Outlasts

MONDAY - 9

The cold dark of the evening had arrived suddenly.

Like entering a haunted house the town sets up at Halloween.

Your eyes struggle to adjust from the daylight to the oppressive darkness of the interior, strain to see the scary things before they jump out at you.

But Louis didn't have to see the scary things to know they were there.

Scary things like dehydration.

Starvation.

Hypothermia.

Scary like the skin on Blue's shoulders sticking up for a second when Louis pinches it—the first sign of dehydration.

Scary like sleeping another night in the sled bag with Harry.

Oh, Harry.

"Whoa,"

Harry says in Louis' ear.

His arms are around Louis in the nest of the bag and they both hear the loud complaining of his stomach.

Louis actually feels it on his back.

"It's rebelling after that tea."

Without food, their bodies are having a harder time staying warm.

And tonight is much colder than last night. It's hard to guess how cold because he hasn't eaten so he's feeling it more than usual.

Even the furnace that is Harry's body is barely radiating the BTUs it did last night.

Go hungry—get cold.

Louis thought about making a proper lean-to shelter to reflect back the heat of the fire, but that seemed like so much work.

All of their energy should be used to move forward and get themselves out to a road.

They couldn't afford to waste any time or effort making a shelter when they already had one.

Louis shivers again and he feels Harry's arms tighten around him.

They've set camp near another slough. Plenty of water, but the dogs didn't drink enough for the energy they are putting out. And they're used to baited water.

Louis still doesn't recognize the land or the slough but he's guessing, since they haven't come to a road or main trail, that they've somehow gotten turned around far north of where he wanted to be.

Without a map, his compass doesn't tell them much. Louis doesn't need a compass to show where west is when he has the sun.

Calculations buzz in his head.

If they've been out there two days, possibly traveling twenty miles a day with the deep snow and slow speed, they definitely should have crossed Crook's road by now.

Maybe they're running parallel to it.

Louis scraped the inner bark from a bird and tried eating it.

Mom told him once that it could be used as emergency food because it's starchy. But Louis guesses he was thinking of potatoes when he heard starch.

It was nothing like potatoes.

Sort of like eating sawdust, and it was so bitter, it made his eyes water.

But he boiled some white birch twigs in a dog dish for him and Harry, and that had been okay.

Slightly sweet. And nice to have something warm inside his stomach.

The fact that he had just been joking the night before about eating yellow birch twigs hadn't escaped him. He truly never thought they'd be out there so long.