Darkness. Wet! Cold, no warm, no...both. Illya opened his eyes. As his muddled thought processes slowly cleared he realized he was in a bit of trouble. He felt bitter cold moisture on his legs while his head dripped warm, sticky drops down his face into his eyes and mouth. His head hurt like hell. He raised his right arm to wipe away the warm moisture from his eyes. Blood. A lot of blood. He reached up to his scalp and found a large gash at his hairline. His hand brushed against pieces of glass stuck in his hair. Then he remembered. The images of the truck colliding with his car then forcing both vehicles down the embankment came back in bold technicolor.
His legs were wet and freezing. His ears had stopped ringing and now picked up the sound of water splashing against the car. Illya looked through the flowing blood to see the front foot wells had filled with water from the partially ice covered spring.
Illya pulled his communicator out of his pocket. Even without a light he could tell it was broken. It had been bent in half from the force of the crash. Shit. He pushed hard against the driver's door. The door refused to budge. He threw his left shoulder into the effort succeeding only in jarring his body and making his head hurt more. A wave of dizziness and nausea washed over him as white stabbing lights drove pain through his eyeballs. Illya paused a minute to let the pain subside then drove his shoulder into the door yet again. This time he was rewarded with the complaining groan of the door yielding to his efforts.
As he climbed out of the car he immediately felt the water's current rushing around his knees. Illya sloshed through the creek to climb up its low bank. The bank was slippery with ice and snow causing him to stumble onto his knees and hands.
As he stood up he saw the mangled wreckage of the truck. It lay upside down, its roof pierced through by a limb of a tree that splintered in the crash. The passenger door was flung open, hanging twisted on its hinges.
Illya inspected the inside. It was immediately apparent the driver was dead. The tree limb that had pierced the truck's roof was also driven through the driver's chest. The Russian briefly bowed his head. Someone would be without a family member for Christmas.
After a brief search, Illya found a couple of blankets, a flashlight, and a cigarette lighter. Wrapping the blankets around him for some semblance of warmth, he pocketed the lighter and flashlight before heading up the embankment to the road. He had remembered passing an old rundown sheep shed a mile or so back. He decided to make his way there to take shelter out of the storm and try to get warm.
Never had a mile seemed so endless. Surely he had covered that much distance in the last half hour yet he could not see the sheep shed he knew had to be nearby. Illya pulled out the flashlight to light his way. His hand shook so much from the cold it was a wonder that he could get the beam of light to focus on anything.
He traveled about another quarter mile when he found a break in the trees revealing a small meadow. Using his flashlight the faint outline of the rundown shed, about 100 feet away, was caught in the beam of light. Fighting the slippery footing, made worse by his smooth soled loafers, Illya climbed over a century old stone wall then waded through knee deep snow around the far side of the shed to the entrance of the dilapidated building.
Illya shone the flashlight into the shed. The building was in poor condition. The roof had caved in towards the center leaving little room for someone to even crawl into. Old dust encrusted cobwebs hung from the beams, and on the dirt floor lay piles of moldering straw. Even in the sub-freezing temperature the smell of urine and sheep dung permeated the air. None of that mattered to Illya. All he saw was a place to get out of the wind and the snow.
He crawled into a far corner where the walls seemed to be sturdier than the rest of the place. Clearing a spot on the floor, Illya prepared to make a small fire. He gathered a few clumps of straw together and fished out the cigarette lighter. His hands were so numb that he had trouble getting the flint wheel to turn. Finally after several minutes he was able to produce a flame only to have it go out immediately. He scowled at it and tried again with the same results. He shook the lighter and found that there was no lighter fluid. The lighter was useless.
Fighting the numbness in his hands and legs, Illya struggled to get out of his wet shoes and pants which had stiffened with ice below the knees. He massaged his feet trying to get the circulation going, then wrapped each foot with several layers of one of the blankets he had torn into pieces. The other blanket was pulled around his torso then covered with layers of foul smelling straw. Illya checked the luminous dial of his watch, 9:18 pm. Nearly five hours had passed since the crash. It was going to be a long night. Shivering uncontrollably, Illya settled back into the straw, piling more on top of him and waited for morning.