Bitter Cold Apocalypse 2 (A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller) Read online

  That didn’t even start to take into account the fact that whatever had happened in the atmosphere seemed to have driven the animals in the area insane. I had no idea whether they would react to gunfire the way they would have last week, or even yesterday.

  Besides, their prey right now was Zoe, and there was no way I was going to let them have her. It didn’t even enter my mind as a possibility. So I had to do the one thing that I knew for a fact would work.

  I had to attack them, and my body knew it. I was flying toward the younger set of wolves before I could think clearly, but by the time I’d reached them, my brain had caught up. I grabbed one of them by the scruff of the neck and threw it to the side, then went after the other. They were pups, but they were still wolves, which made them a lot bigger—and a lot stronger—than the average dog. Stronger even than the average man, if they got going. Because they had wild animal blood, and that meant they weren’t going to hold back when it came to something attacking them.

  But they were also young. Four months old wasn’t full-grown yet, and it made them young enough to not have started taking part in the hunt, yet. They didn’t know how to kill, yet—and they didn’t even really have full control over their limbs. I was counting on all of that to work to my advantage.

  I was also counting on the adults to care more about protecting their young than about attacking mine.

  The pup I’d shoved out of the way went with a yelp of distress, and though it got up quickly enough, it also didn’t come after me. The one I had a hold of, though, was fighting. Snapping and growling and yelping and putting up quite a fuss, it was also throwing its body from side to side. I quickly put my arm around its neck and tried to establish a choke hold, but the wolf was both bigger than anything I was used to dealing with, and also moving way too much for me to get a good handle on it.

  I got one arm wrapped around its throat, but when I tried to hook my other arm around it and grab my left arm with my right hand, the animal threw itself to the side, very nearly getting out of my grasp entirely. I moved with it, trying to keep my arm around its throat while avoiding its teeth, and hauled back on it, attempting to get it up against my body.

  If I could get it up on its hind legs, I thought, I could get my other hand around its throat and get it into a choke hold. I didn’t want to kill it, but I needed to incapacitate it enough to hold onto it while its parents—or pack mates, at least—figured out what I was doing.

  I could hear them snarling and snapping in the distance, and Zoe’s screams had made the change I’d been afraid of, reaching the height of panic and pain now as the wolves actually went after her. She was still screaming, which was a good sign. It meant she was still alive and alert. I needed her to stay alert.

  “John!” she screamed, her voice full of pain.

  My heart almost broke right in two at that moment, but instead of pausing and allowing it to, I sent all my energy, all my heartbreak and fear for her, into my fight with the younger wolf.

  “Zoe, I’m going to get you!” I shouted. “Can you move?”

  She’d stopped listening to me, though, and I could hear her screams increasing in pitch. Things were getting bad over there—and I didn’t want to think about why. I didn’t want to think about what the wolves were doing to her. I couldn’t, not right now. I needed to get their attention on me—and that meant I needed these younger wolves to do their jobs. I needed them to make more noise.

  Or I needed to move them to where it would catch the adults’ attention. They obviously hadn’t noticed that I had their babies, yet. I needed to change that.

  I finally got my hand latched around my arm at that point, which gave me better leverage, and I started dragging the animal toward the larger fight. I needed to be where those adult wolves could see me. I could see now that they were almost right on top of Zoe, the bright pink of her favorite snow jacket only a flash of color between their legs and snapping jaws.

  I could also see blood on the snow.

  “John, we’ve got a shot!” a voice suddenly shouted out from behind me.

  Bob, I thought, matching a name to the voice and thanking whoever was watching out for me that they’d finally arrived. Help. Help was here.

  But a second later, I realized that they weren’t going to be able to do a damn thing.

  “Don’t shoot!” I screamed back. “They’re right on top of her; you’ll run the risk of catching her if you shoot into that pack!”

  I jerked the wolf in front of me closer to the pack, still counting on my plan to at least get the adults off of the girl. If I could get them away from her, then Bob and Joe and Marlon could shoot as much as they wanted to, without running the risk of hitting her.

  Finally, the wolf I was holding let out a yip, and then a snarl, and it was enough to get the attention of one of the adult wolves. It jerked its head up and in our direction, its yellow eyes meeting my gaze, and I shivered despite myself. I’d seen wolves before. Seen them in the wild, as well as in cages.

  But I’d never met them face-to-face in the wilderness. Never had the full attention of a grown adult. An adult who had killing on its mind and two very vulnerable human beings within jumping distance.

  The intelligence in its eyes was eery, and I knew in that moment that I was outmatched. I couldn’t take those things down. Hell, I couldn’t even take one of them down. If they came for me, I’d be done for, and it wasn’t going to be a pretty death.

  But it would get them away from Zoe. And, I reminded myself, if I could get them away from her then I could free my friends up to shoot at them. Take them down.

  I tore my gaze away from the wolf and looked down at where Zoe was laying on the ground, crunched into the fetal position, with her arms around her head. She was still screaming, and I could see that the wolves had torn apart her clothes and gotten into her skin as well. She was bleeding from several different locations—but she was alive.

  I was going to have to keep her that way.

  “As soon as they make a run for me, you shoot!” I screamed at the men in the woods. “I don’t care if you hit them or not. Just scare them away so I can get that girl!”

  A second later, the wolves were turning as one, eerily in tune with each other, as if this was a choreographed dance. And then, so quickly that I hardly saw the change, they were sprinting right for me.

  I dropped the wolf I’d been holding, crouched, and jumped for the nearest tree, which I’d marked when I first realized that the adults were going to give me more trouble than I’d realized. I grabbed for the bottom branch and hauled myself up, feeling the snap of teeth just to the side of my right calf. And then the shooting started.

  I’d give this to Marlon and the others, they shot to scare them rather than kill them—and after what those wolves had done, it was more than I would have given them. Snow exploded up from the ground below me as bullet after bullet hit the white powder, the roar of the guns deafening and finally drowning out Zoe’s screaming.

  The wolves paused for only a moment, and then they were suddenly gone, like ghosts into the night, their exit nearly as quiet as their appearance must have been. The only reason I saw them go was because I’d been actively watching them, praying for that very thing. And the moment the last tail went darting into the bush, startled by the gunfire, I dropped out of the tree.

  My legs were moving almost before I hit the snow, and it took me about half a second to go sliding on my knees toward the shaking, still screaming little girl. The snow around her was stained with pink and red, and once I reached her, I could see why.

  The wolves had torn into one of her arms, which she must have put up to protect herself, and had also mauled one of her legs. I didn’t see any bone, so I didn’t think they’d gotten too deep, and if she had broken bones, they weren’t sticking out anywhere.

  But those hadn’t exactly been sterile animals, and she had to be in an awful lot of pain.

  I held her gently up to my chest, my own chest tightening with
emotion at her whimpers, and whispered, “Zoe, girl, I’ve got you now. I’ve got you, girl. We’re going to make it stop hurting real soon, okay? I’m going to get you some medicine real soon.”

  “J-J-John?” she moaned. “John, it hurts.”

  I held her tighter, part of my brain screeching that I had to be careful of broken bones, and the other part telling the first part to go to hell. If I could have magically taken her pain away, I would have. I would have done anything to heal her at that moment. Anything to make it better.

  “We’re going to make it feel better soon,” I whispered. “You just try to rest right now. And tell me if anything suddenly starts hurting worse, okay?”

  When Marlon, Bob, and Joe came skidding up next to me, I stood with Zoe in my arms.

  “She’s been mauled pretty bad; lost a lot of blood. We have to get her to someplace where we can disinfect the wounds and get her stitches, at the very least. Infection won’t set in as fast here as it would in warm weather, but it’s still going to be a risk.”

  I glanced at Marlon, and saw that his expression matched my own. He looked as if he’d just seen his own daughter being attacked by wolves—and like he knew exactly what my next words were going to be.

  “We have to get to your house. I need your surgical instruments and your knowledge, now.”

  “We don’t have time to wait for the rest of the group,” Marlon agreed with a nod. He turned to Bob and Joe, already taking control of the situation. “You two, take over the march. Keep the people in line, keep them moving. You’re not going to have a lot of leeway in terms of getting there before dark, after this, but you’re going to have to get it done. Stay in the forest in the dark and you’re sure to get lost. Keep everyone together. Keep them safe. And dammit, make sure you don’t lose any more kids. This one could have been left behind if she didn’t start screaming.”

  “And her mom?” Bob asked quickly. “What do we tell her?”

  “Tell her mom…” I stopped, pressing my lips together in thought. No matter what they told her, she was going to worry. No matter what they told her, we were still leaving her behind when her little girl was hurt. But I didn’t see any way around it. We couldn’t afford to take her with us, because I knew the woman and didn’t think she’d be able to keep up with us. She also had four other kids—two of them younger than Zoe—that she needed to take care of.

  I also thought there was a good chance that she would be too distraught to be of any real help. And I wasn’t willing to take the time to support both her and Zoe.

  Zoe couldn’t afford for me to take that time.

  “Tell her that Zoe’s been hurt, but that we’re going to help her. Tell her that it’s not a mortal wound but that we have to get her to a place where we can sterilize it and stitch it up. And tell her that I can’t have her playing hero right now. I can only afford to worry about one girl at a time. She needs to stay here and take care of her other kids, and let me take care of Zoe.”

  Bob nodded and Marlon took several moments to give them rough directions toward his house, then promised them that we would see Zoe settled and then come out into the forest to find them and guide them the rest of the way.

  Bob reached out and grasped my arm, careful not to touch the girl, who was quiet but still trembling against my body.

  “You take care of that little girl, John,” he said, his voice breaking. “You fix her, you hear me?”

  I met his gaze, my own gaze steady as a rock. “I’m not willing to lose her, Bob,” I answered. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  Then Marlon and I were running through the forest, leaving the other two behind and plowing through the snow like our lives depended on it. It was going to be an extremely long run, I knew. And it was going to be hard. We weren’t able to get out onto a road or even a more well-trod path, because there was a good chance that Randall and his men would be watching those sorts of things—or that they would take them if they were coming to look for us.

  And we absolutely couldn’t afford to be caught by Randall and his men. Not now. Not when I had a wounded little girl in my arms and no way to grab the gun and knife I was carrying. We would be two men against who knew how many, and we’d be overwhelmed immediately.

  So our best shot—our only shot—was to stay hidden while moving as quickly as we possibly could.

  “Is there a more direct route to your house than we were taking?” I huffed, hoping for an answer in the affirmative.

  “There is,” he answered quickly, as if he’d already been thinking about it. “It won’t cut a lot of time off, and it’s more dangerous. Takes us through thicker forest. I didn’t want to take such a large group that way, if I didn’t have to. But given the situation…”

  “We take it,” I told him firmly. “Get this little girl to your house the quickest way possible, Marlon, and then fix her. I don’t care what it takes.”

  We shot forward into the glare of midday snow, and I had only one thing on my mind: I was going to do whatever I needed to do to make sure Zoe was okay.

  22

  I was right about the journey being difficult. And long. As we took off into the forest, in a direction that roughly echoed where the rest of the group was but wasn’t going to cross them exactly, I quickly went through what I knew of the local geography and decided that we must have around five miles left between us and Marlon’s house.

  Five miles through ankle-deep snow and freezing temperatures. Five miles of carrying a ten-year-old girl who needed immediate medical treatment. And five miles that we had to cover as quickly as we possibly could.

  It was a tall task, for sure. But I wasn’t willing to fail at it.

  We charged into the trees, Marlon three steps in front of me—which was where I’d keep him. Yes, I wanted to get to his house as quickly as possible and it would be easy to make the mistake of creeping up on him. But I knew from long experience in the military that getting too close to the guy in front of you while you were running led to one thing, and one thing only: tripping on said guy’s feet and sending you both to the ground.

  So I had to control my need for speed and keep a safe distance. The last thing I wanted right now was for us to go crashing to the ground. I had absolutely no doubt of what that would do to the already broken little girl in my arms.

  “How’re you doing, Zoe?” I asked softly. “You still with me?”

  “I’m cold,” she muttered, her voice sounding a little stronger now.

  The girl had never been shy with her opinions as my neighbor, even going so far as to tell me that she didn’t believe I could actually barbecue in the snow at one point, and I wasn’t surprised to hear that attitude coming out now. In fact, I was thankful for it.

  I ducked under a low-hanging tree branch, jumped the set of roots that were sticking out of the snow right after it, and gave her the lightest of squeezes.

  “Cold is good. Very good. I know it sucks, but it means that if those wolves left any nasty germs on your skin, the germs are dying.” This wasn’t exactly true, but I didn’t feel like explaining how freezing temperatures make germs go dormant until thawed, not actually kill them.

  “So the cold is my friend,” she guessed, her voice shaking only slightly.

  “It is, but it’s also a friend that might get you in trouble. If you get too cold, so cold to where you can’t stand it, you have to let me know, okay? Promise?”

  “Promise,” she replied, snuggling further into my chest.

  I pressed my lips together, wondering if she’d know the difference. Because the cold would definitely stop the bleeding, and would potentially slow any infection. But there was also a good chance of it sending her right into shock.

  And that wasn’t a risk I was willing to take.

  “Marlon, hold up,” I said, lifting my voice to be sure he heard me.

  He stopped immediately and turned, his eyes on the girl in my arms.

  “She’s okay,” I told hi
m quickly. “But we need to figure out how to keep her warm. I don’t want her going into shock.”

  A quick nod from Marlon and he was stripping out of his snow coat and draping it over her body, then tucking it in around the edges so that it would stick.

  “Good?” he asked, his eyes on mine.

  “Good,” I replied. “But I want mine on her as well.”

  It took a bit more maneuvering, but we managed to get my coat off, too, and Marlon did the same thing with it, covering the girl and making sure the edges of my jacket were secured around her.

  Then we took off into the forest again, neither of us wasting time or effort on speaking.

  By the time we got to the clearing around Marlon’s house, I thought I was probably very close to dying. Marlon and I had been switching off in terms of who carried Zoe, and not wearing my jacket meant that I’d been able to cool off in the wind around me, but my legs were burning, my feet were hurting, and I was starting to have trouble breathing the ice-cold air.

  Getting to that clearing and seeing the house and outbuildings in the distance almost made me cry with relief.

  “Thank God,” I said, pausing to adjust Zoe in my arms. “Zoe, are you still awake?” I asked the wrapped package in my arms.

  I heard a grunt in the affirmative and smiled a bit.

  “Good. We’re at a house where we’re going to be able to patch you up, okay? You’re going to be warm very soon, I promise.”

  Another grunt, and I took that as all the motivation I needed to make good on that promise.

  We dashed across the open area, and though it had to be faster this time than it had been the last time, courtesy of us being without the sled we’d been pulling before, I swore it took us at least ten hours to get to the front door of the house.

  And there we found another surprise. The front door had been scarred by what looked like an axe. There were deep divots chopped out of both the door and the frame, but the structure looked like it had held, regardless of the abuse.