Chapter Seven
Isa hugged her windbreaker more tightly around her. Was Maya out there somewhere in this rain? Today had felt so much lonelier without her.
“It’s getting late. Maybe we ought to try to do some foraging before it gets any darker,” Nate commented beside her.
She cringed internally. Despite what she’d told him earlier, she had no desire to eat slugs, grubs, or raw, slimy fish fresh from the stream. But finding food was what she was best at out here, so she was going to do her damnedest to find them something for supper. “Let’s do it.”
“I’m going to turn over a few rocks and see what pops up.” He stepped into the stream, fully clothed. “Not like I can get any more wet, right?”
“Right,” she said with a laugh. She was soaked to the bone. Her sneakers squished with each step she took, and her wet jeans were heavy, cold, and starting to chafe her legs. “Okay, you take the stream, and I’ll poke around here on shore.”
She bent and began looking under rocks near the stream. The rain had faded to a drizzle now, but the damage had already been done. There was no way for her or Nate to dry off now and nowhere to build a dry shelter for the night. Her fingers were stiff from the cold, and the rocks were slippery as hell. She turned over as many as she could, finding nothing of interest.
Changing tactics, she wandered inland, lifting fallen branches and bits of tree bark. She lifted a big wedge of bark, and a shiny, brown salamander looked up at her. “Oh!”
“Find something?” Nate called.
“A little salamander, but I don’t think I could eat him.” He was too cute, and also too slimy… Her stomach turned at the thought of putting him in her mouth.
“He’d be more appetizing if we could make a fire and roast him first,” Nate said.
“Ugh.” She replaced the piece of bark, officially pardoning the salamander. A pine cone nearby caught her attention. Pine nuts. Now there was something that actually sounded appetizing.
A half hour or so later, she’d managed to gather three squirmy grubs and a handful of pine nuts—which were pretty easy to harvest once she’d figured out how to do it, although it would be much easier if the pine cones weren’t wet.
“I hate to say it, but I think we should save our granola bars tonight.” Nate sat on a rock beside her, water dripping from his lashes and coursing over his handsome face.
She pressed a hand against her empty stomach. They had four granola bars left, which meant he didn’t think they’d be rescued tomorrow. “Okay.”
“This might sound gross, but maybe we should eat what’s left of the dog food.”
She flinched. “But what if Maya comes back?”
“She hunts better than we do. It’s something I think we have to consider if we run out of food completely. For tonight, we can share the nuts and grubs and finish off the cattail roots in my bag. Don’t think they’ll keep much past tonight anyway.”
“The grubs are all yours,” she told him, dividing the pine nuts into two piles.
“You need the protein, Isa. Here.” He opened his bag, took out one of the remaining pieces of cattail, and wrapped a small piece of the stalk around one of the grubs, then handed it to her.
She stared at it as nausea rose in her throat. There was no way she could chew on a live grub, but if she swallowed it whole, she just knew she’d feel it wriggling around inside her stomach. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. Make Les Stroud proud.” He nudged his shoulder against hers with a smile.
“Oh God, fine.” She grabbed it from him, popped it in her mouth, gave it one quick chomp, and swallowed it down before she’d had time to think about what she was doing. A faint flavor of something like dirt lingered in her mouth. She gagged.
Nate handed her water bottle to her, and she washed it down gratefully.
“So how was it?” he asked.
“It tasted like dirt.” She poured pine nuts into her mouth, grateful to replace the dirty sensation of the cattail-wrapped grub with the somewhat bitter taste of the pine nuts.
Nate popped the other two grubs in his mouth at the same time, making a face at her as he chewed and swallowed. “Nasty.”
“Truly,” she said after she’d washed down the pine nuts.
Nate did the same, then unzipped his duffel bag and doled out the last of the cattail roots. She took one and bit into it. It had dried out after a day in Nate’s backpack, and she gagged again trying to swallow it. But food was essential to their survival, and she couldn’t afford to be choosy. Dutifully, she choked down her portion of the cattail roots. “So where are we going to spend the night?”
“Been thinking about that.” Nate looked thoughtfully at the stream before them.
“A soggy shelter sounds miserable.” She hugged her knees against her chest, struggling to keep her spirits from plummeting. Tonight was going to suck so bad.
“I think maybe we should keep walking a little more and see what we find.”
“Okay,” she agreed, even though exhausted didn’t quite cover the way she felt at the moment. She was so tired, her bones ached with it, but the thought of lying down in cold, muddy pine straw sounded about as appealing as walking some more.
She brushed her teeth by the stream before packing up to move on.
“Just a little farther,” Nate said, sliding his warm, strong hand into hers. “Maybe we can find someplace drier to camp for the night.”
“Maybe.”
They walked in silence as twilight deepened around them. She missed Maya, missed her family, missed her warm, dry bed…
“See that tree up there?” Nate said. “I don’t know the name of it, but we’ve passed a few like it today, and they seem to offer decent shelter.”
She looked where he was pointing and saw a massive tree ahead with thick branches. It was too dark to see it clearly, but she was too tired to care. “Sounds good to me.”
Nate led the way to the tree, and they ducked beneath its branches, crouching against the trunk. It was definitely drier here. They put their bags beneath them to keep from sitting on the cold, wet ground. Who cared at this point if their spare clothes got a little more wet? Everything in their bags was already soaked anyway.
She leaned back against the tree trunk, and it was such a relief to be out of the rain and off her feet that for a few minutes, she felt almost comfortable. Every now and then, a big, cold drop of rainwater would splash down on her head, but the tree—some kind of evergreen—provided decent cover.
“Okay?” Nate asked, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.
She nodded, her eyes already drooping.
“Wait.” He rose to a crouch and pulled the remaining food out of his duffel bag. “Just in case.” He walked out of sight, returning a few minutes later empty-handed.
“No bears tonight,” she murmured. Her stomach hurt from her meager supper of forest oddities, and her body seemed to have finally given out. As night fell around them, she nodded off with her head on Nate’s shoulder.
When she woke, the first thing she was aware of was the pain in her butt from sitting on all the toiletries in her backpack. She needed to pee. It was pitch black around them, so dark she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. And Nate’s hand was on her breast.
***
Nate woke sometime before dawn as Isa shifted beside him. The night around them was cold and dark, silent except for the splashing of the rain. His hand had slipped from her shoulder while they slept, coming to rest on her breast, the tight bud of her nipple pressing into his palm.
Under other circumstances, waking to find himself palming Isa’s nipple would have made him the happiest man alive. As it was, his ass was numb from sleeping sitting up. He was cold, wet, hungry, and sore as hell.
“You awake?” he asked softly, lifting his hand back to her shoulder.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Not exactly comfortable, is it?”
“No.” She sounded as miserable as he felt.
“What I wouldn’t give for a hot meal and a dry bed right about now.” He snugged his arm around her, hoping their voices would scare away any wildlife nearby instead of attracting it.
“And a bathroom,” she said.
“Yeah, that too.”
They huddled together, alternately dozing and talking, until the sky began to brighten overhead. As soon as it was light enough to see their way around, they crawled out from under the tree, eager to stretch their legs. They spent a few minutes freshening up, and he doled out granola bars for breakfast. Only two left. Not good.
“That was pretty much the worst night ever,” Isa said, rubbing her eyes.
“Yeah, it was.” And he really wanted to get them out of here before tonight. He’d like to go up another tree to scout their surroundings, but right now, everything was too wet to climb.
“I can’t spend the day in these wet jeans,” she said. “I’m going to have to wear my ripped leggings, and don’t you dare laugh.”
“I would never,” he told her. Couldn’t blame her for changing either. Wet jeans were a fate worse than hell. Despite the chill in the air, he changed into his khaki shorts, which were just as wet but ought to dry faster at least.
He’d never laugh at Isa in her ripped leggings, but it was going to take all his concentration to keep himself from checking out the intriguing flash of yellow panties exposed by the rip. If he had to prioritize his needs right then, getting her naked was right up there with dry clothes and food.
“It’s Wednesday,” she said as they set out. “Three nights in the woods is three too many. I don’t want to spend a fourth.”
A slight drizzle lingered in the air, but they were already so wet, it almost didn’t matter. They walked alongside the stream, swollen now from all the rainfall.
“At least the rain seems to have slowed the fire,” he said. Compared to yesterday morning, when the air had been thick with smoke, today he couldn’t detect any trace of it.
“Thank goodness for that,” she agreed.
Thick undergrowth slowed them down this morning. They had to wind their way in and out of the brush, sometimes detouring away from the stream to get around it. Isa was quiet. Her face was pale, and her eyes had lost some of their sparkle.
He needed to get them out of here. As soon as the sun came out, he was going to climb trees until he saw some sign of civilization, dammit. Around lunchtime, they stopped to refill their water bottles and rest for a few minutes.
“It stopped raining,” Isa said quietly.
“Yeah.” He sat on a nearby rock. “Keep your eye out for another tree for me to climb. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to go home.”
“So ready.”
They got to their feet and kept walking as the sun broke through the clouds overhead, bringing with it a much-needed boost in morale. The prospect of warming up and drying off was awfully damn motivational. They rounded a bend in the stream, and…
“Whoa,” Isa whispered.
Whoa indeed. The forest before them opened up into a wide, green valley. The stream splashed over a gentle waterfall, rushing out into the open space beyond. The mountains swept aside in either direction, revealing some truly awe-inspiring rock faces. After days of seeing nothing but dense forest, the abrupt change of scenery was both jarring and awesome.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“Sure is.”
“It feels like we’re the first people to discover this spot.” She laced her fingers in his.
“We might be.” He was doubtful that there were many spots left in the Sierra Nevadas that hadn’t been explored, but what did he know? He was a businessman, not a park ranger.
“As romantic as it is to imagine being the first people to stand here, I really wish there was a big, gaudy hotel out there interrupting the view.”
He laughed. “Yeah, me too.”
“Maybe we’ll find some new food sources here, though.” Isa led the way, scrambling down the incline toward the valley below.
“Food would be awesome.” Because he was running on empty right now. As they left the shelter of the trees behind, he felt the warmth of the sun on his skin for the first time since the crash, and it felt fucking fantastic.
“That feels so good.” Isa tipped her face toward the sky, arms extended.
“Sure does.” The creek was wide and shallow here, dotted with rocks, its edges gentle and easy to follow. Outside the creek bed, the valley was lush with tall grasses and wildflowers.
She looked up at him, her brown eyes bright. “Would it be okay to stop here for a bit and rest, you think?”
He turned to look in the direction they’d come. The sky was still gray behind them, but it looked more like rain clouds than smoke. Was it possible the wildfire had changed course or even been contained? “I think it makes sense. We’re visible here. We could make another SOS signal while we rest up and dry out.”
“Yes to all of that.” Isa unzipped her windbreaker and slipped it off. Then her gaze caught on something behind him, and her eyes went wide as saucers. “Oh my God, Nate. Look! A house!”