Frozen Stiff (11 page)

Big mistake.

Flushed with heat, she broke out in a sweat. Her fingers felt strange and alien, as if they were gripping handlebars on a bike instead of strangling a vine.

If I cry I’ll die
.

Her boot slipped. She dangled helplessly, trying to regain her footing. She felt as if she had just run the Los Angeles Marathon in place, all but the last stretch of its twenty-six miles. Only a few more steps until she crossed the finish line.

She pressed her boots into the rock and moved up slowly, not daring to look down again—praying she wouldn’t slip and find herself on the ground. It seemed to take forever; near the end she was pulled up by thoughts of Derek.

On top, she collapsed, so weak that she couldn’t stand right away. But she’d made it. Then she crawled away from the edge and glanced at her watch. The face was shattered, the hands stopped. She tossed it in the brush and pulled up her pack, the vine still looped through the straps.

On this stretch of trail the undergrowth choked the path to almost nothing. Everything was so unbelievably green. Spruce and hemlock, and all kinds of shrubs she couldn’t name.

Earlier she’d eaten some jerky and half the berries. Wildman’s food. She munched another boiled root. The roots were as sharp as onions and just as slimy. At least they were moist.

Her mouth tasted metallic, like dirt and nails mixed together. Add a little fish jerky … She ran
her finger over her teeth. Five days without a toothbrush.

After eating she hiked on, encouraged by a print made by Derek’s boots, now a step behind the wide flat prints of Wildman.

Her own boots slipped on her heels; her socks were matted with mud.
Extra insulation
, she thought,
added warmth
.

Cody stopped.

“No.” She shook her head.

It wasn’t possible.

She knelt down and drew her finger through the damp earth.

A third set of prints trudged down the trail; smaller than Wildman’s, but pressed by the same type of homemade boot.

There could only be one answer and she knew it. Wildman had a partner.

Until now she’d tried not to think about what she would do after she caught up to Derek and Wildman. She’d counted her steps, her breaths—anything to
not
think about it, hoping she’d come up with a plan and spring into action when the time came.

Adrenaline will kick in
. The whisper came on the edge of consciousness.
Instinct will take over
.

Now everything had changed. There was another person. But she still had to find Derek.

Fog moved in on the mountain in front of her, from the ocean end of Russell Fjord, where the Pacific Ocean filled Yakutat Bay. Fog from the sea, but as white as bleached bones in the desert. It moved like water tumbling down the mountain, wiping out vast sections of trees. Seconds later it lifted and framed a rock outcropping, then dropped just as quickly and obliterated the entire scene.

Cody spun around, startled by a sound shattering the mountain silence. The sound was foreign. She listened, clinging tightly to the straps of her pack.

Her gaze scanned the nearby woods. She could see up to ten feet in some directions, depending on light
and vegetation. She made herself smaller, squatting down.

The noise grew in intensity.

Cody jumped up and let the sound of rotary blades wash over her: a helicopter. “I’m down here!” she yelled at the chopper, hearing it somewhere above her.

“Here I am!” Her leg began bleeding again. She quickly untied the T-shirt bandage and waved the bloody flag in the air. “Down here!”

First I’ll tell them about Derek, then Wildmen. They won’t stand a chance now. Their game is finished!

Cody dropped her pack. She thought about climbing a tree and tying the T-shirt on top like an SOS. But even the lower branches were too high, so she just waved the bloody shirt, screaming, “I’m down here!”

The sound grew less intense.

It’s looking for a place to land
, she told herself.
There has to be a place somewhere!

The pilot must have seen the fire and the tent. He must have spotted the kayak
. The sound of whirling blades faded to a flat hum, like that of distant bees.
Looking for a place to land; looking for a place!

They know I’m down here. We’re down here
.

Don’t panic!

Finally the sound vanished into the mist.

She laughed like someone on the verge of madness.
Back to Yakutat for reinforcements—that must be it!

Cody collapsed on the ground and rubbed fresh mud over her wound. The T-shirt again took its place
as a bandage. It would have been easy to make an arrow with rocks. An arrow in the clearing near the tent pointing to the stream, leading them to the abandoned pots, eventually to Wildmen’s trail.

The neglected fire and empty tent would tell them the camp was deserted.

Cody shrugged into her pack. She saw a feather on the ground in a bed of leaves. Probably a buzzard feather. Picking it up, she recognized it as belonging to an eagle. An eagle?

“I can’t even tell the difference between a buzzard and an eagle!” she said aloud.

And then to herself:
I don’t belong out here alone
.

Up the mountain, the fog parted again. This time the opening highlighted a section of trail on steep, rugged terrain with few trees. Three beetle-sized dots stuck out against the pale granite: all three moving, hunched over, as if searching the ground for something lost.

“Derek,” she muttered.

Then the fog returned and swallowed them up.

At least he wasn’t hurt. The rescuers would be coming soon.
Don’t worry, help is on the way
.

Hour after hour
Don’t worry, Derek
repeated itself in Cody’s mind as she walked the trail that no longer climbed up the mountain. She was now walking parallel to the fjord and moving in the direction of Hubbard. In some places the ground was so wet that it was like walking on a soggy sponge.

Still, no sounds.

No chopper or airplane.

It didn’t make sense.

Maybe the windswept water was too rough for a seaplane. Maybe the fjord was too narrow. She strained to hear the sound of a boat or plane engine. Then she stopped and looked around for a place to hold up. She knew she’d have to sleep under a roof of branches. Parcel out jerky and berries for dinner, save some for tomorrow. Suddenly the tent back in camp seemed like a five-star hotel.

Four days earlier she’d poked fun at Derek for dividing trail mix. Now she was doing the same thing.

Fog
. Maybe that was why no one had come back. Fog was as dangerous as thunderstorms, and grounded just as many flights. Boats and cars piled up in the pea soup.

She tossed her pack under a tree, spread her slicker on the ground. Sitting on her sleeping bag, she untied the bandage to look at her leg. Dried blood mixed with dried mud. She winced, knowing that the pain that had left her eyes had now settled into her thigh.

The next day rescuers would wind their way down the fjord. The next day Derek would be saved and Wildmen would have to face the authorities.

The next day would be marked
The End
.

She’d tell Derek, “You can drive the old pickup when we get back.”

Cody pulled down No Fear, trying to cut out the menacing night sounds. She shivered down to her bones. Was it the night air or her own anxiety? She tried sleeping on her side, then on her back, always
keeping the pressure off her leg. She wadded up her sweatshirt but it felt more like a rock than a pillow.

This only happened to people on the news. Not to normal people like her and Derek. Then she remembered Ginny Martin.

The strange night sounds reminded her just how alone she was and how little she knew about anything. She looked in the direction of the sunset, a faint glow setting off jagged peaks blacker than night itself, and worried about Derek.

They’ll have to take care of him
, she tried to reassure herself.
Otherwise he isn’t worth anything to them
.

Cody just couldn’t unwind, couldn’t turn off her brain.

The night went on and on.

Cody moaned in her sleep when something told her that she was surrounded by water, that she wasn’t just dreaming about drowning but was actually inhaling salt water and choking. She didn’t have any idea where she was or what was happening.

Dial 911
.

But her finger punched in a different set of numbers, seven digits plus an area code: three-one-zero. Her finger kept slipping on the last number.

More than once she’d actually dialed all seven digits without fumbling. After an agonizing number of rings a stranger answered, “You’re looking for Mr. Lewis? He moved three years ago. And his new number is unlisted.”

She’d had the same dream off and on since the divorce. Calling her dad now didn’t make sense. Even in a dream she should have been dialing the lodge in Yakutat.

It took several minutes before she fully awakened, drifting in and out of a foggy reality. One second she was in the kayak battling four-foot waves, the next she
was staring into the face of a masked madman. Then it was all reality. She was sleeping out in the open in a remote Alaskan wilderness.

Cody rolled over and cried out when her weight pressed her thigh. Her first instinct was to check her watch. Stupid. She knew first light meant it was four
A.M
. And besides, her watch was broken and she’d thrown it away.

The blue-gray clouds hung in layers stacked across the mountains where the sun would make its first appearance. Even without sore eyes, the sky was so alive behind the weaker clouds that she had to look away. Cody usually liked the hours between first light and sunrise.

Her sleeping bag was damp on the outside. Still, she pulled it over her torn clothes and willed her body to make heat. She imagined the pilots in Yakutat in the tavern, filling mugs with steaming coffee. Her mom would be scrambling eggs and frying sausage, which would be gobbled while planes were being fueled for the rescue flight.

Eggs and sausage. Strange that the idea of food didn’t make her hungry. No gnawing pangs or grumbles. Her stomach remained a dead void taking up space in her body.

The pilot must have seen their camp yesterday.
Soon
, she thought.

She snuggled deeper into her bag, barely aware of her aching muscles, bruises, and scrapes, focusing on wiggling her half-numb toes.

Cody wondered if Derek and Wildmen were
working their way down the trail. Holding the sleeping bag around her shoulders, she sat up and cringed at the pain in her leg. She couldn’t believe she’d slept through the night.

The air held its usual dampness, heavy with its own wet weight. The bottom of her bag had slipped off her rain slicker; in places it was as wet and muddy as the rest of the landscape. Everything around her was shiny with dew.

The clouds were dissolving over the horizon. She blinked at the brightening sky and pulled the brim of her cap down. Her eyes only burned a little today. They certainly weren’t hurting as badly as the heat in her leg.

She peeled back her bag, startled by the sight of her clothes. Ripped, muddy, spotted with dried blood. Her hands appeared to have battled barbed wire and lost. Her nails were jagged and torn.

She studied the bandage, still in place and wrapped loosely around her thigh. It untied easily enough but refused to loosen from her skin. Maybe a scab was forming. She inspected the skin around the bandage. It wasn’t pretty but the swelling had started to go down.

Cody retied the T-shirt, careful not to yank on it. She forced herself to choke down a strip of jerky, then licked the last of the squashed berries off the deerskin cloth that had held them. The berries were sickeningly sweet now, too ripe. Scooting out of her sleeping bag, she stood up and laughed as her shorts nearly fell off. She couldn’t believe she’d lost that much weight.
She used the filthy bandanna as a belt, then hooked on the bear horn.

At least there aren’t any mosquitoes
, she thought, pulling the slicker over her sweatshirt for added warmth. She forced her feet into her dirty socks, then slipped into her boots and found a couple of walking sticks.