“This should be the last suitcase, shouldn’t it?”
Isac pushed the underbrush aside with some effort and dragged out a pale-pink suitcase with only a single wheel left on it.
He gave it a once-over — it still had a lock on it, so he tugged at it a little… Hold on, you’ve got one wheel out of four left, but the lock somehow hasn’t broken?
Whatever.
The sky was getting dark fast — he’d haul the case back to the shelter first and figure out how to pry the lock open later.
Isac hefted the suitcase and found that, sizable as it was, it wasn’t actually all that heavy.
Carrying it back in his arms would have been completely doable.
Of course, walking with it like that made it easy to lose sight of his footing and trip himself into an injury, and it burned through stamina too fast — so dragging it was the way to go.
It was snow underfoot anyway, and the case had a smooth bottom; even with no wheels, dragging it took barely any effort.
Isac set the case down, then took another look into the underbrush, wanting to make one last check for any undiscovered ‘treasure’ still tucked away inside.
Then he spotted a string of paw prints.
None of the individual prints was very large — they were arranged in a plum-blossom pattern, and there were a lot of them.
They were also fresh: conservatively no more than two hours old, which was why they hadn’t been buried by the falling snow yet.
This spot was very close to their makeshift shelter — only a few hundred meters off.
Which meant that, just moments ago, more than one unidentified wild animal had passed through here.
A chill crept into the bottom of Isac’s chest.
His biology grades weren’t anything to write home about, but this kind of oval, plum-blossom-shaped paw print could only call one creature to mind.
— Wolves.
The area wasn’t safe anymore.
They couldn’t keep sitting around the aircraft wreckage waiting for death — they had to move out as quickly as possible.
You had to understand — sure, the wreckage could block out wind and snow, but that was as far as it went.
As a defensive structure, its protective value was effectively zero.
And as for that door panel Isac had pried off and propped against the entrance: aside from cutting down on heat loss, it would do absolutely nothing against a pack of wolves.
Oh — wait.
That wasn’t quite right; it wasn’t completely useless.
The door panel did still block line of sight.
At least at night, the wolves wouldn’t be able to see him and Yukinoshita Yukino directly — though by the same token, neither could he and Yukinoshita Yukino see the wolves.
But over time, once the pack had gotten a clear read on these two ‘upright apes,’ the visual cover would amount to next to nothing.
By that point, he and Yukinoshita Yukino would basically have become canned meat tucked inside a cramped cabin.
The pop-the-lid-and-eat kind.
Isac was no badass keyboard warrior.
He had a clear-eyed read on himself, and he wasn’t naive enough to think he could fight his way out of a wolf-pack encirclement without a proper weapon in hand.
Let alone with a little invalid by his side.
By daybreak tomorrow at the latest, he had to find a way to move Yukinoshita Yukino to a safer shelter — and he wouldn’t be entertaining the idea of coming back here anytime soon.
After all, no one could guarantee whether the rescuers or the wolf pack would show up first.
After a deep breath, Isac had lost all desire to keep gathering supplies.
The only thought on his mind now was to get back to the shelter as fast as possible and hash out the relocation plan with Yukinoshita Yukino.
Of course, the suitcase he was still dragging back with him.
On top of that, the suitcase’s size had sparked a new idea for Isac — he could absolutely convert it into a makeshift snow sled.
Yukinoshita Yukino couldn’t walk because of the severe sprain, right?
Just plop her on top of the sled and pull her along.
As for the towing rig — Isac had picked up plenty of tattered clothing today.
The clothes were too far gone to wear, with insulation value of effectively zero, so he could absolutely tear them up for fabric and weave a makeshift rope to serve as a temporary tow strap.
Given his stamina, he’d also have to figure out how to trim the supplies down later — pick the most important items to take with them, and as for the rest that were comparatively less critical… those would just have to wait.
Thinking that through couldn’t help but give Isac a pang — after all, every one of those items was something he’d painstakingly clawed out of the snow himself.
He found ’em fair and square!
…
“That’s the situation.
First thing tomorrow morning, we have to move out — no delay.” Isac walked Yukinoshita Yukino through his thinking.
After hearing him out, Yukinoshita Yukino immediately voiced her agreement — without an ounce of doubt in Isac’s judgment.
She asked: “So which way should we head?”
Isac had clearly given this some thought already.
“While I was scavenging today, I took the chance to size up the surrounding terrain.
The forest is relatively thin to the southeast, and that slope sits away from the wind and faces the sun.
“And that’s… still only a chance.
The greater probability is we come up empty.
Worst case: we’re still searching when it gets dark and we haven’t found a shelter — and we end up having to throw together a makeshift one for the night.”
He said ‘throw together a makeshift shelter,’ but in reality what was more likely was that he and Yukinoshita Yukino would find some windless spot and sleep out in the open.
If it came to that, they might actually be safer just staying put in the cabin.
Truth be told, Isac’s original plan had been to finish collecting supplies first, then slowly push his exploration outward, only relocating once he’d actually found a specific building or signs of people.
But plans rarely keep pace with circumstances.
Before he’d even finished combing the area around the crash site, signs of wolves had cropped up first.
That single discovery basically killed any thought of Isac heading out solo to scout for a shelter.
There was no way he’d leave Yukinoshita Yukino — this little gimp of his — alone at the camp.
If the wolves just happened to find her while he was off scouting, the consequences would be unthinkable.
Isac really did not want to turn into a broken record of regret.
“Of course, it’s also possible the prints I found weren’t from a wolf, but from some other animal — a fox, for instance.
Fox tracks look pretty similar to wolf tracks.”
Yukinoshita Yukino shook her head and said: “We can’t gamble on that kind of possibility.
Everything has to be planned around the worst-case scenario.
We move at first light — and I… I’ll find a way to stand on my feet.”
Yukinoshita Yukino understood perfectly well that her own presence was the single greatest obstacle to this ‘move.’ She didn’t want to be deadweight, so even at the risk of worsening the sprain, she had to stand.
With another push at it tonight, the stick Isac had handed off to her this morning should be just about dried through — perfectly serviceable as a crutch whenever they weren’t in immediate danger.
“Don’t force it.
If the injury gets any worse, it’ll just make our situation that much more of a headache.” In a rare display, Isac firmly shut down Yukinoshita Yukino’s proposal.
“If I don’t get on my feet, how exactly are we going to relocate?
If you carry me on your back the whole way, once your stamina runs out, won’t we be in even more danger?” Yukinoshita Yukino furrowed her brow, not following why Isac was refusing.
Isac pointed at the large pink suitcase he’d brought back and said: “I can convert this suitcase into a sled.
You sit on top, throw on some essential supplies, and I should be able to drag the whole thing along.
The travel speed will still be faster than you inching through the woods on a crutch.
Trading stamina for speed — that’s a worthwhile bargain.”
Yukinoshita Yukino parted her lips, about to say something — but then she glanced down at her still-swollen left ankle, and in the end she accepted Isac’s kindness.