The wind had been wrong all day.
It wasn't the usual cold, steady thing that cut through your coat and made your fingers go numb. This was heavier. Thicker. Like the air itself was holding its breath.
Jake felt it before the sky changed.
The forest went too quiet.
Not just the usual hush that came with snowfall. This was different.
Even the distant crows were gone.
By mid-afternoon, the gray sky had turned a deep, ugly blue. Clouds stacked up like bruises on the horizon. The wind picked up, tossing the skeletal trees until they groaned against each other.
Jake watched it happen from his camp, chewing on the last scrap of dried mushroom he'd found near an old log pile. It tasted like dirt and rubber, but it was food.
Sort of.
The makeshift lean-to rattled in the wind, one corner of the tarp flapping loose. He squatted by his fire pit — a sad, black ring of frozen ash — and tried striking the wet matches he'd scavenged last week.
One.
Two.
Three.
Nothing.
The wind snatched the tiny flames away before they even caught.
"Goddammit," Jake muttered under his breath.
He wasn't sure if he was cursing the matches, the storm, or himself. Maybe all three.
The cold was biting deeper than usual, his hands trembling even inside his pockets. The boots he'd taken from the dead man helped, but the wet ground had soaked through to his socks. Every step made his toes throb.
A distant rumble rolled across the sky.
Not thunder.
Not yet.
The storm was coming.
Jake grabbed his bag — a half-torn school backpack with one strap and a busted zipper — and started gathering what little he had. The bow. His two pathetic arrows. The broken knife. A handful of blackened tinder.
The shelter wouldn't hold.
It never did.
But it was better than nothing.
He glanced up at the darkening clouds and made a choice. He wasn't going to ride this out under a tarp. Not this time.
A storm like this meant water pooling under the lean-to, the fire never lighting, everything he owned turning to mud.
And cold.
Worse than now.
Worse than death, sometimes.
He slung the pack over his shoulder and started toward the old hollow tree he'd marked days ago. It wasn't much. A split trunk wide enough for him to curl up inside. But it would block some of the wind. Maybe keep him alive until morning.
The first fat raindrops started falling as he reached it.
Cold as ice.
They splattered against his face and soaked through his sleeves in seconds. The storm came in fast — a wall of rain that turned dirt to sludge and flattened the grass. The sound of it hitting the trees was deafening.
Jake ducked into the hollow, pulling his knees up to his chest. The damp rot smell inside was sharp, thick with mold and old leaves. He didn't care.
Water streamed off the tree outside, running in little rivers down the grooves in the bark.
Jake pulled the torn tarp around his shoulders. It helped, but not much. The cold crept in anyway, wrapping around his bones. His teeth started chattering, and his hands hurt worse than they had in days.
He hated the quiet moments.
They made you think.
And thinking hurt worse than the cold.
He thought about his dad. How he promised to teach him to hunt rabbits after the trip. How they'd sat around a campfire once on vacation, and his dad showed him how to sharpen a stick.
Jake had snapped it, trying to look tough.
His dad laughed.
Said, "You'll get it next time, kiddo."
There was no next time now.
Nobody left to laugh when he screwed up. Nobody to tell him how to aim, or what kind of tree to use for a snare. No one to say it wasn't his fault when he missed.
Jake had no one.
Just the cold.
And this tree.
And a bow that barely worked.
The rain kept coming, harder now. The wind howled through the trees, snapping branches like dry bones. A thick limb cracked off somewhere close, thudding into the wet ground.
Jake squeezed his eyes shut.
His stomach cramped again.
He'd eaten that mushroom too fast.
He didn't care.
The hours stretched long. He didn't sleep. Couldn't. The cold kept him half-conscious, his mind drifting in and out of old memories. His mother's voice calling him for dinner. The feel of clean clothes, dry socks. The smell of soup on a stove.
He bit down hard on his sleeve to stop the sound in his throat.
Because if he started crying now, he wasn't sure he'd stop.
By the time dawn came — pale and gray, like a sick thing — Jake was soaked to the bone. His fingers were blue. The tarp was half frozen. His teeth still chattered, but he was alive.
Barely.
That counted for something.
Didn't it?
He peeled himself out of the hollow, his legs unsteady. The forest looked like a graveyard. Trees split. Ground torn up. The little stream nearby had overflowed, dragging debris down the slope.
One of his traps was gone.
The lean-to flattened.
"Figures," Jake croaked.
He shoved his numb hands deep into his jacket and started walking.
Somewhere.
Anywhere.
Because what else was there to do?