Snowlusions

108.

"Alaska sucks." Clarissa was colder than she'd ever felt before. Colder than she felt she could ever feel. Even wearing full winter clothing there was a lingering cold that soaked down to her bones. Her recently broken arm ached.

"Tried to warn you its not a fun time in the bush."

"Is that what they call this snow capped hellscape?"

"Among other things." Clarissa didn't see any bush's, nor did she want to see what kind of plant could live in this frigid wasteland. It was high noon and yet felt colder than it had been earlier in the morning.

"Well lets find these people and get out of here."

"I thought you wanted to find a Gillawomp?" Gilbert was cold too, but tormenting Clarissa about her belief in the Gillawomp kept him warm.

"Too cold for your bullshit old man, lets find these people or what's left of them." The one positive about the cold and snow was it had been fairly easy to follow the foot prints of the missing people, even with the wind. Nothing looked untoward about the foot prints to Gilbert, they didn't look hurried or pursued by anything, but they hadn't gotten to the cabin the people were supposed to be staying at yet, he worried what or who he'd find there.

It took three hours of hard trudging to finally come across the ruins of the cabin. Clarissa's heart fell. The cabin had been torn apart, and at some point a fire had burned the remains. She had hoped when they got there they could stay a while and warm up, but seeing the wind blown ruin just killed any hope of being warm.

"Wolves?"

"Possibly." Gilbert didn't think it was wolves at this point, but he'd seen crazier things, it could have been wolves, but they hadn't seen tracks leading up to the cabin that were the signs of wolves. So if it was wolves they were pretty stealthy, but he also didn't see any Gillawomp tracks whatever that would look like.

"Possibly? So now you believe in the Gillawomp theory."

"No, its probably someone started a fire and then burned the cabin down." Clarissa looked over the remains of the cabin in the waning afternoon light and doubted Gilbert's theory.

"Where are the foot prints of the cabin occupants, or the bodies?" Gilbert cursed under his breath. He had trained Clarissa too well.

"Ok you got me it's still not a Gillawomp, probably something else horrible up here, like a wendigo."

"Or a Gillawomp."

"Clarissa if I wasn't worried about freezing to death I'd so continue to argue this point, come on." Gilbert had a map of other buildings in the area, he hoped at least a few of them were still standing, or things were about to get real bad, and not just Clarissa mentioning the damn Gillawomp.