by Roxie Noir
Reason #116: he’s a bullheaded prick who won’t listen to reason and who won’t let the injured person in the party set the itinerary.
Reason #117: he just sucks, I just hate him, and the longer we’re hiking away from the mouth of the valley and toward God-only-knows-what shiny thing, the angrier I’m going to get at him.
It’s still there. We still can’t tell what it is besides something shiny not made by nature, and for some reason, Wilder’s completely convinced that it’s our salvation. Even though it’s in the wrong direction and across a finger of the frozen lake, and even though I’m pretty sure that at best it’s just the windshield of a snowmobile or something that got left out here by some moron.
But at our last discussion, when we could have started walking for the shiny thing or for the mouth of the valley, he informed me that he was walking for the shiny thing, and I was welcome to do whatever the hell I wanted.
I’ve read enough survival guides and horror stories to know what happens to people who split up in the wilderness, so I go with him, lungs and ankle screaming in pain. We’ve got one more real meal for tonight, a couple more granola bars each, and honestly, I’m too cold and tired to even panic about the food situation.
Nice to know that there’s a bottom to the anxiety pit, I think, stepping carefully over a fallen log, wobbling slightly as I balance on my bad ankle.
Who knew anxiety was a non-renewable resource?
I snort at my own stupid joke. Wilder glances back at me, eyebrows raised.
“I’m fine,” I tell him.
He keeps walking, though I think he slows down. I still hate him for walking too fast, though. Just for the record.
On into the afternoon we’re skirting the shore of the lake, the white-blue surface glaring through the evergreens as we hike lower and lower. We haven’t been able to see the thing for a long time now, the tree cover totally obscuring our view, but now that we’re closer to the frozen water Wilder’s getting antsy, hiking way ahead of me, looking back impatiently.
Every time I lose sight of him my stomach knots, even though I don’t say anything. I need him out here in a real, visceral way and I don’t want him to know.
Finally, we find a way down to the lake shore and stand there, side by side, scanning across.
I don’t see shit. I’m tired. I think I might be sunburned, because even though it’s cold, ultraviolet rays are much more intense at high altitudes, not to mention the fact that when we’re not under tree cover we’re hiking through snow fields, light glaring at us from two directions.
My back hurts. My legs hurt. My quads and hamstrings are killing me, not to mention my ankle is throbbing and pulsing and pounding. I feel like it’s a blood-filled water balloon that’s about to burst inside my shoe and splatter everywhere, and all I want is to sit somewhere that’s semi-comfortable for once and semi-warm for once and just… do nothing.
Instead I look out at the frozen lake, at the stark trees on the other side, at the craggy, rocky mountains above it, and I feel like crying.
“There,” Wilder says, and points.
I squint. I think I need a new prescription, something I hadn’t realized until we crash-landed in the wilderness and I couldn’t see as well as I thought I could.
“Where?”
He steps behind me, takes one shoulder in his hand. I let it happen. He puts his face right next to mine, our hoods rubbing together, and points again, his finger bobbling and circling…
…something.
“I think it’s a cabin,” he says.
I push my glasses up, squint harder, but it doesn’t really help. There’s a dark shape in a blur of dark shapes, and this one might have straighter lines, might be squatter and a different color and look more man-made, but I can’t tell.
I hold my breath, because my eyes are welling with tears.
You can’t even see anything, what are you doing here? I think, suddenly drenched in self-pity. You should have told him to leave you in the plane, he’d have been better off…
“I don’t see it,” I say, forcing myself to swallow my tears.
“It’s there,” he says, his excitement barely contained. “Sort of on the other side, right across the one finger of the lake, it’s not even that far. We can get there before dark, definitely. Definitely.”
I glance right, to where the mouth of the valley is, chew my lip.
But what if we’re right outside a town or something and don’t know it? I think, the same thing I’ve been thinking all day. There could be a university or a superhighway or a ski resort just where we can’t see it…
Only I know he’s right and I’m wrong. If there’s something there, where are the lights at night? Where are the houses on the lake, where are the people going for day hikes?
“Okay,” I say, swallowing my pride for once, trusting in Wilder again. “Let’s go.”
We edge along the lake. The ice is melted in spots, and way out in the center of it I think I can see water, or at least the flat, shiny spot where the ice is so thin that anything could break it.
I think of the rule my dad told me once about ice: one inch to hold people, two inches for horses, four inches for anything. I asked how they measured the thickness of the ice when he was a kid just going skating, and he didn’t have a good answer.
The closer we get, the more it looks like a cabin: a square instead of a blob, brown instead of black, hard-lined manmade shapes instead of nature’s curvature.
Wilder stops. I stop next to him, nothing but a thin finger of frozen water separating us from the shape that is almost definitely a cabin. We both stare at it without speaking, breath puffing in front of our faces.
I’ve never wanted to be somewhere more than I want to be in that cabin right now. My cold, tired brain is conjuring everything that it could have in it: a fireplace, blankets, canned food. A heater. A bed.
Running water, some sort of vehicle and a road to use it on. I worry at my lip with my teeth, head filled with cabin fantasies — Scrabble, even — as Wilder and I stare.
“It’s still a long way if we go around the lake,” he says. “That inlet cuts in pretty far, and from what I could see earlier, it looks like it gets pretty steep back in there…”
The inlet’s what’s separating us from the cabin. It’s not that wide, maybe two hundred feet across, but it’s tucked deeply into the mountain.
My ankle throbs. My spine protests. My fingers and toes are so cold I can barely feel them, and they’ve been that way for days now.
“The ice is plenty thick to walk across,” Wilder says.
“One inch for people,” I say. “Good thing we’re not horses.”
“I say that all the time,” Wilder teases, looking over at me as I shut my eyes and shake my head.
“Something my dad used to tell me about skating on the pond,” I tell him. “Though he never could answer how they could tell how thick the ice really was, all his answers sounded like guesses.”
“I thought you’d insist on going the long way around,” he muses, walking a little further along the shore.
“I guess you’re in luck,” I say, following behind him. The mud here is a little slushy, ice particles mixed in with the dirt. “I’m tired and sore and cold and just want to be inside a structure already.”
We reach a spot where the land slopes into the water. Wilder goes first, stepping tentatively onto the ice with one foot, then the other. The shadow of the mountain is already stretching over the lake, and in a few more steps it’ll consume him as he crosses.
My heart thumps as I pick a spot ten feet to Wilder’s left, step on with one foot. The ice creaks but doesn’t splinter, the sound sending a sickly feeling up my spine.
This is how ice sounds, I remind myself. How many times have you done this? Hundreds.
I take another step, then another. It’s slippery but rough, and I hold my arms out for balance, knowing that if I go over on my bad ankle I’ll make it even worse.
&nbs
p; Every few steps, I look up at the cabin. From here I can finally tell that it’s definitely a building, probably a hunting cabin. It looks like it’s built from plywood and scraps, the roof tarpapered, the outside either unfinished or left for years and years to weather and decay.
But it’s shelter. It’s got a roof and a floor, and there’s a chimney pipe coming out of the top.
I cross the lake slowly, fantasizing about a bed. About blankets, about canned soup that expired last year, about a flickering fire.
The ice creaks, but we make our way across without speaking. Halfway. Three quarters. The shoreline dips in toward me, so I’ve got ten feet less to go than Wilder does, and as soon as I’m close I find myself speeding up even though I’m still afraid of falling.
I reach the shore, one boot on the muddy ice and then the other, and I realize I’m shaking.
I could have fallen through.
I could be underwater right now, under the ice, breathing in cold water and beating at the ice with my bare hands as my clothes dragged me down…
“Quit it,” I tell myself out loud because I’m probably losing my mind to cold and hunger.
I walk a few more feet inland, my eyes on the cabin. It looks uninhabited, an ugly curtain over the only window, and I doubt that anyone who had a cabin way out here would mind if a couple of lost souls broke in—
Behind me, there’s a loud crack.
“Shit,” Wilder says as I whirl around, fear squeezing my heart in an iron-clad hand.
He’s perfectly still on the ice, one foot on a darker spot, bright white cracks radiating outward as my heart twists itself like a balloon animal.
“Watch out!” I shout uselessly.
Slowly, so slowly, he pulls his foot back, watching the ice. He unbuckles his pack, crouches, puts it on the ice.
I don’t say anything. I stand stock-still, brain blinking like a neon light running out of juice, trying and failing to come up with a way I can help.
He starts walking, skirting the dark area on the ice, moving cautiously toward the shore, step by step.
I close my eyes, because I don’t think I can watch. I can’t do anything, I can’t tell him anything that will help, I can only stand here and pray that the only other person in this godforsaken wilderness doesn’t plunge into the water and die.
The water here can’t be that deep, I remind myself. He’ll only get half hypothermia, the cabin’s right there, he’ll be able to climb out and—
There’s another crack and a splash, and my eyes fly open.
Wilder’s on his back, cracks radiating outward. One foot’s broken through the ice and he pulls it out instantly, wet to his knee, scrambling away from the hole on his hands and feet like a crab.
I cover my face with both hands, peeking through my fingers. I think I might throw up, the least helpful response of all, but I don’t know what to do because anything I do will just make it worse.
He moves away from the water, his face pale, still backward on his hands and feet.
“Go here!” I shout from the shore, pointing at where the ice looks thickest.
He locks eyes with me, then pauses, looking around. Like he’s trying to figure out the best course of action, his chest heaving under his thick coat.
Then he crashes through, the ice underneath his body just disappearing. He doesn’t have time to move or react, he just disappears beneath the surface and then he’s flailing, both arms coming up as the water drags his heavy clothing down.
“WILDER!” I shriek, bolting toward him.
I step onto the ice and slide instantly, my bad ankle going out from under me and sprawling me sideways, but I ignore the screaming pain and crawl toward him on hands and knees, fissures crackling around my gloved hands as I inch forward, the ugly groan of weak ice inaudible over the splashes and gasps.
I grab for his hand, miss. Wilder pulls himself up on the ice shelf, just his head and arms above water, and I grab for him again just as the ice crumbles, plunging him back down.
My hand goes in, but I scramble backward to safety, the water colder than cold, pure pain radiating up to my elbow.
Wilder thrashes. His face has gone bone-white, his hands and arms desperately flailing for purchase on the ice but not finding any.
I lay down on my stomach, face first, reach out again. This time I catch his hand and feel him kick, struggle to get up but the ice keeps crumbling away from the lip. My other hand dips in, the pain making me dizzy.
This isn’t working.
You need something else, you’re not strong enough, you’re not at the right angle, you’re just going to go through the ice yourself.
THINK.
I scramble backward, away from him, stumbling on the ice and wrenching my ankle again but I ignore the searing pain as I sit in the mud at the edge of the lake, tearing my pack off my back.
“Come on,” I whisper. “Come on, please, please, fucking come on.”
There has to be something here, rope or another jacket or straps for something or a tent pole or—
I yank out a wide swatch of bright yellow nylon and instantly it billows over my head.
The parachute.
I stand, nearly falling over, tugging it from my pack with freezing, shaking hands. I don’t dare look over at Wilder for fear that he’s not there anymore, that he sank before I could help him and he’s dead and it’s my fault and I’m all alone out here now—
It’s got straps. I tie some straps together with a square knot, the only kind I really know, hurl them at Wilder.
“Put it around you,” I scream, and run the other direction, toward the trees along the shore. I’m praying that the parachute is big enough, that it won’t tear, that this last-ditch thought I’ve had will work and isn’t just stupid.
I trip over my own feet again, my bad ankle rolling and nearly pitching me forward into the dirt but I ignore the pain and look frantically up at the trees, trying to find the right one while Wilder shouts and splashes behind me, my own hands so cold after going in the water that I can’t feel them and barely know what they’re doing.
He’s going to die, he’s going to die…
There it is, a solid branch sticking out at ninety degrees, relatively smooth, maybe eight feet high. I hurl the other end of the parachute over it, miss, do it again, and it catches. I leap as high as I can and grab the yellow nylon in both hands, dragging it down until it’s taut, the fabric scraping over the bark.
I land and my knees nearly buckle, tears in my eyes, but I ignore my ankle, look out at Wilder.
I think he’s got it wrapped around him, still splashing and kicking though he’s stopped yelling.
At least he’s still alive enough to make a ruckus.
I jump again, grab the parachute, but my wet gloves slip and I fall back to the ground. My ankle gives out and I go down right on a pinecone, so I stand, brush it off my butt, tear my gloves off.
I leap, I grab, and this time I can hold it even though my hands are freezing, my body weight slowly pulling the parachute down, over the tree branch. There’s the sound of fabric tearing above me, the sound of my own voice screaming, the sound of splashing and flailing and so I shut my eyes and just concentrate.
I keep going. I drag it hand over hand, hanging from it, clawing Wilder back toward me inch by inch using the worst pulley ever made until suddenly something gives and I fall again, my elbow smacking into a rock, pain shooting white through my vision but I’m back on my feet almost instantly, parachute still in both hands, wondering where it tore, what went wrong, whether I can fix it…
…and then I realize Wilder’s out. He’s lying on the ice, barely moving, but he’s out of the water and I run toward him, grab the parachute, pull him to the edge of the lake and grab one arm.
“Are you okay?” I gasp, because it’s stupid but it’s the first thing that comes to mind. “Come on, you’re okay, just stand up, please just stand up…”
I’m hauling him to his feet, or at least I’m
trying. He’s pure white, lips and nose blue, eyelids fluttering, moving like he’s still underwater. I have no idea if he can hear me, so I just keep shouting get up, get up, my own hands aching and icy as we struggle together.
Finally, he’s upright, sort of. He’s at least eight inches taller than me and is probably fifty pounds heavier, but I shove his arm around my shoulder and grit my teeth.
We start walking for the cabin. I can’t get the parachute off from around him so we drag it behind us as we stagger toward shelter. It’s only fifty feet away but it feels like it may as well be a thousand, because I drop him twice, fall over once myself, and by the time we get there I’m dragging him along the ground by the back of his jacket.
I throw myself against the warped plywood door and it flies open. The space inside is maybe twelve feet by twelve feet and austere as fuck but I don’t care as I crouch one more time, right leg wobbling and shaking with effort and pain, and drag Wilder up the two steps and into the cabin, slamming the door behind me.
He’s still awake, his mouth opening and closing, his eyes looking at me but I don’t think he’s really there as I tear his wet, freezing layers off, contorting his arms out of his jacket, yanking off his pants and his shoes and his long johns and his boxers until he’s completely naked, his skin so pale it’s got a bluish tinge.
There’s a cot along the wall. I shove him onto it and he complies as much as he can, lifting one arm, blinking slowly.
What now? I think frantically, trying to remember all those wilderness training seminars I had to take to go to the Arctic. Get them out of their wet clothes, and then….
I look around again. There’s a wood stove in the other corner but no wood and I have no idea how to start it.
Plastic crates stacked against one wall, and I pull down the top one, start rifling through it. It’s got camping supplies: flashlights, tarps, tentpoles, and then at the bottom a sleeping bag.
Two sleeping bags.
I’m crying as I pull them out, unzip them, throw them on top of Wilder. I’ve probably been crying this whole time, but it’s only now that it registers what I’m doing.
“What else?” I cry-whisper, one shaking hand shoving the tears off my face. “What else, what else…”