Survive

by David Haynes

  “I’m going to take a look,” said Jonesy.

  Lauren stepped back from the window, shaking her head. The look of terror was back.

  *

  Lad led the sled through the patchy Sitka. Jonesy kept his eyes moving, scanning through the trees and the ground for tracks. There had been no shots for the last twenty minutes but if someone was out here firing a weapon, there was no value in being careless.

  It felt wrong. Something about Lauren was off and she wasn’t giving them the whole picture. She was barely giving them anything at all. He was no expert but there was a difference between the sound a rifle made and that of a handgun. The shots they heard were from a small caliber handgun. He was sure.

  But how could Olin have survived out here? It was an impossibility unless he had cover, unless he had found a place to hole up. But why would Lauren say he was dead if he wasn’t? None of it made sense. None of it.

  He pushed on. Without the sound of a gunshot to home in on, he was almost blind; not as clueless as he had been a few days ago when he scouted the area, but the forest was deep, dark and vast. On a few occasions Lad took the air more vigorously than normal, even barking at one point, but if he smelled anything other than the normal flora and fauna, he wasn’t telling anybody.

  Just as Jonesy was coming to the conclusion that they might have been mistaken, that it hadn’t been gunfire, his viewpoint changed. Against the crystal sharpness of the snow, the blood droplets stood out like rubies. The color was vivid and startling. Something or someone was injured.

  Lad put his nose to the blood and whined. Jonesy followed the spatter direction with his eyes, deeper into the forest, then back the other way, down toward the river. The droplets were fatter at one end with a thin tail at the other. The tail end showed him which way the injured party had gone. He wanted to avoid a bleeding bear, or a wolf. Getting shot was apt to put either in a bad mood but he needed to know what was happening. He followed the direction from which the injured animal had come, not which way it was heading.

  Within a couple of minutes he saw what he’d been searching for, but never truly expected to find. The color of the jacket, bright red and as vivid as blood against the snow, was impossible to miss. It matched Lauren’s ski-suit. He stumbled through the snow, bouncing off a tree, to reach the bundle of clothes. There was no movement.

  He urged Lad forward with the sled and dropped down onto his haunches beside the figure. He knew it had to be Olin – the clothes, the size, and the hairy exposed hand reaching forward, gripping tightly onto a black handgun. Nobody else would be out here now.

  He slid a glove off and reached beneath the hood. Pulse, good and strong but if he stayed face-down much longer, the guy’s nose would be eaten by the ice. He glanced down at the exposed flesh on Olin’s fingers and winced. There was some swelling around the joints but no obvious discoloration. Lad sniffed the outstretched fingers and whined. He looked at Jonesy as if to ask if it was alright to go ahead and chow down. Jonesy eased the dog away with his forearm.

  He rolled him onto his back. The tip of his nose had a blueish tint to it. He was heavy, a big man, and it took a colossal effort to pull the deadweight onto the sled. There was no time to examine him further, that would happen back at the cabin. He just needed to get him there. Jonesy prized the gun from his hand and slid it into his pocket. The steel was as icy as the man’s fingers. He draped a tarp over him, attached the harness and pulled. Covering him up like that made it look like he was pulling a corpse, but if it kept the snow off his face, nose and hands for a while longer, it was worth the initial shock Lauren might suffer.

  He grimaced at the effort. It was one thing pulling a caribou carcass through the lighter, more compact snow at the start of the winter, but entirely another in December. Whatever was going to happen next, he had no idea, he didn’t want to think about it. Treating Lauren, who had suffered exposure for a relatively short space of time, was a different matter to trying to fix someone with serious frostbite. One thing for certain, Olin hadn’t been lying like that since Lauren had appeared. If he had, he’d be dead. One way or another he’d be dead.

  That only left one option. Olin had been hiding out somewhere that kept the worst of the winter off him, kept him alive and not dead as Lauren had said. There was only one place that could have been. Jonesy urged himself on, pulling his hood down lower, covering his eyes against the wind and the snow.

  That place.

  Behind, on the sled, he thought he heard Olin groan. It was either that or whatever he’d fired at was coming back for another go.

  “Lad, stop!” he shouted.

  He swung the rifle off his shoulder and leveled it at precisely nothing. There was nothing there except for the empty forest.

  Olin groaned again, his voice bouncing off the tarp, making it sound as if it were coming from a cave.

  “Hang in there, buddy,” said Jonesy.

  A grunting cough came back in reply.

  Jonesy turned around again. “Let’s go!” he shouted. Lad pulled immediately and they were moving again.

  “Hang in there, and maybe you can tell me what the hell’s going on,” he said. “Your wife has got a few questions to answer. From both of us, I reckon.”

  Olin was silent. Maybe he didn’t know why his wife had left him to die in the middle of nowhere either.

  *

  As he went past the cache, he saw movement coming from the cabin – a figure stumbling toward him.

  “Oh, God!” It was Lisa’s voice. She reached him, her hands raised toward her mouth. “Is...”

  “He’s alive,” Jonesy said before she could say anything else. “We need to get him inside, looks like frostbite, maybe hypothermia too.”

  He carried on toward the cabin, Lisa at his side. “He’s in a bad way, not as bad as he should be though.” He turned his head toward her. “He’s been holed up somewhere.”

  Lisa stared straight ahead. “Oh,” she replied.

  “Lauren?” he asked.

  Lisa nodded at the window. Lauren was watching them come toward the cabin. She moved her head from side to side, trying to get a view of the sled and what was beneath the tarp.

  “She said he was dead,” Lisa whispered, coming closer.

  Jonesy nodded but said nothing.

  He pulled the sled up to the steps and removed the harness. The cabin door flew open, caught by the wind. Lauren stood staring, the familiar trapped-ptarmigan expression daubed across her face. Jonesy stared back.

  “Put more wood on the fire,” he shouted.

  And then her expression was gone, the wind whipping her hair across her face like a scarf, obliterating whatever emotion had been there a second ago.

  He turned to Lisa. “Help me lift him.”

  She nodded and moved around the sled. Jonesy pulled the tarp back and slid his forearms under Olin’s armpits. “On three,” he said.

  They lifted him off the sled and carried him up the steps, into the cabin. “By the fire,” Lisa said, her face contorted with the effort.

  They lowered him, sliding him to the place Lauren had lain when she arrived.

  “I’ll get the blanket this time,” Lisa said. “You get to undress him.”

  Jonesy looked up. “Maybe Lauren should be the one...” His eyes found hers. “Lauren?”

  Even from across the room, he could hear her breathing. It came in rapid jumps and twitches, as if she were about to cry. She opened her mouth to speak and then abruptly closed it again. She turned away.

  Her response was strange enough but it was her expression which really made Jonesy wonder if his mind were playing tricks on him. There was nothing; no concern for her husband’s health even though he was lying at death’s door. No exhibition of love, compassion or any other emotion that a human might feel for someone they loved. And certainly not for someone they wrongly assumed was dead. Fear, that was all there was. Horror.

  Jonesy glanced at Lisa, and then started peeling the layers of clothing
from Olin. Lisa raised her eyebrows but said nothing. In front of the fire, his outer layers of clothing were dripping with melting ice. The water made a dark patch on the threadbare rug which crept slowly toward Jonesy’s knees.

  He slid the jacket off. It was of a similar style to the one Lauren had worn when they found her. Good for an afternoon of hiking in the forest but useless out here. Beneath the first jacket was another. It was of the same style. Water, ice and snow had forced its way through the poor-quality zips and breathable lining of the top jacket and soaked into the layer beneath. It added a better degree of protection than just one stratum but only just.

  Jonesy stripped him naked and wrapped him in the same fur Lauren had worn. Olin had been wearing another layer of pants too. They were ski-pants and were as pathetically inadequate as the rest of his clothing.

  Lisa came in and out, loading the fire with wood until it filled the cabin with a smoky, spicy heat that was as aggressive as the wind outside. The only part of Olin that moved was his jawbone which worked at a constant pace, as if he were grinding his teeth through a bad dream. A very bad, prolonged dream.

  Lisa sat down on the rug beside him. “What do you think?”

  Jonesy shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s frostbite on his nose and fingers. I’m not sure how bad it is but we’ve done all we can, for now at least.”

  He nodded toward Lauren. Throughout the last twenty minutes, she hadn’t moved. She stood and looked out of the window toward the forest. It was the position she had taken when she first came, looking for Olin. He was inside now, lying half-dead in front of the fire, and she didn’t seem interested.

  He leaned toward Lisa and whispered, “What the hell?”

  She shrugged in response.

  “Can you speak to her? Find out what’s going on?”

  “I can try,” she replied, reaching over to grab the other fur from the couch. She draped it over Olin who was now shaking.

  Jonesy nodded. Apart from his head, the rest of Olin’s body was shrouded in furs. His face was a mess. The bridge of his nose was black. The frostbite spread out from there, down to the mummified tip and nostrils. Where the corner of his eyes reached across toward his nose was gray but two blooms stood out on each cheekbone. It was as if he were made up like a clown with black paint. It didn’t look good.

  He couldn’t see Olin’s fingers and wasn’t about to drag them out from under the fur, but he’d already seen how bad they looked. The fingers on his left hand were the same color as his nose. He needed medical attention, more than just a re-thaw by the fire. The color meant there was a risk of gangrene. He swallowed hard and looked over at Lisa. He didn’t want to think about amputations at that moment.

  Lisa was holding Lauren by the arm, her head tilted toward her.

  “Lauren? Talk to me.”

  Nothing.

  “Olin’s sick, he needs our help. Don’t you want to help him?”

  Lauren didn’t move. She kept her eyes fixed on the window.

  “When he wakes up he’ll want to see a friendly face. Remember how scared you were when you saw us for the first time?”

  Lisa tried to guide Lauren away from the window. She pulled at her elbow but the girl remained rooted to the spot.

  “He needs you,” Lisa urged.

  Lauren finally turned. She swallowed hard, tears running down her flushed cheeks. She glanced at Olin, at Jonesy and at Lisa. Her eyes were full of fear. No not just fear, terror. She was literally petrified.

  She swallowed again and then opened her mouth.

  “He...”

  Olin emitted a long, mournful wail and then thrashed his legs, the movement throwing off the fur and exposing his naked body.

  He screamed, sitting up and flailing at some imaginary creature flying above his head.

  Jonesy reached out, trying to pull the furs back over him but his legs kicked as if he were sprinting, running for his life.

  He looked up at Lisa. “Give me a hand, would you?”

  Lisa dropped in beside him, putting her hands on Olin’s chest. Her voice was soothing as she whispered to him. “We’ve got you, Olin, you’re safe. Lie still.”

  He roared like a grizzly, the cords on his neck standing out with the effort. His eyes flicked open, taking in the room and everyone in it with a jerking twist of his head. A second later he collapsed back down and closed his eyes.

  “Jesus,” Jonesy whispered.

  Over by the window, Lauren half-fell over one of the chairs, sending it clattering to the floor as she stumbled toward the cabin door. She was sobbing loudly.

  “Lauren?” Lisa tried to get to her feet to grab her but the girl was already throwing open the cabin door. A blast of frigid air tunneled inside and she was gone.

  Jonesy jumped up and stood beside his wife at the open door. Lad wriggled between them, bounding to Lauren’s side as she stumbled through the deepening snow.

  “She’s going to the shed,” said Lisa.

  They watched her disappear inside and then closed the cabin door. They both looked down at Olin. In the flickering flames, the mummified flesh appeared to crawl across his ravaged face.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Jonesy asked.

  Lisa simply shook her head.

  13

  Jonesy was sitting beside Olin on the floor. “I’ll stay with him, make sure he doesn’t have another...” What was it? “…attack. Shivers seem to be calming down though.”

  Lisa was beside him. “That frostbite doesn’t look good, does it?”

  He shook his head. “What’s Lauren doing out there?”

  Lauren had been in the woodshed for the last two hours. Night had fallen and the temperature had descended with it.

  “Nothing. She’s sitting in the corner, knees pulled up to her chest, wrapped up in a couple of old furs she found in there. Lad’s loving it, he’s lying next to her. She won’t speak to me, not a word.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on. She’s...”

  “She’s terrified, that’s what she is. She’s scared to death.”

  They both looked at Olin’s pathetic form.

  “Of him?” Jonesy asked.

  Lisa nodded.

  “But she never said anything. I mean, when she thought he was dead, she looked desperate, desperate and sad. That was real, I saw it.”

  Lisa nodded. “It was. She was heartbroken.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “No it doesn’t. And now she’s sitting out there, rocking to and fro like someone in an asylum. She’s catatonic, just like she was when we found her. She won’t speak, so...” Lisa shrugged.

  “So, until he wakes up and starts talking, we don’t know what the hell’s going on.”

  “If,” Lisa said. “If he wakes up.”

  “He will.”

  “And then what? We’ve got two extra mouths to feed, Jonesy.”

  The same thought had been at the front of his own mind for the last couple of hours. Two extra people was a lot to carry. It would be tight, really tight and there would have to be concessions, big ones. This wasn’t what either of them wanted or what they had planned for. They were all going to lose weight. They just had pray for an early spring. There was no alternative.

  The cabin already felt cramped with three of them. Four would be horrible. Maybe he could do something with the shed, make the front weatherproof and make a fire pit in there. It was possible. Two people could sleep in there in the short term. At the moment, though, it was moot. Olin couldn’t be moved and it didn’t look like Lauren wanted to play happy families anyway.

  “There’s enough food.” He put his hand on her leg. “Just need to make that tenderloin stretch a little further.”

  She smiled back but he could see the effort it took to make the gesture. “I hope so.”

  They were silent for a while. Lisa dripped water onto Olin’s parted lips, hoping some of it would slide down his throat.

  She handed the wet cloth to him. “I’l
l go and check on her before I go to bed.” She slid into her jacket, walked to the door, pausing before opening it. “What kind of trouble does a marriage have to be in for her to behave like this? Think he beats her?”

  He’d seen the bruises on her body when she arrived, they were unmissable. But there was no point in speculating, they could have been caused in any number of ways. She had been wandering about in the bush for a few days before she came to them. She could have fallen, she could have been in a wrestling match for all they knew. That was the point. She hadn’t told them anything.

  Yet, from the way she acted when Jonesy brought him inside, it was clear all wasn’t rosy with them. Her reaction suggested something altogether different.

  “There could be a whole load of reasons why she’s in the shed. I don’t want to get involved in any marriage counseling but nobody’s laying a finger on anyone else whilst they’re here. If that happens, someone’s got a long walk to Big Six ahead of them.”

  Lisa nodded. “Back in five.” She stepped out of the door.

  He couldn’t think of many other reasons for Lauren preferring to sleep in the shed rather than beside her sick husband. Hate was one but that wasn’t what was in Lauren’s eyes. It was fear.

  He rubbed his eyes. Two extra mouths to feed. Two extra mouths and some kind of shitty marriage breakdown to deal with. The winter just grew longer.

  *

  It wasn’t until the following afternoon that Olin opened his eyes again. This time it wasn’t accompanied by a grizzly roar or a scream but with a whispered plea for water. Lisa gave him a cup, tilting it to his mouth.

  “Thank you,” he whispered. His voice was scratchy, as if he were coming out the other side of a throat infection. “Lauren?” he asked, coughing up some of the water.

  Lisa wiped it away. “Safe,” she answered.

  Olin moved his head, looking about the room. Jonesy nodded at him. “How’re you doing there, Olin?”

  He closed his eyes for two seconds and then opened them again. “Woozy. Where am I?”

  Jonesy walked over and crouched down beside Lisa. “In the middle of nowhere. You heard of Big Six?”