Frozen Stiff by Sherry Shahan Read Free Book Online Page A

skirt and rolled it back. Earlier her toes had been numb. Now they’d started to burn. The glare off the ice and water was blinding, like having a sunlamp plugged in only inches from her face.
    “Look for a place to tie up.” She forced the water away with deep strokes, glancing at Derek. “We have to build a fire and dry out.”
    Derek pulled his T-shirt away from his wrinkled skin. The whiteness was stark against his tanned arms. “Maybe there’s something to eat around here.”
    “We should be able to find some berries.” Cody was half starved too. She had a gnawing sensation that felt as if her stomach had started eating itself. “Where’s the trail mix?”
    “Buried at sea along with my sunglasses.”
    “How did that happen?”
    “They just fell overboard.”
    At a cultural fair earlier in the summer Cody had watched natives drying salmon, roasting seal flippers, smoking bear meat, and fermenting fishheads. Now she scanned the terrain above the waterline and wished she could remember how they preserved berries.
    She wasn’t looking for shelter anymore, just asmall clearing in the trees where water met land. A place to tie the kayak, build a fire, and find something to eat. She scanned the areas that had once been mudflats and sandy beaches, that had supported a world of small animals only the day before, now all under water. Somewhere there had to be a place to stop.
    Cody couldn’t remember ever being this tired. She was so exhausted that she felt like dropping her head in her hands and blubbering like a baby. Suddenly she was overcome with emotion.
If I don’t make it back to Yakutat, and die out here in the wilderness, then Mom will be alone
, she thought.
    I’m all Mom has now. We can’t die out here
.
    There was another reason to survive. She’d never told her dad how she felt about what he’d done. She’d written lots of letters but never mailed any of them.
    Cody swallowed the ache in her throat, using all her strength to search the old-growth trees and rocky knobs for a place to tie up. Normally grasses and sedges sprinkled the shoreline, mixed with splashes of colorful wildflowers. Edible herbs, even. Now they lay rotting under several feet of water.
    She wondered what finally had happened back in 1986, when Hubbard had surged. The glacier hadn’t closed off Disenchantment Bay forever; otherwise Russell Fjord would still be a lake. Then she wondered if seals and porpoises had been trapped in here too. If only she’d paid more attention when the outfitters had talked about it.
    She blinked at the sun passing far beyond the midday mark. Her eyes felt as if they’d been ground withcoarse salt. Each blink rubbed the grains in even deeper. Sunburned. What she’d give for a pair of shades.
    Derek nudged her. “Did you see that?”
    “What?”
    “Something moved in the forest on the other side of that stream.” He lowered his paddle and pointed across the water at the distant forest, thick in some places, sparse in others. “Something big.”
    She followed his gaze beyond a silty stream; the sound of water played everywhere. “Maybe it was a bear.”
    “No way. It didn’t move like a bear. Has anyone around here ever mentioned Bigfoot?”
    “Don’t be stupid.”
    “I’m not. I know what a bear looks like. I’ve been to the San Diego Zoo. It wasn’t a bear, Cody. That thing I saw stood up straight and walked like a person.”
    “Out here?” A wave of gooseflesh rose on her already chilled skin. Déjà vu. She’d experienced the same sensation at the waterfall the day before. For an instant she’d wondered if something had scared the bear away.
    “It was probably a shadow.” Cody searched for an answer that made sense. “If the angle of the sun was just right, a bear might look like a person. Or maybe it was a tree.”
    “Right.” Derek didn’t sound convinced. “A tree that walks.”
    She turned on her sleeping bag and water oozedfrom the goose-down lining. He had her on