And just like I’d thought, the wolves had been big fuckers. Their paws were way larger than a normal wolf’s. And deep in the snow, too. They’d been carrying some weight.
I was just glad none of that weight was me in their bellies.
Determined to keep it that way, I got out my knife and opened it up.
I might have been able to punch through a wolf skull or two with my ice axes, but that would have required too much precision. Better to use a razor-sharp blade.
Actually, the knife was nothing more than a steel safety blanket, and I knew it. If the wolfpack showed up again, I was fucked. There was no way I could defend against them with just a knife.
But maybe I could take down one of the bastards before they ripped my throat out.
That made me feel the tiniest bit better. And right about now, I’d take any amount of feeling better I could get.
First I guzzled what remained of the water in my metal water bottle. The only reason the contents were still liquid was because I’d had the bottle tucked inside my jacket all night, next to my relatively warm body.
Then I hungrily tore into a power bar. I’d used a lot of energy last night just staying alive. I wanted to eat every last thing I had, but I knew I needed to conserve my supplies until I could find another source of food.
I thought about what I should do: try to get back to civilization, or find shelter?
The civilization part was a gamble. I’d flown deep into Denali to get away from it all. As far as I knew, I was twenty miles away from the nearest roads, and even farther from any towns. Maybe there were some rangers’ stations.
But at any rate, there was no way I could cover 20 miles of snowy terrain in one day. It was impossible.
Well, unless I covered a lot of it by tumbling down a mountain.
Then I had to remind myself of something:
I wasn’t in fuckin’ Denali anymore.
I was someplace with two moons.
Which meant that there might not even be any fuckin’ roads nearby.
In fact, given that the only person I’d seen was a fur-wearing survivalist –
I stopped in shock.
If I wasn’t on Earth…
Then whoever I’d seen might not even be human.
Maybe it hadn’t been fur wrappings I’d seen them wearing… but its own fur.
An abominable snowman with a spear.
What the fuck…
I fought to calm myself down.
No need going down the science fiction rabbit hole, dude. Just stick to the facts you KNOW.
Two moons was enough to freak me out – I didn’t need to add to it by creating more weird shit to contend with.
BUT…
Considering I was in a place with two moons, and my nearest neighbor might be Bigfoot… there might not even be any such thing as ‘civilization’ around here.
Okay. So that made finding shelter definitely the top priority.
Last night had done a number on me, and there had been no wind or seriously sub-freezing temperatures. If it had dropped another ten degrees or so, it might have been a different story.
Shelter it was. I could always reassess after I’d made sure I would survive the next 24 hours.
I packed up the rope ‘belt’ I’d used to climb the tree last night, took off my crampons, and began moving stiffly through the forest. As I walked, I tried to figure out how the hell I could keep myself both protected from the cold and safe from the wolves.
Maybe I could build a platform up in a tree… but even if I could cover myself with tree branches, that wasn’t good enough for long-term survival. Too much exposure to the elements. One bad storm would wipe me out – and I was betting there were plenty of bad storms around here.
The shadows in the forest were too damn cold, so I walked until I was on the edge of the woods, in the zone of exposed snow between the trees and the mountain.
The sun was high enough that I could catch some rays over the treetops, so I pulled down my gaiter from the lower half of my face. The morning sun on my skin felt good, even if it was cold as a witch’s tit out here.
As I was standing there soaking up some solar energy, I looked at the sloped cliff face above me. Lots of cracks I could climb… maybe there was something up…
…there…
I almost did a double-take in surprise.
About 40 feet up, there was what looked like an opening in the rock face.
And there were plenty of cracks running vertically up the cliff, along with lots of jagged protrusions. It would be a cinch to climb.
I moved away from the cliff, back amongst the trees, to get a better look.
Holy shit…
It was definitely an opening. Maybe a cave. Because the sun wasn’t shining directly into it, and because of the angle, it was hard to tell how deep it went… but it might be just what the doctor ordered.
Take one cave and call me in the morning… IF you wake up, that is.
Only one way to find out.
I put my crampons on again, grabbed the ice axes dangling from my wrists, and started up.
Five minutes later I was at the lip of the opening, peering in.
It was definitely a cave, with an opening about four feet tall and eight feet wide. The entrance was fairly cramped for the first few feet – and then past that, the cave opened up. It was dark in there, but it looked like I might even be able to stand up inside.
There was a nice, flat surface that extended back into the rock a good fifteen feet. It might have gone back even further, but that was all I could see at the moment.
I was worried that some sort of two-moon-planet bear with
