Adventures in Intergalactic Backpacking

  Debra Dunbar

  Copyright © 2021 by Debra Dunbar

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Also by Debra Dunbar

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  My breath came in short pants. My heart raced. I was so close—so very close.

  No, I wasn’t having sex. I was breathless from the altitude, heart pounding as I strained to summit this peak as quickly as my oxygen-starved muscles could go. All this with a twenty-five pound pack on my back. For me, this sort of thing was just as good as sex. Actually it was better than sex. The finish would be more satisfying than the best orgasm—but only if I managed to beat Ethan to the top.

  Behind me I heard the scattering-clack of a dislodged rock tumbling down the mountain, followed by a not-so-muffled curse. We were at least two miles ahead of the rest of our hikers—probably more since neither one of us has taken a break since we’d broken camp and headed out this morning. Our resting spot for the evening, the place where the others were most likely approaching right now, was further down the mountain in a gorgeous spot next to an alpine lake. That’s where we should be, relaxing in ultralight camp chairs and eating trail mix, our tents already set up for the night. The sun at the campsite would be setting, low in the embrace of scrubby pine boughs, but here it was gone, blocked by the shadow of the mountain. If I hurried, I’d catch a glimpse of the red-gold rays at the summit. I’d glory in the view, wait at the peak for that asshole to climb over the last ledge, gloat a bit, then head down a narrow, treacherous trail in the dark with only my headlamp to guide me.

  This is stupid, that logical voice inside my head chastised. But I never listened to that voice, not when there was a challenge to my endurance, skill, and speed. There was no money riding on this bet, just honor. If Mr. Weekend-warrior, Corporate-wank, Offshore-tax-sheltered-jerk with his thousand-dollar backpack and five-hundred-dollar trekking poles thought he could out-hike a woman who’d been on the trails practically since she could walk, then he was in for a surprise.

  I didn’t have a thousand-dollar backpack or five-hundred-dollar hiking sticks. What I did have was some nice, sponsored products, my trusty old gear, and grit. Emphasis on the grit. Normally an extreme backpacking excursion organized by a swanky outfitter with a reputation for corporate team-building would be out of my price range, but Women In The Backcountry magazine had asked me to do an article on the experience, and the outfitter had comped the trip, eager to break into the “Outdoorsy Women CEO” demographic. I could see why they’d want to tap that market since I’d arrived to find myself in a group of ten men, all of them executives from some giant finance company.

  Ethan was the head dick, evidently. Although the others were reasonably fit, they were struggling to keep up where he wasn’t. Ethan had clearly put together this team building exercise for his department. No doubt he’d said “jump” and they’d all thrown on their backpacks and agreed to seven days hiking in the Grand Tetons. There were no fourteens on this excursion, but plenty of eleven and twelve thousand foot mountains, and the mother of them all that came in pretty damned close to fourteen thousand. This trip had been tough even for me, a woman who made her living doing extreme outdoor expeditions and writing about them. As for these corporate guys? I was surprised none of them were dead yet.

  From day one, Ethan had pushed hard, ordering our guides to set a crushing pace with high miles and big climbs. These guys should have started out with a five-mile day, especially at altitude, but Ethan had us doing twenty on our first hike of the trip. None of the guys complained. None of the guides complained, clearly realizing who was paying the bill—and who would be doing the tipping at the end of our trip.

  I hadn’t complained either. Instead I’d gotten pissed at Ethan’s arrogant, high-handed bullshit and took the lead the first day, arriving at our campsite an hour before the rest of them. That was the beginning of our feud. Each day Ethan and I quickly outpaced the others, racing each other to our spot for the night. Today was our last hike before we headed back. Ethan’s smack-talk this morning had been unbearable. And if I didn’t beat him to the summit, he’d be worse than unbearable tonight. I’d never been so tempted to ditch a group and head back on my own as I had on this trip. But if I left, Ethan would claim that as some sort of victory, and I wasn’t about to lose to that asshole, ever. It was only pride that allowed me to put up with that jerk for seven days. And it was pride pushing my body to its absolute limit up this mountain.

  I traversed a narrow ledge, then came to a stop at a huge bolder. A scramble wasn’t a big deal, but the last hundred feet of this were pretty close to a climb. Once more that voice in my head warned me to call this foolishness off and head back. I didn’t have climbing gear with me, and doing this bare-handed with no tie-offs in dim light was taking unnecessary risks.

  Did I mention that I never listened to that voice?

  For a brief second I thought about taking off my pack and leaving it behind, but I could see Ethan climbing a path that would put him ahead of me if I delayed. Leaving the pack on, I found some handholds, and got moving.

  The next half hour was brutal. Twice I’d almost fallen to what surely would have been my death. My hands were cramping, and two fingers were bleeding from scrapes, but I finally pulled myself over the last boulder, got to my feet, and started running. Ethan was seconds behind me and gaining, his longer stride giving him the advantage in this sprint to the finish.

  I poured on the speed, using energy I should have saved for the trip down to the campsite. But I didn’t care about getting to the campsite; all I cared about was winning. Ethan flung out a hand, jumping for the final boulder that was the high point on the peak. I threw an elbow his way and jumped as well.

  That’s when a blinding light took away my sight, and everything went from white to black.

  Chapter 2

  Something smelled sickeningly sweet, like cotton candy had become inexplicably crammed into each of my nostrils. The room was dark, with bright splashes of white light that did nothing to illuminate the surrounding blackness. I was naked, lying on something cold and hard, but it wasn’t the ground under my sleeping bag. It felt unyielding. Inorganic. A six foot gelatinous form slid into view, six eyes stalks waving around as some of them looked at me while others scanned our surroundings. I’d had the dark room dream before, but this visitor was new. Alarming as his appearance was, I decided to just relax and go with it. Anything was better than the aloneness of being paralyzed on a slab of rock at night with a moonless, starless sky. I hated that dream. Maybe in this dream my slug companion would rescue me, or at the very least help me wake up faster.

  Blub.

  The gurgled syllable came from the creature, who didn’t have any visible mouth that I could detect. I tried to reply, but then I remembered that I was paralyzed.

  I hated this dream.

  Blub. The slug jabbed a hypodermic that felt like it had the diameter of a fence post into the base of my skull. It was so painful that I felt it even through the dream, even though I was supposedly paralyzed. I screamed, but the only thing that came out was a hoarse choking noise.

  An icy cold washed through my veins followed by searing heat. This dream was going from bad to worse. I wondered if it was true that if you died in a dream you died in reality. If so, I was a goner, because if the gigantic needle didn’t cause me to bleed to death, whatever this escargot had injected me with surely would.

  “Hail SETA,” the slug informed me.

  Had my dream just merged with a superhero movie? Where slugs were part of a subversive organization? No, that was Hydra, not SETA.

  “What’s SETA?” I mumbled back.

  Hey. I could speak. Still couldn’t move my arms or legs, but I could speak.

  “Hush. Do not let them know you understand. Stay quiet and someone with our organization will come for you,” the slug said.

  Or didn’t say. I wasn’t sure how “blub-blub-blub” had somehow transformed into words in my brain, but I suddenly understood this guy.

  In past dreams I’d just been paralyzed on the hard rock, alone and frightened. There’d never been a giant talking slug in those dreams before. Or oversized hypodermics. Or a promised rescue from some secret organization.

  “Where am I?” I tried to look around but saw nothing but darkness and those patches of white light. No stars. No moon.

  “On the blub-blub,” the slug informed me.

  Okay, so that didn’t
translate fully.

  “You have been captured and are being transported to the buyer,” the slug continued. “There is no way for us to rescue you until you reach your destination, so you must be patient.”

  A faint swish noise came from somewhere to my left. It reminded me of the noise automatic doors made when opening and closing. The slug’s eyestalks waved around. I got the impression he was nervous. Thinking about what made a giant talking slug nervous was pushing me toward the edge of panic.

  It’s just a dream, I reminded myself. I’d wake up soon and be in my bed or in a sleeping bag. Just a dream.

  “You must remain quiet. Don’t let them know you understand. SETA will not allow this atrocity to continue.” The slug bent over me with another hypodermic and I tensed.

  This one didn’t hurt nearly as badly as the first, but it wasn’t exactly painless either. There was another swish noise, another circle of light that appeared to my left with the elongated shadow of a bug bisecting the bright white.

  The slug’s stalked eyes went wild, swinging around in all directions. My vision blurred with sudden pain and when my sight cleared, the creature was gone. Once more I was alone in the dark. Paralyzed again. Lying on something hard. Another wave of pain swept through me, and this time I thankfully passed out.

  “Great skttr and mlwr, these things smell.”

  The voice penetrated my sleep and I frowned, annoyed that someone was disturbing my finally dreamless rest.

  “It’s all that excreting,” another voice explained. “Too many orifices. Far more than any creature should have.”

  The conversation wasn’t coming outside of me, they were being formed inside my head. The voices were making clicking and rubbing noises like crickets or grasshoppers, and my brain was somehow making sense of all that, turning it into words.

  “They’re like Gezmats, with the skin oozing.” The first voice laughed—or at least my brain told me the sound was a laugh. “But this is more watery and salty. Leaves this gritty film when it dries. Disgusting.”

  “Not as disgusting as their methods of absorbing nutrition,” the other said. “So inefficient. And the waste product is downright vile.”

  Talk about stink. Yeah, I hadn’t showered since I’d started this hike, but at least I didn’t smell like week-old sauerkraut that had been sprayed by a skunk.

  “Vile. And don’t get me started on their ridiculous reproductive process. It’s just as inefficient as their energy conversion system. Can you imagine requiring two beings to procreate?”

  “And the weird protuberances involved,” the first voice complained. “That floppy hose! The damp hole! And more excretions on both parts. Why the Pooties wanted a pair of these, I’ll never know.”

  I really didn’t need to hear about these guys’s sex hang-ups.

  “Don’t know, don’t care,” the second voice said. “For what the Pooties are paying us, I don’t need to care.”

  “At least it’s not more bovines. Don’t get me wrong, their inability to keep bovines alive for more than a few turns works to our financial benefit, but it’s nice to get something else for once, even it does stink.”

  I’d never get any decent sleep with these assholes yammering away. “Shut the fuck up,” I slurred. “I’m trying to sleep here.”

  There was a loud clatter, as if someone had dropped an impact wrench, and some curse words that translated weirdly. Then I smelled the sticky sweet of cotton candy and drifted into sleep once more.

  Chapter 3

  I stirred, feeling muddled and slow, like I was coming out of a deep sleep. My mind cleared, and I remembered that I’d been racing across the top of the mountain, lungs screaming in the thin air as I tried to beat Ethan to the highest point. Then there had been a bright white light, and nothing else—nothing except some weird-ass dreams, that is.

  Damn it. Damn it all to hell. I’d passed out. Or fell off the mountain. Or…something.

  Breathe in. Breathe out. Assess my situation.

  Nothing physically hurt besides some expected muscle soreness. The light seeping through my closed eyelids was dim, with a cold, blue tinge to it. The air held a faint sweet smell.

  Like cotton candy.

  I tried to keep my breathing steady, not wanting to open my eyes and see the inside of a hospital room—or worse, Ethan’s gloating face.

  What the hell had happened? I cringed internally, suspecting the answer to that question. I’d pushed myself too hard and blacked out mid run. Too much exertion, too little oxygen. Ethan had probably needed to use the satellite phone to call for an airlift. Knowing him, he’d stepped over my prone body, touched the highest point, then performed a victory dance before checking to see if I was alive and calling for help. I’d never live this down. I’d lost. And I’d lost to Ethan.

  The realization that I’d probably never see that jerk again wasn’t any consolation. There was a good chance he’d send flowers with a snarky note, just to rub it in, but it wasn’t just his anticipated smirking attitude that made this loss sting, it was the loss itself.

  I hated to lose. Whether I was trying to better a personal best in a 10k or racing to get off the mountain to beat an approaching storm, I hated to lose.

  Memories of the last…day? Two days? Memories flooded me, and I held my breath, hoping when I opened my eyes I’d see a clear blue sky, rock-strewn mountains, and my backpacking group. Maybe this was all just a nightmare, or a bad trip due to peyote-laced trout or something.

  Blinking my eyes open, I looked upward at some industrial-style ductwork ten feet from my face. If I was in a hospital, they’d put me in the boiler room. Stretching my hands out, I felt grass that wasn’t exactly grass-like.

  What. The. Fuck. Was this a hospital basement, or a football field?

  Sitting up, I quickly looked around.

  Not a hospital—not even a hospital boiler room. Not a football field either.

  I was in a twenty-by-twenty cage of hot-pink wire mesh, that I was pretty sure wasn’t wire mesh. Half the floor was covered with some sort of blue sand and the other half the cheapest neon-green AstroTurf I’d ever seen in my life. In one corner was a metal container that held what looked to be water. Next to it was another metal container with multi-colored, one-inch long foam pellets.

  The pink mesh separated me from the ductwork right above it, making this truly a cage. The only familiar, non-psychedelic-colored thing within sight was my backpack. Relief flooded me as I pulled the bag over, doing a quick check. Everything was still there—tent, sleeping bag, and everything else. Wherever I was, whatever had happened to me, no one appeared to have rifled through my pack, let alone taken anything.

  Frowning, I tried to remember what had happened after my mad dash to the summit. White light. Cotton candy smell. My sleep disturbed by dreams of a giant slug and some people talking about cows and bodily functions. Maybe I had passed out and fallen off the side of the mountain, and my fractured memories were from the anesthesia during surgery.

  No, because this clearly wasn’t any sort of surgery recovery room. I patted myself down, realizing that I didn’t have any signs of injury, let alone surgery.

  Plus, I was still in my clothing and not in a hospital gown. The shirt was backwards, though, and my shoes weren’t laced. An ambulance ride? That had included morphine and the removal of my clothing? But I’d have something that indicated an IV insertion, and the few ambulance rides I’d had in my life hadn’t involved taking my shoes and clothing off, then putting them back on.

  Or leaving me in a hot-pink cage full of blue sand and eye-watering green AstroTurf.

  This was absolutely some Alice in Wonderland level shit here. The only explanation I could come up with was that I’d been drugged and was still feeling the effects. Had my dinner trout been laced with peyote? While I wouldn’t put it past Ethan to drug me just for kicks, I couldn’t see mister trust-fund silver-spoon douchebag having access to hallucinogenics. Cocaine, yes. Acid, no.