Читать книгу Bush Poodles Are Murder - Lou Allin - Страница 4

Darkness. The pungent herbal smell of leaf mould in a den with an earthen floor. A certain slant of grey light peeked through a crack in the snow cover, soon fading shut as a howling wind drifted white lattice across it. Then black. A cold, dry womb. She shivered, twitched as a web of roots over her head pulled at her soft felt hat.

Hunger. No lunch or dinner for the first time in recorded memory. But food was banished to an idle corner. Beyond panic, thoughts keened by the cold, she tried to recall the last weather report. -15°C, barometer falling, accounting for the snow. But after the predicted foot dump, skies would clear by morning, ushering in an Arctic front, a mid-February deepfreeze, minus thirty degrees Celsius all day. And Monday? She’d hardly been listening. Hadn’t the forecaster said “single digits,” a balmy minus nine or better?

In her more fashion-conscious youth, she’d cross-country skied in that temperature wearing only a shapely nylon racing suit, pumping her arms to work up a sweat, cooling her brow with snow when she stopped at the top of a hill to catch her breath. But she hadn’t been running for her life. The glow-watch read 7:00 p.m. Thirty-six hours. She could leave before dawn. Were those five miles another lie? And what about the system? She cursed her laziness for not trying it out. Five or six hours, the brochure had said, depending on temperature and exercise levels. Her toes flexed in the clumsy felt-pack boots. Moosehide mitts kept her hands from freezing. Wrapped in a featherlight silvery space blanket, the extremities were protected, but her down parka was blowing in the wind, Dylan.

Something round and hard poked her back as she rolled onto her side. A rock or . . . ? From close by came the soft burble of contentment.