Stranded

Chapter Four

Whit walked into the trees with no set destination in mind.

She just knew she needed space, someplace away from all of Abby’s lingering questions.

The ground was hard on her feet, stabbing and pricking with its rough pine needles and dead bark, but she didn’t care.

She’d done nothing but run barefoot as a child, so the discomfort wasn’t anything new.

As for being nearly nude, that was new and the growing chill was definitely affecting her, but she needed the peace and quiet more than she needed the comfort of warmth.

Why couldn’t Abby just let it go? Why did she have to ask so many questions and demand answers?

It wasn’t any business of hers what all she’d been through, or why it was that she was calm in the face of chaos.

She knew why she was like that, a therapist many years ago had clued her in, but Abby didn’t need to know. They were virtual strangers, after all.

She examined her hands in the oncoming twilight. They were shaking. Not from the cold, but from the questioning and the reality those questions made her face. She could see her father, see his wide, glossy eyes and hear his voice telling her everything was going to be fine.

Only it wasn’t.

Nothing was ever fine after that and nothing was fine now.

Junior was dead, damn near cut in two, and no doubt burned beyond recognition. She and Abby were stranded, pretty much lost in the woods with freezing temperatures on the way. Things were looking grim. Grim indeed. She needed to get control of herself and stop the damn shaking.

She clenched her fists and then leaned against a thick tree to garner breath.

She could handle this. She was handling it.

But Abby would have to leave her alone. Otherwise, the past would come filtering back, one small image, one small sound, one small scent at a time, and she wouldn’t be able to hide what it did to her.

Abby would see. And that absolutely could not happen.

She set her jaw, took one last, deep breath, and walked with a newfound determination back to the campsite. Abby was stoking the fire, the twilight now settling in around her, encasing her, causing her red hair to look like a wild flame against the orange of the fire.

God, she was beautiful.

She stopped tending to the fire and plucked her clothes off the log and began dressing.

Whit approached, said nothing, but did the same.

The clothes were mostly dry, but they still felt cold, so she cozied up to the fire as best she could and pulled on her liners, socks and boots.

Abby, thankfully, didn’t say anything. They both just sat and warmed themselves by the flames.

Whit got lost in oblivion as she stared into the fire, grateful to not be thinking about anything. Eventually, she glanced upward, trying to discern any rain clouds, but she saw only hundreds of emerging stars and the faint glowing of the northern lights.

“Look,” she said.

Abby followed her line of sight. She stared in obvious awe. “They’re so beautiful, aren’t they?”

“They are.”

“I could never get tired of seeing a sky like that.”

Whit felt the same. The Alaskan sky was home to her.

As was the wilderness and her tiny little town of Cozy.

She wished she could make Abby understand that.

She didn’t want any more tourism than they already had.

Especially in Cozy. It was a quiet little community full of Alaskans, not teeming with people from the Lower Forty-eight. She wanted to keep it that way.

Sure, tourists paid her bills. She flew them to whatever destination they wanted, but that was away from Cozy. Far away.

“You know,” she tried to explain. “Cozy is a very special place to me.”

Abby turned to look at her.

“And I hope—”

A crunching noise came from the nearby brush. They froze, eyes trained into the dim forest. Whit reached for her knife and slowly stood. The hairs on the back of her neck were raised in alarm.

“What was that?” Abby whispered. Whit could hear the fear in her strained voice.

“I don’t know.” She walked toward the noise, but Abby called out for her.

“Don’t leave me here alone!”

Whit turned back to her. “Stay there.” She held out her knife. “I’m just going to go check. It’ll be fine.”

The words nearly caught in her throat. Her father’s last words.

And here she was using them on someone, trying to comfort them when she felt anything but comfort herself.

She took a few more steps and then widened her stance and spread her arms. She began to shout, thinking that if it were a bear, she needed to make as much noise as possible.

“Hey! Get out of here! Get on out of here!” She took a few more hurried steps and then froze again as she heard more noise come from the brush.

She relaxed however, when she realized the noise was growing faint, moving away from her.

She lowered her arms, gave one last long hard look into the darkness, and then returned to Abby, who stood ramrod still and as pale as a ghost.

“What was it?” she asked.

“I don’t know. But whatever it was, it’s gone.”

Abby embraced herself. “What if it comes back?”

“It won’t. I scared it off, so it’s unlikely to return.”

“I wish I was as sure as you are.”

Whit thought about telling her she wasn’t sure at all, but decided to continue to try to put her at ease.

It would do no good to frighten her and they both needed some serious rest. Sitting up all night worried about creatures in the dark would only exhaust them, and they needed their strength for tomorrow if they were going to try to start walking out of there.

“We should turn in,” Whit said, rubbing some dirt in the bottom of the pot to clean it.

She then rinsed it with a little water and put it and the remaining cans of food back into the polyester bag and hung it from a tree about thirty yards away.

Then she added more wood onto the fire, quickly tossed more hot rocks into the shelter, and crawled inside.

She dug around in the pine needles and scooted the old, now cooled rocks out of the way, then lined up the hot rocks on the ground.

Next, she covered them with the bed of pine needles and made herself comfortable, looking forward to the warmth the rocks would hopefully provide.

She tucked her hands behind her head and called out for Abby.

“You coming?”

Abby knelt and looked into the structure. She seemed unsure.

Whit patted the pine needles. “Come on. It’s nice and warm in here with the fire and the hot stones.”

Abby crawled inside and eased down next to Whit. Her breathing was short and quick and she couldn’t seem to find a comfortable spot.

“You okay?” Whit asked.

“I’m fine.”

“It’s not the Hilton, but it’s as good as we’re going to get for tonight.”

“It’s—good.”

“I’ll wake and check on the fire throughout the night so we’ll keep warm.”

“You’ve done an amazing job with building the fire wall and thinking to put those hot rocks beneath the bedding. I’m sure we’ll stay warm.”

Whit glanced over at her and watched as the firelight played with her profile.

“Thanks,” Whit said. She rarely heard such compliments.

“Thank you,” Abby said. “For taking such good care of us.” She closed her eyes and folded her hands on her chest. “I’m still scared, mind you. But I am appreciative for all you’ve done.”

Whit chuckled. “The wilderness takes some getting used to.”

“What do you think was out there?” She opened an eye as if checking to make sure that whatever it was hadn’t returned and was lurking at the entrance to the shelter.

“It was probably a curious animal. Maybe a fox or something like that.” She was still trying not to scare her. But Abby didn’t seem to buy it.

“It’s sounded big. Much bigger than a fox.”

“Sounds carry at night.”

Abby grew quiet. “I’m going to trust you, Whit, and try to sleep. But if I hear so much as a peep again, I’m probably going to run like hell.”

“Don’t worry,” Whit said softly. “I’ll keep an eye on the fire and the fire will keep the animals at bay.”

“Swear?” She turned to look at her.

“Swear.”

“Okay then. Good night.”

“Night.”

Abby closed her eyes once again and Whit stared out at the fire, lost in thought. The shelter was warm and they were covered from the elements, leaving them to sleep peacefully.

She awoke three times in the night, unsure as to what woke her, but glad nevertheless, so she could add more logs to the fire, which thankfully, did keep them relatively warm.

But when she awoke the next morning, Abby was clinging to her as a hard chill had settled, dispersing into the shelter.

Whit was very still, listening to Abby breathing, delighting in her tight embrace.

She knew she’d only clung to her because she was cold, but it felt nice nonetheless.

She lay like that for as long as she could before she eased out from beneath Abby’s arms and exited the shelter.

The first thing she did was restart the fire, which had apparently died sometime very early in the morning.

Then she piled on more wood and stood with her hands extended, trying to warm up.

When she glanced down to kick some more pine needles into the fire, she saw what looked like footprints. Alarmed, she knelt and examined them further. They were too large to be hers or Abby’s.

Am I really seeing this?

She couldn’t make out the tread. Just the impression in the pine needles.

Was somebody here?

If so, who?

And why didn’t they wake them and try to talk to them?

A chill crept down her back as she considered the answers. Either the person wasn’t friendly, or it wasn’t a person at all. Neither possibility left her feeling secure.

She swallowed hard and stared off into the woods where the footprints led.

Whatever it was was long gone with the light of day.

But just thinking about someone or something snooping around their campsite while they were sleeping unnerved her.

Seriously unnerved her. Was that the noise they’d heard in the brush last night? Was whatever it was watching them?

She rubbed her arms and tried to think. They needed to get out of there and put some considerable distance between them and this campsite today and maybe whatever it was would remain behind. That was her only hope at the moment.

She hurried to where she’d hung the nylon bag and stared in disbelief up into the tree.

The bag was gone. She quickly searched the ground and the surrounding brush and found the pot, but there was no sign of the pilot bread or the cans of Spam, coffee, or mug.

Just more impressions of what looked like footprints in the pine needles.

Something was seriously wrong. She knew for sure now and it couldn’t be ignored.

She walked back to camp where Abby was just emerging from the shelter. She took one look at Whit and her face clouded with worry.

“What’s wrong?”

“We need to go.”

“Whit, what’s wrong?”

Whit thought about playing the whole thing down, but she could tell Abby wasn’t going to believe her. Besides, how would she explain the missing bag?

“The bag is gone,” Whit said, kneeling to toss dirt onto the flames.

“What do you mean, gone? As in, someone took it?”

“Seems so.”

“There’s someone else here?”

“It’s the only explanation.”

“Well, it could be a bear or a—”

“It wasn’t a bear.” She shook her head. “The prints don’t match.”

A look of sheer terror came over Abby’s face. “Prints?”

Whit stepped away from the fire and showed Abby the tracks. Her look of terror intensified.

“Whit, those are big.”

“I know.”

Abby glanced around as if frightened about what would emerge from the woods.

“We should go. The sooner the better.”

“I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t they help us? Why wouldn’t they—?”

“I don’t know. Which is why we need to go.”

Abby nodded and Whit finished extinguishing the fire.

Then she found a sturdy stick and handed it to her.

“To help you walk.” Abby took the stick, and after they gathered the water bottle and the utility knife, they started off, walking through the woods, headed north, with Abby turning to look behind them every few steps.

Whit didn’t protest, or tell her not to worry. She couldn’t do that. Because the truth was, they both needed to be worried and they both needed to keep their guard up. It was the only way they would survive.