Page 209 of Keeping Kasey
I hadn’t meant to fall asleep in the first place, but as soon as the first pop echoes from outside the cabin, I’m on my feet searching for the cause. I wish we were lucky enough that theshadow outside the kitchen window could be passed off as me still being half-asleep, but less than a second later, the top branches of a tree fall directly into the window.
Shattered glass covers the floor as the top three feet of the tree settle into the cabin through what used to be a window, and the house groans like it’s about to cave in on itself.
By some miracle, it remains standing.
But there is absolutely nothing miraculous about the running clock that has just been triggered.
“What just happened?” Kasey asks in a tone that shakes with panic.
A blast of cold air follows, and the already cool cabin turns freezing within seconds—and it’s only going to get worse.
“It’s okay,” I assure her on autopilot, still assessing the situation. “Just a tree that must’ve been dead. The snow was too much weight for it.”
Kasey’s eyes go wide. “Logan.”
“It’s fine. The cabin’s still standing. I think the worst of the damage is done.”
“Logan.”
“We’re alright, baby—”
“Logan, we are going to freeze to death!”
The window isn’t large, and most of it is covered by the pine tree poking inside. It’s such a small space, and yet in the single minute it’s been since it fell through the window, I can see the fog of my breath.
We were having a hard enough time staying warm before, but now?
Our chances of getting out of this alive just plummeted.
“We are not going to die. Not today,” I tell her anyway.
Kasey doesn’t say anything else, and I can tell that—even if she doesn’t fully believe me—she trusts that I’ll do whatever it takes to make good on my word.
And I will.
I’m not one to panic—I never have been.
My mind sorts through what I know and what I need to know to make a plan.
I start by inspecting the tree. It’s dark outside now, eleven o’clock, according to my phone. It isn’t a particularly big tree, but it’s long enough that I can’t pull it out of the window by myself, and without a way to patch the glass, it’s a moot point anyway.
Based on the amount of snow scattered across the kitchen floor, I was right in my initial assessment that the weakness of the tree, combined with the weight of the snow, was what knocked it down. The snowfall stopped while we were asleep, and the wind is significantly less violent than it was a few hours ago.
The worst of the blizzard is over, but at this rate, we’ll still be frozen to death by morning.
Which means we cannot wait around to be saved.
I mentally go over the inventory I took of the cabin and weigh my options as well as my odds of survival. They’re slim, but better than waiting this out and hoping to be found.
When I go back to Kasey, she’s shivering beneath the blanket.
“I need to move you to the bedroom,” I tell her as I crouch at her side. “Carrying you is going to hurt, but you’ll be a lot warmer.”
“You mean,we’llbe a lot warmer,” she corrects through chattering teeth.
“Can you wrap your arms around my neck?”
She nods, reaching her arms out to do just that. I do my best to keep the blanket wrapped around her. The cuts and bruises will hurt enough without adding full-body shudders. I push my hands beneath Kasey until her body can be supported by my arms, and then I lift.
