Survival Queen of the Frozen Wastes novel Chapter 2

The wind screamed across the open ground, picking up loose snow and flinging it against her goggles like sand. It sounded like static.

Riley had pulled her basic work gear from the toolbox before heading out. Now she stood in the snow, surrounded by clusters of thin conifers that looked half-dead already.

She took a breath. The air burned going down.

"Zzzzzzz—!!!"

She squeezed the trigger. The orange-and-black lithium-ion chainsaw in her hands roared to life, the chain spinning so fast it blurred. She buried the teeth in the nearest pine trunk.

Wood chips exploded everywhere.

Fragrant shavings—still wet with resin—scattered across the pristine snow, stark and yellow against all that white.

Five seconds.

Crack.

The pine tree, thick as her arm, groaned and tilted. Then it fell slow and heavy into a drift, sending up a puff of powder.

"God bless modern technology."

Riley shook out her wrist—the vibration had numbed her fingers—and allowed herself a small smile.

Without that chainsaw, with just the basic iron axe the system had given her, felling a tree frozen solid like this would have taken twenty minutes minimum. And it would have left her soaked with sweat.

In subzero temps, sweat was a death sentence. Once your base layers got wet, the moment you stopped moving, your body temperature would plummet. Hypothermia would follow fast.

Riley didn't waste time celebrating.

She knew the saw in her hands was a hungry machine. She'd brought two spare high-capacity batteries, sure, but until she found a way to recharge them, every second the motor ran was borrowed time. She had to gather as much wood as possible before the batteries gave out.

"Zzzzz—Zzzzz—"

At the edge of the forest, the chainsaw's snarl rose and fell, shattering the frozen silence.

Riley worked like she was possessed.

Fell a tree. Move to the next. Fell another.

But she had to stay alert—watch for hidden snow pits underfoot, keep adjusting her collar against the wind that kept finding its way down her neck. Her stamina drained faster than she'd anticipated.

In extreme cold, body burned through calories just to stay alive. Added walking through knee-deep snow, where every step took three times the energy of walking on pavement, and the math got ugly fast.

Pretty soon, Riley was breathing hard. Her breath fogged the inside of her goggles, and she had to keep wiping them clear.

"Zzzzz..."

She was mid-cut on a tree—didn't even know which number anymore—when the chainsaw's roar stuttered. Died. The chain jammed solid in the wood.

A red light blinked at her.

Dead battery.

Riley yanked the saw free and patted its housing. "Good work, buddy." Genuine regret in her voice.

She straightened up and looked around.

Pine trunks lay scattered across the snow in every direction. A decent haul.

She counted silently.

"Twenty-three total."

Then the next problem hit her.

According to the system, until she actually possessed these logs, they were still just natural resources. That meant they didn't qualify for Inventory storage. She couldn't just snap her fingers and make them disappear.

She had to drag them back to camp.

Riley grabbed the nearest pine and tried to pull.

Heavy.

Like, unreasonably heavy.

Fresh-cut wood was full of moisture. Add the branches catching in the snow, dragging like anchors, and she felt like she was hauling a dead body through mud.

"Huff... huff..."

She gritted her teeth, looped rope around the trunk, slung it over her shoulder, leaned forward, and started walking. Inch by inch.

The tree line to her campfire was maybe fifty yards. Right now, it felt like fifty miles.

By the time she'd wrestled the fourth tree back into the fire's warm radius, she was wrecked.

Her legs felt like someone had filled them with concrete. Her lungs burned from hauling freezing air through them.

"Can't... can't do more."

Riley made the call. She stopped.

Those nineteen trees still out there in the snow—they called to her. Tempted her. But if she kept pushing without rest, without fuel for herself, she'd collapse out there. And out there, collapse meant death.

She dropped down next to the big wooden crate that had held her starter supplies.

It was less than three feet from the campfire.

The flames danced orange and red, pumping out heat that felt like heaven.

The shift from frozen to warm made her shiver violently. She pulled off her goggles and thick gloves, set them near the fire to warm up, then—still shaking—pulled the half-empty water bottle from her Inventory. Took a small sip.

Then the bread. Two black bricks that looked more like construction material than food.

"Crunch."

Riley bit off a piece with effort. It was coarse. Tasted like sawdust with a hint of burnt toast. Bitter.

But it was calories. Carbs. Fuel for her own fire.

She forced herself to chew, swallow. When the food hit her stomach, warmth finally started spreading through her core. The uncontrollable shaking eased.

After half a loaf, Riley leaned back against the crate. Her eyelids drooped.

Post-exhaustion crash hit her like a wave.

The campfire crackled. The wind seemed farther away now. Muffled.

She really wanted to sleep...

Her head nodded. Her body started sliding sideways.

"Wait—"

Some animal instinct jolted her awake just before she went under.

She pinched her thigh. Hard. Then looked up at the timer floating above the flames.

"Shelter Level 1

"Campfire Burn Time Remaining: 06:28:00"

Six and a half hours.

If she slept too deep, too long, and that fire went out—what then?

Even ignoring the obvious—that she'd freeze to death in this hellhole without a heat source—the game rules were clear.

When the campfire hits zero, it's game over.

"No sleeping. Not allowed."

Riley slapped her own cheeks, forced herself upright.

She stayed near the fire, but she didn't take off her heavy work clothes. She remembered reading something once, a survival article. "In the late stages of hypothermia, your hypothalamus malfunctions. You get a false sensation of heat. It's called "paradoxical undressing"—people strip down right before they freeze to death."

"Okay. Process these four. Keep the fire fed."

She pulled a traditional handsaw from the toolbox.

Looking at the four thick pine logs on the ground, she almost laughed. Without power tools, breaking these down into burnable pieces would take at least half an hour. Burn the little energy she had left.

But what choice did she have?

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