I’d forgotten to look for any familiar markers, for the red flags. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Wind was whipping up the loose snow around us and icy sleet began pelting us.
I tried the radio and got the same thing I’d gotten the last six times I’d tried it: static. It made my teeth hurt, the sound as irritating as fingernails on a chalkboard.
“I just don’t understand how this could have happened,” I said.
“I do. I was spending more time watching you than keeping my eye on where we were going.”
I suddenly grew so warm that I thought I was going to have to remove my jacket. I was surprised the snow around me didn’t just melt and create a puddle.
“Because I’m so awesome on the board?” I asked.
Reaching out, he touched his gloved fingers to my cheek. “You’re awesome, Lys. Absolutely.”
I was certain that if we weren’t lost he would have leaned in to kiss me. But right now we had to concentrate on survival.
He took a step back and glanced around quickly. “So what do we do now?” His voice held a seriousness that ratcheted up my worry level. If my fun-loving, life-is-to-be-lived-to-the-max Aussie wasn’t grinning, we were in big trouble.
And when had I started to think of him as mine?
“Under normal circumstances I’d put on my problem-solver outfit and—”
He swung around. “What?”
He was looking at me as though I’d shifted into crazy-girl mode. Maybe I had.
“Bad joke.” I shook my head. God, did I really want to take time to explain this? “When I read Rick’s email to you, I had this vision of me in Superman tights with a big P for Problem-solver Girl on my chest.”
He gave me his slow grin. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad joke.
“So I’m about to discover that mild-mannered Lys is a superhero with a magic cape who can fly us out of here?”
“I wish.”
His smile dimmed as much as the daylight had.
“You’re scared,” he said.
Didn’t take a genius to figure that out.
“I’m terrified,” I admitted.
He hooked his finger in my jacket and pulled me toward him. “It’s gonna be all right.”
He lowered his head and kissed me. In the frigid air, his mouth was so warm, and I thought if we could somehow harness that warmth we would be okay. The kiss was brief but it was enough to restore my confidence that we would survive.
“Well, we’re certainly not going to make any progress by just standing here,” Jude said. He pointed toward some trees. “I think we need to go that way.”
I didn’t have a better suggestion. “Agreed.”
“So we’d best get going.”
“Yeah. We should.” I was nodding my head so fast that I looked like a bobble-head. “I have a flashlight.”
I removed my backpack, knelt in the snow, unzipped it, and dug around until I found the flashlight.
“Don’t turn it on until we have no choice,” he advised. “Don’t want to waste the battery.”
“I’ve heard of people getting lost in the wilderness for days and coming out alive,” I told him.
“I don’t think it’s going to be as bad as all that.” He took my hand. “Let’s stay close.”
I did my bobble-head imitation again, before falling into step beside him as he trudged toward the trees.
The snow thickened and the wind started howling by the time we reached the trees. I had visions of us trying to build shelter.
“You don’t happen to have a pocketknife with you, do you?” I asked.
“Nope. Can’t get them through security at the airport, didn’t think to buy one when I arrived.”
“Right.”
“Why?”
“I was just thinking about shelter.”
“I think we can use the sleds as a form of shelter,” he offered. “Create a little tent with them.”
“We’d have to scrunch up.”
“I can scrunch.”
“I guess if I have to get lost, getting lost with an optimistic Aussie is the way to go.”
The radio crackled to life and I nearly peed in my pants right then and there. “Hello? Ten-four over.”
I don’t know why I thought some code would strengthen the connection. It didn’t. Another crackle sounded. Then nothing.
“Since we were able to pick up some sound do you think someone is near us?” I asked. “Are they trying to contact us?”
“Haven’t a bloody clue.”
“Do you think we should yell?”
“I guess we could give it a go.”
“What do we say? Hello out there or—”
“How about help?”
“Yeah, that’s the word we need.”
We yelled in sync for a good five minutes, our hands cupped around our mouths, trying to increase the volume. We heard some twigs snapping, but decided it was just small animals scurrying away from the crazed sledders.
“Okay, let’s move to plan B,” Jude said.
He took my hand and we pushed forward—or at least I hoped it was forward. Who knew? We could be moving away from our group. How had this happened? Every time I heard some story on the news about people getting lost, I always wondered how they could be so stupid, so careless. And here I was. Stupid and careless and who knew what else?
Possibly dead.
Chapter 13
The farther we walked, the more trees surrounded us and hemmed us in. I was suddenly claustrophobic when I’d never been before. The bare, rattling branches seemed ominous, reminding me of skeletal fingers. The wind was screeching. It was as if we were extras in a really bad horror movie—the characters without last names, the characters who never survive.
Eventually the trees began to thin out and we found ourselves in another clearing as darkness was rapidly descending.
I squinted in the distance. “Is that a barn?”
“It’s some sort of building.”
“If there’s a barn, there has to be a house.” But even as I said it, even as I looked around for smoke coming out of a chimney, I saw nothing except that one building, all the snow, the trees, and the mountain waiting to be climbed.
“I say we go for it,” Jude said. “If nothing else, it’ll give us some protection against the wind until morning.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Good idea. Let’s go for it.”
All I really wanted to do was lie down and go to sleep, but somehow I managed to reach deep inside and pull up the gumption to move toward the barn. I pretended I was a puppet and someone was yanking my strings—foot up, foot down. Foot up. Foot down.
When I lost sight of the barn, I turned on the flashlight. There it was: a looming shadow in the encroaching darkness.
I thought we were going as fast as we could, but somehow we managed to quicken our pace, in spite of the fact that our feet were sinking into the deep snow. The sled was bumping along behind me, hitting my calves and threatening to trip me up.
We finally reached the barn. It didn’t look nearly as sturdy close up as it had from a distance. As a matter of fact, I was fairly certain that a good strong wind would cause it to crumble like a house of cards. And a ferocious gale was circling around us. Was this really our last hope for shelter, for survival?
We took a slow walk around it. It had barely weathered the elements, and the boards were rotting, leaving gaping holes between some of them. I had a feeling we weren’t going to find a house nearby in the morning. It was a deserted building, maybe a hundred years old. Wonderful. I always wondered where old barns went to die.
Jude pulled on the door. It creaked and groaned. When he had the door opened a crack, I picked up the sled and prepared to go through.
“Wait,” Jude ordered. “Give me the flashlight. I want to take a quick look to make sure no dangerous animals are in there.”
“I don’t think anything big could get through the holes we’ve spotted. And since we had trouble getting the door open, I don’
t see how something—”
“I just want to check. Maybe it’s been living inside for centuries. Like the Loch Ness monster.”
“I really don’t like the idea of you going in alone.”
“And I don’t like the idea of you going in at all, until I’ve checked it out.”
“You don’t have to be heroic,” I grumbled, handing him the flashlight. “Be careful.”
He wrapped his arm around me, pulled me close, and dropped a mind-numbing kiss on my mouth. It was the kind of move I’d seen in movies.
He released me and grinned. “Just in case I don’t come out.”
Who did he think he was? Indiana Jones?
Before I could get after him for teasing me like that and scolding him for even thinking about not coming out, he’d disappeared through the narrow opening.
I crept up to it and peered inside, watching as Jude circled the flashlight around. My heart thudded with the thought of something being in there, some harm coming to him. I wouldn’t leave him. I should have at least armed him with some snowballs.
There wasn’t as much snow inside but it wasn’t exactly warm and cozy looking, either. The good news was—no monsters.
“It’s okay,” Jude declared and walked back over, shouldering his way out.
We each picked up our sleds and went back inside. It actually didn’t smell too bad. The cold weather had probably killed off any mold and frozen anything yucky. Here and there were piles of straw. It looked like the floor was just dirt.
A chill went through me that had nothing to do with the cold. The storm actually sounded much worse, much more ominous, inside the barn than it had outside. The wind screaming through the cracks sounded like demons rising up from hell.
“Here,” Jude said, “you’ll probably feel safer with the flashlight.”
I took it from him, although the truth was that I felt safer with him.
“Shouldn’t we close the door?” I asked when he didn’t try to draw it back into place.
“I’m afraid if I do that we might not be able to get out in the morning.”
“Good point.” Although I thought a good hard kick would probably punch a hole in any of the outer walls.
I heard a scurrying sound and swung the flashlight wildly around. “What was that? Was that a mouse? Oh, God, don’t tell me there are mice in here.”
“All right, I won’t.”
I shone the flashlight on him. “You think there are?”
“They get cold too.”
“How can you sound so calm?”
“They’re just mice. Probably as afraid of us as you are of them.”
“I’m not terrified of them. I just don’t like them. So going to sleep tonight is completely out of the question.”
“I don’t think they’ll bother us.” He stomped his foot and then started kicking straw away. “Looks like there’s just dirt beneath us. We could use the straw and what’s left of some of the stalls to get a fire going.”
“How? By rubbing two sticks together? I don’t think that really works. Plus there’s the challenge of finding two sticks.”
He held up a lighter and flicked it. “Boomer and I had been talking about hanging around after we all met back at the car, building a fire, roasting marshmallows, and tossing back a few brews.” A wistful look came over his face. “So, Superlighter Man to the rescue.”
I laughed, quite proud of myself for not sounding too hysterical. “A fire would be great.”
And would probably keep the rodents away.
“Just so you know, my costume will not involve tights,” he said.
I squeezed his hand. I thought we were both putting on a brave front.
Jude found an old rusty pitchfork and used it to clear away an area in the center of the barn. We avoided going near corners and anything else that looked like nesting areas.
Snow sprinkled in through holes in the roof. It was magical really. Any other time I would have flung out my arms and twirled beneath it. Right now, though, I was having a difficult time appreciating the wonder of it.
Jude soon had a very small fire going. We sat on our sleds, watching the sparks shoot up and listening to the crackling of the straw and old wood. The heat felt heavenly after trudging so long in the cold.
“So I’ve done my part,” Jude said. “What are you going to fix us to eat?”
“How sexist is that?” I teased.
“Pretty sexist, I’ll admit. But I’m starving.”
I set the flashlight aside, its beam of light shining toward a corner. Jude reached over and turned it off. The shadows crept in. Our small fire wasn’t very good at keeping them at bay.
“We might need that later,” he said.
“Okay, yeah.” Naturally I hadn’t brought any spare batteries. I put my backpack in my lap and unzipped it. “I have a couple more protein bars.” I looked up at him. “Do you think we need to ration our food—just in case it’s awhile before they find us?”
“They’re gonna find us tomorrow.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“We’re gonna burn the building. Or at least take what we can outside and start a bonfire.”
“That should get someone’s attention.”
“I hope so.”
“Okay, then. One bar for you, one for me. I’ve also got a few tiny boxes of raisins.”
“I have some more apple cider. Don’t know how warm it is.” He pulled out a thermos.
I smiled. “We have a feast.”
“It’s gonna be all right, Lys.”
Nodding, I pulled off my gloves and tucked them into my pockets for quick access. I couldn’t tear off the wrapper with thick gloves on.
“I’ll trade you,” I said, holding out the opened protein bar.
I took a long, slow swallow, letting the now lukewarm apple cider do its thing and chase away the chills from the inside out. I handed the thermos back to Jude.
“I hope Boomer and Mel made it back to the car okay,” I said.
“Now, see, I’m hoping they got lost so we won’t look that stupid.”
I laughed, not truly believing he was hoping they’d gotten lost. “You’re not stupid. I am. I’ve done this before. I should have known better, should have paid more attention to where we were heading. I probably never should have gone off and followed those stupid moose tracks.”
“Hey, it was worth it. It’s a moment I’ll never forget.”
“I’m just glad we didn’t have to work tonight.”
“I think Paul would have understood.”
“Actually, they might even call him to try to find us. He’s a volunteer rescuer.”
“I’ve always admired people like that—who help others.”
“I just never thought I’d be one who needed to be helped.” I felt incredibly silly. I had a feeling that I was going to have a hard time living this down—living being the key word there because as long as I lived through this I’d take all the teasing anyone wanted to dish out.
I took a bite of the protein bar and listened to the howling of the wind. At least I thought it was the wind. It stopped, then came again.
“Is that a wolf?” I whispered.
Jude stilled, listened. “Sounds like it.”
“Do you think he can get in? Through the door? We should have closed the door.” I eyed the nearby pitchfork. Would it stop a wolf?
“We’ll be fine. It’s a myth that they attack people.”
“Is it?”
“I think so.”
Still I scooted farther away from the door and nearer to Jude.
“Do you have wolves in Australia?”
“We have dingoes. Close enough.”
I nodded. I thought I heard something snuffling around outside.
“What’s your favorite movie?” I asked to take my mind off the predator which I was now envisioning slowly circling the barn.
“Gladiator.”
“Because it stars Russell Crowe?”
“I
might be a bit biased toward my fellow countryman, but no, I just like that era. The sword battles, the gladiators, the excitement, the adventure. It’s not a romantic comedy.”
“How can you not like romantic comedy?”
“Please. Silly girl meets silly boy. What’s your favorite movie?”
“Love, Actually. Where a lot of silly girls meet a lot of silly boys and live happily ever after.”
“Of course. Something romantic.”
“Have you seen it?”
“No, but it sounds like a girl’s movie.”
“Which works since I’m a girl.”
“That you are.”
I heard appreciation in his voice, and I thought even without our fire, at that moment I’d have been warm.
“Favorite actor?” I asked.
“Have to go with Russell Crowe again.”
“Favorite TV show?”
“You know, I don’t watch a lot of TV.”
“Really?”
“Really. What would you recommend?”
“I don’t watch much either. Favorite book?”
“I Am Legend. Which, by the way, had a very different ending from the movie. The book’s is far superior. What’s your favorite book?”
“I haven’t read for fun since the last Harry Potter came out. Pathetic, huh?” I sighed, planting my elbows on my thighs, and buried my face in my hands. “Oh, God, I’m losing two days here. I should be reading now. I have a midterm Friday and a paper due.”
“They’ll find us tomorrow.”
I lifted my head and looked at him. “But no way will they find us in time for me to get to class. So I’ve missed two class days plus my study time. I’m going to have to pull all-nighters—”
A whoosh suddenly echoed through the barn and a squeak sounded. I screeched, aware of movement, grabbed the pitchfork, and stood up, circling around.
There was no other sound, just an ominous silence. I didn’t dare breathe.
Jude stood up and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “It’s all right.”
My heart was thundering so hard that I was surprised it didn’t start an avalanche somewhere. I clutched Jude’s jacket. “What was that?”
The flashlight beam was suddenly shining along the rafters.
“There. An owl.”
Larger than I thought an owl should be, it stared down at us with large dark eyes. It angled its head one way and then the other, studying us as if we were curiosities.