Chapter 9
The last of the candle’s wick burned away before they reached the cabin. The light guttered, flickered once, and winked out. “It’s okay,” Andy said. He didn’t know if it were Sam he tried to reassure, or himself.
Around them, the trees had taken on some substance in the darkness, but they still looked like gray ghosts barely indistinguishable from the night. Another few hours and it would be dawn. It seemed as though they’d spent half the night shuffling through dead leaves, brambles clawing at them like hungry children as they passed, the trees looming in and out of focus. To Andy’s calculations, they’d already walked a mile or more. How much farther was the cabin in this darkness?
With Sam’s injury, the two men moved through the dense trees like a sluggish stream. Andy hal
