“How are you doing, Riley?” I asked.
“Fucking ace,” she mumbled.
Whilst the water was boiling I got my first aid kit out and unpacked a sterile needle and thread and some more bandages. There were some rubber gloves too and I put them on, struggling with my fingers that were going numb with cold. I tried not to think about Piotr - it wasn't conducive to our survival. There'd be time for that after. I had no doubt that there'd be things in the pack he'd want sent home to his family but I couldn't think about that now.
I took the unsalted pan of water and quickly made up a mug of black coffee, sipping it for its warmth to try and get some feeling back into my hands. It's funny how your mind works in a crisis. My brain began replaying the audio of a memory, of Dad saying 'core body temperature, son, it's all about core body temperature. Keep your chest warm and your limbs will be warm'. Now I found myself thinking about the both of them. Dead. No longer in my world. Just recordings in my head.
I took the other pan off the fire and sat it in the snow, leaving it to cool a little.
“Where's Piotr?” asked Riley, barely audible even over the gentle crackling of the fire.
“He's dead,” I said. “And we have to fix that leg.”
I put my finger in the pan and found the water was lukewarm. I turned and looked at the bandage. Riley's hand had stopped pressing and had slid down her leg almost lifelessly. The blood had come through the second pad and so I took off both and threw them on the fire.
“Sorry, Riley, but the pants need to come off,” I said. She didn't reply. I leaned over her and held my hand to her mouth, feeling for breath. It was there - faint, but still there.
I undid the buckle of her combat trousers and slid them down to her ankles, grabbing Piotr's sleeping bag with one hand and pulling it over her exposed legs. Then I used my knife to cut through her underwear and that went on the fire too.
The wound was a few inches long but was deep enough to worry me. I was no expert but I was sure I could see bone and the chances of her avoiding infection were slim. Still, I knew I had to try and it wasn't a new experience for me - one of my students had suffered a similar wound to their back once and I knew the treatment would be the same.
I took my pan of warm salt water and, bracing her legs with my knee, I prised open the wound and gently poured it in. She suddenly bucked under me, screaming with the pain but she was too weak to fight my weight and I emptied the pan until the flesh was clean again.
Next I took the needle and began the delicate work of stitching the wound closed. I'd done this before - countless times under Dad's careful supervision with a pig carcass and even a couple of times with an orange peel. Again, the audio rattled on in my head, Dad's words, Dad's training chanting through my mind like a mantra.
Riley tried to fight me off but failed. She led on her side, sobbing to herself which, though it broke my heart, was better than the silence of the dying.
When I was done I put a fresh pad over the neat join and wrapped it around her thigh. When I was happy that the blood flow had been stemmed enough, I helped her up into a sitting position and began taking off my gloves.
“Riley?” I said. “Are you okay?”
“That really hurt...” she managed to sob. I guess I'd unfairly expected the hardened Ranger to suck it up and I hadn't taken her feelings into account. I felt guilty as I helped her out of her boots and into the sleeping bag, putting my coat around her shoulders. I took her trousers and hung them up to dry with a piece of paracord strung across our shelter. Then I sat down next to her and gave her my coffee cup.
“How are you feeling?” I asked. I found a cleansing wipe in my kit and began to clean some of the dirt and blood from her face.
“Shit. Like I’ve gone a few rounds with Rowsey.”
“You're lucky to be alive. We both are.”
“He's dead. Piotr is fucking dead.”
“I know.” I squeezed her hand. “I need to get more wood,” I said. “Will you be okay?”
She nodded. I got the folding saw from my pack and set off in search of more firewood. The easy part of our survival was done. Now the hard work was about to begin.
8.
The darkness didn't seem to care that we were fighting for our lives and it surrounded us, blotting out the landscape and leaving us with only the reflected moonlight shining on the snow. It was enough to work by and I made several trips to the apple trees, dragging back the thicker branches until only the trunk was left standing; my little folding saw wouldn't do much against that and unless there was an axe head knocking around I'd have to find some smaller stuff.
I was wearing my gloves and my beanie hat and my mouth was covered with my neck warmer, but still the cold found ways in despite my best efforts. The fire was burning well now and Riley began to look a bit healthier as she sat with the warmth on her face and another hot drink in her hands. I kept the pans boiling as I worked. We'd need plenty of fresh water and with her pack gone it meant boiling melted snow to fill the two empty bottles Piotr had been carrying.
I was able to string my hammock tarp over the corner of the barn to shield Riley from the worst of the weather but in the morning I'd have to look for thicker logs to re-roof it with. We'd be stuck here for a while - a week at least until the wound was healed enough to risk walking on. Then what happened after that was a mystery to me - it was beyond our immediate needs and not worth thinking about.
“What happened?” asked Riley as I began cutting the longer branches into short lengths and piling them up near the fire.
“He got caught in the blast,” I said.
“Oh my God,” she muttered. “They were after me and I couldn't see it. They were tracking us and it was my fault.”
“It wasn't your fault,” I said. “You didn't know. You couldn't have known.”
“Why? Why did they try to kill us?”
I carried on cutting and shrugged. “I don't have a clue. I suspect that they were able to see the direction we were taking and didn't want us to continue. They could have killed us in the house but they didn't. They waited to see what we'd do. When they were confident we were going to the bunker, they tried to take us out.”
“You think?”
“Yeah. I do. Why? Hell, I don't know that. Maybe they don't want us to find out what Alex and Saska are doing. Maybe they've already been killed and the army were just tying up loose ends. I don't know, Riley.”
We lapsed into silence with only the sound of the fire and the rhythm of the saw blade to break it. Riley stared into the flames and pulled my coat tightly around her.
When I was happy that we had enough fire wood to see us through till the morning, I picked up my rifle and settled down near the opening to our shelter with my sleeping bag around my shoulders for warmth.
“Are you worried they'll come for us?” she asked. “I've been expecting them to come and confirm that we're dead. It's what I'd do.”
“Yeah, I thought the same thing but I’ve heard nothing. No chopper. No more planes. It's not just that though. There's a lot of your blood out there and it leads here. I don't want a pack of dogs sniffing us out before I’ve cleaned up and built a wall across this gap. We've already seen how hungry they are.”
“What are we going to do? In the long term I mean.”
“As soon as that leg's healed we're heading north to Newcastle to try and catch a boat out of here.”
“What do you mean?” she said.
“We can't go home now. That's the first place they'd look if they haven't bombed it too. They want you or both of us dead. The best chance we have is to get out, maybe head for Russia.”
“Jesus Christ. It's that bad, isn't it?”
“Yeah. It is.”
I watched the empty field in front of me and it almost looked bright enough to be daytime. I was glad because if anything did come for us at least I'd be able to see it. The stars were out in their brilliance and if it hadn't been for the tragedy of earlier I might ha
ve found it beautiful. Now I only saw his blackened body and it began to haunt me. Had he died saving me? I'd never know. I found his bag and took it back to my watch point. It was Riley's pack now, I realised. It was all she had.
In the top compartment were the usual items you'd expect to find - first aid, a torch, some matches and a tinder box made from a mints tin. There were some documents in there in a zip-lock bag and I put them to one side. In an outer pocket was his cook kit with spoon and cup, alcohol stove with spare fuel and a flip lid lighter. On the other side was a small bag with tent pegs, spare cord and various bits of camping kit. In the main compartment had been his tarp and sleeping bag, now with Riley, and at the bottom in another plastic bag was a notebook and pencil. It was a thick leather-bound book that looked hand made. The pages looked old and well thumbed.
I opened it up and began flicking through it, realising that it was a kind of journal dating all the way back to when he was in his thirties. It was written entirely in Russian and had diagrams and maps in it, crudely drawn but effective. There were three photographs inside - one of Piotr with his wife sat on a park bench, the other two of both his daughters in their school uniform. I looked at them for a long time before putting them back inside the ageing journal and in the plastic bag.
“He kept a diary,” I said to Riley, holding it up. “It needs to go back to his family.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It does. Did he leave an address by any chance?” I looked at his documents.
“Yeah. I don't know where that is though. Someone can take us there once we're across.”
“It's a plan at least,” she said.
“Yeah. I suppose.”
I dozed throughout the night but by morning nothing had come looking for us. The fire was still going and I got up, stiff from sitting in the cold and eager for a morning coffee. We were both ravenous with hunger now, having missed our evening meal, but I guess neither of us had been hungry then. I dug out two of my instant mash packs and set both pans boiling again after filling some bottles with the last lot of purified water. Riley prepared the coffee in two cups - one being Piotr's.
“I feel guilty using his things,” she said.
“They're yours now. He doesn't need them and I'm sure he'd prefer it if they didn't go to waste.”
“I guess so.”
“Let me look at your leg,” I said and she pulled back the sleeping bag, exposing her pink skin to the cold. The pad I'd put on it had a few splodges of blood coming through but nowhere near as much as I'd feared. She covered it up again and shivered.
“Sore?” I asked.
“Just a fucking bit!” she said.
“That's the spirit.”
We had breakfast just as the sun was coming up, drinking our coffee as the sky turned a brilliant blue like a still lake in summer. It was beautiful and I could have sat there for the rest of the day if the thought of a pack of wild dogs hadn't invaded the fantasy.
“I'd better get to work,” I said and got up. Riley's hand shot out and grabbed mine, her cold skin against my own.
“Be safe,” she said with a smile that broke through her pale but still beautiful features. Her eyes had lost none of their fire. My heart decided to skip a few beats.
“I can't promise it, but I'll try.”
I emptied some of the things from my pack that I wouldn't need - my spare clothes, sleeping gear, that sort of thing. Then I gave Riley the rifle and spare rounds and piled up the last of the logs beside her to keep the fire burning.
“I'm going to get some more wood to block that entrance up with,” I said. “The nearest trees are about a click south of here. I'll be a while but try not to worry, I'll be back before it goes dark.” She nodded and tried to smile.
“I'll be fine,” she said.
I walked out into the daylight and straight away I missed the fire. There was a strong westerly wind blowing and it tore at my face and ripped through my clothing as I tramped through the snow. It was up to my knees in places and by the time I reached the woods I was exhausted and my leg muscles were burning with the effort.
I wanted to limit the number of trips I'd have to make. The first thing I needed to do was build a pulk to drag the logs back to our shelter with. I found some nice lengths of pine the right diameter which I cut and lashed together to from the main body, adding smaller lengths across them to form the 'cradle' where I'd put my load. Then I made a harness from paracord, doubling the small diameter line so it wouldn't cut into my shoulders. I had a quick go at dragging it around and it seemed to work, though what it'd be like with a full load was another matter.
I began cutting as much as I could with my saw, annoyed that I didn't have an axe to make use of the bigger stuff. There were plenty of blowdowns that'd survived the summer and I dragged them to the edge of the woodland to come back for later. One of those could be fed into the fire without the need to cut it up into smaller pieces.
I loaded up the pulk and set off back around midday. The sun was high but fat white snow clouds were rolling in again, threatening to empty themselves later on that night. It was hard going, dragging the wood back to the shelter but when I got there Riley had a hot drink waiting for me.
“How's the patient?” I asked, panting from the effort. Riley smiled and poured me a cup of hot water.
“Itchy, sore but in one piece. It doesn't look like it's bled any more.”
“Good. I'll get started on the barricade.”
“What about lunch?” she asked.
“I need to crack on. Help yourself to something though - keep your strength up.”
I began by clearing the snow from the entrance with one of the logs until I had a reasonably deep trench to begin stacking them up in. I wasn't going for anything elaborate - just a straight forward palisade that'd be enough to put any roaming animal off coming inside. I hammered in the longer, thicker logs that were about five feet long with a heavy stone I'd found, using them as supports for my shorter logs that I stacked on their sides between them until it was waist high. At that point I ran out of logs so I had another cup of hot water and set off with the pulk to gather more.
When I got there I noticed a set of tracks off to the left of where I'd been working and when I bent down to look at them I realised they were deer tracks. It was a bit of good news - it might mean that the dogs would leave us alone in search of better prey. It also meant we'd have food ourselves.
When I'd loaded up the pulk it was getting dark and I was feeling quite hungry. I set off back, eager to sit by the fire and warm up my frozen feet. The work had taken my mind off things but it was starting to exhaust me and I wanted to feel the warmth again. I couldn't afford to burn out, not at this stage. The hard work was coming and I needed to keep my strength up.
When I got back, Riley was trying to get up off the tarp.
“What are you trying to do?” I asked, worried that she'd rip the stitches apart.
“I need to go pee,” she said, leaning against me. I helped her up, supporting her leg and led her over to the far corner of the shelter.
“Give me a minute,” I said as she shivered there. I cleared the snow away and dug down with a branch, then turned around as she slipped out of the sleeping bag to squat.
“Well this is fucking awkward,” she complained, holding herself over the hole by hanging off my shoulders.
“Take your time, why don't you?” I said as her fingernails dug into my flesh.
“I'm done.” I turned around and she wriggled back into the sleeping bag. Then I walked her carefully back to the tarp and sat her down. I checked on the dressing and it was fine.
“I'll sort something more hygienic out later,” I said. “But try not to do it without me again. Please?”
“Yes boss.”
I finished the barricade and added an entrance that I could slide out when I needed to. Then I sat down on the tarp next to her and rehydrated a meal. It was another of the ones I'd made myself - a chunky vegetable soup that I ate a little
too quickly, burning the roof of my mouth in the process.
I slumped against the wall, exhausted and ready to sleep. My muscles were throbbing, especially across my back and calves and I knew tomorrow would be worse. Still, I knew that life was counted in days out here and we'd managed another two. How many more we had was yet to be decided.
“Thank you,” said Riley out of the blue. I was half-dozing from the heat of the fire when she said it.
“What for?” I asked.
“Saving me.”
“I didn't really save you,” I said. “I just patched you up.”
“You saved me. I couldn't have done it myself.”
“You're welcome then,” I said. “I guess that bullshit finally came in handy for you.”
“You're damn right it did. I just wish... ah fuck it. I kinda liked the crazy Russian. I'm gonna miss him.”
“Yeah,” I said. My eyes started to close. The flames licked up and cracked and spat as the night wore on. Riley shifted position a lot, trying to find a comfortable place but I could see she was struggling. I got up and moved to her good side which was near the corner of the two walls and dragged the tarp and my sleeping bag into it. I slid my hands under her arms and helped her to sit between my legs with her back to me, facing the fire so she could recline into me. She resisted at first until she realised I was far more comfortable than a brick wall.
“Better?” I asked as her hair brushed against my face. It was still scented with apple shampoo and smoke from the fire.
“I don't think we...”
“It doesn't mean anything but you're not going to get much sleep leaning upright against a wall, are you?”
“I did okay last night,” she protested.
“We're not getting married and it's too cold for me to do anything else so just trust me, okay?”
She nodded and relaxed into me. I pulled my sleeping bag around us and immediately felt snug and warm. At first she folded her arms across her chest, but when she began to realise I wasn't out to molest her, she relaxed further, her head turning to lie against my shoulder and her arms flopping down on my knees. Within moments she was snoring softly and after half an hour she was fast asleep.
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