Free Frozen Stiff by Sherry Shahan Page A

burning logs the smoke evaporated into the clouds.
    If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes
, she reminded herself.
    The water had risen another five or six feet since she’d been out of it. Luckily the terrain was steeper here than at their first campsite, and the tent was still high above the waterline. No sea life swam by, no otters, no porpoises. And few birds. Where were all the deer? There were more deer in Southeast Alaskathan people, she knew. She hadn’t seen one since they’d left Yakutat.
    Now that she was sure help was on the way she’d stopped worrying so much about the tide. She kept glancing at the fjord, noting that the icebergs had vanished. They must be melting or drifting around another bend. She strained to see that the kayak was safely tethered.
    “Where are the planes and helicopters?” she asked an hour later.
    Sitting sideways, she stoked the coals with a stick. Fiery sparks sputtered around her boots, quickly snuffed out by the soupy mist. “Wouldn’t choppers fly in from Juneau to search for a couple of kids lost in the fjord? And there are lots of bush planes in Yakutat.”
    She realized she was talking to herself. The sound of leaves crunching in the trees made her jump. “Derek?”
    Instinct pushed her fingers to one of the logs, guiding them around the rough bark.
If it’s a bear, I hope it’s a black bear. I’d rather face a black bear than a grizzly any day. If it’s the poacher, I might still need a weapon
.
    Slowly rising to her feet, she turned, letting her eyes focus on the vine-tangled woods, drab brown and muted green like military camouflage.
    “Derek?”
    Be quiet! Hold the log behind your back …
The instructions were coming from some other self, her survival self. Then, at the last second …
    Staring this long was painful, but she didn’t dare blink.
    She stood still, hands gripping the log. and waited.
    Derek moved into the clearing. “What’re you doing?”
    Cody tossed the log in the fire.
“Me?”
She noticed for the first time that he was back in his jeans, the cuffs tucked inside his rubber boots; three days and a fire must have been long enough to dry them. “You scared me to death. I didn’t know you’d left.”
    Derek rubbed his hands briskly over the fire. “I thought you were sleeping, so I went to the cabin.”
    “What for?”
    He pulled a T-shirt scrap from under his sweatshirt. “I found some berries.”
    She recognized the pink fruit, smooth and succulent. Salmonberries. “He left them, didn’t he?”
    Derek shrugged.
    “Did you see him?”
    She looked nervously toward Yakutat.
Where is the search party?
she cried to herself. Then she turned to Derek and said aloud, “What does he want from us?”
    He set the bundle in the dirt, the T-shirt becoming a platter. “
I
found the berries.”
    Cody thought he was lying but didn’t argue about it. She snatched a handful of berries and ate them quietly. She needed to build up her strength. The juice had an odd taste, not as sweet as usual.
    They aren’t ripe
, she thought, eating them anyway.
    Derek pulled a strip of brittle plastic from his hip pocket. “Maybe we can make you some shades.”
    Cody recognized the plastic from the cabin’s crude window. She turned it over in her hand. Maybe if she soaked off the years of grime, tucked it under No Fear, notched out a slot for her nose … She held it up to her eyes and looked at the flames; the light was definitely softened. But her vision was close to zero.
    “Maybe if I can scrape off some of the yellow,” she said, hoping she’d never need them.
    She was suddenly ravenously thirsty, as if her sunburn had spent the last three days sucking moisture from every pore. She lifted the cooled pot and drank what was left, guzzling each drop. Then she reached for the second pot, swirling it to cool the water.
    Derek polished off his half of the berries and dug into the roots. Boiled roots? He couldn’t have found roots and boiled them. So