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I screamed like a kid in elementary school and suddenly Gabe was pressed against me.
And just like that, I felt my Christmas dream crashing harder than my quickly fading buzz from the spiked hot cocoa.
“Get off me,” I said, pushing him away. Gabe stumbled backward into the opposite wall of the tiny galley kitchen.
“I thought you were hurt,” he said, flipping on the Maglite and pointing it at me.
“Get that out of my—”
A horrible noise like the groaning of a metal ship resounded and Gabe and I caught each other’s eyes moments before the pressure of the wind burst the window on the far side of the living room, eliciting another shriek from me and a loud“Shit!” from him.
We both scrambled to our feet and stumbled for shoes so we didn’t end up cutting our socked feet on broken glass. The cold—which had been no more than a chill in the air—was now arctic against our faces and our beautiful Christmas tree was getting covered in snow by the minute.
The vision I’d had for my perfect Christmas vanished before my eyes. Instead of Dean and Lexi, I was gonna be accompanied by this jerk and his money manager face. Rather than a warm, home-cooked meal, I'd be forced to choose between a peanut butter and a chocolate chip protein bar. I could feel tears springing to my eyes and forced myself to stifle them because they were likely to freeze to my face at this point.
“What are we gonna do?” I shouted at him over the roar of the blustering winds.
“I don’t suppose there is another fireplace, is there?”
“No,” I shouted back. “Why?”
“Because if not, we need this room. And that means we have to patch up that window until we can get the owners out here.”
I was truly shivering now, and I wondered for a moment if this was how I was going to die. “How do you plan to do that, Bear Grylls?”
He leaned in so I could hear him better, and grabbed his coat and hat. “There’s a shed about fifty feet from the house. I’m gonna see if there are any boards and tools. I want you to gather all the blankets you can find, any first aid, and all the food you can scrounge up, and wait in the master bedroom with the door closed. Conserve the heat as long as you can.”
I nodded, but found myself ever so slightly worried about him out there. “Are you gonna make it?”
Gabe smiled a little but didn’t answer. And then he pushed open the door and disappeared into the whiteout.
Chapter Eight
Gabe
Theroaringwindblewtorrents of snow around me, the tiny frozen flakes feeling like razorblades as they assaulted my skin. I could barely see two feet in front of me, let alone the fifty feet between me and the shed. I had never been more thankful to grow up in the northeast. This was just regular winter weather around there.
I knew the general direction of the shed from earlier, but the harder the storm raged, the more I felt like I was being veered off course. Indeed, within a few minutes, my shin slammed into something hard and solid.
“Ow, shit!”
I grabbed my injured leg, hopping on the other one in pain as I tried to see what I’d run into. I saw something sticking up, and when I reached out my hand to feel for what it was, I found myself grabbing the handle of the ax, which I’d buried back in the stump after cutting firewood earlier.
Even amidst the whiteout, I could see dark crimson splotches of blood painting the snowy ground. Thank God Jenna was a nurse. I’d definitely need one by the time I got back.
I looked around me, trying to remember where the shed was in relation to the firewood, and turned my body in the direction I thought I’d find it. Then I began to walk forward again into the white abyss, hoping my internal compass and natural sense of direction wouldn’t fail me now.
This disaster made me think of another time in my life when I’d been in such thick, unforgiving snow. It was a Christmas after my parents had passed, and we were planning to spend the holiday with Hannah’s family two hours north of the city in upstate New York. We had our dog, a little black mutt named Jasper (who Hannah took with her when she moved out) with us, and a backseat full of pre-prepped food and presents we were bringing. The day started cold but sunny, then out of nowhere, the sky went dark gray, and the wind began to gust in thick waves of white.
I remember thinking to myself that it seemed almost impossible that the weather could turn that drastically, that fast. Hannah too was nervous because she’d been in a fairly bad car accident as a kid when her dad’s truck slid across some black ice.
We were still an hour from our destination when the road became undriveable, and I pulled over to the shoulder before it became impossible to do so. We sat there for nearly an hour, hoping the squall would pass, but we weren’t that lucky. In fact, the exact opposite happened as snowdrifts began to pile up on every side of the car, blocking us in.
“We don’t have enough gas,” I said, watching the meter slowly go down.
Eventually, the snow covered the exhaust pipe, and we had to turn the car off so we didn’t suffocate. With no heat and no way to signal for help, we’d freeze to death before we were ever found.
“What are we going to do?” Hannah asked, clutching Jasper, who seemed to know something was wrong. It was exactly the same question Jenna asked me before I walked out into this frozen hellscape.
