Chapter 12

“These mountains are as dangerous as they are beautiful. They might appear to be lovely and majestic but don’t let ‘em fool you. The beauty hides the heart of a killer,” Brenda explained as she dug through her inventory, looking for a pair of gloves in my size.

“Got ‘em!” she yelled as she held the object of her search aloft, a pair of insulated gloves joined the rest of my new wardrobe.

A slim and attractive woman in her mid-thirties, Brenda served as the colony’s quartermaster. Medium sized, well-tanned breasts protruded from her chest, and a pageboy haircut framed her freckled face. The dented, circular scar of a long healed bullet wound adorned her left breast, a few inches below her collarbone.

One wall of the armory displayed her honorable discharge from the US Army along with a citation awarding her the Army Commendation Medal for heroism, a Purple Heart for wounds received in combat, and an Iraq Campaign Medal. Ex-Army and combat tested, she was the real deal.

The brand new garments still carried tags from LL Bean. I let out a long whistle when I did a tally in my head. The camouflage Gore-Tex hunting jacket and matching tactical cargo pants carried a hefty price north of eight hundred dollars. Gore-Tex is some amazing shit. The fabric is a lightweight, waterproof, and breathable membrane that repels liquid water while allowing moisture and vapor to pass through. A pair of Gore-Tex lined winter hiking boots I had brought with me turned out to be the only article of my clothing which passed muster with Brenda.

“The secret of staying alive in the wilderness is to stay warm and dry, and the proper clothing is your first defense,” Brenda commented as she rummaged around for headgear.

“Is it true that we lose most body heat through our heads?” I questioned Brenda.

“We lose heat from any part of the body exposed to the air, but the head is a special case. For example, when hands are unprotected and exposed to severe cold, the human body tries to maintain core temperature, and sometimes our bodies will shut down circulation to the hands to conserve heat,” Brenda replied.

“The rapid loss of hand function is the net result. Eventually, they become useless popsicles. Our bodies will sacrifice our hands to save our lives. The head is different. Our bodies will never shut down blood flow to our heads, but it will sacrifice everything else to maintain our brains at a functioning temperature. Folks succumb to hypothermia and die from cold without ever realizing they are in danger,” Brenda spoke as she produced an adjustable thermal fleece Balaclava Winter Face Mask.

“Is all this really necessary? We’re only going hunting. We’re not climbing Mount Everest,” I grumbled.

“I use the ‘parachute principle’ when it comes to gear,” Brenda said as she examined the facemask. Gear is like a parachute. It’s better to carry one and not need it than it is to need one and not have it,” she said with a laugh.

After a few adjustments and additions, Brenda smiled with satisfaction. My wardrobe now met her minimum standards for survivability in extreme conditions.

“You can’t go hunting without a weapon.”

The quartermaster laid a Kimber 84M Mountain Ascent rifle on the counter for my inspection. The rifle weighed in at less than five pounds. Fitted with a four round magazine, it fired a .30-’06 bullet with a muzzle velocity of a bit over three thousand feet per second. The rifle’s two thousand dollar price tag was the heaviest part of the Kimber. Apparently, when you win the lottery, money is no object.

Brenda positioned me in front of a full-length mirror and, like a tailor, stepped back to admire her handiwork. “Very nice. Now you look like a hunter. The deer will take one look at you and die of fright,” she noted with pride.

“More likely Bambi will die laughing. I feel like an escapee from an LL Bean fashion catalog,” I said with a silly grin.

“Either way, dead is dead, and Bambi is dinner.” Alice smacked her lips in anticipation of venison stew.

Unloaded rifle in hand, I followed her to the underground garage. A somewhat dented 2009 Kawasaki Mule retrofitted to run on hydrogen fuel would be our transportation. We spent the next fifteen minutes doing a pre-trip safety inspection.

I read out the items from our pre-trip cheat sheet, and Alice reported the status of each. Tires? Check. Fuel? Check. First aid kit? Check. Radio? Check. Emergency rations? Check. And so it went until we had checked each of the vehicle’s systems.

Satisfied our pre-trip checklist was complete, Alice took her place behind the wheel. I climbed in next to her and rode shotgun, and we sped down the tunnel toward the exit. Our Kawasaki Mule abruptly decelerated the moment we hit daylight.

“Why so slow? I can walk faster than this,” I said to Alice.

“This is our exit protocol. We reduce speed when crossing the meadow to minimize damage to the grassland.” Alice kept our speed to a crawl.

It was all rather clever. The colony’s survival strategy was to do nothing to alter the visual footprint of the valley. The likelihood of someone accidentally entering the valley at Liberty Mountain was modestly remote. However, it was a virtual certainty on any given day dozens of Google Earth’s armchair explorers loaded images of the valley into their computers. Dirt trails left by vehicles exiting the mountain would attract unwanted attention.

Once we crossed the meadow and entered the forested area, the air temperature dropped like a rock as our rate of travel increased to a more reasonable twenty miles per hour. The ground was littered with splotches of sunlight mixed with delicate patches of sparkling frost feathers left over from last night’s deep freeze. The ecosystem of the valley and the mountains idled between fall and winter as plants and animals braced for the arrival of winter and the season’s first major snowfall.

“The herd we’re hunting should be about fifteen miles ahead of us. We’ll need to cross a steep ridge and two valleys to get there,” Alice said.

Thanks to the modifications to our ATV’s exhaust system, we journeyed westward in near silence. The sound of our tires on the rocky trail was louder than the whispering purr of our engine. As we topped the crest of the last ridge between our deer herd and us, Alice let the ATV coast to a stop.

The top of the rocky ridge offered a spectacular view of the snow-capped summits all around us, and the clear, chilly air gave the illusion distant mountains were much closer than they actually are. High overhead, the bright indigo sky of the morning now had a hazy white tint and high altitude streamers of wispy mare’s tails and cirrus clouds smeared across the heavens from the west.

“Time for lunch and a potty break,” she said as she secured the vehicle, killed the engine and dismounted.

“Great idea! I gotta go water some moss.”

Turning my back on Alice, I used my body as a modesty screen. As I was busy unzipping my fly, Alice moved next to me and stood at my side.

“Do you mind?” I protested.

“Don’t get your knickers in a knot. Just pretend I’m not here,” Alice responded with a wink. “Besides, you weren’t very shy when my daughter and I were playing with you in the shower,” she reminded me.