Frozen Stiff

Frozen Stiff by Sherry Shahan Page A

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Authors: Sherry Shahan
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dull. She couldn’t understand the words. She strained to hear Derek.
    Closer, I’ve got to get closer
.
    She let herself breathe slowly through her mouth and inched her way through ferns and rusty manzanita.
    The talking stopped abruptly.
    Cody stood still.
    She listened.
    A glacial wind whipped around the trees. The cold sapped her strength. The body used a ton of energy to keep warm, burned a ton of fat to make heat. She hadn’t had much fat to begin with. Suddenly she understood why people in subzero climates ate whole cubes of butter.
    Fire and smoke
.
    She crept closer
.
    Everything was suspended, as if the earth had stopped spinning.
    Then she saw it, about seventy-five feet away. An opening in the trees much like the clearing that had held their tent so many miles back.
    Derek was settled on a boulder near the fire pit, holding a stick over the blaze.
Breakfast
. The idea was slow to sink in. It seemed so ordinary.
He’s cooking breakfast!
    Just seeing him, knowing he was okay, gave her more strength than any amount of food, sleep, or warmth. She let out her breath, unsure what to do next.
    No one else was in the clearing; at least she couldn’t see anyone. She wanted to shout, but she didn’t dare. Not yet. She had to watch for a while. Watch
them
. Where were Wildmen?
    Derek was wearing a crude animal-skin poncho. His hands weren’t tied, but she couldn’t see his ankles. The fire pit blocked her view. She wondered who had been talking. Where were they now?
    She studied the shack on the far side of the clearing. Four sides with a wooden roof. A door of stripped limbs tied with rawhide. The shack had a few scraps from the old cabin. She recognized the same rotten, worm-eaten wood.
    It looks like it’s been here for years
, she thought.
    The smell of meat reached out to her. Fat dripped in the fire, spitting and sizzling. The void in her stomach begged for something fresh to eat. Derek pulled apiece of charred fat off the meat—chewed bite after bite, licked grease off his fingers, wiped grease off his chin.
    Cody swallowed hard.
    She heard the door creak before it opened. Derek turned his head toward the person backing out of the hut. One of the Wildmen. She touched the bear horn, an automatic reflex. If nothing else she could throw it at him.
    Wildman turned, set a pot on the fire.
    Where was the fur mask? The gloves? The wild mangy hair? This guy was dressed in the same skin pants and homemade boots. But no, it wasn’t possible.
    Cody closed her eyes, not believing the picture:
Her
hair was gathered in a neat braid.
    It didn’t make any sense. It made perfect sense.
    The second pair of prints, like Wildman’s only smaller—a woman’s boots. The woman was short but sturdy looking, her face smooth and round. Seashells were stitched in double rows along a wool poncho where the dark blue came together with the red material. Larger shells and bones dangled like bells from the top of her mukluks. Sealskin, it looked like.
    Cody recognized her as Tlingit, a member of the largest native population in Southeast Alaska. Half of Yakutat had Tlingit ancestry.
    Derek didn’t seem bothered by her presence.
Maybe it’s some kind of act. He’s just playing it cool until he can get away
.
    The woman’s mukluks rattled when she walkedback to the shack. Cody leaned closer, trying to see inside when the door opened. But it was too dark.
    Derek!
She willed him to look at her.
Derek!
    He poked his stick through another slab of raw meat without even a glance in her direction.
    Cody decided to sneak back to her pack, settle in, and wait. Maybe there was a little jerky left. She’d just started to turn when the chilling wind on the back of her neck turned hot and sticky.
    She knew without turning that Wildman stood behind her.

Grabbed from behind. It happened so fast that she didn’t have time to react. She kicked wildly and fought with what little strength she had left. But she couldn’t nail her target.
    “Get away

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