He turned. Caren was watching from the doorway, arms folded, smirking.
“You said it would help.”
She shrugged. “You’re up, aren’t you?”
After a shower and a shave, he felt almost human. The mirror told a different story.
People here had got used to Carter’s appearance. They no longer shrank in horror at his approach. It was easy to forget what he really looked like.
Frostbite had decimated the right-hand side of his face. His cheek, much of his forehead and chin were blackened and dead. The center of his face was a gaping cavity and his lips dragged to one side where the muscle had been destroyed. When he ate or drank, he often dribbled. Only his eyes remained. Blue, sharp. A reminder of the person he had once been.
Carter tried hard not to mourn him. He had never been handsome. Overweight in his youth and later, his features had always been a little raw. But sometimes, he woke from dreams where his face was whole again, and the realization of reality left his pillow damp with tears. He was not a crying man. Nor a vain man. But it’s the little things that get to you. Like having a nose.
He slouched back downstairs to find Nate, Miles and Julia lounging around in the large living area, drinking coffee. A Monopoly board had been spread out on the coffee table (Miles was no doubt winning, again) and Julia was rolling a joint—which would piss Caren off when she returned from her workout.
Jackson and Welland, the final members of the group, were nowhere to be seen. Jackson was probably meditating or doing yoga. Welland was probably buried in a snowdrift. With any luck.
They were an eclectic bunch here at the Retreat, thrown together by circumstance and necessity, but they managed to work and live together without killing each other. For the most part.
Fortunately, the Retreat was large. And luxurious. The living area was all polished wooden floors, thick, shaggy rugs and worn leather sofas. There was a massive flatscreen TV and DVD player, games consoles and a stereo. A wooden sideboard housed stacks of CDs, dog-eared novels and a collection of board games. The kitchen was modern and sleek with a huge American fridge freezer and a polished granite island.
Residents at the Retreat were well looked after.
For the most part.
Nate glanced up as Carter walked in. “Man, you look like shit.”
“I know my usual good looks threaten you.”
Nate blew him a kiss. “I love you for your tight ass, dude.”
“Don’t. You’re making me blush.”
Nate grinned. Even with a hangover, he was all stoned-surfer good looks—shiny muscles, sun-bleached hair wrapped in a bandanna. By rights, Carter should hate him, but somehow, over the last three years, they had become friends.
“What time did you guys make it to bed?” Julia asked, pushing a dark dreadlock behind her ear and popping a filter in her joint.
A skinny, tattooed Californian, Julia had grown up in a commune and still looked like she would be most at home in a yurt or behind a placard, protesting something.
Carter frowned. It hurt. “Maybe a couple of hours after you went up.”
Miles arched an eyebrow. He didn’t seem the least bit hungover. He looked as dapper as ever, in a polo shirt and chinos, like he was about to punt a boat along the Thames.
“It was a little later than that,” he said in his cultured English accent. “But I think you might have passed out by that point, Carter.”
“It’s my party piece.”
“Passing out?” Miles queried.
“Some people smoke cigars out of their backsides. I pass out.”
“They really do that?” Julia asked.
“With my own eyes.”
Nate chuckled. “Man, why do we do it to ourselves?”
“Because there’s nothing much else to do?” Julia said.
They all smiled and nodded, even though the truth of that statement cut deep.
Of course, there was stuff to do at the Retreat. Day-to-day tasks to keep the place running. Maintaining the various areas, inside and out. Cooking, cleaning, looking after the supplies. They all had their assigned roles—Miles made sure of that. There were leisure facilities: the gym, the pool, the slopes. Oh, and there was the grocery run.
Carter walked over to the roster pinned on a large corkboard in the kitchen. Sure enough, it was his name there. Again. Time in this place. It seemed to move differently.
He hated doing the grocery run. Not least because it wasn’t exactly a quick scoot to the corner shop. It involved skiing down treacherous slopes all the way to the village, then a hard, uphill trek dragging the sack of groceries, tethered to the skis.
Carter was easily the worst skier in the group. Unlike the others, he had never gone on winter holidays “to the mountains” when he was a kid. Winter sports to him meant careering down an icy quarry slope on an old car bonnet with his sister.
It took him the longest to get down to the village, not to mention the slow climb back. And that was before you figured in the wildlife in the woods.
He could feel his headache edging in again.
“Does it have to be today? I mean, we’ve plenty of—”
“No way.” Julia shook her head. “You know the rules.”
The rules. Yeah, he knew them.
“Julia’s right,” Miles said in an irritatingly reasonable tone. “Besides, there’s a storm coming in, fast.”
Carter stared out of the huge plate-glass window that took up almost an entire wall of the Retreat. It was an awesome view, out over the slopes, the vast pine forests, ...
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