The world was silent. After it swallowed Alex and his loud laughter with a deafening sound, it was engulfed by silence. The quiet was a sharp contrast compared with the previous noise, carrying a purity devoid of liveliness, but not quite lifeless either. And more than that, the quiet felt like how the world should be like, what the hustle and bustle of life had disturbed. It felt just right.
The world suddenly gained a pristine tint it seemed to have lost for a long while already, and it looked like it could remain so, if undisturbed, until the end of times, and rightfully so. A calm breeze blew by, softly brushing against the soft white of the ground and making a swath of its fine upper layer roll playfully and turn over to also enjoy the warmth generously sprinkled onto the world by the sun with its other side.
The quiet lasted for a while, but unfortunately, only a while. A soft tremor shook the snow at some point. It was so soft, and it shook such a small part of the large expanse of white, that it seemed to have been an illusion, or a more mischievous joke of the carefree wind. But right after that, the ground shook again, the tremor that ran through it stronger than before, strong enough to be impossible to be mistaken for an illusion or a joke anymore.
The wind seemed to stop for a moment, like a breath held back by the world. Even the sun seemed to focus, as it fixed its gaze on the ground and waited, waited for the source of the disturbance in the white world of cold and quiet.
The ground calmed down, the tremors just now as if an illusion that had melted away to hide from the focused gazes, then something suddenly pierced through the white ground, bursting out from underneath.
It was a hand, clad in a dark glove glaring in the white setting, and pointing toward the sky like a stubborn life germinating amidst the cold desolation, unrelenting in its determination for the surface, in its drive for the warmth from high above. The scene was so impactful that it was like an exhibit in nature. But it was just a hand.
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A white helicopter with a universally recognizable distinctive red sign on its fuselage flew over the sky above the Hintertux Glacier. Though low in the air, it kept an altitude high enough to avoid an accident like the previous avalanche. As it passed by, the activities that had slowed down on the other mountains in the wake of the thunderous collapse a few kilometers away decelerated again, as heads turned, fingers pointed up, and gossips flew around.
But no one inside the aircraft had the time to care about that, Mark even less, as he sat amidst the rescue personnel, clenching and unclenching his fists while tapping the metallic floor with his left heel, his casual city wear and shoes having been replaced by cold-resistant mountain climbing clothes and boots.
The inside of the chopper was silent, save for the noise of the rotor outside. That was until they arrived at the piste that had seen a complete overhaul about an hour ago, revamping itself to look whiter, with all its defects buried below the surface.
Mark immediately started sweeping his eyes below in search of anything, any clue to help locate Alex. At the same time, his eyes never failed to come back to the one across from him after each sweep, looking at the laptop on the latter's lap and expecting a reaction, a result.
He indeed got one soon enough, but it was a headshake that made his heart pound. The disappointing result was transmitted around then turned into a signal for the pilot who nodded. Silence came back, laden with apprehension, expectations, and fear, and the helicopter turned in the air, tilting to go around the mountain.
The aircraft circled around, eliminating the already unlikely back zone of the mountain, and came to overlook the path marked on the rescue map according to where Alex had been last sighted.
The silence inside the helicopter thickened, and the ceiling seemingly pressing down, as the atmosphere tensed up with the hearts hanging in the air. The outside and the laptop that could give the answers became the focal points of attention. Even the pilot focused and did his part by making the aircraft sweep around as low as he could.
As the heavy silence stretched, the pilot finally broke it:
"I can't fly any lower than this because the zone is still fragile. Have you found something?"
"No– Wait… Footsteps! There are footsteps on the snow!"
The almost depressing answer that had been coming up changed at the last moment, turning into an expression of hesitation, then, after a moment of sharp and deep focus on the screen of the laptop, into an exclamation full of joy and relief. That same relief swept through the interior of the aircraft like a contagion.
With emotions flying high, the helicopter moved to the discovered trail, and it didn't take long to find its end below, as well as the target of the rescue. Seeing him, Mark fell silent for a moment, then turned to the head of the rescue team:
"I want to go down there."
"We can't land."
"I can rappel."
The captain hesitated for a second, then nodded:
"Okay, you can come with us."
Mark nodded, then turned back to the small pit in the snow below, and the trail of footsteps going from it to a cliff looking like a resting wolf a hundred or so meters away. He took a deep breath, and followed the rescue team to the ground.
The snow crunched under their boots as they followed the drawn path. When they arrived below the cliff, they found Alex where they had spotted him from high above. He remained focused on what he was doing for a moment, before he finally raised his head to sweep his smiling gaze over the group of new arrivals, and letting out a bright grin when he saw Mark:
"Hey, you are here. How was the rest of the journey? Did you guys land smoothly?"