Wilderness
Survival – Night 2 - Continuous
Cain’s
body jerks backward so fast his breath tears out of him. The coyote’s
teeth clamp the fabric of his hood and rip,
dragging him off balance. Snow rushes up toward him, but
Lucille is already there.
She lunges, one hand
clamping onto the back of Cain’s coat. With a snarl of effort she
wrenches him forward, tearing him out of the animal’s jaws. The
force sends Cain sprawling to his hands and knees beside the fire,
sparks leaping at the sudden violence.
At the same instant her
kukri arcs upward, clean, vicious, its chipped serrations catching
the firelight before slicing across the coyote’s nose. The animal
yelps and recoils, blood spotting the snow.
The pack reacts instantly.
The sudden flurry of motion
near the flames startles the two coyotes that had been inching closer
from behind Cain. One skitters back, hackles raised; the other lunges
defensively, jaws snapping for Cain’s exposed side.
Cain throws himself
backward, rolling in the snow, fingers clawing for the spear he’d
left stuck upright near the shelter wall. His heart slams against his
ribs. His glove closes around the shaft and he rips it free just as
the lunging coyote snaps at empty air.
Lucille doesn’t get the
same breath of space.
The wounded coyote whips
away, and another bolts from the dark, slamming full-force into her
flank. Teeth sink into her sleeve, dragging her down, snow exploding
around her as she hits the ground. She twists, driving her forearm
between its jaws to keep them from her throat, even as she swings the
kukri blind and furious.
Chaos detonates.
Coyotes pour in, a shifting
ring of shadows and teeth, darting forward, darting back, testing,
harassing, overwhelming. Fourteen, maybe fifteen of them, large and
half-starved. Their yips and snarls meld with the crack of the fire
and the scraping of claws on frozen earth.
These aren’t shy
scavengers. These are predators accustomed to dragging down bucks
twice their weight. These are animals that challenge bears for
carrion. And two human teenagers, small, exhausted, underfed, are
nothing but opportunity.
Cain rises just in time to
jam the spear toward a coyote leaping for his chest. The point rakes
fur; the animal veers away with a howl. Another darts behind him and
snaps at the back of his leg. He spins and thrusts, the spear’s
reach barely keeping them at bay.
Lucille fights like she’s
being swallowed by the pack.
Pinned beneath the coyote
on her arm, she slashes upward with the kukri in brutal,
close-quarter arcs. Metal bites fur and flesh; a coyote shrieks and
reels back, another immediately taking its place. Snow under her is
trampled red.
Everywhere is motion, dark
shapes weaving in and out of the firelight, teeth glinting, eyes
flashing amber, white breath pouring from their jaws.
Cain plants the butt of his
spear in the snow and drives it forward, impaling one through the
shoulder. The impact shudders down his arms. The coyote thrashes
around the shaft in a frenzy of blood and snow, and Cain has to brace
with both hands just to wrench the weapon free.
Lucille kicks a coyote off
her hip, rolls to her knees, and slices open another that rushes her
from the side. Blood spatters across her cheek as she rises, shaking,
panting, feral.
And still the pack circles.
Still they test. Still they charge.
The two teenagers stand in
the swirling firelight, backs not quite touching, blades and spear
flashing as fifteen starving predators close in for the kill.
Another coyote lunges for
Cain, a blur of teeth and snow. This time he meets it clean, wooden
tip slamming into its chest with a jolt that rattles up his arms. He
drives forward, boots skidding, and forces the animal backward. Its
claws scramble uselessly on the ice before it crashes into the
firepit.
The beast’s scream rips
through the night as flames crawl up its fur. Cain tries to wrench
the spear free, tries to hold it down, but the coyote thrashes
violently. The fire sputters under the chaos, embers scattering, and
in a burst of sparks the creature flings itself away, burning,
shrieking, and vanishes into the dark.
The flame dies with it.
Sudden blackness folds over
everything.
Cain’s breath catches. He
staggers back, eyes wide, blind except for the vague sheen of
moonlight off snow. The shadows become alive, shifting, circling,
closing.
Lucille can see. Not
clearly, not comfortably, but enough. Silhouettes flicker at the
edges of her vision, low and fast and many.
Cain bumps into her spine,
panic in the tight rasp of his voice. “I can’t see, Lucille, I
can’t see anything.”
“Stay close,” she
whispers. Her stance lowers, kukri poised, every muscle trembling
with cold and adrenaline.
He tries. He really does.
It doesn’t matter.
The pack surges,
coordinated and merciless, dividing them with practiced ease. Cain
swings blindly at the rush of snow and fur. The haft of his spear
cracks against a skull, sending one coyote tumbling. Another leaps in
and he thrusts low, the point catching its collarbone and flipping it
head-over-paws, pinning its head briefly into the snow before it
writhes free.
Lucille fares worse.
She slashes open a muzzle,
hot blood spraying across her forearm, only for another shape to slam
into her flank. She’s ripped off her feet, crashing into the snow.
Her kukri spins from her grip, skittering across ice, landing just
out of reach.
Then the weight hits her.
Snarling, snapping, biting. A second coyote piles on. Teeth tear
through her fatigues like paper, finding flesh beneath, hot, bright
pain exploding under every bite. She twists, kicks, tries to protect
her throat.
Cain isn’t doing much
better. One coyote clamps onto his arm, shaking savagely, dragging
him off-balance. Another sinks teeth into his ankle and yanks. He
stumbles but refuses to fall, driving the butt of his spear into the
attacker’s side before ripping his arm free, skin torn and blood
hot on the snow.
But the pack only tightens.
More shapes. More eyes. More breath.
The night becomes a frenzy
of screams, snarls, and steel. The dark swallowing almost everything.
Except the red.
Lucille resorts to the only
thing she can do. Claw. Tear. Bite. Her fingers seize the nearest
coyote’s ear and wrench hard, twisting its head sideways until she
feels cartilage tear under her nails. The beast shrieks, thrashing to
escape, but its violent jerk rips itself free, leaving Lucille with a
streak of hot blood across her palm.
Another coyote lunges at
her flank, she clamps her jaws around its foreleg. Fur fills her
mouth, coarse and bitter, but she bites down anyway, tasting iron.
The animal yelps, kicking madly, trying to rip its limb from her
teeth.
Then an opening, a throat,
exposed for an instant. Lucille surges up. She bites deep.
Her teeth sink into flesh,
and despite the suffocating wad of fur, she clutches and tears until
the throat gives way. Blood floods her mouth, hot and metallic. The
coyote gurgles, staggers, tries to backpedal but only makes it a few
steps before collapsing in a twitching heap.
Lucille spits blood,
scrambling across the churned snow. Her hand slams onto the kukri’s
handle. She spins just as another coyote springs at her, she drives
the blade into its ribs, dragging it out in a vicious arc that spills
the beast across the snow in a dark spray.
Meanwhile, Cain is losing
ground. A coyote drags at his arm, teeth locked just above his elbow,
shaking savagely. Another clamps onto his ankle and yanks, dragging
him lower, forcing him onto one knee. He can barely keep his grip on
his spear, his vision a blur of shifting shadows and gleaming teeth.
But he knows the sound of a
lunge. He hears the rush of paws over snow and thrusts blind. The
spear cracks into a chest, punching through muscle. The coyote howls,
kicking wildly as Cain forces it back, then rips the spear free and
whips the butt end behind him.
Luck, instinct, both. The
haft catches another coyote in the face. Cain shoves hard, slamming
the spearhead upward into its eye. A burst of hot blood splashes
across his knuckles as the animal crumples.
He turns again, panting,
half-blind. One more shadow leaps at him, he stabs through it. Then
another. He can’t tell if he’s hitting fur, snow, or nothing at
all. His world is breath and screams and the crunch of teeth on bone.
But eventually, the pack
breaks.
One coyote yelps, another
whimpers, another limps backward dragging a bloodied paw. Their
formation fractures. Their rhythm falters. Too many dead. Too many
wounded. The big prey is not falling.
The surviving coyotes
scatter. Tails tucked. Ears flat. They vanish into the tree line,
disappearing between the trunks one pair of glowing eyes at a time.
And then, silence.
Lucille lies sprawled in
the snow, steaming blood soaking her clothes, her breaths sharp and
fast. Cain kneels in the mess of trampled snow, arm throbbing, ankle
burning, spear trembling in his grip as the reality settles over
them: They are alone in the dark. Alone in the cold. And the night
around them is very, very quiet.
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Cain’s breath fogs into
the darkness, thin, ragged, shivering despite the heat still flaring
painfully through his veins. The spear trembles in his hands as he
forces himself upright, forces his head to turn, scanning blindly for
movement he cannot see. Every inch of him throbs. Blood, his and
theirs, sticks his sleeves to his arms.
The silence presses in,
thick and wrong. Bitter. Victorious in a way that feels hollow.
A sharp hiss cuts the
night. Cain jolts, whipping toward the sound so fast he nearly loses
his balance. “Lucille!” His voice cracks. He stumbles forward,
boots slipping in churned-up snow soaked with shadowed red. “Lucille,
where—”
“I’m here!” she gasps
back.
He follows her voice,
half-running, half-staggering. Her silhouette finally registers,
small, hunched, shaking. She pushes herself upright but only reaches
her knees before collapsing forward with a trembling grunt.
“Damn it, Lucille—”
“I’m fine,” she
snarls, breathless, lying through her teeth. “Just—just give me a
second—”
But even in the dark he can
hear it, the wet patter of blood hitting snow. Her breath catches on
something sharp, her whole body curling inward around the pain. Cain
drops to her side, hands searching for her shoulder, her arm,
anything to anchor himself in the smothering dark. His fingers brush
her sleeve and she flinches, not from him, but from pain radiating
beneath the shredded fabric.
“Shit, no, no, we need
light. We need fire. It’s freezing. Lucille, it’s gettin' colder.” His teeth chatter mid-sentence. Now that the adrenaline
ebbs, the night’s bite crashes in, merciless, immediate. The cold
feels like it’s reaching inside him, clawing through the wounds he
didn’t even realize he had.
Lucille sucks in a ragged
breath, lifting her face toward him though he can barely see her
outline. “Cain… we need to get the fire back. Now.”
He nods even though she
can’t see it. “I know. I know.” His breath shudders. “Stay
with me, I’ll-I'll get somethin' burnin', Just don’t move too
much, okay?”
But the darkness is deep,
and the cold is deeper.
Cain focuses on the fire
like it’s the only thing keeping them alive. He drops to his knees,
blindly clawing through the shelter for whatever scraps of wood and
tinder he can grab. Everything aches, everything burns, and his
fingers feel half-numb as he drags the bundle back to the dead fire
pit.
He fumbles through his
pockets for the firestarter. Too many pockets. Too much panic. His
breath rasps, sharp and uneven, the cold sinking deeper now that the
adrenaline is bleeding out of him. When his fingers finally close
around the metal, he exhales a broken curse and starts striking it
against the tinder. Sparks spit, but refuse to take.
“Just... just hold on,”
he mutters. “I’ve got it. I’ve got it…” Lucille doesn’t
answer. He keeps talking anyway, the words for himself more than her,
the silence around them far too heavy.
Behind him, Lucille shifts.
She presses a palm against the ground and forces herself upright,
only managing a kneel. Her kukri is still clenched so tightly her
knuckles are the only pale thing on her blood-slicked hand. Her
breath rattles; each inhale sounds like it hurts.
She drags herself to Cain’s
side, the movement a painful crawl. She puts her free hand, wet,
warm, trembling, on his shoulder. He flinches at the touch.
Lucille hisses through her
teeth. “Relax… Cain. Take your time.”
Her voice is thin, frayed,
but steady enough to cut through his panic. The tinder still refuses
to catch. The cold presses in. And they both know they don’t have
time, yet she tells him anyway. Take your time.
Cain takes another breath,
slow, deliberate, letting it burn its way down his throat. His hands
stop shaking just enough. He drags steel across stone.
Spark. Spark.
Spark.
Finally the tinder blooms
with a soft orange glow. Cain bends over it, cupping it from the
wind, blowing until the glow turns to flame. He jams it under the
waiting wood, breath held. Ignition.
A thin ribbon of fire
crawls up the bark. Another breath from Cain feeds it, and the flame
finally takes, climbing into something real. He sags with relief, a
tiny, breathless laugh slipping out of him. He tosses another piece
of wood on, then another, building the fire back into a proper
barrier against the dark.
Lucille, still kneeling,
still gripping her blood-slick kukri, reaches one hand behind the
small of her back and rips the IFAK from her belt. She drops it
between them, flipping it open with clumsy fingers.
“Let me see,” she
whispers, no softness, only urgency.
“No,” Cain immediately
counters, turning toward her, “you first. You’re worse.”
Lucille shakes her head
sharply. “Cain. You’re bleedin' everywhere.” She tries to force
more command into her tone, but her voice wavers. “Give me your
arm.”
He doesn’t. He reaches
toward her shoulder instead, where the fabric of her jacket hangs in
tatters, soaked through with blood. “Lucille, you need—”
She growls, actually
growls, and grabs his wrist hard enough to make him wince. Her eyes
burn brighter than the firelight.
“You. First.”
Her breathing is ragged.
Her face is pale beneath the blood. But her hands move, determined
and practiced, dragging out gauze and disinfectant with a snap of
fabric and plastic.
Cain hesitates. The fire
crackles, casting light on the snow, on the blood, the pawprints, the
bodies cooling in the dark beyond.
He meets her eyes. They’re
steady. Fierce. Unyielding. “…Fine,” he mutters. “But after
this, it’s your turn.”
Lucille snorts, a breath of
a laugh through clenched teeth, then reaches for his wounded forearm.
Cain freezes. The fire
crackles, growing, its orange light licking across the snow, and
across Lucille.
Now that he can truly see
her, his breath leaves him in a single, hollow exhale.
Blood. Everywhere.
Splattered across her sleeves, smeared across her throat, soaking
into the wool of her shirt. He can’t tell which wounds are hers,
which stains belong to the coyotes she ripped apart with her bare
teeth.
The tears in her clothing
reveal pale skin beneath, sliced open in a dozen places. Snow melted
by the heat of spilled blood runs in thin red rivulets down her
sides.
He reaches for her coat,
hands trembling. “Lucille… take this off. I need to...just let me
look.”
She tries to turn away from
him, voice hoarse. “Cain, your arm is pouring, take care
of yourself first.”
He doesn’t listen. He
can’t. He works at the blood-slick zipper until it finally gives.
Lucille’s protest is little more than a breath now; she’s too
drained, too hurt to fight him.
Cain eases the jacket off
her shoulders. The fabric peels away with a sound that turns his
stomach, frozen blood unsticking from cloth.
Her long-sleeved shirt
underneath is torn, punctured, clinging wetly to her skin. Bite
marks, some shallow, others deep enough to expose raw flesh, run
along both arms. Her ribs are covered in jagged claw slashes. Her
shoulder is a blooming mess of bruises and teeth.
And then he sees it. Her
left hand. Or… what’s left of it. Her pinky is gone. Not
a clean cut, ripped. A ragged stump, already clotting but still
oozing.
Cain’s breath catches.
Heat stabs behind his eyes.
“Lucille,” he whispers,
voice cracking as he cups her trembling arm, careful not to press too
hard. “Gods… Lucille…”
She swallows, jaw clenched
so tight the muscle jumps. “It’s fine,” she rasps. “I don’t…
I don’t need all of them.”
But he sees the faint
shiver in her shoulders, the tight hitch in her chest each time cold
air touches a wound, pain she refuses to admit, refuses to give voice
to.
Her eyes flick toward him,
wild and sharp in the firelight, as if daring him to pity her. He
doesn’t. He just kneels there with her, the fire crackling, the
night still and heavy around them, and he sets his jaw with a resolve
as fierce as hers.
“No,” Cain says quietly
as he lifts the IFAK with bloodstained fingers. “Come here, let me
patch you up.”
And this time, she doesn’t
argue. Only watches him, breath shallow, as he begins the grim work
of piecing her back together in the flickering light of their
struggling fire.
Cain gently takes one of
Lucille’s arms in both hands, steadying her trembling limb as he
digs into the IFAK. His fingers are clumsy with cold, but determined.
He finds the antiseptic jar, twists it open with his teeth, and
begins working; quick, diligent, careful. The sting makes Lucille
flinch, but she doesn’t pull away. He scrubs the blood from her
skin, cleaning each gash with slow, deliberate strokes. Then he wraps
gauze around her entire forearm, layer after layer, until the
bleeding slows. He repeats the process on her other arm, hands
shaking, breath visible in the frigid air.
Cain’s breath fogs the
air as he stares at her hand, what’s left of it. His jaw sets. He
hates this. Hates every part of it. But he can’t show it. If he
cracks now, she will too.
He hesitates before
reaching for her hand. She watches him, silent, jaw tight. They both
know they won’t find the finger. They both know how much it’s
still bleeding.
His stomach turns at the
thought. “…We might have to cauterize it,” he says, voice low.
Apologetic. Hating every word.
Lucille breathes in once.
Thinks. Then nods, sharp, decisive. “Do it.”
She shoves the kukri’s
end deep into the heart of the fire, the metal already reddening. Her
face stays still. Focused. The only sign of pain is the slight tremor
in her thigh where she braces her posture.
Cain forces himself to
move.
He lifts her left hand,
gently, so gently, trying to ignore the pulsing flow of blood from
the torn stump where her pinky once was. She hisses, teeth snapping
together, a sound somewhere between anger and agony. He murmurs an
apology, but she shakes her head hard. No time for that.
Cain grabs a strip of
gauze, wraps it once around her wrist to help slow the bleeding until
the metal heats fully. His fingers shake. He tries to hide it by
tightening the wrap.
The kukri’s tip glows a
bright, furious orange.
Lucille pulls her hand
closer to herself in reflex. Her breathing quickens. Cain steadies
her arm with one hand and reaches for the kukri with the other. It
feels like holding a burning sun even with the thick gloves
insulating him. His stomach rolls.
“It’s okay,” Lucille
says, voice thin. “Just...just do it.”
He swallows hard. Nods. “On
three,” he says.
Lucille shakes her head
again. “One.”
Cain doesn’t hesitate. He
presses the glowing metal against the open wound.
Lucille screams, raw,
guttural, animal. Her entire body convulses, spine arching, boots
gouging trenches in the blood-stained snow. Cain nearly drops the
kukri, but he forces himself to hold it there, forces himself to
watch her flesh sear shut, forces himself to endure the smell of
burning skin.
He pulls the blade away the
moment the bleeding stops.
Lucille collapses forward,
catching herself on her good hand, panting violently. Cain drops the
kukri into the snow where it hisses and sputters. Then he catches her
shoulders before she faceplants.
“It’s done,” he
whispers, barely audible. “It’s done.”
Lucille trembles. Sweat and
tears mix with the blood smeared across her cheeks. But she nods, jaw
grinding as she forces herself upright again.
“Your turn,” she rasps.
Cain blinks. “Lucille,
you can barely—”
“No.” Her eyes lift to
his, feral with stubbornness. “Your turn.”
The fire crackles, casting
long shadows across the shredded snow around them, blood-slick,
paw-printed, littered with the bodies of dead coyotes.
They are alive. Barely. But
alive. And they still have to survive three more days.
Lucille does the same thing
for Cain, cleaning every wound with the antiseptic, scrubbing away
the blood as gently as her trembling hands allow. Cain hisses at the
sting but doesn’t pull away. She wraps the bandages around his
arms, his shoulder, across his ribs where teeth nearly tore through
him. When she finishes, she lets out a slow, shaking breath,
exhausted and pale.
They sit together before
the fire, shoulders brushing. Lucille’s pinky-less hand trembles in
her lap, wrapped tight in fresh, white bandages already spotting
through with red. She leans forward, picks up the skewered fish,
brushes the snow off with her wrist, and plunges the sticks back into
the ground so the heat can rewarm them.
For a while, neither
speaks. The fire crackles. The wind sighs. Their breaths come uneven
and tired.
Then Lucille snorts. Just a
tiny sound at first. But it breaks something in her, the tension, the
fear, the pain. A small laugh escapes. Then another. She tries to
swallow it down, but the sound only grows, spilling out of her in
unsteady, breathless bursts.
Cain turns to her, eyebrows
raised, utterly lost. “What—?”
But that only makes her
laugh harder. Cain’s own laugh catches against his raw throat,
half-disbelieving, half-hysterical. Soon it's both of them, laughing
with the fire casting wild shadows across their torn clothes and
bloodstained skin.
Lucille wipes her eyes with
her wrist. “We did it,” she chokes out. “Cain, we...we actually
killed coyotes.”
Cain shakes his head,
wheezing a breathless laugh. “I know. I know. I can’t believe...
I mean... shit.” He looks out toward the dark tree line where their
battle had raged. “How many did you get?”
Lucille follows his gaze,
rubbing her palm over her mouth as she squints into the dark. “Looks
like… two,” she says.
Cain grins faintly. “I
had three.”
They both fall quiet again,
but this time the silence feels earned, a fragile, victorious thing.
The fire burns steady. The fish warms. And for a moment, despite the
blood, despite the cold, despite everything…they’re alive.
