2 cobra 14

 

Chapter 14

 

The cold was excruciating. And I do mean at the level of torture. There was a foot or more of snow on the silent forest floor, whilst the pine trees around were starkly black and silent where they had not shed their load of snow. I needed to do something to keep warm in very short order.

I kept moving.

That was important, keep moving fast enough to keep the muscles warmed, not so fast as to cause the body to sweat. Sweat could be fatal.

No likelihood of being an animal I could kill and skin when there had been a helicopter. I took out one bootlace and pulled two saplings together the side the wind came from most and tied their tops as a windbreak.  Then I piled snow up behind them to fill the cracks. There were branches, and those I balanced on the top of the two young trees; I had permitted enough spring to them to make a curve. I also needed  some branches to put on the ground. Off the ground, I had a chance. On the ground, not a hope.

There was a crash in the bushes, and I hefted a good stick about four feet long as a club.

The crash resolved into a pink and blue shivering human body, named Dave.

“Don’t run about, you’ll sweat, and then you’ll need the bleeper not to be deep frozen long pig,” I said.

He managed a grin.

“I knew you’d know what to do.”

I took a handful of snow and rubbed him down roughly. Yes, I know snow is frozen water, but it removed the actual fluid of the sweat from him and the rubbing was rough enough to make him feel a bit warmer. Though I needed to warm him up properly.

“Gather pine cones,” I told him. “Build them up in front of the shelter.”

It was something he could manage, and I continued building, pulling off live branches of needles to weave in and out of the top of the shelter.  I put a layer of those on top of the branches as well. Pine needles in the fundament may not be much fun, but better than freezing.

I used a stick which had blown off something forcibly, having a wide torn end which would make a spade of sorts. I dug away to the ground. I didn’t want to set the forest floor ablaze.

When I’d cleared a kind of trench in front of the shelter, and threw the snow to make a berm behind it, I set to making fire.

“Bootlace,” I said, to Dave.

He gave me a bootlace.

I tied it to each end of a green stick to make a bow.

I then needed an oldish piece of soft, partly rotted wood and a hard stick; not difficult to come by. I thrust a handful of dry old pine needles into Dave’s hand; I had found them inside a cleft in a tree.

“When you see wisps of smoke, feed them in gently; don’t force it and don’t put it out,” I said.

He nodded seriously. I put a bight of his shoelace round the hardwood, and held the softwood between my knees, squatting, which is a damned painful position. The bow pulled the hardwood in rotation faster than it is possible by rubbing between the hands, and so made it heat up the quicker. We started to get a tendril of smoke.

“Wait,” I said to Dave. “A little more....”

I could smell charring now, and smell the smoke.

“OK,” I said.

He managed to be gentle without being too tentative, and the sere needles crackled into sudden flame which died to embers almost immediately.

“Keep feeding it,” I said. He did so, as I continued bowing.  Soon there were quite a lot of crackles of not quite flame, and I lifted the burning mass to put inside a hole I had made at the base of the trench with small sticks, broken pine cones, and dead leaves from a bush around it. I blew on it and was rewarded with a tiny flame.

Now I could start to feed it.

“I have no idea how to make a fire,” said Dave. “It’s almost like magic.”

“The trick is now to feed it fast enough but not too fast,” I said. “Ok, that’s enough for now,” as he wanted to feed it too fast. “We can’t afford to lose all our fuel.  I saw a fallen log over there, if you help me bring it, we can sit on it by the fire to get warm.  And then take turns at foraging for wood when we’ve warmed up a little.”

“It’s amazing!” said Dave. “The difference having this scrape of a shelter behind us makes.”

I smiled enigmatically.

It was probably something he assumed came naturally to a First Nation man like Jay Silverheels. It was something I had learned from my Sensei, who made me read books on survival so that I could survive wherever I ended up.

We sat on our log until I regretfully left the warmth to get more fuel.

Then Dave went.

I had put two long branches to hold our fuel wood off the ground; green branches went over them as a roof, more important overnight.  I found a stream whilst foraging for wood, and brought back a number of smooth river stones, better to contain the fire, and if wrapped in moss when heated in the fire, a good hand warmer. I also found a piece of flint which I broke to have sharp edges, and stripped some bark of a birch tree on the stream’s edge.  I folded it to make a cup, and drank my fill, then took it back full for Dave.

“Not good to eat snow,” I said. “It cools you down. This is a bit too cold but at least not frozen.”

He drank, gratefully. We had worked quite hard, after all, and it was pretty smoky.

“You’re amazing,” he said.

“I read the right books,” I said.  I was hoping to find some cat tails if we followed the stream; you can make a sort of porridge with them.  I’d have to make a bigger cup and heat it by dropping hot stones in it, but it would work.

“There’s how to do this in books?” he was amazed.

“You may have to go looking,” I said. “But yes.”

Hey, I might write one myself when this is over. That would keep me busy. And in a few years, our kid could help daddy with extreme camping.

“Rick!” Willow’s voice came in my ear. “One of those big lugs deliberately broke the drone on him. He didn’t know I have a second one. He met someone who gave him clothes and a shotgun; pump action. And he’s heading your way.”

“Oh bugger,” I said.

“What?” said Dave.

“Get in the shelter, and pull some branches over you,” I said. “We’re going to have company, and it isn’t going to be friendly.”

I pulled down a large branch to lie on, myself, and pulled another over me, pretending to be part of the woodpile.

I had my club with me; not much of a weapon against a firearm.

However, a pump action shotgun needed dry lubricant in this level of cold. I wondered if chummer knew that?

I wondered if whoever had given it to him knew that.

One way to find out.

I could hear the crunch of his boots on the snow.

I took the risk of throwing a stone into a bush.

He fired at the sound. I hoped he might. Then he was coming forward.

I stood up. He swung the gun round to point at me, and worked the action.

It stuck.

The look of incredulity on his face was hilarious. But I did not have time to laugh.

“You saw that,” I said to the drone.

Chummer now had a big, expensive club; the spent cartridge was jammed in, and he could not get another into the chamber.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.

Most people who die young, die of ignorance.

I fended off his new club, and hit him with  mine.  I was better with archaic weapons, or possibly me heap big caveman.

He went down.

I stripped off his clothes.

“Here, Dave, you put these on; you need them more than I do,” I said.

He made token protest, but accepted a shirt and pants. I took the fellow’s undershirt and jacket. I wasn’t going near his longjohns unless things got desperate. I stripped them off, though, to put on our sleeping platform in the shelter.

“You may fart on them,” I said to Dave.

He laughed.

I also took off his boots and socks and put them in the shelter; now we had a spare pair in case ours got wet. By common consent we each replaced our missing laces.

The chummer?  I left him where he was. If he came too, I had left him his squawkbox.

Of course, Oppenheimer turned up with cas-evac for my assailant.

“Have you killed him?” he demanded.

“I think having a shotgun pointed at me justifies anything I might do,” I said. “He did try to hit me with it as well.”

“You’ll have to give up your clothes.”

“Not according to the rules,” I said. “We are at liberty to use anything which presents itself for our survival.  He presented himself. If he’d been a bear, we’d have had the skin. This just smells less bad. Moreover, he has delayed our wood gathering, and therefore our time is running down to get enough by nightfall. As are you,” I added, pointedly. “I hope he is forfeiting any prize and is going straight to the calaboose.”

“I... yes, of course,” said Oppenheimer.

He left hastily in case I had a case of debagging in mind to relieve him of his pants.

I would have done if he hadn’t made himself scarce.

A bit of imagination and a bit of growling and he could easily represent a bear.

 

Well, they had tried their hand at bribing a fellow contestant. I rather fancied I might be seeing a family member next.

Meantime, I planned to unfreeze the shotgun by the fire. He had fired one, leaving seven rounds.

I could have one in the chamber which would work, as his first shot had worked. I just couldn’t work the action without warming it between.

However, I now had six shells worth of gunpowder. I wiped the oil off the gun with the cuff of his longjohns, to prevent it re-freezing. We would sleep with it, loaded, to keep it warm, in case trouble came overnight.

Paranoia.

It keeps me alive.

And with the safety on, we would be in no danger of the gun going off overnight.

 

I wondered if Willow was following the other contestants, but I didn’t want to give up my ace in the hole.  Getting Dave out of sight and making ready could be explained by preternaturally sharp hearing. However, Willow knows me well. She knew I’d want to know.

“The girls met up,” she told me. “They found a cave in the side of the river, under the roots of a big old oak tree. It’s given them plenty of firewood, too, and they have a fire. You might want to shift camp to join them tomorrow. Lamborghini decided that being seeded in the top eight was enough, and bleeped. The other two tough guys are working together; they’ve done this before. They used trees like you, but more of them in a dome and have essentially used it as the frame of an igloo. They’re going to get a nasty shock, though, as they have a fire inside their shelter, and from outside, I can see the snow on top of their branches shifting as it melts.”

You need to have blocks of ice to make an igloo in which you can have a fire, and then you really need a stove pipe to carry away the heat and smoke. A hole in the roof isn’t enough. They must be pretty well kippered, too. Though if they cut turfs after making the fire to lay over it, they should be ok, and have some charcoal to use to more swiftly start a cookfire. I suspected, however, they just planned to sit it out as long as they could and hope to win or place high by default. Dave was lucky to have found me.

No, not quite true; Dave was determined to find me, and he had been dropped right after me, so he had some idea of my direction.  And to my mind, finding a survival expert was a survival skill in itself.

He grinned happily.

“Want to take a turn wearing the pants?” he asked.

“It’s fine,” I said. “I don’t wear the pants in my own home, so why should I worry when shacking up with you?”

Dave laughed heartily.

“Consider yourself poked,” said Willow.

We turned in, hungry but not dehydrated, having also melted snow in the cups – I made a second – by the fire. I was hoping for some small animals to be around at dawn.

It was cold, but warm enough to be safe to doze without risking hypothermia, and just by being there together, the temperature rose. I got up from time to time, Dave having fallen asleep with exhaustion.

False dawn was in the sky when I thought I heard an aero engine. Which might have been anyone on legitimate business; or it might not. I had seen the gleam of a lake to the north.

If it was a flying boat full of yakuza...

There was a stag stepping delicately through the forest at the edge of our clearing; and he was useful calories.

I could not afford not to shoot, even if the enemy heard it. Shots in forests ring out all the time, there were probably cabins somewhere. And the echoes mean direction is hard to gauge.

I shot him.

He was a fine fellow, and I wished I did not have to; but on the balance of things, deer left to their own devices breed like rabbits and take the food of other denizens of the forest. I ran across to collect him, which was a chore in itself, but I wanted warmth to work on skinning and jointing him.

And I wanted that shotgun kept warm in the shelter and yet, to hand. Since I was almost certain the plane had come down, and had not gone off again.