Chapter 5
Nate
The generator dies in the middle of my second cup of coffee.
One second, it does its usual asthmatic wheeze in the background; the next, the lights give a long, dramatic flicker and then surrender to the dark side. The hum cuts off like someone pulled the plug on the world.
The cabin melts into eerie silence.
Ally and I look up at the same time, mugs halfway to our mouths.
“Shit,” I say eloquently.
“Shit,” she agrees with a tight tiredness around her eyes.
The fire in the grate is still burning well enough to throw out heat, but I can already feel the house shifting, like it’s remembering how cold it is out here without artificial help. The windowpanes are fogged, frost feathering at the edges.
“Could be the fuel line,” I say, listening like that’s going to tell me anything. “Or the starter. Or the ice. Or all three.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Define fix,” I say. “I can hit things with a wrench until something changes.”
“I’m not much better.” She gives me a look that’s half skeptical, half worried. It lands somewhere between my ribs. “You sure it’s safe to go out there right now? It’ll have gotten worse since last night.”
I glance through the curtain. The storm has downgraded from apocalyptic rant to petulant sulk. Snow is still falling, but not at that sideways, hell-bent angle of the past couple of days. It’s… survivable.
“As long as I don’t go far,” I say. “Generator’s just behind the shed. I’ll take the toolkit, have a look. If I can’t get it going, we resign ourselves to pioneer life and hope the food lasts.”
Ally makes a face. “I’m not emotionally ready to churn my own butter, Nate.”
I chuckle. “Relax. Worst case, we ration coffee and sit very close to the fire for a while.”
The words are out before I fully process the image that comes with them: Ally pressed against my side, wrapped in a blanket, her head on my shoulder, shared breath in cold air.
Nope. No. Absolutely not.
I shove my arms into my jacket a little too hard. “You stay here. If I’m not back in twenty minutes, assume the generator ate me.”
She doesn’t laugh. Not properly. Her fingers tighten around the mug. “You…”
“I’ll be careful,” I say, more gently. “I’ve done this before.”
She studies my face like she’s cataloging every line. “I don’t like it,” she says finally.
“I know.”
It does something to me, having her admit that. That she doesn’t like the idea of me out in the cold, fighting with an ancient machine. I’ll use that knowledge as a source of inner warmth while I’m freezing my ass off out there.
“I won’t be long,” I promise.
She nods, once. “Fine. But if you’re not back in twenty-one minutes, I’m forming a search party of one.”
“Bossy,” I say, trying to make it light.
She lifts her chin. “Hey, I gave you an extra minute of leeway. And you love my bossy side.”
I step out into the cold before I can say anything stupid in response.
***
The world outside is white and muffled, the kind of cold that goes straight for the edges of your ears and fingers like it has it in for you. The snow’s piled higher since last night, swallowing the ruts my boots made before.
The generator crouches behind the shed, half-buried like a sulking animal. “Morning, sweetheart,” I mutter, trudging toward it with the tool box. “You really know how to make a guy work for your affection.”
The casing is encrusted with ice, and my gloves stick slightly when I touch it. I swear under my breath and pry open the panel, trying not to think about frostbite.
Or the feeling of Ally’s eyes on my back from behind the kitchen window.
“OK,” I tell the mess of pipes and wires inside. “What’s your problem?”
I lose track of time in the familiar frustration. The cold continues to bite hard, but at least the wind has died down enough that I’m not being sandblasted. I check the fuel, the starter, the plugs. It takes fifteen minutes to find the culprit: a cracked fuel line, brittle from years and weather.
“Got you,” I say, with grim satisfaction. “You sneaky bastard.”
Replacing it isn’t hard. I’ve watched Mac’s handyman do it before, and I’ve got enough mechanical literacy not to blow us up.
I strip the damaged section, fit a new length from the spare coil hanging in the shed, and clamp it off.
By the time I’m tightening the last joint, my fingers are numb even in the gloves, and my nose stopped existing somewhere around minute ten.
I stand up, stretch my back, and give the casing a fond whack.
“All right,” I say through chattering teeth. “Moment of truth.”
I prime the line, hit the starter. Nothing.
Before I can summon up some Ally-style expressive profanity, there’s a cough. A sputter. And a full-throated, glorious roar as the generator shudders back to life. The vibrations travel up through my boots.
“Yes,” I exhale. “Thank you, sweetheart.”
I let it run for a minute, listening for anything off. It’s still not exactly purring, but it’s alive. I close the panel, clamp it shut, and start walking back toward the cabin.
Which is where everything goes wrong.
The path that was just snow last night is now a treacherous layer cake: snow over ice over packed sleet. My boot hits a patch at the wrong angle, and my foot slides out from under me. For a split second, I think I can catch myself.
I can’t.
The world tilts.
There’s a drop behind the shed. Not a canyon. Not a cliff. Just the kind of steep, tree-studded slope that leads down to the creek; a slope I know is there, in theory, the kind we used to toboggan down when Mac felt fatherly enough to bring a handful of his kids here in winter.
Right now, with the ice, it might as well be Everest.
I skid past the edge, gravity grabbing me by the collar. The toolbox flies from my hand, scattering wrenches like metallic confetti. Snow explodes around me, and my shoulder clips a buried rock hard enough to make white lightning shoot through my arm.
“Fuck!” The word is ripped out of my mouth as I tumble, rolling, sliding, grasping at nothing.
The world’s a blur of white and gray and brief, vicious tree trunks.
Something scrapes my calf. My hip slams into something else that feels like a boulder.
Everything narrows to pain and cold and panic.
I finally come to a sliding stop against a snowbank halfway down the slope, more by luck than by any skill.
My lungs burn, vision pulsing at the edges.
For a minute, I just lie there, staring up at the sky, trying to catalog damage.
Legs: still attached. Arms: achy but working.
Head: rattled, but not broken. Back: pissed off, but functional.
Nothing feels like it’s on fire in that special, alarming way that means serious injury.
I’m probably bruised to hell. My ankle is possibly sprained. But I’m not dead.
I try to sit up. Lightning lances up my right ankle, sharp and nauseating. Yeah, that’s a sprain.
“Ah, shit.” I grit my teeth, breathing through the wave. “OK. OK. We’re fine. This is fine. Just a… surprise sled ride.”
I look up the hill.
It’s steeper from down here. Of course it is. The cabin roof and the top of the shed peek over the lip like they’re watching me.
I try standing, weight on the left foot only. It takes some wrangling, but I manage it. The ankle screams protest when I shift, but holds. I could maybe hobble up. Slowly. Carefully. If the snow doesn’t decide to play slide-and-die again.
Which it will. It’s icy as fuck.
“Nate!”
Ally is at the top of the slope, a blue blob against the snow, framed by the corner of the cabin. Her voice climbs the distance, threaded with panic.
“Nate! Are you OK?”
“I’m fine!” I shout back, then immediately wince as the motion jars my ribs. “Just took the express route downhill!”
“This isn’t cocking funny!” Her voice cracks on the last word. “Can you walk?”
“Define walk!”
She says something I don’t quite catch, but I imagine it was viciously creative and could probably strip bark off trees. Then I see her disappear from the edge.
“Ally, don’t come down here!” I yell. “The snow’s slick as hell. You’ll just get stuck down here with -”
She reappears a moment later, not on the slope but on the cabin deck, moving with focused purpose. It takes me a heartbeat to realize what she’s holding: her bow. A quiver of arrows. And a coil of rope.
“What are you doing?” I shout.
“Saving your stupid ass!” she calls back.
There’s a clean, economical sharpness in her movements I recognize from footage of her training sessions. The version of her that steps into the wind with a bow in hand is different, more distilled. All the scattered energy and sarcasm poured into one clear line, the purest kind of focus.
She loops one end of the rope around the porch post, knotting it tight, then feeds the length through her hands, gauging distance.
“You’re insane,” I mutter, half to myself.
She plants her feet, draws an arrow from the quiver on her shoulder, and ties the free end of the rope near the fletching in a quick, sure knot.
“Ally!” I call again. “If that arrow slips -”
“It won’t,” she snaps. “How’s your ankle?”
“Not broken,” I say. “Just pissed off.”
“Sounds familiar.” She nocks the arrow, lifts the bow. For a moment the world seems to contract around her, around that line from her shoulder through her arm and into the arrow, all tension and intent.
She takes a breath.
Forgets I exist.
Releases.
The arrow sails in a clean arc, hissing softly. It buries itself in a tree trunk half a yard from my head with a thunk I feel in my teeth.
The rope bites into the bark, the line pulled taut between porch post and tree.
I stare at it, then at her.
She lowers the bow, watching me with wide, fierce eyes. “Grab the rope!”
“Yes, ma’am,” I mutter, adrenaline making me stupidly giddy.
I reach for the line. It’s ice-cold and rough under my gloves. I wrap it around my forearm, test the tension. Solid. Between the anchored arrow and the post, it’s a crude but effective handrail.