But we were going to have to do what we were going to have to do. And right then, that meant getting her out of the elements—and away from any animals that might smell the blood and come around thinking they were going to have a free meal. An easy target.
“First things first,” I continued, without waiting for an answer. “I’m going to have to build you a stretcher.”
I lashed the final corner of my improvised stretcher together, threading the tent cord through the canvas and wrapping it around the end of the sapling before tying it off and sitting back to inspect my work. Angie had given me pointers here and there—between bouts of faintness—and though neither of us had done anything like it before, and we were now trying to figure it out in the most stressful situation ever, I thought we’d done an okay job. I’d gone into the woods to find two saplings of equal size to use for the frame of the stretcher and cut them down using nothing but my hunting knife. The four-inch blade had not been designed for chopping down trees, but I hadn’t had a choice.
My wife was dying. I wasn’t going to let a little thing like a small knife blade stop me from saving her.
The first thing I’d done was leave the two sides of the frame a little long. It meant the thin branches at the top of the saplings would be dragging behind us, making this more of a sled. With luck, it would keep the thing from digging into the snow.
With luck, it would mean quicker travel for us. Because the day was getting darker and darker, and I was having more and more trouble getting Angie to wake up when she faded off. We had to find shelter, and we had to find it quickly. I ripped through the tent with my knife, cutting cloth for the sled, and grabbed the ropes that would have held the tent to the ground for binding the canvas to the saplings. The result was a narrow length of tent canvas stretched between two long saplings, a ski setup at the back, and handles for me to hold in the front.
Our tent had been absolutely destroyed, and though it was worth it, it also meant that we’d have no protection against the night. We had to find that cabin. If we didn’t, or if we got lost, we’d be stuck out in the woods without any protection whatsoever.
If that happened, we wouldn’t have to worry about anything anymore. But that wasn’t an option.
I gathered together the rest of the supplies, trying to think through what we might need, and stuffed as much as I could carry into my pack. Then I very carefully moved Angie from the truck to the stretcher and bundled her up in every blanket and scrap of cloth I could find. I would be moving and would heat up quickly. But she was just going to be laying there. It was going to make her horribly vulnerable to the seeping coldness of the air.
“You move your arms and good leg every five minutes or so,” I told her firmly as I tucked the last blanket up around her ears. “Keep the blood circulating. I don’t care how much it hurts. I won’t have you dying of hypothermia, do you hear me?”
She nodded, but I didn’t know how much she was actually even hearing at that point. I was losing her. Quickly.
Too quickly. We had to get the hell out of there.
Before I picked up the branches and started running, though, I went through some of my training. What was I forgetting? Was there anything else that I needed to do before we left?
Then I remembered. “Arrow,” I whispered to myself.
A marker for anyone who might come after us. Something to tell them where we’d gone. I dug through the snow near the truck, scraping and stomping out the shape of a large arrow pointing in the direction I intended to take us. Then I filled it with stones—and hoped that it didn’t keep snowing, and that the rocks would stay visible. If anyone saw it, they would at least know where we were headed.
Not that anyone was likely to come.
In a final moment of inspiration, I walked over to the dead bear and yanked the deer antler from its neck, cleaning the blood away in the snow and returning it to my pocket.
“Okay, Ange. Just hang on. We’re gonna find you some help.”
I wasn’t sure if she’d heard me or not, and added stopping every few minutes to manipulate her extremities to my list of things to do.
Five miles. I’d said it had only been about five miles to the cabin I’d seen. God, I hoped I was right. I secured my backpack on my back, hoisted the end of the stretcher up by the handles, and started the long walk toward the cabin, dragging my wife behind me.
Hoping we would reach shelter before nightfall, and before my strength gave out.
The snow clawed at my boots, forcing me to fight for every step. Weariness dragged me toward the frozen earth, but I pushed through it, channeling old habits from long days spent marching across rocky Afghan terrain. My arms and back ached with a slow burn from dragging Angie’s stretcher behind me, and I stopped every time I thought about it to check on my wife and move her arms around. Massage the circulation back into her good leg.
I didn’t mess with her broken leg. I didn’t want to start the bleeding again. Figured that at this point, the cold might be good for it. Might be keeping the wound from going bad.
Then, finally, after what felt like one thousand years, I saw something in the distance. I didn’t know what it was at first, but after several minutes of squinting and holding my breath, it finally began to take shape.
A cabin. Right there next to the road, just like I’d thought. A cabin. Shelter. Safety. And perhaps a way to contact the outside world.
I watched it materialize from the trees like a ghost fading into view, thanking every deity I could think of for delivering us. Behind me, Angie was quiet, and though I wondered if I should wake her and tell her that we’d found shelter, I decided not to. Instead, I started pushing myself harder, making my steps longer and quicker. Angie was fading quickly, and the sooner I could get her under that roof, the better.
For now, if she was sleeping, I wanted her to stay sleeping. Wanted her to save all her energy for healing.
Above us, the sky was still that strange yellow-tinted color, casting the world around us into sepia tones. The woods were utterly and eerily silent, as if there was no one else alive but us. But I put that behind me, for now.
All that mattered was that we’d found the cabin. All that mattered was getting her out of the cold.
“There it is,” I finally said, unable to contain my excitement. “We’re almost there. Just a little bit farther, and we can get warm. Get some help for you.”
The thought that there might not be help was an unwelcome—and unhelpful—guest in my mind. I didn’t know what had happened, didn’t know what had caused that yellow coloration in the sky, but worrying about it right now wasn’t going to help us. I needed to stay calm, to remain in control, no matter what. Angie was depending on me to get her home. To get back to Sarah.
Eyeing our surroundings, it didn’t seem like there was anyone around—not even in the cabin. Perhaps it had been deserted. Perhaps whatever had caused that yellow sky—and the animals to go crazy—had also struck here. Taken out whoever had lived here.
The cabin was set back a bit from the road, but remained visible through a thin covering of trees along the roadside. It was small structure, but looked solid, and was clearly kept in good repair and used on a regular basis, if not inhabited permanently. The wood siding was well maintained, as were the shingles of the roof, and piles of cut wood were stacked neatly on the front porch.
I stopped at the edge of the trees and lowered the stretcher carefully to the ground, prying my stiff fingers away from the handles. I hated to leave Angie alone, lying in the snow, but I had no better option. If all went well, she would only be there for a couple minutes. And I definitely couldn’t take her with me until I knew what we were dealing with.
“Okay, sweetie,” I said. “You just rest here for a minute while I check things out.”
I approached the cabin on my toes. I didn’t want to scare anyone who might be in there, but I also needed to make sure it was safe before I brought Angie to the door. I crept to the side of the small building, where I f
ound a window that was just low enough to the ground for me to look through. Unfortunately, it was dark inside and I couldn’t see much from that vantage point. A small round table, a lot of bare floor, and what looked like it might be a stove in the corner. A fireplace, too, and at the sight of it my heart beat several times harder.
A fire. We could build a fire in there. It would be the best, and quickest, way to get Angie warm. Thank God.
Another quick glance around the room seemed to indicate that it was dark and quiet in there. I stepped back and looked, and there was no smoke drifting from the chimney, which meant that there hadn’t been a fire in there in some time.
Could it be that the cabin was just empty? Maybe a summertime haunt for some rich family who didn’t bother with it in the winter? That wouldn’t be ideal—because I could certainly use some help out here—but if it meant that we were free to use it, I would take it.
I returned to the front of the cabin and climbed the three steps onto the porch, pausing to measure my surroundings. Nothing jumped out as being out of place, so I raised my hand and knocked on the door.
No answer.
I waited a few beats, then knocked again.
“Hello! We need some help out here!”
After a moment, when I still hadn’t gotten a reply, I tried the door handle. It turned in my hand. I wasn’t surprised to find the door unlocked; this far out of the town, people tended to relax a little bit when it came to that sort of thing.
I still felt incredibly lucky, though. With one nudge I had the door open, and I could feel that it was already much warmer inside, out of the wind. Away from the snow.
“Hello?” I called out into the interior of the cabin, covering my bases and making sure I was alone.
When there was still no answer, I stepped inside, still on my toes, and prepared to figure out whether the people who used this cabin were actually gone—or were hiding, waiting to jump out at me once I was fully inside.
4
The first thing I did was make a quick circuit of the interior of the cabin. There was a single open space containing a seating area and the table and stove I’d seen from the window. Crossing the small living space, I found a single bedroom with a twin-size bed, separated from the main room by a curtain that could be drawn around it. Plenty of blankets on it, though they looked as if they hadn’t been touched in some time. A stall bathroom was attached to the bedroom on one side.
The furnishings throughout were mostly wood, and they looked handcrafted and well-worn. I was disappointed not to see any sign of a telephone or two-way radio of any kind, and I took a moment to breathe and let that settle in. What kind of cabin didn’t have any sort of radio in it? Why didn’t they have any way of communicating with anyone? The cabin was out in the middle of nowhere, surely they would want—
Ah, I realized. It was out in the middle of nowhere. We’d left our phones in the truck because we hadn’t had any coverage, and this cabin was probably more of the same. If there was no signal here, there was no reason to have electronic equipment.
Still, it was a blow. I’d been hoping that we would find something here, something I could use to call for help.
Did they even have electricity? I suddenly wondered. A couple of electric lamps were standing in the corners of the main room, but the place seemed to be lit primarily by the kerosene lanterns I saw scattered throughout the cabin. Whatever electricity they had, it must have come from a generator somewhere on the property. The town surely hadn’t run any power lines all the way out here.
I moved to one of the lamps and tried to switch it on, but nothing happened. Well, that didn’t mean anything. If they were running off a generator, and they weren’t here, that generator was probably turned off at the moment. This place was definitely set up for off-grid living.
And if that was true, maybe it meant that whoever lived here—if they lived here at all, and it wasn’t just a vacation spot—would know what to do in case of an emergency. Hell, maybe they’d have some super snowmobile, just ready and waiting to take Angie into town for help. People who lived off the grid might not want to be found, but they also didn’t want to die. They had to be ready for any eventuality.
Including, I supposed, people randomly showing up out of the woods, having been attacked by a bear and needing medical attention.
But what if there was no such person? What if this was just a vacation place and no one was out here?
“Then we’ll get her warm and figure out what to do after that,” I told myself firmly. “One step at a time.”
It was something one of my COs had told me once—one step at a time—and it was valuable advice. You couldn’t jump ahead of yourself or you’d forget to accomplish the thing you needed to accomplish right now.
Right now, getting Angie warm was my primary target. Anything else could wait. It would have to.
I dropped my backpack on a chair and made my way back outside, bracing myself against the suddenly cold air, to where Angie waited in the snow. Five minutes later I had Angie at the front of the cabin, and then in my arms. I carried her inside, laid her on the couch, and wrapped her in the quilts I found there.
“Okay, honey. There you go. Just give me a minute to get a fire going and warm it up in here. Then we’ll check your bandage and see how it’s looking.”
I made a quick route around the cabin, checking for anything I’d missed before, and realized that I’d missed something very important: a wood-burning stove in the kitchen. It was the kind that could be used as both a source of heat and a method of cooking, which made the oven seem rather extraneous, but I tossed that off as not my problem. I rifled through my backpack until I found a long-necked lighter and slipped it into my coat pocket. There was a stack of newspaper near the front door—presumably for this very purpose—and I shoved a handful into the oven.
Right. Wood. Must find wood.
“I’ll be right back. Just hang in there.”
I stepped quickly out onto the front porch of the cabin and found firewood on both sides, cut neatly and laid out here to dry. This was a covered porch, which meant the wood was actually still dry, and I grabbed an armful and rushed back toward the door. I was just trying to figure out how to get the door open with my arms full of wood when I was frozen in place by the ratcheting echo of a pump-action shotgun chambering a round.
“What the hell are you doing on my porch?” The voice behind me was low and rough, carrying an unmistakable threat.
“Okay,” I said, my heart in my throat. “Okay, just... don’t shoot. I’m moving real slow, here.”
I lowered the armload of firewood back onto the pile.
“I’m not armed.” I raised my hands and turned around very slowly until I was facing the road. “I don’t mean any harm. I’ve got an injured woman here, and I just needed some help. We found your cabin and I thought someone might be in here—someone who might be able to help.”
“So you decided to help yourself to my home, huh?”
The man was standing ten feet away, in the yard between the front porch and the thin line of trees at the roadside. He wore black tactical pants and a thick jacket of forest green camo. His pale face was red with wind burn and he wore a dark, moth-eaten beard. Heavy brows rose like mountains above the small pools of his sharp brown eyes, which held intelligence and hostility in equal parts. The full pack on his back didn’t seem to weigh him down at all, and he stood easy, the shotgun expertly cradled against one shoulder of his large frame.
This was not the look of a man who was going to be helpful, and I felt my muscles tense in readiness. If he meant to make trouble, he’d find it. I wasn’t going to let him anywhere near Angie until I knew we could trust him.
“Maybe I should shoot you where you stand for trespassing on my property.”
“We didn’t mean any harm,” I repeated, working to keep my voice calm. It wasn’t the first time I’d been held at gunpoint by an angry man who saw me as an intruder on his land. I knew the r
ules. Talk them down. Stay calm. Show them that they’re jumping to conclusions and that I’m not there to hurt them. “Just looking for some help.”
The stranger’s eyes narrowed. “You said you’ve got a wounded woman.” He motioned with his head toward the stretcher that lay in the snow near the front steps.
I nodded. “My wife.”
“Uh-huh. What happened to her?”
The shotgun stayed trained on my body, barrel steady, not weaving around in the slightest, and I cursed myself for having left my own gun in the house. What kind of soldier runs out into the snow without any way of protecting himself? I’d known there was a chance that whoever owned this cabin would find their way back.
I knew better than to let myself be caught out like this.
This guy had obviously had some experience pointing a weapon at people, too. My impression of him was growing less and less complimentary. I didn’t want him anywhere near Angie.
“We were attacked by a crazed black bear. Her leg is broken and she’s clawed up pretty bad. Our truck is dead and so are both our cell phones, so we had to walk. I thought I’d seen a cabin in this direction, and we came hoping we would find someone who could help.”
I was running out of words and this guy was just staring at me like he didn’t understand a word I was saying. Completely unhelpful.
Dammit.
“I just need to find a way to get her some help,” I continued, praying that he would understand. Praying that he would make some move—either to help or to attack. If he moved, I’d know who he was, what he was about. I’d know how to react.
The stranger stood without moving as I fell silent, his eyes narrowed as he processed my story. I held my breath, watching the man’s trigger finger, knowing I would have trouble getting out of the way if the guy decided to fire at me. Finally, though, the guy lowered his gun. I exhaled just as slowly, thinking that we might actually be getting somewhere.
“Your truck and your phones, huh? Tell me more about that.”
Bitter Cold Apocalypse | Book 1 | Bitter Cold Apocalypse Page 3