We're still moving, but not forward anymore. We're sliding sideways now, picking up speed, the vehicle completely out of control. The world outside the windows is a blur of white and dark, spinning and tilting.
"Hold on!" Kazimir shouts.
I brace myself against the door and the seat, but there's nothing to stop what's coming. The SUV slides off the road completely—I feel the vehicle lurch as we hit the uneven ground of the forest floor. Kazimir tries to brake, and the SUV slides again. We slip, tilting downward, crashing through underbrush as branches scrape against the sides of the vehicle with a sound like fingernails on a chalkboard. The SUV is still tilting, still sliding, and I realize with a spike of pure terror that we're going down an embankment.
The impact is brutal.
I have a split second to see the looming trunk of a tree in front of us before the SUV slams into it. The force of it throws me forward against the seatbelt. Pain explodes through my chest and shoulder. The airbags deploy with a sound like a gunshot, and then everything is white fabric, a chemical smell, and the ringing in my ears.
My world is a blur of red pain. Only pain, and silence, and the settling of snow on the windshield.
I blurrily hear Kazimir's voice, rough and urgent: "Svetlana. Svetlana, are you okay?"
I try to answer, but I can't seem to make my lungs work properly. The airbag is deflating now, and I blink my eyes open and see that we're at a steep angle, the passenger side lower than the driver's side. Through the cracked windshield, all I can see is snow and the dark shapes of trees.
"Svetlana." Kazimir's hand is on my shoulder, shaking me gently. "Talk to me."
"I'm—" I cough, and it hurts. Everything hurts. There’s no part of my body that doesn’t hurt. "I'm okay. I think."
"We need to get out. Now." He's already unbuckling his seatbelt and reaching for the door handle. "The vehicle's not stable."
He's right. I can feel the way the SUV is settling, shifting like it might roll further at any moment. Kazimir manages to force his door open, fighting against the angle and the snow that's already piling up against it. Cold air rushes in, and with it, the howling of the wind. The interior of the car has been warm for a while now, thawing me out, and the sudden rush of cold sends my teeth chattering.
He climbs out and comes around to my side, wrenching the door open. "Can you move?"
I unbuckle my seatbelt with shaking hands and try to climb out, but my body doesn't want to cooperate. Everything that was already broken feels more broken now. Everything that was already painful feels like it's on fire.
Kazimir reaches in and pulls me out bodily, lifting me clear of the vehicle. I recoil from his touch instinctively—every touch has been a violation for so long now—but he holds me against his chest all the same, and I fight the urge to curl into him. The cold is shocking, stealing what little breath I have left.
“There should be an emergency kit in the back,” he bites out. “We need to grab it.” He’s already fighting through the snowdrifts as he speaks, yanking open the back of the car. There’s a blanket, which he shakes out and wraps around me, and a yellow bag with a long strap that he throws over his arm. "We need to move away from the vehicle. It could roll."
We struggle through the snow, putting distance between us and the wrecked SUV. As we move around it, I can see the damage. The front end is crumpled against a massive tree trunk. The passenger side door is caved in, where we hit something on the way down. One of the rear tires is completely shredded.
Even if we could get it back on the road, it's not going anywhere.
We're stranded.
We're in the middle of a forest, in a blizzard, with no vehicle and no way to call for help. The compound is miles behind us, and if we did go back, we’d only face torture for me and death for Kazimir. It’s no haven.
We escaped one death trap only to end up in another.
"We can't stay out here," Kazimir says, raising his voice to be heard over the wind. He's already wrapping the blanket more tightly around me as he walks, trying to conserve what little warmth we have. "We need to find shelter."
"Where?" I look around at the endless forest. The trees all look the same, and the snow is falling so thickly I can barely see more than a few meters in any direction. "Where are we supposed to find shelter out here?"
"I don't know." He pulls me closer, and I'm too cold and too scared to protest. "But if we stay here, we'll freeze to death before morning. We have to find something. A cave, a safety shelter, anything. A fucking deer stand, if it comes to that."
It feels impossible. But there’s no other choice.
"Okay," I say, my teeth chattering so hard my jaw feels as if it’s broken, bruised, and damaged from the punches Evan gave me earlier. "Okay. Let's go."
Kazimir adjusts the blanket around me, trying to create a barrier against the wind. He starts walking, trying to follow some semblance of a trail through the woods, searching for anything that might offer protection from the storm.
The snow is so deep that every step is a struggle. Behind us, the SUV is already disappearing into the white. In minutes, it will be completely buried, invisible.
Just like we'll be if we don't find shelter soon.
4
