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Wind and a flurry of snow howled through the door as soon as it was opened, and Dante jumped up to wrestle it closed.
“Bang when you want to come back in,” he yelled to Jeri as he stood and waited. He was gone just minutes but those bare seconds of opening and closing of the door plummeted the small room into a new state of chill. Dante took the container while Jeri undressed again and stood it next to the fire to melt. Then he filled an old-fashioned stove top kettle and set that on the top of the log burner to boil.
“So, what have we got?” Jeri asked as he came closer to the heat.
The woman in Lazarus’s arms mewled her displeasure at the new gust of cold air and burrowed closer to him.
Dante looked over the haul he’d been cataloguing, then pursed his lips and shot a look at Jeri as he stripped off and crawled onto the sleeping pallet with Lazarus, so the woman was sandwiched between them.
He shook his head, but said nothing as he recited everything they’d amassed between their four bags and what they’d found in the cabin so far.
“There are several high calorie food pouches and an unopened bag of dried pasta which I found in the cupboard. It’s past its sell-by date, but it’s pasta, so it’ll be fine. Half a dozen sachets of powdered hot chocolate and a couple of small bags of peanuts. Some protein bars which have gotten a bit squashed, but beggars can’t be choosers and a packet of glucose tablets. We should give her one of those and some water as soon as she’s conscious enough not to choke. There’s also a big sack of flour, and some other stuff, although I’m not sure that will do us any good,” he said with a depreciative laugh.
“The girl also has a locator beacon, but she didn’t set it off for some reason. Do you think we should do that now?
“No,” Lazarus replied. There aren’t enough daylight hours left and I don’t want to pull a rescue team out in this weather, in the dark, unless we don’t have a choice.”
“You don’t think she needs one?” He hitched his chin at the woman. “She hasn’t come round yet.”
Lazarus studied the girl's face and swept his fingers across her skin underneath the covers. “Her color is good. She’s losing the blue tinge now she’s warming up and her core temperature is normalizing, even though her extremities are still chilled. I don’t think she’s in any immediate danger.”
Jeri added his own thoughts. “Well, we have the satellite phone. Tomorrow, we can ring the mountain ranger station and update them of our situation. It’ll be better than just setting off a locator beacon with no information. Let’s all just get some rest first,”
“Good idea,” Lazarus agreed. “Honestly, I think she’s just exhausted, and suffering the effects of being out in the cold, rather than deeply unconscious.”
She snuggled into him at the touch of his fingers, leading him to the conclusion that she was pretty sentient, if only subconsciously, but he didn’t mention that to Dante. No need to fuel his brother’s concerns any further.
But he did glance at Jeri over her shoulder. From the grimace on his face, Lazarus was pretty sure he was dealing with his own issues as the woman wriggled her butt which he suspected was right up against Jeri’s groin.
He suppressed a shiver as she sandwiched one of her freezing feet between his calves. Warming her like this might be the most effective way of getting valuable heat into her, fast; but it was less comfortable for them as she leeched on their warmth. At least he had his back to the fire. Jeri wasn’t so lucky, and Dante was still sitting stoically in the darkening room with his legs bare.
A particularly wild belt of wind rattled the windows and took the temperature down a couple of degrees as it found its way through the cracks, even though the windows were small. There was also an insipid draught blowing up from beneath the floorboards.
“Hey, Dante. See if you can hang a couple of our coats over the windows, will you?” Jeri was obviously on the same page and through the encroaching gloom Lazarus watched his middle brother climb to his feet to carry out the instruction.
“I don’t suppose you found a torch, or anything did you?”
“There’s a couple of shelves over here I didn’t notice before, I’ll check them now,” Dante threw back.
There was some shuffling and scraping and then Dante called, “We’re in luck. There’s a couple of hurricane lamps here. One of them feels like it’s got enough oil in it.
A moment later a golden glow lit the room, casting long shadows into the encroaching night before Dante found a hook in the ceiling to hang it from. The light was as comforting as the cheery crackle of the fire.
While Dante covered the windows, muffling the wind and closing out the last bit of light, as well as their tenuous link to the outside world, Lazarus scooted over and threw another couple of logs on the fire. At least wood was something they had plenty of. In a couple of hours, before he fell asleep, he’d bank it up to keep it going overnight. Although in truth, he was already exhausted. Battling the wind with the dead-weight of the girl while slogging their way through foot deep drifts had taken it out of him. Out of all of them.
Dante puttered around some more. “I’m going to make some of that hot chocolate with the hot water you set to boil, in a minute,” he called across the room.
There was some thumping and scuffling, but whatever he was doing resulted in so much of a lessening of the wind that was whistling around the door, that for a moment, the silence was quite unnerving.
“There we go,” he stated. There was an audible satisfaction in his voice. “I used the bags as a draught excluder. That damn whistle was getting on my nerves.”
While Lazarus wished Dante would come and get warm with them, he appreciated his brother's alacrity and attention to detail. It was pretty typical behavior from him and one of those things that could make all the difference to the wellbeing of all four of them. Dante was the details man. Lazarus knew the process calmed his brother too, so he was happy to leave him to it for now.
His eyes were just starting to drift shut when a loud thud on the wooden floor startled him awake again.
“What the fuck? Jeri grumbled across from him. The noise had obviously disturbed him too.
“I found another blanket up on this shelf,” came the muffled reply along with a billow of heavy fabric. “Bonus, I found a tarpaulin too. Looks like a big one. I know you’re settled, but we should put it on the floor under the mattress to lessen the draught and the damp.”
