Frozen Stiff Read online

  “The good news is my mom knows we took the kayaks, that we were camping in the fjord. The bad news is I cheated on our bet. I left a note.”

  He looked as if he’d just choked on a bunch of berries.

  “So we don’t need a fishing pole.” It sounded like an apology, but the note was going to save their lives.

  “I don’t have any good news,” he said. “Just bad news.”

  Cody waited.

  “I found the note … and tore it up.”

  The stage was set for a fight, a knock-down, drag-out brawl.

  Cody only swore once and tagged it with his name. It came out sounding like one word, dammitderek. “Why?”

  He shrugged, looking guilty and sorry. “I thought someone might find the note before we got to camp out. People are always going into your cabin.” Then he disappeared with pots in hand, heading for the stream.

  The mist turned to light rain, adding grayness to the already sullen sky. Shadows on the distant mountains deepened in the valleys. Up close the forest looked like what it was, a dense growth of trees and underbrush choking hundreds of thousands of acres. Farther away it was dead green, the color of lettuce forgotten in the vegetable bin.

  Cody slipped into her yellow slicker.

  No one knows we’re here, she thought.

  Except the poacher.

  Derek would continue to the stream for water; then he’d probably head to the cabin for nails: fishhooks. She should have gone with him, but she’d been so ticked off about the note.

  The fire kicked up when the drizzle lightened to an annoying mist. Fire and smoke were still allies.

  Would a search party start at the beach, on the ocean side? She and Derek had gone to the beach every day it hadn’t rained since he’d come to Yakutat. Their mothers knew the routine: hang out at Cannon Beach, a fifteen-mile-stretch with fifteen-to twenty-foot breakers that attracted surfers from around the world. Check out the fishing action, chat with the locals.

  How many days would it take before the canvas bags holding their kayaks were missed? No one used them this late in the season. She had another thought: Her mom might even think they’d been kidnapped.

  Now that Cody knew about the stranger, she couldn’t stay another night. They needed to pack up and get back in the kayak. No one could sneak up on them on the water.

  Cody sank into the brush behind the tent to pee. That was when it hit her that Derek now had two pots—and they didn’t have a second pot. One had disappeared with her kayak and the rest of the gear. But she’d recognized the second one. It was theirs—one of a matching pair purchased at Mustache Pete’s General Store in Yakutat.

  She’d just zipped her shorts when Derek returned to the clearing. She closed her eyes, waiting for them to stop stinging. Her eyes needed lots of rest; it still took time before objects farther than ten feet away were more than blurs.

  She had to ask Derek about the second pot. Maybe it had fallen out of her kayak when it capsized and had washed ashore.

  He was leaning into the tent when she moved up on him. “Derek? Where did—”

  She stopped.

  It wasn’t her cousin.

  Slowly the man turned …

  “What do you want?” she shouted.

  He didn’t answer.

  Make yourself big. Don’t let him know you’re afraid.

  It had worked with the bear.

  Her eyes were fully focused on the man twenty feet in front of her. She realized he was wearing the crude deerskin clothes Derek had described. But all she saw was his mask. A dark patch tied over his nose and cheeks, butting into a white beard. His eyes were dark and threatening.

  The man’s beard shook as if he was going to say something. Cody imagined a low, guttural grunt like that of a wild animal. That was what he looked like: an animal.

  “Get out of here!” she screamed, and stumbled backward, bumping into the woodpile. She was about to scream again when he clutched at his mask, as if he wasn’t sure he was wearing it. Just as suddenly he spun around and fled the clearing.

  Cody stood stiff and alert. She kept her eyes on the trees and reached down to the woodpile. Her fingers found a board studded with nails. A scrap from the cabin.

  If he came back, she’d let him have it, without a second thought.

  Her skin crawled under the slicker. She’d never seen anyone, anything like him before. He reminded her of the old circus poster in her grandmother’s garage. Faded and yellow, it touted Mr. Apeman, supposedly raised from birth by gorillas in a jungle.

  The mask … the fur gloves … it wasn’t that cold.

  He’s hiding something.

  Ten minutes ticked off, then twenty. Not so much as a breeze rustled in the trees. Still, he could be watching.

  Waiting was the worst part.

  She snatched a second board from the pile. I’m going to look for Derek.

  With two boards in hand she crawled over the fallen trees, tensing at every sound. Her boots crushed dead branches, splashed shallow puddles, sucked soft mud.

  The forest had been trampled into a path. Derek must have trudged back and forth many times in the past few days.

  The vegetation was a tight weave in some places, and the boards were awkward to carry. Heat from rotting debris seemed inconsistent with the drizzle. The steam bubbled up from the ground, working its way under her slicker and mixing with her nervous sweat. Sweat even dripped from No Fear.

  She constantly scanned the trees, expecting the man to jump out.

  What was he doing in our tent?

  Go check the cabin.

  Derek would have stopped to look for nails to make fishhooks with, after filling the pots at the stream. Her eyes still burned but she didn’t allow herself more than a blink. And her sunburned face was itching.

  The cabin looked different than it had three days before. Most of the old boards had been sorted into piles of scraps and usable wood. Derek’s handiwork. He must have thought they’d be stranded for a while. He’d even swept the floor. A crude branch broom leaned against the wall. The stack of skins had disappeared with the pile of bones.

  She gripped her boards more tightly and whispered, “Derek!”

  He wasn’t there.

  It was still and dark on the path leading to the stream, with barely enough air to breathe. Mosquitoes sprang from the ground and she batted at them with the boards. She shook her head to keep the whining bloodsuckers away.

  They had to get back in the kayak. She’d rather face calving glaciers and rolling icebergs than a monster.

  They could fish and trail a baited line behind the kayak. Clean it, eat it. Raw. Sushi was popular in California.

  She’d even sit in the rear seat if she had to, and rest her eyes. Derek would like that.

  She still couldn’t believe he had torn up the note.

  Cody stood at the stream, the boards hanging at her side. “Derek!” she whispered again. “Where are you?”

  Upstream, the outline of two pots developed edges as her eyes slowly focused. One was on its side, the other upside down. The appearance of the second pot hammered at her. Maybe her kayak hadn’t broken free on the rising tide after all. Maybe the bowline had been cut.

  “Derek!”

  No answer.

  She caught sight of her frightening reflection in a shallow pool. Her eyes were puffy; her face was scratched, dirty, and streaked with smoke. It looked as if the muddy ground had reached up and slapped her. Her hair was a mass of tangles springing from No Fear.

  She dropped the boards in the water, shattering the image.

  “Derek!” she called again.

  Silence.

  She knew the poacher had him.

  Cody rushed back to the campsite, trying to quiet the screaming in her head. The frightening words were like a hundred schoolyard bullies ganging up on her, until she shouted, “No!”

  This can’t happen to someone in my family.

  Derek dropped the pots by the stream to go
berry picking. That’s it. He’ll march back any second with salmonberries stuffed in his sweatshirt.

  But Cody couldn’t ignore the truth. The man had him. A setup. Baited with decoys: berries and roots. Tricked into trusting a poacher.

  Kidnapped.

  At the thought of the word kidnapped she stumbled down the slick granite boulders below camp. She slipped on loose rock and shale, making her way to the kayak, where she worked frantically on the stubborn knot.

  The line had been soaked by dew and drizzle, dried and soaked again, saturated with salt air, probably dozens of times in the last several days. The knot was hard and tight. She ripped one of her fingernails and blood dripped onto the knot. But it refused to give in. If she had an ax she could slice its twisted neck.

  The sun briefly broke through the sluggish gray sky. Above her boots and below her slicker blood was seeping through her dance tights. A sticky splotch the size of the knot in the bowline. Most likely a puncture wound, she thought, from a nail in one of the boards. She’d never even felt it.

  Pull yourself together! she told herself. Without an ax she couldn’t free her kayak. She needed to tend to her wound. And be more careful.

  Cody scrambled back up the incline, stopped, and panted. Mud clung to her boots, making them heavy and awkward. She couldn’t afford a mistake now. Mistakes were what had put them in this mess in the first place.

  Forcing herself to think more clearly, she snatched the torn T-shirt off the clothesline and wrapped it around her leg.

  Think! she insisted. Then it came to her.

  The poacher and Derek couldn’t have gone down the fjord as she had first thought. There weren’t any new tracks leading to the water. They must have gone by land. Then she remembered the abandoned pots on the sandy banks of the stream. That was where she’d start her search.

  Cody decided to pack up some of her stuff. Crawling partway in the tent, she grabbed her sleeping bag and started rolling it up.

  Her hands continued moving across the floor. Derek’s clothes and bag were gone. Even his map of the fjord. All gone.

  That was what the man had been doing in the tent. Stealing Derek’s stuff. He must have come back when she went to the cabin.

  She found another deerskin bundle, twice the size of the first one. Inside were heaps of jerky, seeds, berries, dried roots.

  Why did he leave me food?

  It’s another trick.

  “I will not cry.”

  Then, because she had never thanked Derek for taking care of her and feeding her, she broke down and sobbed.

  I’m going to find Derek and get him back.

  She packed the wild man’s food and the flashlight. The bear horn was already in place. She stuffed everything else in her daypack, including her slicker, and tied her sleeping bag to the outside.

  Cody looked around the clearing, taking in the details of the camp. Leaving was scary but she couldn’t think about that now. She’d already wasted too much time. The sky was depressing in its grayness, thick and damp. But she was grateful. Sunshine would have been utter torture.

  She pushed through mudholes and snagged her clothes on vines, struggling unsteadily with the heavy pack pulling on her back. She glanced at her watch: an automatic reflex; 9:30. At home she’d still be asleep.

  At the stream Cody stood over the two pots. They stared at her with hollow black eyes. Beyond the pots she discovered footprints in the damp sand. The wafflelike patterns left from Derek’s boots were the same as her own, only three sizes larger.

  The poacher’s prints, she noted, were flat. No insteps or heels. Just flat fur boots, probably fur from some animal he’d killed. She shivered.

  Then she moved to the edge of the stream, untied the T-shirt bandage, and washed her wound as best she could through her tights. Her thigh was sore from the rusty nail. She soaked her bandanna and bathed her eyes.

  She walked ahead. Suddenly the footprints stopped. Drizzle had washed away all signs of life. The prints picked up farther into the woods—not prints exactly, just trampled leaves and broken vines.

  Every step up the mountain moved her away from both the camp and the kayak, away from Yakutat. But closer to Derek and Wildman. That was how she thought of the man in skins now. Wildman.

  Cody steadied her gaze on the stretch of ground in front of her. One boot, then the other, following a trail to uncertainty.

  No. She cut her thoughts midstream. I’m following a path to certainty.

  Certain danger.

  Early in the afternoon Cody climbed a VW-sized boulder by clinging to heavy vines. Mud had washed over the rock, making it as slippery as owl manure, as the old-timers would say.

  The mud itself was a reddish clay, almost an exact match with the blood-stained T-shirt wrapped around her leg. Even her black boots were mud colored.

  Cody stopped at a bend in the trail. She closed her eyes a moment to let them rest and listened to her strained breathing. The point overlooked the fjord and she let her eyes slowly take it all in, surprised she’d hiked this far. The water was spread out below her several miles away. The inlet really did resemble a lake from here; the steep rock walls looked like stepping stones.

  She wondered why there weren’t any environmentalists in the fjord trying to rescue seals, porpoises, and other trapped animals. There should be National Geographic reporters and photographers, since Hubbard was named after the first president of the National Geographic Society.

  Surrounded by mountains and forest, she caught herself wondering about the altitude, a question one of the outfitters’ clients had asked. The obvious answer was sea level.

  I am losing it, she told herself, if I’m trying to remember stuff that basic.

  She shook her head and turned her thoughts to a trail that could’ve been made by either a bear or a moose. If Wildman lived in the woods, the route could be his. But trail was the wrong word. This was little more than a primitive path where underbrush had been stomped down.

  She rested a few minutes longer, wishing she could splash cold water on her face. Her bandanna was the same brownish red as everything else. Still, she held the damp cloth against her eyes. Worry weighed her down, making every step a feat worthy of applause.

  Clues came in the form of displaced leaves, which would have been slapped onto a boot, carried a few steps, then sloughed off. A puddle that had splashed mud a little too high on a tree. A vine broken at an odd angle. All signs of intruders.

  Another boulder filled the path. But this one was no VW. The same slippery marks painted its face, marks made by Derek’s and Wildman’s boots.

  The trail was nearly vertical here, a cliff face of unsettled shale. If the rock had handholds and footholds she couldn’t see them. Too much mud. Halfway up the hump in its back, a vine made a lazy S. If she could get hold of it, she was sure she’d be able to pull herself up.

  She took a running start and scrambled up the rock face, trying to swipe at the vine to dislodge it. She’d forgotten about her pack. The extra weight threw her off balance and she fell backward, landing hard. Her leg started bleeding again.

  I’m a complete mess.

  A failure.

  I can’t do this.

  The mosquitoes found her again. Bloodsucking demons!

  Then the sun broke through and the mosquitoes disappeared. Even though she had to squint against the light, the warmth felt good against her back. She tugged on the brim of No Fear until it shaded her face.

  I won’t quit until I’m dead.

  As if in response, a bird with a menacing wingspan circled high overhead. She strained for a better look but the sky was too bright for her sore eyes.

  They probably had buzzards in Southeast Alaska. The ugly black birds ruled California’s highways, thriving on roadkill.

  They smell the blood on my leg.

  She dredged the torn shirt in mud and rebandaged her wound. The mud felt cool, soaked up some of the sting. Then she set her mind on getting the vine.

&nb
sp; In the end it wasn’t that hard; a dead branch hooked the vine on the third try. Now that the vine was straight, it reached easily to the ground. She looped it through her pack, left the pack at the base of the rock, and started climbing. One toehold, then another. She kept hold of the vine in case she slipped. Near the top she glanced down at her pack.

  Big mistake.

  Flushed with heat, she broke out in a sweat. Her fingers felt strange and alien, as if they were gripping handlebars on a bike instead of strangling a vine.

  If I cry I’ll die.

  Her boot slipped. She dangled helplessly, trying to regain her footing. She felt as if she had just run the Los Angeles Marathon in place, all but the last stretch of its twenty-six miles. Only a few more steps until she crossed the finish line.

  She pressed her boots into the rock and moved up slowly, not daring to look down again—praying she wouldn’t slip and find herself on the ground. It seemed to take forever; near the end she was pulled up by thoughts of Derek.

  On top, she collapsed, so weak that she couldn’t stand right away. But she’d made it. Then she crawled away from the edge and glanced at her watch. The face was shattered, the hands stopped. She tossed it in the brush and pulled up her pack, the vine still looped through the straps.

  On this stretch of trail the undergrowth choked the path to almost nothing. Everything was so unbelievably green. Spruce and hemlock, and all kinds of shrubs she couldn’t name.

  Earlier she’d eaten some jerky and half the berries. Wildman’s food. She munched another boiled root. The roots were as sharp as onions and just as slimy. At least they were moist.

  Her mouth tasted metallic, like dirt and nails mixed together. Add a little fish jerky … She ran her finger over her teeth. Five days without a toothbrush.

  After eating she hiked on, encouraged by a print made by Derek’s boots, now a step behind the wide flat prints of Wildman.

  Her own boots slipped on her heels; her socks were matted with mud. Extra insulation, she thought, added warmth.

  Cody stopped.

  “No.” She shook her head.

  It wasn’t possible.