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Amazon
Wodke Hawkinson
Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: Amazon Digital
Pages: 319
Copyright: August 11, 2011
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
Brook is taken captive in a botched carjacking. Her nightmare begins.
Brook seems to have a good life, until she is abducted during a carjacking and held captive in a remote mountain location by three criminals. After days of torment, she escapes her captors only to end up barefoot, badly injured, and hopelessly lost in the Colorado wilderness at the beginning of a harsh winter.
Excerpt
She couldn't go back to the road, even if she could find her way. For all she knew, Jase might be patrolling the area, just waiting for her to be foolish enough to return to the wrecked car. How long would she have to be out here? How would she survive? Panic rose up and nearly choked her.
Taking slow, even breaths around the jagged pain in her side, she struggled to gain control over her emotions. Think for a minute! Just think! Her brain scrambled to collect everything she knew about survival in the wild, and it wasn't much. She had a niggling concern that eating snow was bad for a person, but becoming dehydrated would also be a problem; she would eat snow if she had to. Food was another matter. However, she reasoned, the worst part of her predicament was the cold. She had no idea how far she had traveled or how she could ever climb back up to where she was before she had fallen. The steep, brush-choked incline continued in both directions as far as she could see. Besides, it would be too risky to go back for her ‘shoes’. She would have to continue on bare feet.
Tears ran down her cheeks at the thought of putting weight on her damaged feet, but she tried to stand anyway. Pain soared up her legs and she slumped back to the ground. A fresh, sharp sting issued from the back of her thigh. She turned her leg and found a large gash emitting a steady flow of blood. She wiped her hand on her shirt and turned her eyes back to the slope. Unable to go up, unable to walk, she pulled herself along the ravine, tugging the shirt sleeves down over her hands to protect them.
She had lost the stream and was thirsty again, and the cold had reclaimed her. She took small mouthfuls of snow, but it did nothing to ease the parched feeling in her mouth and throat, and she had started to shiver again. It was another half hour before she found a shallow rain puddle in the hollow of a large flat rock. She broke through the paper-thin crust of ice over the water and drank deeply before moving on.
The woods grew denser, and the ground became riddled with knobby roots and half-buried stones. Her progress was slow and painful. After a while, she came to a game path, hard packed dirt with few rocks. Brook thanked God for giving her a way relatively clear of obstacles. She crawled onto the path, brushing stray branches and rocks from the ground as she went, making her way steadily onward, putting more and more distance between herself and the wrecked car. The shirt she wore was now wet and clung to her skin like a layer of frost.
Snow began to accumulate under the wide-spreading branches overhanging the trail. But, so far it was just a light covering, and for this she was grateful.
After a while, she tried to stand again, pulling herself upright with the help of a tree. Pain radiated up her legs, but her feet were numb from the cold and she found she could stumble along at a slow pace. It seemed she had been wandering for hours. Providing she hadn’t been going in circles, she calculated that she should be miles from the car by now. But she could see no help in sight and no foreseeable end to her misery. She had heard that freezing to death was a peaceful way to go. Brook couldn’t imagine how that could possibly be true as she stood quaking in the frigid air. She assumed she would eventually just lie down and close her eyes, and then it would all be over. She would just fall asleep and never wake up. Tears stung her eyes again. She didn’t want to die! Keep moving, said a small voice in her head. Keep moving.
Her feet grew heavy and her limbs ached with exhaustion. Brook realized she was probably traveling further away from any possibility of help, but she had no idea which way to turn. There was nothing but trees in all directions. Trees and more trees. And she was so tired. She focused on the mechanics of taking a step. First lift one foot. Then set it down. Then lift the other. Set it down. Moving very slowly now, she trudged on.
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