You Only Die Twice - By Christopher Smith Page 0,27

saw deer tracks, but nothing substantial. Nothing that looked as if many animals had traveled a similar path.

Often, she stopped and strained to hear something, but there was nothing. She checked the slope of the land and saw that she was going downhill. Just slightly, but still, she was walking downhill, which is where a water source naturally would flow.

There has to be something, she thought.

But in the end, when the sun was getting too low along the horizon for comfort, Cheryl Dunning knew she’d been beat. She wanted to cry when she came to the realization that she couldn’t have water, something she’d always taken for granted. She wanted to scream in outrage at what was happening to her, but she couldn’t. Her father would expect her to remain strong. Her grandfather, a firmer man raised on a farm, would demand it of her.

One day without water wouldn’t kill her, but it would undermine her strength. Two days without water would challenge her. Three days without water would leave her no choice but to drink her own urine. There were ways to stay alive in the woods, most of which were unpleasant. But she’d do it if she had to. Her life was worth that.

And she was damned if she was going to let him win.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

When another twenty minutes passed and Cheryl found no signs of water, she knew it was time to stop the hunt and build a shelter.

The sun was dipping behind the uneven line of trees. Soon, darkness would descend, which wouldn’t just bring colder temperatures, but nighttime creatures also on the hunt.

Because of her father and grandfather, she knew how to build something that would protect her overnight, and she knew that she could do it reasonably fast.

What she needed was a ditch of some sort. A hollow in the forest floor in which she could sink down a few feet without having to build something that looked unnaturally high. The hollow would allow her more living space and it also would allow her to be as inconspicuous as possible when the shelter was finished.

To accomplish that, the shelter needed to look like a natural part of the landscape. Just a mound of limbs, branches and a covering leaves. That way, if she was successful, it would look to someone like a small rise on the forest floor―perhaps a hill―and maybe, hopefully, they’d take no notice of it should they pass by.

That was the goal.

This time, unlike finding water, finding a reasonably deep recess in the landscape was easy. Within minutes, she found a choice spot that was partly concealed by fir trees. She felt excited by it. With the trees circling it, they wouldn’t just serve to help conceal the shelter, but they also would work to protect her from any breeze or wind.

She started to construct it. She gathered dry wood, sticks and fallen limbs. She maneuvered them, layered them and constructed them in such a way that created a gently sloping hill, bearing in mind that in the end, it had to look as natural as possible, and that, later, she might need to use the shelter for something else should they come too close to her.

She gathered leaves and scattered them on top of the mound, which had a small hole at the front, through which she’d need to back into. When she was finished, it was dusk. She stood back, appraised her work and felt that at the end of the day, with every odd stacked against her, she had created something she could be proud of. The top of the shelter was finished off with wet, muddy leaves gathered from the wetlands. Sticks were placed on top of them so the leaves wouldn’t blow away. By doing this, she had created a cover of insulation, which she’d need because there was no way she could light a fire tonight. He’d see it.

Unless I want him to.

By the time she wiggled backward into her nest, she was more thirsty than she’d been in her life. Her throat was scorched. Raw. With the blood still caked in her mouth, it was as unbearable as her headache, which she knew, at least in part, had to do with her lack of food and water consumption.

She needed to sleep. She needed to conserve her energy. She snuggled down on the moist forest floor, which chilled her body to the point that she began to shiver, and she closed her eyes to shut