by Maren Smith
“Are you insane? It’s twenty miles to Barry’s, at least!” He flung out his arm, but there was no missing the storm. It was all around them and it wasn’t stopping. “You can’t walk in this! You could freeze to death!”
“It’s still preferable to being stuck with you!”
He was going to strangle her. Better yet, he was going to paddle her backside first, and then he was going to strangle her. “You want to walk? Fine! Go ahead and walk. In fact, in about two seconds walking is all you’ll be able to do, ‘cause you sure as hell won’t be able to sit!”
Digging up under the bottom of his coat, he grabbed his belt. Encumbered by winter clothes, it took two good yanks to get it out of his belt loops. He had to hand it to Ettie, she didn’t back down to anything. She just stood there, her blue eyes flashing and her jaw set at that stubborn angle that all but dared him to go ahead and try it. He almost did, too. Except that just as he reached to seize her by the arm, a cautioning voice in the back of his brain whispered, Don’t do it.
Never in his life had he ever struck a woman in anger, and at this particular moment, he couldn’t remember when he’d ever been angrier. Coupled with the belt, its buckle biting into his palm, this was not a good combination.
“Get in the truck,” he told her, already knowing he was going to need to take a minute, maybe even three or four. Standing out in this blizzard a while might freeze some of the anger out of him, or it might not. But if he got back in the truck with her at this point, he was one snarky word away from doing something unforgiveable.
She tried to push past him, heading in the opposite direction.
Vance couldn’t help laughing. Again, not funny, but he couldn’t help it. She could not have pushed harder for a spanking if she got down on both knees and begged him for it.
And if he gave it to her now, he’d be nothing but an abusive asshole.
Yeah, but he’d be an abusive asshole with a belt in his hand, and right now a session with his belt was just what she needed.
Vance stalked after her, catching her by the scruff of her coat and jerking her back around. “Get,” he ordered, pointing across the road to his waiting truck, “your skinny ass back in that—”
“No! You get your—”
Three loud, crackling pops shook the road beneath their feet and shut them both up. His truck began to slide again. With the groaning sound of metal-scraping-ice, the entire front end of his truck fell deeper into the pothole, sending the underside of his truck scraping against the edge of the road.
“What…” Vance grabbed Ettie’s arm. A good fifteen feet of distance separated them from the truck, but he still shoved her back behind him. He had to squint, fighting to see through the driving whiteness of the storm, and what he saw made his jaw drop. His truck was still sliding. Another pop and the entire front end dropped with a splash into water. It wasn’t until he saw that rush of frothy liquid washing up over his hood that Vance realized they were not standing on a road. This was a creek or a stream, frozen over and buried under snow, but nowhere near thick enough to support the weight of his truck.
Another sharp crack, and the ice gave way. Ettie gasped, grabbing onto his arm as his entire truck dropped into a bubbling swell of fast-rushing water, thick with slushing snow and bobbing flecks of ice. Only the top foot or so of his cab and tool camper remained above the surface of the ice when the wheels finally found the streambed.
Ettie swiped frantically at her glasses, swatting away the snow in an effort to see what was happening.
Vance didn’t move. If she’d followed his order when he’d first given it, she would be in that water right now. Had she not jumped out to begin with, they’d both be in it.
He’d just killed them. He cupped his forehead, the magnitude of trouble they were in compounding wildly with every gust of swirling snow and wind. His cellphone was in that cab, under a rush of icy water. He had no idea how far the nearest shelter was. They were neither one of them dressed anywhere near warmly enough to tolerate these conditions for very long. Dear God, he’d just killed them both.
“What are we—” Ettie started to say, but everything stopped with the next ominous crack, this one originating right under their feet where snow more than knee-deep obscured a very deadly threat. “Oh…” she breathed, her eyes huge in her too-pale face.
Vance didn’t have time even to swear. He felt it, that moment when the solidity of the ground under his boots gave way and every muscle he owned just reacted. He hit Ettie. That wasn’t his intent, but the end result was just as violent as it was knee-jerk. His arm caught her full across the chest with force enough to send her flying when he fell. The last thing he saw was Ettie landing flat on her back in the snow at the base of a frosted evergreen, her arms and legs wind-milling wildly and her glasses flying off into the snow.
All of that paled in importance when the iciness of that hard-rushing water sank its teeth into his legs. He hit the ice chest-first, grabbing for something solid under the snow as he was sucked down, his involuntary gasp at the frigidness crawling up his kicking legs choking him with snowflakes. He took yards of loose-packed snow down into the water with him, turning it into a soup of slush and broken ice. And then the current caught him, hitting him like a wall of razors. It filled up his clothes, sliced into every pore of his skin, and before Ettie could even scream his name, it sucked him clean off the ice and down into the bubbling blackness underneath.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The scariest thing in the world was seeing the look on Vance’s face just before the water dragged him under. The sickest twist she’d ever felt in her gut followed the next half-second when she realized if she didn’t get up off her ass, he was going to die.
“Vance!” She scrambled back onto the ice, dropping to her belly the instant she neared that slush-filled hole and heard that first ominous crack beneath her hands and knees. Snow spilled wet into her collar and sleeves, turning to slush inside her coat when she lay down, trying to spread her weight over as wide an area as possible. She dug down into the hole, throwing handfuls of snow and slush to get down to the water. There, gripping tight to the cutting edge of the ice with blood spilling between his fingers, were Vance’s hands. She lunged to grab him and very nearly went face first down into the hole with him.
Leverage. She needed leverage. Ettie twisted all around, searching for anything that might qualify and seeing only flying snow and the shadows of the trees.
He was drowning, right here, right at the end of her fingertips, and she wasn’t strong enough to pull him back up into the air.
Ice cracking under her, she let go of Vance and clawed her way back to the bank. The thick snowdrifts sliced her fingertips as she shoved her hands down into it, fumbling over frozen dirt and leaves and sticks, the cold so intense it burned into her fingers. She ignored the pain, throwing both hands into the search and shouting only once when she whacked into something solid, thick and rough. A fallen branch off a nearby tree, the diameter as thick as her wrist.
She grabbed and pulled at it, heaving with all her strength to rip it back out of the blanketing snow. Almost six feet in length, it came back out into the blizzard heavily laden with snow and pine needles. The scent burned her nose. Crawling back to the hole, she dragged it with her and threw it across the top. It overlapped by several feet on each side and sank into the snow. It sank even deeper once she crawled over it, using it as a rail to keep herself from falling in when she dug down into the freezing cold, grabbing at every part of Vance solid enough to hold onto—his hair, his coat—and heaved.
The racing current refused to release him, no matter how hard she pulled. It wasn’t until his ice-blue hands turned and caught her wrists, that he finally began to climb. He clawed his way up her, from wrists to biceps to shoulders, pulling out chunks of her hair when he gripped at her, though God knew he could be forgiven for that.
He dragged himself up out of the water like a child being birthed, the river reluctant to let him go.
His lips were every bit as blue as his hands. He gasped, spewing slushy water all over her cheek, and water all down her back when he latched onto her, the weight of his grasping arms hooking her despite his hands, which offered no gripping strength.
“F-f-fuck!” he rasped, hoarse and barely enunciating. “H-help m-me!”
“I’m trying!”
He was heavy as hell. As big as he was, his waterlogged clothing made it even worse. “Oh sh-sh-shit! It’s c-c-colder out h-h-ere than in the wa-wa-water!”
He was right too. Everywhere he’d touched her, the wetness was sinking in through the layers of her clothes to bite her skin. For all the protection it now provided against the blustering wind, she might as well not be wearing clothes at all!
She heaved at him, pulling him up by precious inches until they both sprawled over into the snow. The blizzard was already trying to bury them there and the snow beneath them was melting, turning to slush. They couldn’t stay here. Rolling, shaking onto her stomach, Ettie shoved at Vance who was trying to curl into a ball. “M-move!”
He crawled where she aimed him, but the coloration of his skin was terrifying and it was obvious he’d lost the fine use of his hands.
“Move!” Crawling beside him, she tried to spur him on with several sharp smacks to the butt—and wasn’t that an awkward irony?—but each impact felt like hammers striking into each one of her knuckles. Still, she got them to the bank and up under the dubious shelter of a snow-swaddled pine. They couldn’t stay here anymore than they could stay out on the ice. She knew it the minute she tried to pull him into her arms and felt just how bad he was shaking. They were both shaking. Both soaking wet, but already the wetness was turning to ice in their clothes and everywhere it touched them. If they didn’t get somewhere warm and dry, neither one of them was going to last out the hour.
“Come on. St-t-tand up.” She could barely get her own limbs to obey her. Ettie had to use the tree to heave herself upright. It was worse trying to pull Vance up afterward. His shaking was so violent, he had no stability at all. “You’re too heavy. Help me.”
“I l-lost m-my b-belt.”
“I fished you out once. Don’t press your luck.” She wedged herself up under his arm, wrapping her own around his waist to help as best she could. “Come on. Move it, buster. We have to get out of this weather before we freeze.”
He staggered right from the start, sending what little optimism she had for both their survivals plummeting.
“C-cabin,” he stammered, through chattering teeth.
“What?” She looked around, trying to see through the driving snowstorm. Even if she hadn’t lost her glasses, she could barely make out anything.
“F-forestry c-cabin…f-for hunters…f-fishers…”
“Where?” Ettie looked from him to the stream where already the ice was starting to solidify the slush and reclaim Vance’s truck. She couldn’t see anything that looked even remotely like a cabin, though it wasn’t until he said something that she remembered these mountains were supposedly littered with them. Especially along the waterways, but she’d never been down these roads before and she had no idea if this particular stream had anything on its bank but trees. For their sake, there had to be or they were both dead. “Where are we?”
“Pota-a-to Creek, I th-think,” Vance stuttered. His lips, his whole face looked blue now. Oh, this was not good.
“Walk,” she ordered, struggling to both push him into moving and hold him upright. The wind bit through their wet clothes with needle-sharp teeth, and the snow so deep they were wading through it. Every step sucked at their feet, tripping at them.
“Get up!” she ordered when he staggered and collapsed.
“I’m r-r-real-ly c-cold.”
“Get up!”
He did, but it took both of them before he could. If he went down again, she didn’t know if she’d have the strength to get him back on his feet a second time.
“I c-can’t feel m-my f-feet.”
“Don’t think about it.” She had to keep him moving. She had to keep him focused on something other than freezing to death. “Talk to me. Tell me something.”
“Talking h-hasn’t b-been our b-best friend to date.”
“Talk to me anyway.” Batting snow out of her face, she scanned both sides of the stream, but everything was blurriness and shadows. Nothing under the surrounding snowdrifts looked like manmade walls or a roof. “Tell me about the last person you spanked.”
“P-p-pain in the a-ass journalist,” he stammered, nearly going down to both knees.
“Keep moving.” She heaved, staggering them both into the next wading step. The look on his discolored face scared the hell out of her. Everywhere his body touched hers felt like ice. Where her wet clothes and his touched, they were frozen together. “Keep talking. I already know about that one. Pick another.”
“S-s-so I c-can read about it in your p-pa-per later on? Yeah, I-I d-don’t think so.”
The look he gave her then was encouraging. It meant he wasn’t dead yet.
“I promise to k-keep you a confidential informant.” Her teeth were clattering together so hard it hurt. She’d lost feeling in the ends of her fingers and it was getting harder to hold onto Vance. His legs were dragging and his knees kept buckling, but he wasn’t the one who fell next. Or at least, when he did fall it was because Ettie tripped first. She had no idea what she’d tripped over, but it was hard and flat and it snapped up out of the snow to bang into her shin like a sledgehammer.
It was a piece of burnt wood, and at first Ettie was too cold to pay that much attention. It wasn’t until trying to get Vance back on his feet kicked up ash-colored snow that she realized what she’d, literally, stumbled upon: A fire pit. She’d fallen into a fire pit, and doing so probably saved both their lives. It wasn’t until she saw the ash in the snow that Ettie stopped to give the shadows in the trees a closer look.
The storm continued to rage, the snow falling faster and obscuring everything but the most basic shapes. Without her glasses, the only reason she spotted the cabin at all was because the door was painted bright red and nothing else in this stormy landscape should have been.
“Just a little further,” she coaxed. “Move it.”
He fell twice more, and they ended up discovering the drift heavy porch the same way she found the fire pit. She tripped over it.
“I l-lost m-my b-belt,” Vance said again, when she wedged herself up under his arm again.
“Up,” she ordered. Unable to find the steps, she shoved him up onto the porch. “Don’t go towards the light.”
“I th-think it’s g-g-getting w-warmer,” he panted, his face pinched with pain.
She wasn’t sure what scared her more: what he was saying, or the color of his blue-gray skin. “Seriously, don’t go towards the light.”
“H-help m-me take m-my coat off.”
“As if anyone’s going to believe this was an accident as it is.”
“I l-like y-your hair.”
“Shut up,” she puffed, straining to keep him moving. “Keep walking.”
By the time she reached the door, she could barely get her hands to flex and bend enough to shove away enough snow to clear a way in. Please, dear God, she prayed, don’t let it be locked.
It wasn’t. Stuck, yes, but it was an old cabin with an old door and a sliding latch handle that seemed to predate doorknobs. Made of wood, it had warped within the dual brackets that kept the door shut tight. Her hands stung like an icy fury, but she got the latch pushed back. Putting her shoulder into it, she muscled the door open and she, along with Vance and a healthy pile of snow, fell in on the floor.
She hadn’t realized how incredibly tired she was until she had to pick herself back up again. The urge to lie there, maybe just close her eyes for a little while, it was horrifically appealing. Dragging herself up on hands and knees, Ettie forced herself to get up instead. Already Vance was trying to take his clothes off. She hooked her arms under his and dragged hi
m deeper into the cabin. Had there been so much as a single step, she never could have managed it. As it was, by the time she got the door muscled shut again, she was panting, aching, tired as hell and shaking every bit as badly as Vance was. Or rather, almost as badly as he had been.
Vance wasn’t shaking any more. He wasn’t moving at all, in fact. He simply lay where she had dropped him, breathing, his chest rising and falling, and the shallowness of each uneven exhale steaming the air.
Legs giving out, Ettie flopped down beside him and looked around. The cabin was small, no more than a single room. Although it was clear the season for renting this particular cabin had ended, there was still furniture. Dual bunk beds against the far wall, though neither mattresses nor blankets. A table sported four plain wooden chairs. A single shelf above it held only the sparsest of tin dishes: plates, a campfire coffee percolator, and cups. A few wood scraps were stacked up in the woodbin by an old potbelly stove. Animal heads looked down on them from high on the walls. Twin black bear skins faced one another, open-mouthed and forever snarling, on the wall to either side of the stove. A bright yellow first-aid box was affixed between them.
Ettie staggered for that first. Her hands really weren’t working right anymore. When she tried to take it off the wall, she ended up opening it instead, sending the entire contents scattering across the floor. Dropping to her knees, she fumbled through sutures and scissors, bandages and burn gel packets until she found a tiny plastic box. Strike on anything matches. The wood scraps in the bin weren’t much, but they were enough to get a fire started. Using up every scrap of wood left by some previous hunter would only be enough to feed the flames for maybe an hour. After that, they were going to be in trouble again, but she wasn’t going to worry about that now.
One problem at a time…
She dug through the scattered first aid supplies again, finding two rain ponchos but only an empty box where the thermal blanket should have been.
“I…loss-s my…bel-l…” Vance slurred, sounding drunk.