Scarlet Fever Read Online Free PDF

deep snow from the air…Well, it’s bound to be difficult.”
    “So, what you’re saying is that we’re going to die here, in the fucking mud,” Anne groaned. “And then be buried under twenty feet of snow, like a couple of woolly mammoths?”
    “No, Miss Wilson, what I’m saying is that if we don’t want to die, we’re going to have to explore all of our fairly limited options—together. And to do that, I’m going to need you to start behaving like the intelligent woman I think you probably are, under that wiseass attitude you work so hard at. I understand that you’re frightened, but…”
    “I’m not frightened,” she said coldly. “I’m goddamned furious ! You people are supposed to know about crap like this. Why the hell do you go flying around in the wilderness, anyway, in awful weather, when you obviously don’t have the right kind of equipment, or at least some properly trained pilots who know what they’re doing ?”
    Cameron listened quietly, until she had finished the diatribe.
    “Are you done, now?” he asked. “Or shall we just stand here and shout at one another for an hour or so, when we could be arranging some sort of shelter.” He glanced up at the sky, which had begun to darken.
    Anne ignored his questions. “Why can’t we just walk out of here?” she asked suddenly. “Do you at least have a fucking map ? Like any good boy scout?”

    He pulled a crumpled map from a brown canvas backpack at his feet, and tossed it to her. “I’ve already checked the map,” he said wearily. “From what I can tell, the nearest settlement is close to two hundred miles from here. If we’ve come down approximately where I think we have, which I can’t guarantee. By a disagreeable coincidence, the village is due north of here, the same direction from which the storm is coming. So, no, we can’t just walk out of here, as you put it.”
    Anne opened the map and turned it one way, then the other. “My brother was in the army,” she said smugly. “He told me they sometimes hiked sixty miles a day.”
    “Did they, now?”
    “Yes.”
    “And did they make this hike with possibly broken bones, in a blizzard, in seventy mile per hour winds, and temperatures below zero?”
    “My ankle isn’t broken,” she shot back. “It’s just a little sore. And there’s nothing wrong with you, that I can see.”
    “I repeat. You can’t walk, and I certainly can’t carry you.”
    She rolled up the map and threw it at him. “Are you suggesting that I’m fat ?”
    “No,” he said patiently. “What I’m suggesting is that you’re stumbling around on a toe that may well be broken, with something possibly torn in your shoulder, and I may have a cracked rib or two of my own. Now, aside from…”
    “Who says I can’t walk?” she interrupted. “Maybe I’ll move a little slowly, but I can…”
    Wincing with pain at the effort, he picked up the backpack and tossed it to her. Anne stumbled forward to catch it, barely managing to stay on her feet. “All right, let me see you walk to the top of that hill, there,” he ordered, pointing to a spot just short of the tree line. “With that on your back.”
    She hefted the pack with one hand. “You think I can’t do it?” she asked coolly. “This thing doesn’t even weigh as much as my damned suitcase does.”
    “Just do it, then, and stop wasting your breath arguing.”
    She slipped one arm through the straps and hoisted the pack onto her back. It was heavier than it looked, and the strain on her face was obvious, even from where he sat. “What did you put in here?” she snarled. “Rocks?”
    “The top of the hill,” he repeated. “And back. Not fast, just a slow, steady pace.”
    Anne put her other arm through the straps and started toward the hill, with her gait a bit wobbly, at first, but becoming steadily stronger as she walked. “What is it you Brits like to say?” she called back. “ It’s a piece of cake ?”
    “I’m a Canadian