Chapter Three
Abigail
By the afternoon of her third day, Abby had reached a stark, undeniable conclusion: survival was exhausting.
In her old life, a difficult day meant a twelve-hour sprint of conference calls, negotiating contracts, and dodging the passive-aggressive emails of her fiancé. She had thought that was exhausting. She had been wrong.
Real exhaustion was the deep, muscular ache in her arms from dragging fallen branches across uneven terrain.
It was the stinging blisters on her palms. It was the sheer, unrelenting heat of the July sun that seemed to press down on the valley like a physical weight, baking the pine needles until the air smelled sharply of hot resin.
Abby sat on a flat, sun-warmed boulder beside the creek, staring at the water rushing over the smooth stones.
It was glacial runoff, clear as glass and freezing cold.
She dipped her bandana into the current, wringing it out before pressing the icy fabric to the back of her neck. A sigh shuddered out of her.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
The silence of the woods was still a shock to her system.
Without the constant hum of notifications and demands, her brain was trying to fill the void with memories she was desperately trying to outrun.
Whenever she closed her eyes, she was back in that glass-walled boardroom.
She could hear the drone of the HVAC system, see the quarterly projections on the screen, and feel the exact, terrifying moment when her lungs simply refused to expand.
The sensation of her reality fracturing like a windshield taking a rock at eighty miles an hour. It was still too fresh.
She opened her eyes, forcing the boardroom away, and focused on the creek.
She was parched. She reached to her belt and unclipped the high-grade water filtration straw the stranger at the store had forced upon her.
She hadn't wanted to take charity, but looking at the rushing water now, she realized just how naive she had been.
Boiling water required a fire, and maintaining a fire in the middle of a ninety-degree afternoon was a miserable prospect.
She knelt by the edge of the creek, uncapped the straw, and leaned down, placing the bottom end into the rushing current. She took a tentative pull.
The water hit the back of her throat, aggressively cold and sweeter than anything she had ever tasted. She drank greedily, wiping a stray drop from her chin. As she sat back on her heels, her fingers brushed the heavy canister of bear spray on her opposite hip.
The woods up here don't care how many badges you have.
She wondered who he was. The tall, quiet man with the stormy eyes and the steady hands.
He had looked at her like a puzzle he could solve in three seconds flat.
Like one of those people she’d seen videos of whose hands were blurs of motion as they twisted a Rubik’s Cube around for a few seconds then set it down, all six sides in perfect blocks of color.
Out here in the crushing isolation of the woods, the memory of his brief kindness was a strange comfort.
"Alright," Abby murmured aloud, the sound of her own voice startling her in the quiet. "Time to work."
She stood up, ignoring the protest of her sore muscles, and gathered the bundle of dry kindling she had scavenged. The sun was beginning its slow descent behind the jagged peaks of the Bitterroots, and the temperature would soon start its rapid evening plummet.
Back at the campsite, she knelt before the small ring of stones she had painstakingly assembled the day before. She arranged the dry pine needles and twigs into a teepee shape, just like she had learned twenty years ago in a suburban state park. She struck a waterproof match against the box.
It flared to life, but the sudden evening breeze snuffed it out before it even touched the kindling.
Abby gritted her teeth. She struck another. Sizzle. Out.
A third match. A fourth. On the fifth try, a tiny, fragile curl of orange flame caught the edge of a dry pine needle.
Abby leaned in, cupping her hands around it to shield it from the wind, blowing gently at the base.
Smoke stung her eyes, making them water, but she didn't blink. She couldn't afford to look away.
Slowly, agonizingly, the flame spread, greedily consuming the twigs and licking at the thicker branches.
Abby sat back, wiping a soot-stained hand across her forehead, and let out a breathless, triumphant laugh. It was a pathetic, lopsided little fire, but she had built it. With her own two hands.
For the first time in three weeks, she didn't feel like she was actively drowning.