Out of the Wild: A Wilderness Survival Thriller Read online

  OUT OF THE WILD

  A Wilderness Survival Thriller

  Jack Hunt

  Direct Response Publishing

  Copyright © 2020 by Jack Hunt

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to an online retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Out of the Wild: A Wilderness Survival Thriller is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  To my two daughters. Always remember — I love you, I’m proud of you, and you are stronger than you realize.

  Acknowledgments

  A big thanks to the tireless and courageous bush pilots who were kind enough to offer assistance by phone and email to make the aviation aspects of this novel as realistic as possible. You know who you are.

  Also by Jack Hunt

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  Outlaws of the Midwest series

  Chaos Erupts

  Panic Ensues

  Havoc Endures

  The Cyber Apocalypse series

  As Our World Ends

  As Our World Falls

  As Our World Burns

  The Agora Virus series

  Phobia

  Anxiety

  Strain

  The War Buds series

  War Buds 1

  War Buds 2

  War Buds 3

  Camp Zero series

  State of Panic

  State of Shock

  State of Decay

  Renegades series

  The Renegades

  The Renegades Book 2: Aftermath

  The Renegades Book 3: Fortress

  The Renegades Book 4: Colony

  The Renegades Book 5: United

  The Wild Ones Duology

  The Wild Ones Book 1

  The Wild Ones Book 2

  The EMP Survival series

  Days of Panic

  Days of Chaos

  Days of Danger

  Days of Terror

  Against All Odds Duology

  As We Fall

  As We Break

  The Amygdala Syndrome Duology

  Unstable

  Unhinged

  Survival Rules series

  Rules of Survival

  Rules of Conflict

  Rules of Darkness

  Rules of Engagement

  Lone Survivor series

  All That Remains

  All That Survives

  All That Escapes

  All That Rises

  Mavericks series

  Mavericks: Hunters Moon

  Time Agents series

  Killing Time

  Single Novels

  Blackout

  Defiant

  Darkest Hour

  Final Impact

  The Year Without Summer

  The Last Storm

  The Last Magician

  The Lookout

  Class of 1989

  Inaction will cause a man to sink into the slough of despond and vanish without a trace.

  Farley Mowat.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Part II

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Part III

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  A Plea

  Readers Team

  About the Author

  Prologue

  July, Alaska

  She remembered falling.

  The asphalt disappearing, the snapping of branches, the scream escaping her lips.

  Like slides of a projector flipping wildly, too fast to comprehend, every moment played out in quick succession, one after the other, nothing but a blur of sound and images imprinting on her mind: blinding headlights, the locking of brakes, tires skidding, a glimpse of spruce trees, then handfuls of gravel spitting in every direction.

  Then… nothing but weightlessness, just bracing for impact. It was as if time slowed then resumed its normal speed.

  The violent collision of metal and branches ignited the airbags as the bright red 4 x 4 Volkswagen SUV cut through the night, plunging nose-first into a rushing waterway. A wave of icy water fishtailed over the vehicle before the current sucked it down into a foam-lipped eddy.

  Six Mile Creek was mostly a Class IV, gorge style rapids flowing through the rugged Chugach Mountains of Kenai Peninsula, an adrenaline junkie’s paradise buried deep in the heart of the National Forest. With narrow routes, steep drops, and booming whitewater, it wasn’t for the faint of heart.

  Kara Shaw lost consciousness for but a few seconds until an icy wall of water slapped her in the face as it billowed through the air vents like liquid nitrogen, and gushed over the open driver’s side window, ushering the world back into view in terrifying color. Gasping in shock, her mind wrestled with reality as her senses screamed and she fought to still a hammering heart.

  The ice-cold water took her breath away in a suffocating fashion.

  Seconds, that’s all she had as river water rose around her, swirling and threatening to draw them down into a watery grave.

  Although it was at the height of a summer’s night, the sudden immersion and low temperature had the strength to seize muscles and overpower the mind. In an instant, she unbuckled her seat belt and shot her mother a glance. She wasn’t moving and was slumped forward. Blood gushed down the side of her face. The passenger side window was sealed shut, cracked, and smeared with blood.

  She shook her mother’s shoulder to wake her.

  No response.

  Frantically, Kara tried unbuckling her belt but it wouldn’t come loose. It was jammed. All the while the vehicle was sinking and water rising, almost up to her chest.

  “Mom! Mom, wake up!” she yelled, refusing to quit as she tugged at the belt without success. She needed a knife, anything that could cut through the seat belt webbing, but there was nothing to be found.

  The untamed turbulent water was now up to her neck, and partially covering her mother’s face. Taking a deep
breath Kara ducked beneath the surface, removed the key from the ignition, and tried to use the edge of it to cut the belt, but it was no use. Panic took hold as the realization set in that if she didn’t leave now, she would drown.

  The water had come in too fast, filling up the interior in a matter of seconds.

  She wanted to scream.

  Beneath the milky gray, she glanced at her mother one last time before reluctantly swimming out of the window. Immediately the strong current noosed her body, sucking her away from the wreck and thrusting her downstream. Her back crashed into boulders, and every few seconds she would breach the surface and inhale before going under again.

  Even under normal conditions, someone rafting these wild waters and wearing a lifejacket could drown, and here she was with nothing to help her.

  Deep in the throes of Mother Nature, with death as a possible outcome, the water spun her mercilessly, twisting and rolling her body even as she tried to assume the whitewater defensive position of floating on her back with her arms outstretched, feet higher than her butt, and legs facing downstream. Kara struggled to keep her head and feet above the water as her coat billowed with air, acting almost like an inflatable jacket. Still, it wasn’t strong enough to resist the power of the current.

  Thrashed around like a rag doll, the roar of water rushing over stone was deafening as it swept and dropped her downstream, picking up speed. The agony intensified as she bounced off boulders like a pinball. Every collision was worse than the last as bone-crushing pain shot through her. The force was so strong that it felt like she was in a washing machine being spun.

  Trapped — there was no sense of up or down, just an endless nightmare.

  One moment she was sucking air like a fish out of water, the next plunged deep beneath the surface and brought close to the point of drowning. Each time she collided with sharp rocks, she was sure she’d be knocked unconscious. Surviving these waters required more than she had: wet suits, helmets, and a personal flotation device, and even then there was a chance of perishing. Many a rafter had lost their lives in the wild rivers of Alaska.

  Unable to think or breathe, it seemed like she was in the rapids for hours but it was probably only minutes.

  Just as she began to believe this was it — her final moments before she passed to the other side — there was a sudden flash of her father’s face and her will to live kicked in.

  Kara’s head reached the surface and she gasped.

  She knew if there was any hope of survival, she’d have to clamp on to a low-hanging branch or get behind one of the many rocks she kept colliding with. But stopping was the problem.

  There was no one here to save her and if anyone had pulled over at the crash site, they would have concluded she was inside the vehicle, dead.

  Kara eyed a fast-approaching boulder.

  This was it.

  A gut instinct, life, her mother, something told her to reach… her hands caught it, fingernails tearing as she clawed, desperate to hold on. For a split second, she thought she might be swept around it but her fingers held fast, cold, and rigid.

  She had it or better still, it had her.

  Using what little strength remained, Kara hauled herself out of the water, clambering onto the rock, and then over to another. Her mind never telling her she was safe until she stumbled onto wiry, shrubby grass and collapsed. Her face was streaming with blood, and she could taste iron in her mouth. A finger on her left hand was bent sideways, clearly broken. Her ribs felt like they were fractured as every attempt to breathe was excruciating.

  She had no idea how far she’d traveled or where she was. Exhausted, she remained still for an unknown amount of time, hoping, praying that someone would find her and airlift her out. But no one came. As darkness wrapped itself around her like a cloak and her body shivered, chilled to the bone, she heard the growl of vehicles, then sirens.

  Mustering enough energy to rise, Kara staggered up a steep incline, pulling at branches, her vision blurred by blood. Gratitude was fleeting, as every painful memory sought to crush her spirit. As the moon spread its light over the road she tumbled out, losing her footing, falling on all fours.

  Headlights flashed, and someone swerved, brakes squealed.

  Kara screamed in anguish, an overwhelming sense that she was alive but tortured by the reality that her mother wasn’t. She would never forget that fateful day, it would be forever etched in her mind — she was only fourteen years old.

  Part I

  1

  Fifteen years later

  Anchorage, Alaska

  The silence of the morning was obliterated by the wail of a smoke alarm. Henry Shaw looked up from his desk in confusion as he took off round glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose. He let it ring out for a minute or two, wishing it was a car alarm, an annoying neighbor who’d triggered it, but he’d heard it enough times to know better.

  As he shuffled out, the aroma reminded him.

  “Damn it!” he barked as he entered a smoke-filled kitchen and hurried to remove a pan of blackened bacon off the stove. The pan was engulfed in flames. He cursed under his breath as he bolted to the front door and tossed it all outside. Henry snatched up a small red fire extinguisher attached to the wall and blanketed the pan in a cloud of white powder.

  Whoosh.

  Like a burst bag of flour. It went everywhere.

  He coughed, waving a hand in front of his face.

  One of his neighbors, Joe, a bald retired fella with more time on his hands than he knew what to do with, stared at him from across the street, wearing a long bathrobe, plaid pajamas, white T-shirt, and slippers. He tapped a rolled newspaper against his hand, eyebrow raised, chuckling.

  “Having a BBQ again, Henry?”

  Henry narrowed his eyes and grumbled as he retreated into the sanctuary of the two-story home located on a cul-de-sac. He fished out of the toaster charred slices of bread and stabbed the pedal of the garbage can with his foot to get rid of them, then proceeded to go room to room opening windows and turning on every fan in the lower half of the house.

  Fans whined.

  A cool October breeze blew in.

  While he waited for the air to clear, he sauntered into the bathroom to take a leak. After spending the better part of ten minutes in his routine of counting numbers and looking at different objects — tile flooring, steel handle, drywall — a grounding method to get his aging body to work, he exited, cursing old age.

  Henry ambled over to the fridge, the door was littered with colorful reminder notes from top to bottom. Some were weeks old, to-dos he’d forgotten to remove, others still needed to be checked against his wall calendar to determine if they warranted urgency.

  CALL KARA AND WISH HER A HAPPY BIRTHDAY

  Henry peeled the note off the stainless steel and ducked his head inside the fridge to see what could pass for breakfast. The pickings were slim. He hadn’t hit the grocery store in over two weeks. Under the glow of a pale light, a few bottles of beer, half a brick of butter, a carton of milk, some condiments, and the remainder of a blueberry pie stared back. He grumbled. His neighbor, Debbie Ratchet, a widow, had dropped off the pie. It was her angle, a harmless and kind gesture that might have passed as neighborly if it wasn’t for the fact that she was in the habit of doing it twice a week. At first, he’d been surprised, then suspicious, and after that thoroughly disturbed. Who had time for all this chitchat? Better still, who ate this many pies? She might have been on his doorstep every day if he didn’t park his truck in the garage and pretend he wasn’t home.

  Henry fished out the pie, peeled back the foil and gave it a wary sniff, then shrugged. “When all else fails — pie!” He snagged a used fork from the sink and headed back down the corridor. The cream-colored walls were adorned in wood-framed photos of his family and various bush planes. Every room in the house had some décor that reflected his love of aviation, his career of choice.

  In the years since losing Indi, he’d struggled to deal with liv
ing alone. He had good friends, mostly work colleagues, and strong ties in the villages throughout Alaska, but that didn’t equate to true friendship, not that he was a social man or a huge talker. That was Indi’s strength, she had been good at that. No, if it wasn’t for his work, and hobby, he might have put a .40 caliber to his temple a long time ago.

  After taking a few mouthfuls of pie, he set the rest down on top of a large, crinkled map of Alaska. There were numerous old, thick, leather-bound books stacked haphazardly around him; two were spread wide, close to his archaic desktop computer, a machine that would have made Bill Gates proud. He powered it on and was greeted by the familiar and irritating blue screen of death.

  He pummeled the top and swore at it, threatening to replace it as if it understood him. Henry powered it off, and on again, four times before it worked.

  Damn technology, he hated it.

  He’d been meaning to replace it, at least that’s what a fridge note told him.

  Henry set his glasses back on his face, sighed, and took another scoop of pie before scanning a page of his book, then glancing at the monitor to form a comparison before making another scribble in a journal.

  He’d consumed story after story of lost gold mines and sunken ships throughout Southeast Alaska. His descent into madness, at least that’s what some called it, had led to filling over twenty-seven journals. Each one littered with ideas, connections, theories, some that came up empty, others that drove him down another rabbit hole. His hobby was like a drug, a thrill that he’d had since his youth but had lost in the wake of losing Indi. But now it was back, drawing him in, adding meaning to his paper-thin life.