T Connor - Bitter Cold Apocalypse

“But that doesn’t make them tame,” Angie finished for him. “And it also doesn’t make them something you want to run into when you’re alone in a forest. Wounded. And cold.” Her eyes went to mine, and then to Marlon’s. “We can’t stay here. Those howls are getting closer, and that means they’re heading our way, whether it’s on purpose or not. They’ll move a lot quicker than we can, so we can’t wait to run once we see them.”

“Especially with you already wounded,” I injected into the conversation. I, too, turned my eyes to Marlon, knowing that he had the experience we needed right now. “We need to get Angie to a hospital, sooner rather than later. We need to get her inside, where she can get some real shelter from the cold. We definitely need to get her out of the air before night falls. And now we’ve got wolves on our tails. What are our options?”

I’d been trying to come up with the list since we put up the branches and started the fire. And I was running desperately short of ideas. I was hoping he had another brilliant toy hidden up his sleeve.

“We use the river,” Angie said, her shaking now starting to show up in her voice. “We’ve talked about it before, and we were doing it before. We just have to go back to it.”

I turned on her, my refusal already on my lips. “Use the river, are you kidding? Yeah, we were using it before, and you fell into it! Remember, that dunk you took? The fact that we had to save you from drowning?”

She put a hand up. “I remember. And I appreciate it. But it’s our only option, John. We have to get out of here, and we have to do it quickly. We don’t have time to walk through the woods—and even if we did, we wouldn’t be able to do it with wolves out. We have to find something quicker. Something that will get us out of here in a hurry.”

I stared at her, wanting to call her crazy… But knowing that she might also be on to something. And then Marlon agreed with her.

“She’s right, John,” he said slowly. Then, his voice rose a little bit. “We have to get her to a hospital. I agree with you there. We definitely can’t stand to spend another night out here—and there are a number of reasons for that, starting with this little miss suffering from hypothermia. And ending with the fact that we’re almost out of food. We have to get to town. The sooner the better. And the wolves…”

“Just confirm the fact,” I said. “I get it. So the river, then. But you’re both failing to see one important piece. If we don’t have time to walk through the forest, how does walking down the river fix that? We’re still walking. And, I’ll remind you, in a much more open, easy-to-find-and-shoot situation.”

Angie turned and met my eyes, and I tried to look past the shaking as I read her expression. She was cold, yes, and I could still see tinges of blue around the edges of her face that made me very, very worried about how much damage she might have sustained. Even if we got her to a hospital, would they be able to treat her? Or was she going to lose pieces of herself to frostbite?

I cursed myself once again for having allowed her to talk me into this trip at all. If I’d just said no. If I’d just told her to wait until the weather was more stable. Maybe I would have been able to save her from all of this.

Or maybe she would have come without me. And been attacked by that bear by herself.

At least this way I was here to take care of her. To sell my soul, if need be, to get her home safely. So I asked again.

“So what do we do? How does the river get us home faster? What am I missing?”

“The sleds,” Angie said simply.

I stared at her, trying to read between the lines. Trying to understand what the hell she was talking about.

“The sleds?” I finally asked stupidly.

Marlon gave me a tired—but somewhat hopeful—grin. “The sleds,” he confirmed.

Then the wolves started howling again, and they were a whole lot closer than they had been. We threw snow on the fire, ignoring the fact that Angie still needed it so badly, and shot out of our little snuggery. Our destination: the river.

We were evidently going back to the sleds. For reasons I still didn’t truly understand.

Once we found the sleds again—about two hundred feet back up the river—we came to a stop, all three of us shuddering in the bitter cold. A glance up told me that the sun had indeed reached its zenith and was starting to slide toward the horizon. We were running out of time. And the air temperature around us was dropping quickly, spurring us on.

I very carefully didn’t think about how Angie was feeling right then. We were moving as quickly as we could. Doing everything we could. It would just have to be enough.

Marlon was already stacking the sleds one on top of the other again, the way they’d been when Angie was riding in them. He put the cracked and damaged one on the bottom and the newer one on the top, then threw everything but one quilt to the side.

“They’re all too soaked to be any good to us now,” he muttered. “But we’ll need the one. For protection.”

“Protection against what?” I asked, still not catching on.

Marlon looked up at me. “Protection from the wind,” he answered quickly.

I just stared at him. Either he and Angie had suddenly started speaking a different language or I definitely had frostbite of the brain. Because none of this was making sense.

A small hand on my arm made me turn to my wife.

“John, we have to get to town in a hurry. And we know we can’t outrun those wolves. Not in the forest, not on the river. But this river is a pathway, don’t you see? It’s a straight shot to town, an easy route. We’ll use the sleds as our vehicle. With all three of us in them, and the river’s slant…”

“Oh my God, you two are crazy,” I said, but I was already turning toward the river, wondering what she meant by the slant. Then I saw it. She was right; the river had started to run downhill here. It was slight, but once you were looking for it you could definitely see the angle.

The river was one big ice chute. And my wife and our new friend were talking about using it as a slide.

“What about the fact that Angie just almost drowned?” I asked, now only half angry. Because their answer was starting to make sense to me. I just wanted to make sure it was at least mostly safe.

“I’ve thought about that, and I think I know the reason it happened right then,” Marlon answered. “We should never have stopped. As long as we were moving, our weight was distributed across the ice. Once we stopped, though, we were in one place for too long. Our warmth might have melted the ice where we were, or perhaps it was just our weight resting on one place for too long. Maybe it was just pure bad luck that we stopped in a place where the ice was already weak. But if we’re moving, it has less chance of happening. Especially if we’re moving quickly.”

I stared at him. Moving quickly. Getting to town quickly. Getting Angie to a doctor. Getting away from the wolves. Getting out of this God-forsaken forest.

“Yes,” I said, deciding immediately that it was the only way. “Yes, let’s do it.”

I moved toward the sled setup and started helping him to move it onto the ice.

“But Angie sits between us. I’ll go in front, to give her the most shelter we can manage. Marlon, you’ll be in charge of steering. Keep your feet out of the sled and use them to guide us one way or the other. We stay as close to the shore as we can manage, for the same reason we were there before. Thicker ice.”

“Agreed,” Marlon said from behind me. “And you’re in charge of shouting out what you see ahead of us. If my estimations are correct, we’re going to end up going at a pretty good clip. I’m going to need plenty of warning about anything that might be in our way if I’m going to be able to steer us around it.”