Page 6

CHAPTER

FOUR

AIDY

Corvak heads out to go hunting in the cold, and I'm left to guard the cave and pack things.

There are several leather sacks and stacks of furs to go through, and I touch and sort everything.

Whoever left this all here has done a ton of work.

Some of the furs are hard on one side, and some are so soft on the inside that they feel like butter.

There are packs of dried meats of varying kinds, and I snack as I put them aside.

There's an unnervingly large pile of bones at the very back of the cave, just like in the horror movie, The Descent , but at least there are no human skulls in the mix. Small consolation.

Very small.

There's plenty of food but no water, but I have a fire and I know how to keep it going.

I have a vague memory or two of camping trips in the desert, followed by random flashes of shaking out shoes before putting them on.

Names and faces, I don't have. But random footwear knowledge?

Horror movie visuals? Got that covered. It's irritating me because I feel I should know the basics, and I don't.

However, I do know that melted snow makes water, and that's something I can do easily. I spend a good amount of time scooping up snow in one of the stiff leather pouches and then setting it near the fire to melt.

I don't find clothing or shoes, so after I stuff two packs with everything I think we'll need and set aside a couple of spears, I turn to making clothing.

There are a few crude knives fashioned from pale bone lying nearby, and I use one to slice long, thin strips from one of the biggest furs.

I don't know how to make anything without a needle, thread, and scissors, so I figure the best option is to pile furs on our bodies strategically and then just bind them close with the strips.

I take smaller furs, covering my foot with them and then crisscrossing the straps before tying them off in a bow atop my ankle.

I test the shoes for a few steps…and they immediately fall apart.

I'm sure there's a way to make this work, so I keep experimenting, trying to come up with a method. I'm tying the now-stretched-thin strips around my foot once more when I hear a high-pitched snarl come from outside. Grabbing a knife, I race to the entrance, my heart pounding in terror.

I pull aside the partition and see Corvak approaching, arms outstretched as he holds a writhing, squirming creature about the size of a beaver.

It reminds me of one, with its big yellow teeth, but there's no tail and its eyes glow eerily blue.

"Stay back," Corvak calls, even as the creature twists in his grip again.

Pressing against the wall of the cave, I stay out of the way as he enters, the thrashing creature in his hands. He storms inside, trailing snow after him, and once he's near the fire, he holds the creature down and sighs heavily. "I am sorry," he tells the creature. "Thank you for your sacrifice."

He kills the thing with a quick twist of its head and then turns to me, holding out a hand.

I notice that his lower arms are striped with scratches and lacerations. He bleeds from a dozen long strips, and his hands are covered with blood. "Oh my god, you're hurt."

"It can wait. Let us not waste this creature's sacrifice. Give me your knife."

Wordless, I hand it over. I watch as he cuts the creature open, flinching with every wet noise. He pulls out the heart and extracts the glowing filament from it, then places it on his arm, right on an open wound.

My eyes go wide as the thing slithers and burrows under his skin. "What the fuck?"

"All will be welllll…" He begins to slur before he can finish, and then topples over to the side, unconscious. I'm left with a dead creature bleeding all over the floor, an unconscious, bleeding alien, and a whole ton of questions.

I freak out. Just a little. Because what the fuck do I do now ?

One thing at a time, Aidy, I tell myself, and fight back frustration and helplessness.

Corvak is just as stranded as I am, but he hasn't flailed.

He's always had a plan. It's time to have your own plan.

I scrub my hands over my face, take a deep breath, and calm myself.

Corvak needs help. His hands are bleeding, and I don't know if he's in pain.

Then I can clean up the dead animal and figure out what to do with it.

I roll Corvak's heavy body onto its side in case he vomits and tuck a rolled-up fur under his head.

I clean his arms and legs while he's unconscious and check him for more wounds.

His toes feel like blocks of ice, which makes me think he's not as impervious to the cold as he thinks.

I take one of his feet and pull it under my shirt, pressing it against my stomach to warm it.

Read that in a romance novel once, and it seems like a good method.

As I warm his feet, I watch his bleeding, and it seems to slow down.

Good. His sleep is restful, but I don't know how long he'll be under for.

How long was I under for when he did the same for me?

Almost a full day, but something tells me his physiology will probably handle it better…

which means I need to be ready for him to wake up.

I eye the dead creature with dismay. It's lying on the floor, belly up, and I try not to get sick at the sight of it.

Corvak thanked it for its sacrifice, and I don't want to just chuck the thing out of the cave.

Its life has to mean something, even if it's just dinner for us.

Time for me to suck it up and learn how to butcher…

whatever that thing is. Killer Beaver, I decide.

Gotta call it something. With a deep breath, I ease Corvak's feet back under the blankets and move toward the dead thing.

The bad guys in Texas Chainsaw Massacre did this sort of thing all the time, I tell myself. You can slice a few cutlets off a damn animal. Where do you think your supermarket meat comes from?

Even though I chide myself for being squeamish, I really hate that my food is staring back at me. I drop a fur over the thing's face so I don't see his face while I try to figure out how to turn him into steak.