His name was Elmer Rupp. He was 35, married to a woman that he'd loved from the day he'd first met her, and the father of a little girl that he also had loved from the day he'd first met her. He worked two job; daytime as an armed security guard at a bank and night time as a part time clerk at a Conoco gas station. Not that he had to work so much. His wife was an executive for a hospital in their home town of Boise, Idaho, and while they weren't rich by any means, they had enough to put food on the table and pay their mortgage every month.
Elmer worked the extra job to fund his photography hobby. He loved everything to do with cameras, including taking pictures of favorite subjects – his wife and daughter. The equipment wasn't cheap, though, and by working the extra job, he was able to feel justified spending what it cost to make sure he had the top of the line stuff and not just the basics.
This year, he'd dipped into that fund for a special treat. A trip to Montana to find some wildlife to photo. Not that Idaho didn't have spectacular scenery and wildlife, as well, but he had a friend from high school whose dad had a hunting cabin out in the middle of nowhere that they said he could use if he wanted a weekend away from the city. Elmer had jumped at the chance, double-checked with his wife to make sure she didn't mind and deciding on an extended weekend – through Tuesday – and after a couple of months getting things situated and waiting for the snow to fall to make the pictures that much more rustic, he'd driven to the cabin, only having minimal trouble on the snowy roads.
Alone in the woods with just the camera and the wildlife, with nothing to do but take photos all day and sort through them and pick out the best of the lot by night, he was having a good time. Good enough that he wasn't all that concerned when the snow started falling, adding to the already impressive snowpack inch by inch. There was a snowmobile at the cabin that he could use, and the stack of firewood against the leeward side of the cabin was an impressive one.
Then the snow hadn't stopped. Elmer decided a final outing on Sunday morning would be the last for him, since he wanted to be able to drive out before the snow closed the roads – or the Montana Department of Transportation did – and who knew how long he'd be stuck in the mountains if that happened? He debated taking the snowmobile but was aware that the noise from the engine would scare away anything that he wanted to photograph, so had opted to hike through the wooded areas on foot, sticking to where the snow wasn't quite as deep.
He wasn't an experienced woodsman by any means, but he had been out hunting before he'd decided a camera took better pictures if there was still a spark of life in the creatures that he tracked down, and so he knew to bring a small emergency kit – just in case something happened. And a gun – because there were bears, mountain lions and even bison out there that might not be so willing to have their photos taken and might need to be scared off with a shot into the air.
By afternoon he was ready to call it a day, but then he realized that he was in trouble. The snow hadn't cleared his tracks – he could still see them behind him – but it was getting dark, now, and that was making it harder to follow the path back the way he'd come. The next time Elmer had stopped to rest, he was definitely feeling weary and worried. He was bundled up well against the cold, but it was full dark by now, and he realized that the trail that he'd been following wasn't his own tracks but were probably a deer or an elk. Somewhere in the dark he'd managed to get turned around.
Exhausted and knowing it would be suicide to wander the woods in the dark with just a thin beam of a flashlight to see by, Elmer found a sheltered area by a fallen tree to settle in. The roots had been pulled up, leaving a depression that he cleared out before tucking himself into it as close to the tree as he could. He started looking for any dry wood to be used for a fire, figuring he'd be better off if he stayed put, tried to stay warm and curl himself into a ball and wait for daylight.
OOOOOOO
Ned didn't last much longer than it took him to eat a couple of s'mores before he started falling asleep in front of the fireplace and eventually told everyone goodnight and went to bed, yawning and tired from what had been a very full day for him. Peter had more stamina and was more susceptible to the sugar that was coursing through his system, so he stayed up, sprawled in one of the beanbag chairs with a metal skewer in his hand and the bag of marshmallows beside him on the floor for easy accessibility.
Everyone had gone to bed except Natasha and Tony. They weren't in any hurry to sleep – and both had noticed that Peter seemed distracted and were a little concerned as to why that was. He'd make a s'more and would frown, almost as if his head hurt or something, and would then turn and look over his shoulder at the door – as if he expected someone to come knocking. Then he would take a bite of the treat in his hand, only to look back at the door once more.
"You're okay?" Stark asked – again.
"Yeah. Sorry." He rubbed the back of his neck and set the skewer carefully to the side. "Too much sugar, maybe…"
"Or something else?" Natasha asked.
Peter shrugged.
"I'm not sure…" he admitted. "Maye."
"Concentrate," Tony told him. "What's it saying?"
"It doesn't work that way, Tony. I just have a feeling…"
He sounded agitated, and Stark stood up.
"Why don't we go for a walk?"
If nothing else, it might calm the boy down a bit, or maybe give him that extra exercise that he needed to wear out whatever had hold of him.
Peter got up as well, almost looking relieved.
"Yeah."
"Want company?" Natasha asked.
Stark shrugged.
"We're not going to be gone long. Maybe just around the house – make sure there's nothing going on that we need to know about."
"Watch out for any moose."
Tony and Peter bundled up into boots, hats, coats gloves and scarves and went outside, closing the door behind them.
"Which way, Peter?" he asked the boy as they stood on the porch.
Peter headed out immediately, following that nagging itch that demanded to be scratched and only could with activity, going toward the only area that they hadn't yet explored on either of their snowshoe trips – and the opposite direction from the airfield. He ignored the effort of wading through the snow in his anxiety, and Stark followed, activating an arm of the Ironman suit to use to give them a powerful spotlight to see in the dark – and although it wasn't technically designed for that particular function, it worked amazingly well and lit up the area around them as bright as if the sun had come out.
The snow was still falling heavily, but they were under threes, now, and it wasn't too hard to move in it, but Stark was breathing heavily by the time they'd gone even half a mile.
"Now I know what I need to add to my suit," he told Peter. "A power snow shovel."
Peter smiled at that, although Tony couldn't see it under his scarf.
"I think we're close," he said. "It's getting more intense."
"Wait a minute, then." Tony put a hand on the boy's shoulder to stop him and then activated the rest of his suit. "Let me make sure you're not sensing a roving pack of alligators or something…"
"Alligators?"
Peter shook his head, but Friday was already scanning the area, and Tony was concentrating on what the readings were telling him. There were several woodland animals, big and small, out there hiding from the weather, hunkered down in sheltered spots, reading as small red dots of warmth on Friday's sensors. A pack of wolves in a large den – maybe the ones that the kids had seen that day – a lot of elk and deer standing in tight groupings and several bison, even. Some that were a little close for comfort. Nothing that looked out of place, though.
"Boss, there's a person out there."
Friday focused on a red dot that was not as large as the bison but was bigger than the individual elk or deer. A single dot, not moving, and hiding in the shelter of a fallen tree no more than a couple of football fields away, with a very small fire burning so close that it registered as a single heat source with the man next to it. They would have walked right by him in less than another half hour and probably would have missed him entirely.
"Vitals?"
"Body temperature is a little low, everything else is normal."
Tony deactivated the helmet of the suit but kept the rest on.
"Come on, Peter."
He moved to take the lead and used the Ironman suit to push the snow out of the way more quickly than Peter could have,
"What is it?" the boy asked, practically jogging, now, to keep up, but able to do so in the path Stark was making.
"We got a guy out there."
"What?"
Tony was almost running himself, but he was purposely dragging his feet to clear the path. Not only for Peter, but because they were going to be going back that way and it would make for easier travel. The man might be out there on purpose, but if he was, then he was an idiot, because the tiny fire that Friday picked up wasn't going to keep him warm overnight.
OOOOOOO
Elmer was pretty cold and a lot worried. The snow wasn't letting up, any, and even though he'd managed to find some wood and start a fire using a bag of Doritos as fire-starting tinder, there wasn't a lot of wood, and the fire wasn't big enough to really do much to warm him up. He'd tried his phone several times, but there wasn't any service this far out, or maybe the mountains were blocking whatever signal there was.
Whatever the reason, he couldn't call for help – and even if he could, he didn't know where he was and wouldn't have been able to tell anyone where to find him. He'd heard a wolf howling an hour or so ago, but hadn't heard much more than that. The rustling of some little creatures that were probably heading to shelter or – God forbid – a mountain lion or some other kind of predator that hadn't tried eating a person before but might be willing to try one that was out by himself in the woods, helpless. The more he thought about that possibility, the likelier it became in his mind and worry turned into downright fear that spiked every time he heard a noise.
He was ultra-alert, now, and all thought of sleeping until morning had long gone. Instead he held his gun in one hand and fed the fire with the other, flinching every time he heard anything out in the dark. He suddenly was aware of a rustling noise coming toward him from the dark and what sounded like heavy breathing. Elmer's imagination immediately screamed predator and he raised the gun. Something stepped on a branch in the snow, snapping it like a shot and Elmer jumped.
"Watch out, Tony!"
Startled, the gun in Elmer's hand went off. Immediately there was a clang that sounded like metal on metal and then a high-pitched yelp of pain.