Project - 16 (23 page)

I was wearing my gloves and my beanie hat and my mouth was
covered with my neck warmer, but still the cold found ways in
despite my best efforts. The fire was burning well now and Riley
began to look a bit healthier as she sat with the warmth on her
face and another hot drink in her hands. I kept the pans boiling as
I worked. We'd need plenty of fresh water and with her pack gone it
meant boiling melted snow to fill the two empty bottles Piotr had
been carrying.

I was able to string my hammock tarp over the corner of the
barn to shield Riley from the worst of the weather but in the
morning I'd have to look for thicker logs to re-roof it with. We'd
be stuck here for a while - a week at least until the wound was
healed enough to risk walking on. Then what happened after that was
a mystery to me - it was beyond our immediate needs and not worth
thinking about.

“
What happened?” asked Riley as I began cutting the longer
branches into short lengths and piling them up near the
fire.

“
He got caught in the blast,” I said.

“
Oh my God,” she muttered. “They were after me and I couldn't
see it. They were tracking us and it was my fault.”

“
It wasn't your fault,” I said. “You didn't know. You couldn't
have known.”

“
Why? Why did they try to kill us?”

I carried on cutting and shrugged. “I don't have a clue. I
suspect that they were able to see the direction we were taking and
didn't want us to continue. They could have killed us in the house
but they didn't. They waited to see what we'd do. When they were
confident we were going to the bunker, they tried to take us
out.”

“
You think?”

“
Yeah. I do. Why? Hell, I don't know that. Maybe they don't
want us to find out what Alex and Saska are doing. Maybe they've
already been killed and the army were just tying up loose ends. I
don't know, Riley.”

We lapsed into silence with only the sound of the fire and
the rhythm of the saw blade to break it. Riley stared into the
flames and pulled my coat tightly around her.

When I was happy that we had enough fire wood to see us
through till the morning, I picked up my rifle and settled down
near the opening to our shelter with my sleeping bag around my
shoulders for warmth.

“
Are you worried they'll come for us?” she asked. “I've been
expecting them to come and confirm that we're dead. It's what I'd
do.”

“
Yeah, I thought the same thing but I’ve heard nothing. No
chopper. No more planes. It's not just that though. There's a lot
of your blood out there and it leads here. I don't want a pack of
dogs sniffing us out before I’ve cleaned up and built a wall across
this gap. We've already seen how hungry they are.”

“
What are we going to do? In the long term I mean.”

“
As soon as that leg's healed we're heading north to Newcastle
to try and catch a boat out of here.”

“
What do you mean?” she said.

“
We can't go home now. That's the first place they'd look if
they haven't bombed it too. They want you or both of us dead. The
best chance we have is to get out, maybe head for
Russia.”

“
Jesus Christ. It's that bad, isn't it?”

“
Yeah. It is.”

I watched the empty field in front of me and it almost looked
bright enough to be daytime. I was glad because if anything did
come for us at least I'd be able to see it. The stars were out in
their brilliance and if it hadn't been for the tragedy of earlier I
might have found it beautiful. Now I only saw his blackened body
and it began to haunt me. Had he died saving me? I'd never know. I
found his bag and took it back to my watch point. It was Riley's
pack now, I realised. It was all she had.

In the top compartment were the usual items you'd expect to
find - first aid, a torch, some matches and a tinder box made from
a mints tin. There were some documents in there in a zip-lock bag
and I put them to one side. In an outer pocket was his cook kit
with spoon and cup, alcohol stove with spare fuel and a flip lid
lighter. On the other side was a small bag with tent pegs, spare
cord and various bits of camping kit. In the main compartment had
been his tarp and sleeping bag, now with Riley, and at the bottom
in another plastic bag was a notebook and pencil. It was a thick
leather-bound book that looked hand made. The pages looked old and
well thumbed.

I opened it up and began flicking through it, realising that
it was a kind of journal dating all the way back to when he was in
his thirties. It was written entirely in Russian and had diagrams
and maps in it, crudely drawn but effective. There were three
photographs inside - one of Piotr with his wife sat on a park
bench, the other two of both his daughters in their school uniform.
I looked at them for a long time before putting them back inside
the ageing journal and in the plastic bag.

“
He kept a diary,” I said to Riley, holding it up. “It needs
to go back to his family.”

“
Yeah,” she said. “It does. Did he leave an address by any
chance?” I looked at his documents.

“
Yeah. I don't know where that is though. Someone can take us
there once we're across.”

“
It's a plan at least,” she said.

“
Yeah. I suppose.”

I dozed throughout the night but by morning nothing had come
looking for us. The fire was still going and I got up, stiff from
sitting in the cold and eager for a morning coffee. We were both
ravenous with hunger now, having missed our evening meal, but I
guess neither of us had been hungry then. I dug out two of my
instant mash packs and set both pans boiling again after filling
some bottles with the last lot of purified water. Riley prepared
the coffee in two cups - one being Piotr's.

“
I feel guilty using his things,” she said.

“
They're yours now. He doesn't need them and I'm sure he'd
prefer it if they didn't go to waste.”

“
I guess so.”

“
Let me look at your leg,” I said and she pulled back the
sleeping bag, exposing her pink skin to the cold. The pad I'd put
on it had a few splodges of blood coming through but nowhere near
as much as I'd feared. She covered it up again and
shivered.

“
Sore?” I asked.

“
Just a fucking bit!” she said.

“
That's the spirit.”

We had breakfast just as the sun was coming up, drinking our
coffee as the sky turned a brilliant blue like a still lake in
summer. It was beautiful and I could have sat there for the rest of
the day if the thought of a pack of wild dogs hadn't invaded the
fantasy.

“
I'd better get to work,” I said and got up. Riley's hand shot
out and grabbed mine, her cold skin against my own.

“
Be safe,” she said with a smile that broke through her pale
but still beautiful features. Her eyes had lost none of their fire.
My heart decided to skip a few beats.

“
I can't promise it, but I'll try.”

I emptied some of the things from my pack that I wouldn't
need - my spare clothes, sleeping gear, that sort of thing. Then I
gave Riley the rifle and spare rounds and piled up the last of the
logs beside her to keep the fire burning.

“
I'm going to get some more wood to block that entrance up
with,” I said. “The nearest trees are about a click south of here.
I'll be a while but try not to worry, I'll be back before it goes
dark.” She nodded and tried to smile.

“
I'll be fine,” she said.

I walked out into the daylight and straight away I missed the
fire. There was a strong westerly wind blowing and it tore at my
face and ripped through my clothing as I tramped through the snow.
It was up to my knees in places and by the time I reached the woods
I was exhausted and my leg muscles were burning with the
effort.

I wanted to limit the number of trips I'd have to make. The
first thing I needed to do was build a pulk to drag the logs back
to our shelter with. I found some nice lengths of pine the right
diameter which I cut and lashed together to from the main body,
adding smaller lengths across them to form the 'cradle' where I'd
put my load. Then I made a harness from paracord, doubling the
small diameter line so it wouldn't cut into my shoulders. I had a
quick go at dragging it around and it seemed to work, though what
it'd be like with a full load was another matter.

I began cutting as much as I could with my saw, annoyed that
I didn't have an axe to make use of the bigger stuff. There were
plenty of blowdowns that'd survived the summer and I dragged them
to the edge of the woodland to come back for later. One of those
could be fed into the fire without the need to cut it up into
smaller pieces.

I loaded up the pulk and set off back around midday. The sun
was high but fat white snow clouds were rolling in again,
threatening to empty themselves later on that night. It was hard
going, dragging the wood back to the shelter but when I got there
Riley had a hot drink waiting for me.

“
How's the patient?” I asked, panting from the effort. Riley
smiled and poured me a cup of hot water.

“
Itchy, sore but in one piece. It doesn't look like it's bled
any more.”

“
Good. I'll get started on the barricade.”

“
What about lunch?” she asked.

“
I need to crack on. Help yourself to something though - keep
your strength up.”

I began by clearing the snow from the entrance with one of
the logs until I had a reasonably deep trench to begin stacking
them up in. I wasn't going for anything elaborate - just a straight
forward palisade that'd be enough to put any roaming animal off
coming inside. I hammered in the longer, thicker logs that were
about five feet long with a heavy stone I'd found, using them as
supports for my shorter logs that I stacked on their sides between
them until it was waist high. At that point I ran out of logs so I
had another cup of hot water and set off with the pulk to gather
more.

When I got there I noticed a set of tracks off to the left of
where I'd been working and when I bent down to look at them I
realised they were deer tracks. It was a bit of good news - it
might mean that the dogs would leave us alone in search of better
prey. It also meant we'd have food ourselves.

When I'd loaded up the pulk it was getting dark and I was
feeling quite hungry. I set off back, eager to sit by the fire and
warm up my frozen feet. The work had taken my mind off things but
it was starting to exhaust me and I wanted to feel the warmth
again. I couldn't afford to burn out, not at this stage. The hard
work was coming and I needed to keep my strength up.

When I got back, Riley was trying to get up off the
tarp.

“
What are you trying to do?” I asked, worried that she'd rip
the stitches apart.

“
I need to go pee,” she said, leaning against me. I helped her
up, supporting her leg and led her over to the far corner of the
shelter.

“
Give me a minute,” I said as she shivered there. I cleared
the snow away and dug down with a branch, then turned around as she
slipped out of the sleeping bag to squat.

“
Well this is fucking awkward,” she complained, holding
herself over the hole by hanging off my shoulders.

“
Take your time, why don't you?” I said as her fingernails dug
into my flesh.

“
I'm done.” I turned around and she wriggled back into the
sleeping bag. Then I walked her carefully back to the tarp and sat
her down. I checked on the dressing and it was fine.

“
I'll sort something more hygienic out later,” I said. “But
try not to do it without me again. Please?”

“
Yes boss.”

I finished the barricade and added an entrance that I could
slide out when I needed to. Then I sat down on the tarp next to her
and rehydrated a meal. It was another of the ones I'd made myself -
a chunky vegetable soup that I ate a little too quickly, burning
the roof of my mouth in the process.

I slumped against the wall, exhausted and ready to sleep. My
muscles were throbbing, especially across my back and calves and I
knew tomorrow would be worse. Still, I knew that life was counted
in days out here and we'd managed another two. How many more we had
was yet to be decided.

“
Thank you,” said Riley out of the blue. I was half-dozing
from the heat of the fire when she said it.

“
What for?” I asked.

“
Saving me.”

“
I didn't really save you,” I said. “I just patched you
up.”

“
You saved me. I couldn't have done it myself.”

“
You're welcome then,” I said. “I guess that bullshit finally
came in handy for you.”

“
You're damn right it did. I just wish... ah fuck it. I kinda
liked the crazy Russian. I'm gonna miss him.”

“
Yeah,” I said. My eyes started to close. The flames licked up
and cracked and spat as the night wore on. Riley shifted position a
lot, trying to find a comfortable place but I could see she was
struggling. I got up and moved to her good side which was near the
corner of the two walls and dragged the tarp and my sleeping bag
into it. I slid my hands under her arms and helped her to sit
between my legs with her back to me, facing the fire so she could
recline into me. She resisted at first until she realised I was far
more comfortable than a brick wall.