A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe) by Martin Leicht, Isla Neal Page A

place freezing my butt off for who knows how long, and all you can give me is—”
    “Freezing your butt off?” Oates interrupts, as if missing my point entirely. “You’re cold?”
    “Well, no,” I say, realizing it’s true. I’m not cold, though I should be. It’s most definitely below freezing out, and when I look down, I notice that I didn’t remember to zip my thermal up all the way when I came outside. “I guess I’m, I dunno, adapting to the cold, or whatever,” I say. Even my toes aren’t that chilly, despite the dirty mop water that’s icing up under my laces.
    Oates looks at me for a beat too long before he starts talking. “Adaptation is good, especially in a place like this. It means you’re strong.” He rises to his feet, gesturing toward the cabin, where the dogs have finished eating and are tumblingand tousling with one another. “Take the dog,” he says. “Long ago, when the dog was still a wolf, he was a rogue, and lived or died by what he could catch. Then the wolf came into camp, learned to live with humans, and he changed. Adapted. Soon the wolf was a dog, and the dog helped man, and the man helped dog. The two species learned to coexist. They even came to depend on each other.”
    “So you’re saying I should learn to fetch slippers?” I ask. I’m a little confused by this whole monologue.
    Oates merely pats his leg for Pontius, who comes leaping over to greet him. “That which remains still cannot survive,” he replies, scratching the husky’s head.
    I’m pondering Oates’s Yoda-like proclamation when I’m shaken from my reverie by that same Crack-BOOM! noise off in the distance that I heard when we first arrived two weeks ago.
    “Are you sure it never thunderstorms here?” I say to Oates, turning back around. “Because it seriously sounds like . . .” I trail off.
    Oates isn’t paying attention to me. He’s staring intently past me into the blanket of white fog, in this way that feels vaguely ominous.
    Crack-BOOM!
    “Uh, Oates?” I say. “What is that—”
    He puts up a hand to quiet me, and that’s when I pick it up. It’s not the thunder-crack that’s got him spooked. There’s another sound underneath it. A very quiet whirring that grows gradually louder. I do my own ominous staring-off-into-the-creepy-white-fog thing, but all my pitiful human eyes can make out is a giant heap of nada.
    Until . . .
    Several dark splotches begin to appear out of the fog. Five splotches, to be precise. As they get within a few hundred meters of us, I’m able to distinguish what they are: five large snowmobiles, cruising over the snow toward the camp.
    “More supplies?” I ask Oates. “Why is headquarters sending more stuff so soon after we got here? And why didn’t we get to cruise in on snowmobiles?”
    “Because,” Oates says solemnly. And when I look up at him, his stony face makes all of his previous stony faces look downright expressive. “We don’t use snowmobiles.”
    “Uh . . .”
    “Get behind me, child.”
    A fierce chill hits me in the stomach. The Jin’Kai. They’ve found us.
    The snow instantly seems to grow a hundred times thicker than before. I feel like I’m stuck in one of those nightmares where you try to run but your legs won’t work as I try to push through the snow to hide behind Oates. Not that it will do much good. There’s at least four or five guys on each of the snowmobiles, and as tough as Oates is, I don’t think he’s going to stand much of a chance against twenty some Jin’Kai, who presumably are armed. Our only hope is if we can get back to the cabin and warn the others.
    Oates must have the same idea, because he’s slicing through the waist-deep snow to make a path for us away from the intruders. But instead of ducking inside the cabin, he suddenly shifts direction and heads to the dog kennel. A split second later he emerges brandishing a long pole, one of thesnares he uses to corral the dogs when they’re overly