No One Cries For The Lost

IV: On The Edge Of Darkness

IV

On

The Edge Of

Darkness

Day 4

I was right. I was right to horrifying and maddening levels. These wolves are bold. And they're even bolder than I thought they were. In my sleep they came. Their paw prints all throughout the dark parts of the crash site. And they consumed more of the fallen passengers. Feasted on more of the corpses. But worse...they took my brother. They took Alex...and they took Mike...and they took Natasha. They took their corpses. And I'm not willing to let them just leave with my family's bodies. My family gets a proper burial when rescue comes and finds them. Just as everyone else here should. And I will not be left alone here without them. If I'm going to die out in the Nunavut cold, I'm at least going to do it with my family by my side. Be they alive or not. At least I'm not alone in some sense of the word.

The fact that the prints are still fresh and the lack of their covering tells me that the wolves just recently took them. Maybe even within the last twenty to thirty minutes before I woke up. But thes now is still falling. And these prints are being covered up fast. I have to move, and I have to do it now.

I took the time to grab the survival pack out of the luggage compartment at the rear part of the plane's fuselage. I have no idea who it belonged to. But it now belongs to me. Something tells me I need more than anyone else here anyway. I've loaded it full of blankets, clothes, food, a book, my jacket, the first aid kit, a thermos full of plane fuel, a torch, a blue marker, duct tape,a lighter from the cockpit, a shiv, a sidearm from of the other strongboxes, Mike's 22. AR-7 survival rifle with an extra clip and my phone and book along with a grizzly bear man ultra magazine from Mike's suitcase and one of Alex's stupid non-fiction books from his suitcase. Maybe something in one of his animal books can help me with learning something useful about these wolves. And something from Mike's magazine can help me learn something useful about fighting these wolves. I don't know how far they've taken my family or how long it's going to take to get there.But one way or another, they're going to give me my family back.

I take an extra torch with me, one of the ones that I planted around the camp the previous night. Most of them have burned now to the point that they're mostly just small blackened sticks leftover from the big torches that I started out with. This one was the one I putout last night after facing my new furry friends. Not as burnt out as the others. I grab it and take it with me. I look out across the landscape. I have a long way to go ahead of me. It'll be a fifteen-twenty minute walk just to get the treeline in the distance alone.

I start off from the crash site. Leaving behind the sanctity of the plane's leftovers. And with it the possibility of rescue. I know I'm taking a chance on this, the chance that someone could come looking for me and everyone else and end up finding nothing but frozen bodies and charred and twisted debris. And I could miss my one chance at a rescue. But I have to take that chance. I have to do this...for family.

The bitter freezing winds start their relentless tandem assault on me as soon as I leave the safety of the shielding plane debris. It's painfully cold. And it hurts. I feel my nose go numb after only a couple of minutes. Then my lips...and my cheeks.And the rest of my face afterwards with it. Even in a hooded fur-lined jacket, the winds still work hard in their fervent attempts at breaking throw my wool defenses and trying to get to my skin underneath. And what's more, it somewhat works. But still, I'm not freezing yet, so at least there's some good in this.