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Checking her watch, she couldn’t make sense of it for a moment. Then she realized with shock that she’d slept the night away and another day had dawned.
She pushed up, a jolt of adrenaline, its basis in fear, firing her movement. What the hell had happened to Antony?
Damn it, she knew she should have tried harder to stop him going off alone, no matter how much he’d argued against it.
A glance at the roof of her tent showed the telltale shadow and dip of snow piled against it. Evidence that the gale blowing outside had already brought the bad weather she’d been expecting.
Shyla scooted around in the tight space and wriggled back into her coat. First things first. As much as she disliked the idea of going outside, she needed to answer the call of nature. She also needed to refill her water supply. She’d drunk everything she’d brought with her, but hopefully, her tent would provide enough warmth to melt some snow if she could scoop it into her bottle.
She gathered everything she needed and then spied the bag of tent pegs. She took those too. She’d have to peg the tent down better than she had last night when she thought she’d only be using it for a couple of hours.
Gingerly, Shyla flexed her injured foot. Her ankle felt a lot better after a night of rest and elevation, but it wasn’t one hundred percent, and she winced a little at the pressure when she retied her bootlaces.
Unzipping the opening, Shyla crawled out as best she could to avoid getting wet. She thought she did a pretty good job of it, until a huge gust of wind billowed the tent and dumped a sluice of freezing cold snow down her neck from the top of the tent.
Shyla shrieked in surprise and fell backwards into a drift that was far bigger than she expected. She scrambled to get up, but her painful ankle slowed her reflexes and before she could respond, the same gust caught the tent up like it might a hot air balloon, now that the door was open, and her weight no longer held it down. Shyla dived forward and made a grab for it as the rear end rose into the air, the pegs plucked from the earth like pins in a sponge. But the next gust of wind was even stronger. It wrenched the tent from fingers which had less dexterity than normal, encased as they were in thick gloves.
“No!” Shyla screamed as she battled with the wind to keep hold of the tent. Her arms strained and one of the metal pegs that had been wrenched from the ground, which was still wrapped in the tent loop, now thrashed in the wind like a lethal weapon. She saw it flash in the dull light from the corner of her eye and moved her head reflexively. She felt it hit her on the temple, gouging into her skin. Pain bloomed in her skull, and she knew it left a laceration when blood, startlingly warm in the freezing conditions, dribbled down her cheek.
But worse was that the sudden shock had loosened her grip on the tent and the wind took it.
Shyla lost her balance and fell backwards into the snow. Pain arrowed up her leg from her injured ankle and something heavy hit her in the chest, winding her momentarily. She lay there for longer than was sensible, trying to catch her breath as the insidious cold and wet leached through her clothing and shards of pain debilitated her for long moments.
Eventually she pushed herself up and wiped the strands of wet hair out of her face where her hat had come off and they’d escaped from her ponytail. In the distance she could see her tent, now no more than a battered red speck, shredded by the buffeting wind and bowling over and over, a startling, bright red splash, tossed about on the endless white landscape like a giant’s toy.
Looking to her side, she realized that the strike to her chest was from her backpack which must have fallen through the opening when the tent lifted in the air. It was a blessing in disguise. At least with that she had a chance of getting through this disaster. Without it, she didn’t even want to contemplate what might happen. She had decent survival skills, but injured, using any of them would have been a trial. Even now, with the contents of her pack, she was only slightly better off. She had a few supplies, her GPS, a locator, and a space blanket. But none of that was going to be much help now that she was wet. The cold was going to affect her far more quickly. What she really needed was shelter. And she still needed to pee! Although the thought of exposing her bare butt to the elements was even less appealing now than it was before.
Gingerly, she moved her ankle to see if she could ascertain the amount of damage that had been done. There was no way she could afford to sit and wait. Even if she turned her locator on immediately, the time it took for a rescue to be mobilized in this weather would be too long.
Shyla flinched as pain radiated through her bones when she tried to stand. The fall had wrenched something and made an already compromised injury even worse.
She hobbled back to the meagre shelter of the tree while she took stock, did her business, and then surveyed the branches to see if any of them would provide a decent crutch.
There was one which looked promising, if she was only able to break it off.
“Fuck!” After a couple of failed attempts which were making her dangerously sweaty; not a good thing when you were liable to freeze, she was about to give up when the branch finally gave way.
The throbbing in her leg had become a constant, which didn’t bode well. And her breathing was more ragged than it should be from the relatively small exertion. She blinked as her vision seemed to blur but told herself it was just the endless landscape of white.
Shyla dragged her backpack through the snow and dug around for her utility knife which she used to tidy up the branch and remove the jagged edges. Testing it under her arm, where a smaller branch intersected, she found it to be a little too long, and spent precious time whittling away at the length so it was usable.
She could feel the insidious cold seeping through her clothing. Thank goodness her heavy down jacket was completely waterproof and kept her top half dry, and her professional hiking boots and gloves did the same for her hands and feet. She could only hope that was enough, even though her lower half was pretty much soaked through.
Shyla grabbed her backpack and struggled into it, then checked her GPS. There was a hunter’s cabin approximately a mile and half away from her location. Normally she wouldn’t think twice about that length of trek. But injured and in a snow blizzard was a totally different matter.
But all she could do was try. Because staying here was as good as signing her own death certificate.
She’d travelled less distance than she’d hoped when she checked her GPS thirty minutes later. The weather was getting worse. The winds pummeling her body and making it difficult for her to battle against it. Huge flakes of snow were being pelted directly into her face and she was barely able to see where she was going.
Her head ached from the blow it had sustained, and the once warm blood now felt frozen against her skin.
If there had been any part of her lower body that wasn’t wet before, then it was now, and she could feel the cold burning into her skin. Experience told her that wasn’t such a bad thing. The danger came when you started to feel numb. Or worse, warm. Because that meant hypothermia was setting in.
She lost track for a while after that. It was all she could do to put one foot in front of the other and battle through the blizzard conditions. Her energy was flagging, but she pushed herself onwards with a determination born from the will to survive. It would wreck her father to lose someone else to the mountains he held so dear.
‘Every step is one step closer; every step is a closer one.’ The line was one she used to use as a little girl when she was tired after her dad had her trudging all over some place or another. It was on a repeat loop in her head right now as she forced herself on, just like she did then, when her little legs had been no match for her father’s long strides, and she had tired so much quicker.
She was conscious that her steps had become more of a vague shuffle now that the snow was so much deeper. It spilled over the top of her boots and seeped down inside, using her sodden socks as a wick.
