Free Nowhere Wild by Joe Beernink Page A

taken. Tracks would be hard to find unless his dad had left telltales such as stone cairns, or perhaps markers tied high in trees. He wouldn’t have done that though, Jake reasoned. His father had expected to be back from Laroque within three weeks with a rescue party in tow. Jake could think of no good reason why his father hadn’t returned within a month. There were only bad ones—nightmare scenarios that curled him up in his sleeping bag, night after night, imagining the worst.
    Amos had, however, made good on his promise. He taught Jake everything he knew about living in the wild. Now it was Jake’s turn to find a way out, to find his father, and then to pick up the pieces of his life and live. The memories of generations gone before had been stuffed into his head during the long winter. That had been his grandfather’s gift to him.
    Jake would honor those memories by doing the one thing they had all trained him to do: survive.

CHAPTER 11
Izzy
(Winter)
    The thin buffer of trees and scrub barely held back the roaring wind. As the temperature dropped, Izzy and Rick had filled the cabin with firewood. The snow-covered wood left puddles on the floor as meltwater dripped in the relative warmth of the cabin—puddles that formed ice under the pile every night. They foraged for more firewood any time the snow let up for even a few minutes. The cold drove them back inside before frostbite set in.
    â€œSeems like this storm’s never going to end.” Izzy pulled her coat tighter and gazed out the frosted window. It should have been daylight out, but heavy flurries had turned the sky dark. The tinkle of snow pellets hitting the roof nearly covered up her words.
    â€œIt’ll pass,” Rick said. “Go back to sleep. There’s a reason bears hibernate in the winter up here.” The bed frame creaked as he rolled over.
    Izzy checked the meat on the drying rack. Two days before the storm blew in, Rick had killed another buck. Blood-soaked drapes of drying meat hung over the stove. A nine-point set of antlers crowned the door. That had been Rick’s project the previous day. Izzy thought the antlers were slightly gruesome, but wasn’t bothered by the meat.
    She wiggled her toes in her new rabbit-fur slippers. Next to the bed, a set of mittens made with deerskin and lined with more furawaited final stitching. A half dozen failed attempts at creating leg warmers lay in a discard pile next to bed. Even her latest creations weren’t elegant, but they were getting better, and definitely warmer than the thin gloves she had brought with her from town. Her original gloves, layered with high-tech materials and warm to minus forty, remained on the counter in the house where Angie had been killed. She flexed her fingers and closed her eyes, trying to shake off a memory dulled little by the passage of time.
    Time . How long had they been here? Izzy stepped back to the window. A gust of wind shook the cabin. She caught her reflection in the glass and pushed her hair back from her face. She would have to cut it soon. Angie had cut it for her last. Months ago, it seemed. September? She swallowed and counted the days. She’d lost track after they left Thompson. She could only guess that it was late November. Her birthday was November 11. Fourteen . She had turned fourteen without even noticing. She ran her hand over her cheeks, wiping them dry. Dates meant little out here. Survival was the only thing that mattered.
    â€œYou’re gonna freeze if you keep standing around,” Rick said with a deep grumble. “Throw a stick into the stove and put out the light. We ain’t got enough fuel to let it burn all day.”
    Izzy nodded, pulled two short, thick pieces of wood from the pile, and dropped them into the stove. On her route from the stove to the bed, she passed a draft that roared across the floor like a frozen locomotive. She set the lamp down beside the wall and pushed more