Edge of Collapse Series (Book 1): Edge of Collapse

by Stone, Kyla

  Hannah awoke as the first light of dawn crept beneath the tarp flaps. She was shivering hard. Her throat and nostrils burned from breathing in the icy air.

  The relentless cold was taking its toll. Her hands, cheeks, and feet felt frozen. She could barely feel them. That wasn’t good.

  She rolled over, her aching body protesting, and scooted forward. Squinting, she fumbled for her sunglasses, shoved them on, and crawled outside the makeshift tent, pushing aside the pine branches.

  She grabbed the dirty boots she’d placed just at the shelter entrance and covered with pine boughs and shoved them on. She stood, her feet sinking into fresh powder well over eighteen inches deep.

  The world was whiter and colder than yesterday. The temperature had to be hovering near zero, or maybe even below. Thick mounds of snow weighed down the branches of the birch, maple, oak, and pine trees surrounding her.

  The storm was over, the wind a whisper, but snowflakes still swirled from the gray sky.

  The fire had gone out sometime in the night. A thin film of white covered the charcoaled twigs and branches. She kicked it in frustration. Little chunks of snow, coal, and flakes of ash flew everywhere.

  At least the snow would cover her tracks. That was the only good thing she could think of. Weariness pulled at her. She wanted to crawl back into her sleeping bag, close her eyes, and never wake up.

  She needed to keep moving, needed to find some kind of manmade shelter by tonight. She might not make it another night. She thought she knew what she was doing, but she didn’t. Not really.

  Tears wet her eyes. She blinked them back. She was out of her element, exhausted, completely alone. She had no idea if she was going in the right direction, if she’d just missed a road or a house or a town and didn’t even know it.

  At least her canteen was full. Well, almost full. Allowing the water to slosh around would help keep it from freezing.

  She’d weighed down her pack with an additional three Ziplock sandwich bags of water. To keep them from freezing overnight, she’d kept the canteen and the sandwich bags in the sleeping bag with her, along with her warmed rocks.

  The water would last her maybe a day, but not much longer. She needed far more water to keep functioning. This wilderness couldn’t last forever. She would find something. She had to.

  She tried to push down the fear sucking at the edges of her mind. It didn’t work. She forced herself to drink some water and eat a can of tuna, several fingers of peanut butter, and a few pieces of jerky.

  She left one on the log for Ghost. The jerky strip she’d left out the night before was gone. Half-filled in paw prints marred the snow all around the log. Too large for coyotes.

  She knew it was Ghost. She needed him to be here, just outside of sight, prowling the boundaries of the trees. Needed another living creature to know that she existed.

  A sound came from the woods behind her and she whipped around, heart hammering. Saw nothing in the shadows, only trembling branches.

  A squirrel scurried across the snow.

  It took too long for her heart rate to slow. She tried to move faster.

  Still shivering, her fingers stiff and numb—all of them, not just the damaged ones—she undid the tarp and brushed off the snow as best she could. She wound her sleeping bag and rolled the dry side of the tarp around it, then reattached both to her backpack.

  Her movements were clumsy and awkward. Already weakened with a crippled hand, her big belly just got in the way of everything. Things took five times longer than they should have.

  It meant she was slow. It meant something faster could catch her.

  She relieved herself on the other side of the log for privacy—as if someone was going to come along the road—then shouldered her pack, groaning as she stood and rubbed her aching lower back.

  She checked her compass to verify she was still heading south and slipped it back into her coat pocket. Using the log for balance, she managed to latch herself back into the skis, wrapped her remaining pole strap around her right hand, and started out.

  Everything was ten times harder today. She was sore and tired. The snow was deep and soft and instead of skimming the surface, her skis sank several inches and kept getting crossed or stuck. Every stroke was uneven and difficult and took more energy than she had to give.

  “Come on,” she whispered desperately. “Come on.”

  The hours passed incredibly slowly. The snow continued to fall, so she constantly had to brush it off her hood and wipe her sunglasses. She drank the water in her canteen and the sandwich bags and ate the last of her nuts and granola bars.

  She had to pee several times, the pressure on her bladder irritating and constant. She grew more and more weary. Everything hurt. She fell several times. Uncomfortably swollen and off-balance, she felt trapped in an unfamiliar body.

  It felt like she’d traveled miles and miles, but she wasn’t that naïve. In this deep, unbroken snow, she might be traveling a mile to a mile and a half an hour, if she was lucky.

  In the late afternoon, another snowstorm came barreling in, fierce and heavy and unexpected. She should’ve been watching the sky and set up her shelter long before it arrived.

  She was so weary, she could barely lift her gaze from the ground a few feet ahead of her. Another mistake.

  There was no time to search for another fallen log. She unhooked her skis and stumbled off the road, struggling through knee-deep powder and avoiding the deeper snowdrifts.

  Once she was out of sight of the road, she blinked hard against the snow and looked for a tree well, a swath of ground with far less snow beneath the canopy of an evergreen tree. The snow collected on the tree boughs rather than under the tree, creating a natural gap.

  She found one beneath a huge spruce with thick, heavy boughs. She dug away the shallower snow and pushed it all to one side to create a small wall to block the wind.

  Spruce boughs were a bad choice for insulation due to their prickly needles. A fir tree nearby provided softer boughs. She managed to chop several thin ones with her axe and dragged them to her shelter.

  After setting up the tarp and sleeping bag, she burrowed in, too exhausted to think, to do or feel anything. She dreamed of monsters encased in ice and snow, frozen blue-eyed demons hissing white breath, their weapons icicles that pierced the heart and bled cold black water.

  16

  Pike

  Day Two

  Pike had lost the girl’s trail in the heavy snowfall the night before. Gradually, the snow filled the slip-sliding tracks her skis had left, leaving less and less of a trail to follow until there was nothing at all.

  Pike wasn’t worried. She was clinging to the road, to the promise of civilization. He was confident she wouldn’t leave it. Not for a while anyway.

  He trudged through the snow, black balaclava covering his face, the collar of his thick coat turned up, hood tied tight to keep out the freezing wind and biting snow.

  He was no stranger to the cold. It invigorated him, energized him. Besides, if he was freezing, she was more so. It would hamper her, slow her down.

  Hour by hour, minute by minute, he was closing the gap between them.

  It was that thought that excited him more than anything.

  He moved more slowly than he wanted, but it was paramount to find her. He wouldn’t be overconfident. He wouldn’t make a mistake.

  He scanned his surroundings constantly—the dense forests of ash, elm, and pine, oak and hickory and birch; the underbrush burdened beneath mounds of wet snow, the small paths and dark spaces between the trunks; beneath the canopy of bare, snowy branches and needle-covered spruce and fir boughs.

  The air was sharp and clean and smelled of pine and sap. He kept his breathing steady, his senses alert.

  He’d slept well enough in his tent. A solar heater and his winter sleeping bag kept him warm enough that he hadn’t needed to bother with a fire. He still had plenty of food and water.

  His thoughts turned to the power o
utage, to what it might mean. It was an anomaly. Something he hadn’t planned for. He liked to plan for everything.

  Pike knew human nature. Knew how people acted, thought, and believed better than they knew themselves. He based his every action and reaction on the soundness of this strategy.

  He’d studied people long enough to learn their weaknesses, their mental defenses and justifications, their failures and temptations and self-deceptions which allowed someone like him to move freely among them. A careful and cunning wolf among dumb, dull sheep.

  The power would come back on. Life would return to normal.

  But what if it didn’t?

  What if this was only the beginning?

  He mulled that possibility over in his mind as he squatted beside a strange lump on the side of the road. He brushed and dug the snow away to reveal a sawed-off stump. It was nothing.

  He rose and kept moving. No power for an extended period of time meant no heat, no food deliveries right on schedule, no water running through the pipes.

  How long before chaos descended? A week? A month?

  Chaos might be a good thing. As desperate people fought over food and dwindling supplies, the police would be distracted with trying to maintain order.

  Pike didn’t worry about food. He knew how to hunt. He knew how to take what he wanted.

  But the ability to hunt his favorite prey without the concerns of law enforcement to take into consideration…

  That was a tantalizing thought.

  People would be dying of everything—disease, the elements, starvation, thirst—the victims of circumstance. So many dead and dying. Too many for the authorities to handle, to properly investigate.

  Who would know if something—or someone—got to them first?

  Less than ten miles from the cabin, he spotted something irregular off the right side of the road.

  Several nearby evergreens had small lower branches cut off a few inches from the trunk. He jogged over to investigate. He felt one with his gloved fingers. A fresh cut.

  He turned slowly, scanning the area. Behind a waist-high snowbank, several yards into the forest, a large pine tree had fallen. He glimpsed a spot bare of snow in the space beneath the log.

  He bent and examined the scene. Three towering evergreens nearby blocked much of the falling snow from accumulating. The shallow snow beneath the log had been pushed and brushed to the sides, revealing the dirt and leaf litter beneath.

  An unnatural configuration. Manipulated by human hands.

  Pike’s heartbeat quickened. “There you are.”

  A few feet from the log, he brushed aside a thin film of white powder and revealed half-burnt sticks and dead coals. She’d made a fire here.

  He stood, brows furrowed, and took in the dozens of pine boughs littered about—some fresh with green needles, some dead and browned. She’d scattered them to look natural. But he could tell.

  She’d built herself a small fire, made a soft bed of pine needles beneath the log, and burrowed in for the night. She had selected a good spot. One he might have chosen himself, had he been stuck in the elements overnight without a tent or camping gear.

  Interesting. He hadn’t known she had the skillset. He tucked that information into a corner of his mind and kept moving.

  He continued to follow her. The fresh snowfall had covered much of the tracks, but he could still make out the shallow indentations of her skis.

  She was definitely heading south.

  This road would hook west in several miles, heading back toward Free Soil and Manistee to the northwest. What would she do then? Would she stay on the road, clinging to the idea that it would eventually lead to civilization, that civilization would save her?

  Or was she heading south for a specific reason? Was she heading home?

  The thought made him grin.

  He licked his dry lips and wiped snowflakes from his sunglasses. He smiled at the snow and the trees and the gray darkening sky. He would take care of this particular problem.

  And then he would be free. Freer than he’d ever been before.

  The future looked bright indeed.

  17

  Hannah

  Day Three

  Sometime around mid-afternoon on the third day, the snowfall finally relented.

  Hannah’s canteen was empty. She refilled one of the empty sandwich bags with snow and tucked it inside her coat and layers of clothing against her bare skin to melt it. It made her even colder, but she couldn’t go without water.

  She flinched at every noise. A swish and whoosh of wind through the trees, heavy snow thumping from branches.

  Several times, she scrambled off the road, gripped in terror at a strange sound or the hint of movement out of the corner of her eye.

  She hoped it was Ghost following her, but she couldn’t be sure.

  The sun hid itself behind a thick scrim of gray clouds, deepening the shadows beneath the trees. Hannah blinked through her sunglasses. Her eyes still ached and stung, but she didn’t have to squint as much. Her eyesight was returning.

  She crested a small hill, breathing hard. The snow-covered trees closed in on either side, so close she could almost touch the branches.

  Welcoming the small break, she crouched, pushed off with her pole, and slid down the hill. It was steeper than she’d thought. She picked up speed, the sharp wind stinging her cheeks.

  Her left ski dipped suddenly. The tip dug into the snow and struck something hard— maybe a rock. The ski stuck fast.

  Momentum flung her body forward, her ankle wrenching painfully in the ski boot. The latch released, and she tumbled to the snow, arms flailing.

  She half-turned as she fell, managing to land on her side rather than her stomach. She fell hard, knocked the air from her lungs. She tried to suck in oxygen, but it wouldn’t come.

  Her lungs burned. Her pulse thudded loud in her throat, her head. Stinging pain spiked up her right leg to her hip. Her ribs and shoulder hurt.

  She opened her mouth, gasping, but still no air would enter her aching lungs.

  She rolled onto her back and stared up through the branches, her gloved fingers clawing at her throat as if that would help. Breathe! Please, just breathe!

  Finally, her lungs expanded, and she sucked in a huge mouthful of freezing air. Her throat and lungs felt seared. She coughed, trying to clear her airways.

  Hannah lay there, stunned and hurting, for several minutes, just trying to breathe normally again. She needed to get off the ground. The snow pressed against her legs, butt, and back. Little drifts of it tumbled across her arms and sprinkled into her neck, down past her scarf to her bare skin.

  She managed to sit up using her hands and arms, her stomach muscles useless. Her legs stuck out in front of her in the snow. She tried to move her right leg. A sharp pain speared through her ankle.

  Careful not to jostle her injured ankle, she scooted back using her butt and her hands until she reached a thick maple tree at the edge of the road. She slumped against the trunk, defeated.

  She didn’t just have a deformed hand. Now she was crippled, too. Pain and frustration and helplessness welled up inside her. A choking sob escaped her lips.

  It was too much. All of it. She’d spent the last five years helpless and trapped. Her mind still couldn’t grasp anything different. How stupid was she to think she could even try?

  That she was any good at anything but being a beaten, broken, trapped bird in a cage.

  A bird without wings. A bird who’d forgotten how to fly.

  She should’ve stayed in the basement. She was dead anyway. About to freeze to death in the middle of nowhere. The next snowstorm would cover her body, and she wouldn’t be found until spring. If she was ever found at all.

  You know you’ll be found, that voice whispered in her head.

  Fear wrapped its hands around her throat and squeezed, squeezed until she couldn’t breathe. Despair filled her.

  Her fate was already determined, either way.
<
br />   Either the killing cold would take her. Or he would.

  “I can’t do this,” she murmured to no one. “I can’t.”

  18

  Hannah

  Day Three

  Hannah was awakened by the sound of footsteps.

  Minutes or hours, she didn’t know how long she’d been asleep. Her limbs felt heavy, like her veins were filled with cement. The cold cut through her. Her head was foggy and thick with cotton.

  For a minute, she didn’t know where she was. Maybe she was dreaming. She’d rather be dreaming than awake in her prison, her trapped mind slowly going insane.

  A twig cracked somewhere in front of her. In the woods past the road.

  She turned her head to listen, shifting her body slightly. Rough bark snagged at her coat. Pain pulsed in her ankle. Not dreaming, then.

  It all came back to her in a rush—the light going dark, the power off, the opened door, the mad dash to escape. The three agonizing days lost in the woods.

  After tripping and twisting her ankle, she’d abandoned the skis, burying them as best she could in a snowdrift off the road, and hobbled into the woods to find a spot to rest. She’d curled up against the thick, wide trunk of an oak tree and fallen into a restless, exhausted sleep.

  A crack in the forest. Closer now. A sharp rustle. She stared hard into the shadows. The forest stirred and whispered, alive.

  Was it Ghost? Or something else?

  Something large brushed past branches and underbrush. The rhythmic crunch of boots through soft snow. Getting louder.

  Someone was coming. A person, not an animal.

  Him.

  Her heart bucked in her chest. She couldn’t run. Not with her ankle. Not with her condition.

  She shrugged down against the trunk of the oak and attempted to make herself as small as possible. She pulled her pack close to her side.

  A man appeared through the woods.