Now out of the storm, the respite from the howling winds and driving snow was a sharp relief. The inside of the house seemed unnaturally quiet by comparison. The buffeting and roaring wind had sapped his strength as much as the cold. Hestudied his refuge again. With stiff, clumsy fingers, he unlaced the boot covering his injured ankle. He slid his throbbing foot out, propping it on a throw pillow resting on the couch.
He peeled off his hiking socks to find his ankle purple and swollen. Carefully probing, he found a sensitive spot near his ankle bone. He tried to flex his foot and bit his lip at the extreme pain. With a gentle twist, he tried a different motion. Same result. Every movement hurt. Still, nothing indicated if it was a nasty sprain, rather than a break. If broken, his boot had kept everything aligned.
Cam leaned back with a deep breath, taking stock.
He didn’t have many options. Or he did, but they were all crap. He’d have to figure out how to survive here for a while. With a sinking sensation, it clicked. He wasn’t out of the woods yet. He needed water, or a way to melt snow, though he had enough in his canteens for today and tomorrow. Perhaps a third day with rationing.
A wave of uneasiness passed through him, and his stomach churned. There was no way he could walk the sixty miles home, not with a fresh injury. He felt a stab of guilt. While nobody would panic over his late return, the captain and others from the Watch might become concerned.
He hoped fight or not, his mother would worry when he didn’t return. They might not have left things between them on a positive note, but she was still his mother. If their positions had been reversed, he would have blamed himself if she had never returned. He needed to go home, if only to resolve their issues.
First, he’d have to survive.
Chapter 6: Lissa
This was the first day in almost two weeks that Lissa hadn’t walked toward the Fort to check for the Slains or the other man. She’d shadowed the newcomer for part of every day since they’d spoken, never being careless enough to be caught after their first encounter. Not that she’d said a word, but they’d communicated with that single gaze. There’d been a flash of interest in his eyes, which intrigued her, and she couldn’t get him out of her head.
The man had fished in a leisurely, enjoying-himself way, rather than just for sustenance. He’d puttered and relaxed, often reading by the stream, or he’d stared into the sky, as though just watching the clouds drifting. She wished she had the luxury of being so free from responsibility.
Even the guilt at shirking her responsibilities couldn’t keep her away.
One afternoon, he’d caught the largest fish she’d ever seen. He’d grinned, an unaffected, joyous smile not meant for anyone, simply because he’d been excited. It had been so long since she’d seen anything so normal in the crumbled remains after the asteroid impact. He cleaned the fish and tossed the entrails aside for the pair of ravens alighted on a nearby tree. Though she hadn’t been close enough to hear his words, his tone had been pleasant when he spoke to the massive, glossy birds.
Yesterday, despite all the chores she should have done, she’d observed him for most of the afternoon, prickled with unfounded irritation. He acted as if he were on vacation. She couldn’t explain why she was so fascinated. Maybe because he seemed kind. As a nurse practitioner back in Denver, she’d seen thousands of people come through the ER and had witnessed all sorts. Nothing about this man gave her negative vibes or feelings that he meant any harm.
She’d even considered approaching and talking to him. From a safe distance. While she was working up her nerve, a doe bounded up the riverbank, dislodging a stone. The large rock had rolled down and dropped the last couple of feet into the stream with a loud splash.
Startled, Lissa had dropped to a crouch in the thick bushes, her heart pounding in the sudden silence as even the persistent background bird song ceased. She’d stayed flat. Would he investigate? He might guess he was being observed again. More than once this week, he’d turned in her direction, eyes scanning the trees and bushes, but he hadn’t found her. When at last she’d stood, the man wasn’t by the fishing hole. Nor was he by the pond. She dashed into the open meadow, scanning for where he’d gone.
He’d stowed his fishing rod, packed his catch, and was wading through the tall grass toward the bluff on a thin trail. Crouching, she trailed at a distance, while he wound his way up the bluff and headed toward his camp. He didn’t seem to notice her presence. Feeling like a coward, she veered toward home at the top of the cliff instead of continuing to follow.
She didn’t need anyone, and her cats were excellent company, but it took all her will to force herself to keep walking away. To keep her distance. She’d chosen to be alone. It was safer that way. Still, her thoughts remained fixed on the stranger all evening. He’d called his home x-something, but the name wasunfamiliar. His clothes and boots, while well-worn, hadn’t been patched, filthy, or threadbare like someone living rough. Maybe he was from somewhere with a vestige of civilized society.
He didn’t feel like a threat, and she’d spent more time and energy on him than he warranted, especially with autumn speeding past. After weeks of gorgeous fall weather, sunny days followed by crisp, cool evenings, she’d felt little sense of urgency for finishing her preparation for winter, choosing observation instead.
Her obsession had to stop.
This morning, Lissa vowed to stay away from him. When she awoke to the overcast sky and a strange hush in the forest, she decided it was for the best and stuck to her plan to catch up on chores. She also didn’t want to be caught away from home in inclement weather.
Extra firewood never would go to waste, so she spent the early hours dragging fallen logs back to her packed woodshed. She’d let the wood dry there, out of the wind and wet. If her principal supply on the covered porch ran low, she had a convenient stockpile to replace it. She toiled all morning before stopping to eat.
On her way back to the house, sweaty from working hard, Lissa noticed the drastic temperature change when an icy gust rushed through. She zipped her jacket higher and gazed at the sky, the wind ruffling her hair, the trees swaying in the wind.
It was only then that the extent of the dark clouds made an impression. Though only late-morning, the light had grown dim, with an odd haze to the west. Her jaw tightened. She ate a quick lunch of reheated soup and biscuits. Mira and Luna both appeared, head-butting the blanket covering their cat door to enter her section of the house. With them both inside, she closed their kitchen panel to the outside on the ground floor.
Then, she dashed upstairs in the barricaded-off section of the house to shut the other window her cats also used. She didn’t want snow, wind, and water inside. From the second-story window, she glanced down at the courtyard. She still had water jugs to refill and her garden to winterize before the storm hit.
Lissa trailed a finger through the dust on the dresser in this large master bedroom with its king-size bed before turning away. Before the asteroid, she’d never been in a house with eight bedrooms, each with an ensuite. Now the mansion was hers. While she’d explored the rest, it had been important to heat as small a section as possible to conserve wood, so she’d wrestled one of the smallest queen-size beds down the stairs and into her room. Even the old kitchen wasn’t heated beyond what escaped when she left her suite.
In the winter months, she’d spend eighty percent of her time inside, hunkered down for the duration. She had a yoga mat if she wanted to exercise. If she needed to go farther afield, she had snowshoes and a sled. Today, she gave her dishes a quick wash, leaving them to dry beside the basin she used as a sink before pulling on her jacket again. Instead of going through the kitchen, she turned left into the pantry and slid open the panel at the back.
Lissa stepped outside into her hidden courtyard garden. On three sides, the house made a U-shape around this enclosed space. The fourth side was a high wall built of grayish-blue stone matching the house. From outside the wall, the garden was invisible. She’d found the eight raised garden beds in huge metal tubs and tended them every spring and summer since her discovery. Luckily for her, there had been a supply of seeds in the basement. Most of her bounty of food came from her garden, and each fall, she’d squirreled away new seeds and potato starts to store until the following growing season.
Two apple trees and a plum tree had splayed out against the courtyard wall, and she’d raked the leaves into several large piles. Three winters ago, she’d read how to prune the trees and maximize the harvest. She smiled, thinking of her filled jars of jam and applesauce, which proved her success.
With a covert glance at the sky, she got to work winterizing her garden. While she’d prefer to linger, breathing in the rich smell of soil, she needed to hurry. She transported the rotting brown leaves to the garden beds, tamping them down to cover the dirt, to insulate organic matter in the soil. She would add additional scraps or compost in the spring and mix in the decomposed leaves to replenish the nutrients in her garden earth. The garden allowed her to be healthy and self-sufficient.
When she finished with the leaves, she swiped at a few wisps of escaped hair with the back of her work glove. With the pause, Lissa’s attention shifted. She’d been so busy, she’d lost track of time.
