Alice and I hurried toward the source of illumination like moths to a flame. A glimmering halo of white light surrounded the hole Alice cut through the snow drift at the tunnel's entrance. I crawled into the air shaft that she’d excavated and punched through a thin cap of frost at the end and was instantly dazzled by blinding sunshine.

"Alice, Come here and take a look, you aren't going to believe this," I shouted over my shoulder as I emerged into the open air. The blizzard had passed us by, and the heavy overcast it left in its wake was riddled with expanding patches of brilliant blue sky. The sun had broken through the clouds at the center of the largest patch of sky and blazed in magnificent glory.

A few moments later she emerged from the tunnel and took her place next to me. We stood together, speechless and in awe, with our arms around each other.

The land itself lay before us, transformed by the blizzard into a visual wonderland of strange beauty. The storm swept all the colors of the world away, and only vivid blues, dazzling whites, and a thousand shades of gray remained. The thin, clear air distorted distance judgment in such a way that far away mountain ranges appeared close enough to reach out and touch. Snow capped summits all along the western horizon blazed white with reflected sunlight against a sky so blue that the color bordered on black.

"Have you ever seen anything so beautiful, Dennis?" Alice gave me an extra hug and rested her head on my shoulder.

"Not in this lifetime." I kissed the top of her head and returned her hug. "Where did we park Mr. Kawasaki?" I searched the blanket of snow before us for any sign of our ATV. It was nowhere to be seen.

"I think our Mule is under the drift." Alice pointed to a low mound of snow about 10 yards to our right.

The chest-high snow made forward motion almost impossible without an extraordinary amount of effort. Any thought of walking back to Liberty Base vanished before I had gone five yards. Our buried ATV wasn't going anywhere until next spring, and there was no way we would be able to hike the fifteen miles back to base through this snow cover.

"Do you know how to make snowshoes, Alice?"

"No, but the Spanish SAS Survival Manual has a section on how to make them," Alice said.

"Can you read Spanish?"

"Nope, but we can copy the illustrations in the manual. We'll need to get branches from a pine tree." Alice ducked back into the passageway and emerged with our survival saw a few minutes later.

We set off together to explore the nearest stand of evergreens about a quarter mile to our left. The human body is a remarkable machine, but it's a lousy snowplow.

I was utterly exhausted by the time we reached the trees. I had never been athletic as a youth, and my physical stamina hadn't improved with age. Alice, on the other hand, looked like she was ready to do a twenty mile hike. I grimaced; nobody should be so fucking perky after slogging through waist deep snow.

We cut or collected enough pine branches, garlands, and barrows to decorate the Sistine Chapel after about thirty minutes of labor. We knitted the load together using paracord and dragged our evergreen sled across the snowy valley instead of carrying the load of greenery back to our shelter. We spent a few minutes scooping out a semi-sheltered work area; a depression surrounded by piles of snow to block most of the wind upon arrival.

We had plenty of green pine fuel. We got our hobo stove started and burning in short order and melted snow for drinking water. Our all-purpose chamber pot came in handy, and the steam was an excellent hand warmer.

Alice's attempt to build a replica of the snowshoes pictured in the Spanish survival manual was a perfect copy of the illustration.

"Viola!" she triumphantly held her completed set of Spanish snowshoes aloft for me to view and admire.

"It was too easy," she laughed as her smile shifted from grin to gloat.

"Nice," I mumbled, too embarrassed to speak. I knew in my gut that I was never going to hear the end of this one. I had become a legend at the age of five as the only kid in my home town to ever flunk kindergarten Arts and Crafts.

Alice decided to strut her stuff for the hell of it and started tromping across the top of the snow in her snowshoes. Pride goeth before fall. Her footwear fell apart no more than five steps into her victory march. She practically vanished from view as she sank to her neck in powdery snow. The devil lives in the details in the snowshoe business.

We played woodland cobbler and tried to make a working pair of snowshoes for the next several hours. Alice's creations were things of beauty. Although my efforts were less than stylish, they had one thing in common with my partner's design. Neither one of them worked worth a damn.

The one thing we didn't count on in our fight against frostbite and hypothermia was getting sunburned. A UV barbecue is exactly what we got. Our faces looked like supermarket tomatoes; i.e., red, juicy, and overpriced after four hours in the bright sunshine in the thin mountain air.

"The cupboard is bare, and we've officially run out of food." Alice licked her fingers and stared forlornly at the empty MRE packages at our feet.

"Correction; we've run out of prepared food. We still have a pantry full of legless protein awaiting our culinary expertise." I waved my arm at the sleeping snakes in the darkness beyond our tent.

"Yuck! Do you even know how to cook rattlesnake?" Alice's body shivered in disgust.

"Easy as pie. Cut strips of meat, grill 'em, and they're done when they start to burn," I grinned as I fished around, trying to find our weed stash.

"Time for dessert. Our sunburns are as good excuse as any to explore the medicinal benefits of Liberty Mountain's legally homegrown marijuana." 

I lit my glass pipe, took a toke, and passed it to Alice. Wow. We were smoking weed with attitude. We were as stoned as the faces carved on Mount Rushmore after three or four hits from our pipe.

We undressed for bed as our cannabis high wrapped us in a calm and relaxing fog. Alice stripped down to her birthday suit and climbed into the sleeping bag. I shed all my clothing except for my jockey shorts and T-shirt and quickly joined her under the covers.

We snuggled together like two spoons in the kitchen drawer. While I was content to drift off to sleep, Alice had other ideas. She caressed the side of my face with her fingers and slid her hand down my chest in a southward journey.

Alice gave a contented sigh and snuggled closer to me. She nuzzled her head on my chest. She ever so carefully slid her hand under the waistband of my shorts and explored the contours of my growing erection.

"Does this guy have a name?" Alice tenderly squeezed my penis and held it between her thumb and forefinger as she began to gently stroke it.

Damn! Some treacherous male had revealed one of manhood's most closely guarded secrets in a moment of weakness; we gave pet names to our junk. My appendage answered to the name of Harvey (as in Harvey the Hardon).

"Let's see if Harvey wants to come out and play." Alice used both hands to slide my shorts down to my knees.

Freed from his fabric prison, Harvey joyfully sprang into the air, nearly poking Alice in the face. Turning her head to face me, Alice leaned into me and kissed the end of my nose.

"Do you like this?" she stared into my eyes as her fingers stroked my shaft. Her gaze was as intense as the sensation of her fingers playing with the head of my dick. I turned out the lights and let her explore in the dark, anatomy by braille.

"Oh, God, yes!" I let out a low groan as my hips moved in time with her touch.

I closed my eyes in pleasure. Alice wrapped her lips around the head of my prick before I could open them again. My body jolted in surprise and joy when she explored my pee-hole with the tip of her tongue.

She wrapped her lips around the base of my penis with a long, slow slurp, and slowly lifted her head and let my cock slide out of her mouth. Her tongue did a butterfly dance as it did.

Alice rose to her knees as I writhed in pleasure, and straddled my body before scooting forward. She lowered herself over my mouth when she had positioned my face was between her legs and pressed the wet lips of her pussy against mine.

I let out a muffled “Oomph,” only to hear Alice giggling, "Don't talk with your mouth full. Pick a number between sixty-eight and seventy," she said as she turned around, settled her pussy against my lips, and leaned forward to take my cock into her mouth. 

She was so wet that I could hardly breathe. I licked all her juices up in self-defense as I tried to catch my breath. I would be damned if I was going to be the poor guy who drowned while making love in the mountains.

Chapter 19 

Guided only by our sense of touch, taste, and hearing, Alice and I explored each other's naked bodies in a world without light. Like castaways on a sunless sea, we drifted on the tides of pleasure and followed the currents of passion. Occasionally, as we shifted and moved under the covers, sparks of static electricity twinkled like fireflies in the night.

The space around us became a timeless point of joy as we nestled together like two pieces of a puzzle, a perfect fit. As my tongue explored the entrance of her vagina, Alice's mouth and lips surrounded the head of my cock with wonderful wet butterfly kisses. Sensations of ecstasy flowed through me like a rising tide and, as impossible as it seemed, the darkness around me appeared to shimmer with sensual shades of color as our bodies merged into one. We were yin and yang.

A glittering circle of intense pleasure began to glow at the center of my being. Alive with delicious pressure, every nerve in my body converged at the base of my expanding pillar. Waves of tension and joy flowed inward as the pillar became a tower of rising desire. The tingling sensation in my toes merged with the pricking in my groin. I began to fly toward the point of no return.

Damn it, I'm losing control. It's happening too fast. I'm cumming too soon! I rolled away from Alice to the sloppy wet sound of my prick popping out of her mouth.

"Come back here, I'm not done!" She shifted her body to follow as I squirmed away.

"Just a second? wow? I gotta cool down, I'm about to cum too early." I was tottering on the point of no return. I gritted my teeth and willed myself to back away from the brink. Premature ejaculation is a real buzz kill.

As I started to regain control, Alice's searching hand found my shaft in the darkness. The tender touch of her delicate fingers smearing pre-cum across the top of my penis pushed me over the edge. My body and hips jerked as I squirted all over her hand and arm.

"Oh, fuck!" What a waste of an orgasm.

Nobody wants to sleep in the wet spot. I dribble like a leaky faucet as I searched the blackness for our flashlight. I clicked on the power. Out of habit, I glanced at the array of light emitting diodes to determine the remaining strength of the battery. Bad move. After prolonged darkness, my eyes were at maximum sensitivity. The dazzling brightness is painful in its intensity. Alice vanished behind a blizzard of blue dots drifting across my retina.

"Fucking stupid!" I scolded myself as I shook my head in a useless effort to get rid of the afterimages floating in my field of vision. "Sorry about that." 

My T-shirt did double duty as a towel as I cleaned used sperm from Alice's hand and arm. Memo to self: survival kits should include a friggin' face cloth.

"That was interesting," said the Alice shaped blue dot.

The prolonged stillness in our fabric cave drifted from awkward to uncomfortable as we each waited for the other to speak. Silence and rubber bands share at least one thing in common. If you stretch them far enough, they'll snap. In our case, the break came when Alice's stomach rumbled in hunger. A few moments later, my gut responded in kind.

"I'm famished. What's for dinner?" Alice wanted to know.

"We've got bouillon cubes and tea bags. What's your pleasure?" I inquired.

"I want something to munch, not something to drink. Any energy bars left?" the blue dot asked.

"Nope. Yesterday we had the last crumbs for dessert. It's about time we take a trip to the python pantry and go shopping for serpents." I gathered my clothes and began to dress.

"I don't think I could ever eat a rattlesnake," Alice said with a shiver and a disgusted frown.

"Unless yah can survive on breezy sandwiches, I don't think we've got a choice." I took a bite out of the air in front of my hands and chewed with gusto. "Umm, light and fluffy, just the way I like it," I winked.

We were both hungry as hell. I had skipped meals from time to time without fear. I always knew there would be a meal waiting for me on the other side of the clock. This time, there would be nothing in our cupboard unless we stocked it ourselves. Starving to death is a miserable way to die

"I don't care. I still don't think I could eat a rattlesnake," Alice shook her head as goose bumps covered her chest.

Tragic stories of lost travelers who starved while surrounded by nourishment litter the pages of history. The truth is, our bodies are not terribly fussy when it comes to dinner. As long as it isn't poisonous or toxic, our digestive systems can extract protein or vital nutrients from almost any organic matter. There is never enough food if we don't consider everything on the table.

"Get up and lend a hand; you don't gotta eat 'em, but you have to help." 

We quickly got dressed. Alice held the Rayovac lantern aloft and played streetlight while I made our selection from nature's deli counter. A fat slumbering rattler with a body the size of my arm and about as long as I am tall became the catch of the day.

"Want to do the honors?" I offered her my hunting knife, which she promptly refused.

"I hate snakes. You take care of it." Alice took a step backward.

I was pissed and perplexed. My partner, the wild mountain woman, had no problem slaughtering Bambi but went AWOL when it came to putting food on the table to keep us alive in our Godforsaken cave. Go figure.

Except sucking on my mother's tit while a baby, everything I ate in my life came from the supermarket in jars, cans, boxes, and little Styrofoam platters wrapped in clear plastic film. I lived the sheltered life of a city dweller.

I placed the mess kit on the ground and with survival manual in one hand and my hunting knife in the other, I did a quick review and set about dispatching Rocky the Rattler. Even though the handbook was in Spanish, the illustrations spoke the universal language of the illiterate. A picture is worth a thousand words.

"Don't take this personally, buddy." 

I stepped on the snake's head and drove the point of my knife through its spine. I gritted my teeth and stifled my gag reflex as I felt the crunch of the poor guy's bones. Aside from a few rodents in mousetraps, I had never killed anything larger than a fly. Having to kill to survive added an entirely new perspective to my place in the food chain. My grandmother used to remind me, "You are what you eat."

Rocky, before he went to meet his maker, had been sluggish and hardly moving. His body came alive in death as it wriggled and kept coiling as if to strike. Oh, shit! Dinner just went zombie. Yuck!

Husking the poor guy like an ear of corn didn't seem to slow him down as Rocky continued to coil and spasm like a runaway kielbasa. After stripping off the skin, cutting open the belly, removing its entrails, and washing him in ice water, I fought against the temptation to gag. The damn thing is still moving.

"What part of being dead do you not understand?" I muttered under my breath as I cut him into chunks about five inches long. The slicing did the trick. Rocky finally gave up the ghost and stopped pretending to be alive. Thank God.

Rockies' makeover was complete. The slices of serpent looked more like mutated catfish than a snake. The less snake-like dinner appeared, the more interested Alice became. Gradually her expression of disgust melted into a look of cautious curiosity.

"Follow me to the kitchen," I said over my shoulder as I made a beeline for our tent to grab our cooking supplies on the way to the entrance of the cave. She held the light as I dug through the pile of odds and ends in our stash of survival gear.

Whoever thought of adding a three-ounce bottle of Japanese sesame seed oil to our meager horde is a genius. Anything fried with the Oriental oil had the distinctive nutty zesty zing of toasted sesame seeds.

I scooped up four or five beef bouillon cubes, several sugar packs and a few tea bags and stuffed the lot, along with the flask, into the compact hobo stove. I tossed everything into our saucepan, a.k.a. chamber pot, and set out for the cave's entrance.

After our close call with asphyxiation, I became paranoid as shit when it came to the use of flame within our rocky cavern. Tonight's dinner would be cooked in the open air. If we don't learn from our mistakes, we will be doomed to die by repeating them. Nature doesn't grade on the curve. Her courses are all pass/fail.

The unreadable index pages of the Spanish manual made excellent tinder, and soon the little stove blazed away. I balanced the saucepan atop the Hobo stove and sprinkled several drops of oil on the cooking surface and added a slice of the snake. Since I had never eaten fried rattlesnake, this would be an interesting test of my culinary skills.

The aroma of the sizzling snake and toasted sesame seeds resonated with my hunger as my stomach let out a low rumble of appreciation.

Using my knife as a spatula, I kept the fillet of Rocky moving so that it would not burn. I had no idea of how long to cook the meat. Undercooked would not be acceptable. I wasn't ready to try serpent sushi, so I added a handful of snow to the saucepan and closed the lid and let it steam for several minutes. I stalled as I worked up the nerve to try a taste test.

Hunger and curiosity got the best of me, and I opened the cover. The cloud of steam smelled like food. I cut a thumbnail piece from the end and took a nibble of an interesting blend of bland, chewy chicken flavored meat seasoned with sesame. Not great but also not too bad. Needs salt. I added half a bouillon cube for flavoring and let it simmer for another fifteen minutes.

In no danger of ending up on a menu of a five-star restaurant, my creation tasted palatable enough to qualify as food in a half-star eatery.

"Care for a taste?" I offered Alice a portion of our survival cuisine.

"I told you, I hate snakes." She shook her head and made a face.

"It's going to come down to a question of hate. Which do you hate more? Snake stew or starvation?" I extended a slice of steaming snake to Alice. "If it helps, think of it as a type of evolutionary revenge," I laughed and handed her a hot slice. "Watch out for bones," I warned as Alice took a tentative nibble.

"It tastes like chicken," she said between mouthfuls.

Everything tastes like chicken, but no one ever says chicken tastes like snake. All of which leads to an interesting question. If tuna is chicken of the sea, why isn't chicken called tuna of the land? Apparently, the comparison only works in one direction.

I experimented with different ingredients and cooking styles as I prepared a few other slices of Rocky the Rattler. One concoction turned out to be worthy of one and a half stars. I used a handful of vitamin C rich pine needles, bouillon, and a sugar packet with sesame seed oil to create a sweet and sour sauce. While not exactly gourmet dining, it tasted good enough that we each wanted a second serving.

Snake stew or starvation? Alex, I'll take snake stew for two hundred! We had just won this round of Jeopardy.