Protecting the Flame Page 12

“Emma.” A hand on her left shoulder. “Don’t fall asleep again.”

  “Uh.” She’d meant to say she wouldn’t. It still took her another few seconds to actually open her eyes. Instead of only gloomy as it was during the daylight hours, the fuselage was completely dark because they’d let the snow mound up against the windows. She was curled on her right side, as close to Will as she could manage since, with his bad right arm and her noisome left ribcage, they couldn’t spoon. Carefully rolling onto her back, she glanced at her watch. A little after five in the morning. Holy cow. She’d been out since seven the night before. They were all starting to sleep more. Will kept saying it was normal and a way of conserving energy, which was another way of saying when you weren’t eating and using up all your calories to stay warm, the body shut down whenever it could. And it’s been only three days. How much worse would it get? She had a feeling that answer was a lot. “What is it?” she whispered.

  Mattie could have been a ghost sighing from the night: only a voice and nothing more. “Do you hear it?”

  “Hear what?” A jolt of hope made her sit up, a move she instantly regretted as her head emptied and the darkness seemed to wrinkle.

  Mattie’s hand clapped around a biceps. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” Slicking her tingling lips, she shook away the cobwebs. “What did you hear?” Had Mattie heard a helicopter? A plane? No, wait, it’s night. They can’t possibly be looking for us now. Besides, snow was still coming down when they’d gone to bed. “Did you hear a plane?”

  “Wuh?” Next to her, Will stirred then cleared the sleep from his throat. “Something wrong?”

  “Mattie says she heard something.”

  “No, I didn’t say that. Listen. No,” Mattie admonished as Will clicked on his flashlight. “You don’t need that. Just listen without anything to distract you.”

  They did. Emma listened so hard, a high whine started up in her ears. “I don’t hear anything,” Will said.

  “Yeah. There’s nothing.” Mattie heaved an exasperated sigh. “Don’t you guys get it? I think it stopped snowing.”

  “What?” asked Emma, though now that Mattie had said it, she knew the girl was right. She’d gotten so used to the moan of wind and relentless susurration of ice against metal and the creak of trees as they swayed and then the scrape of ice over hardpack as the snow got deeper that she’d ceased to actually hear any of it. “Will, I think she’s right.”

  “We might be buried so deeply now, we can’t hear,” Will remarked, though his tone was halfhearted. “If it has, this could be really good news.”

  “Right. It means they can finally look for us. I’m going out.” Snapping on a flashlight, Mattie clumped for the exit tunnel. “I want to see.”

  “Wait for us,” Will called, but the girl was already squirming out.

  “I’m going.” Clambering out of their bag, Emma grabbed her boots. “Are you coming?”

  “Right behind you. I’m going to check on Rachel first. You go ahead.”

  She could tell before she even wormed out of the exit tunnel that the snow had stopped. There was no wind, but the air felt much colder. When she took a breath, the small hairs in her nostrils seemed to crackle.

  Mattie was waiting as she made her feet. The girl was staring straight up, a mittened hand to her nose. “I see stars. Why is it colder?”

  This one she knew and was surprised Mattie didn’t. “Because there are no more clouds. Clouds are good insulators, too.” The snow glimmered from a combination of starlight and a bright eyelash of moon. There was enough light for her to see that they’d crashed onto a wide plateau hemmed by black walls of thick forest. At a distance, the fuselage was mostly a suggestion with only the tail sticking out of the snow.

  “There are a lot of stars.” Mattie let go a relieved sigh. “It’s kind of nice to finally see them.”

  “Yes, it is.” She knew her constellations, especially the winter ones, but the night sky was glittery with so many hard, diamond-bright stars she was completely disoriented. She couldn’t even figure out where the North Star was. Wait, where was the Milky Way?

  “What are you doing?” Mattie asked as, eyes fixed on the sky, Emma did a slow pirouette.

  “Trying to find the Milky Way.” The view was a little dizzying, as if she were a ballerina in a snow globe. Having had only a half an energy bar from Will’s stash the day before probably didn’t help her wooziness either. “December’s out of prime season for seeing it, but if you’re in the northern hemisphere, it’s always in the southern part of the sky. If I can find it, I’ll know which direction to look for—” She pointed to a spot to the right of and behind the fuselage. “There it is.”

  Mattie followed Emma’s finger. “I see it. So, that’s north?”

  “That’s right.” There was a dull thump of boots in snow as Will made his way over, and she said, without glancing his way, “Found Polaris.”

  “Well, I could have saved you the trouble,” he said. “I’ve got a compass.”

  “Ouch,” Mattie teased. “Way to deflate.”

  “Yeah,” she said, adopting a tone of mock outrage. “Let me own this moment, Mr. Wilderness.”

  “Far be it from me.” They all stared at the sky a few more moments and then Will said, “And you’re getting your bearings because? Don’t tell me it’s because you wanted to be Luke Skywalker.”

  Maddie piped up. “You did?”

  “Briefly. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” She was annoyed, but mostly because she knew what Will was fishing for. She saved him the trouble by coming out with it. “We need to think about getting out of here. We need a plan at the very least.”

  “What?” Mattie’s alarm was instant. “But what about my mom?”

  Will’s face was a nacreous oval in the starlight. “The weather’s only cleared up a few hours ago. You have to give the searchers time to actually look for us.”

  “I get that,” she said. “But we need to think ahead, too. In their calculus, we’re already past our window of survival. First off, it’s cold. Second, with the snow, they’ll figure the odds we made it this long as close to zero. ”

  “It doesn’t mean they won’t look for the plane. With the ELT, they might find us pretty fast. I think we need to give them a chance to do their job first before we panic.”

  That rankled. “I’m not panicking. I’m thinking ahead. Look, I hope you’re right. I hope we get to the point where you can say you told me so. But we also have to be realistic here. Their odds of finding us depend on how off-course we were from Burke’s flight plan when we crashed.”

  “I’m not disputing that, but the first thing they taught us in the Boy Scouts was if you’re lost, sit down. We need to sit tight. If we move, even if we leave markers showing them our direction, the likelihood’s much less that they’ll find us. Plus, with the snow gone, it’s colder now. The sun will help, but we’ll use up a lot more calories if we’re humping over mountains and also trying to stay warm.”

  “The exercise will help keep us warm. We’ll make fires. We’ll melt snow and drink hot water or tea or whatever.” She knew about dogsledding from her time in Thule. “Mushers do it all the time.”

  “They also have food and know where they’re going. We might not find any game, we have no idea where we are, and hypothermia is hypothermia. We could be in big trouble pretty fast.”

  Everything he said was correct. But she’d shot a story on military search-and-rescue operations. Even knowing exactly where a plane went down wasn’t a guarantee of finding people fast. About the only times people were found within the first twenty-four was either if they were wearing a personal locator beacon—or dead. Dead people tended not to go far. Well, unless they were in pieces. Many animals liked to cache their prey for a rainy day.

  Besides, sitting around and waiting was making her crazy. For a woman who’d spent a month cooling her heels on a military psych ward, that was saying something.

  “I didn’t say
we shouldn’t give the search teams a chance,” she pointed out. “What I am suggesting is we need to think about the future and how long we wait until—”

  “Hey, do I get to say something?” Mattie’s shout was loud enough to echo, and they both turned, surprised. “Because it’s not only about you guys! It’s about me and my mom! What, are you guys going to leave her here?”

  “No, no,” Will said. “Of course not.”

  “Then what? Because if we do what Emma wants, if we leave, like, soon, my mom might not be awake.”

  “Then we take her. We have Burke’s raft. We can make a stretcher out of it if we have to or take turns dragging her. It’s not ideal, but whatever works.”

  “Over mountains?” Even Mattie was incredulous. “Through woods?”

  “People have done it. We’ll pick a direction and keep to it. I’ve got a compass. Burke has a compass. We have to come on somebody somewhere eventually. We do the best we can. Guys,” Will said, “both of you, calm down. It’s been three days.”

  Which can easily turn into three weeks. “All the more reason to be thinking ahead, Will,” she said. “About what’s realistic, about what we can really do so we can all look back on this in a year.”

  “Well, then…maybe then you and Mattie go,” Will suggested. “I stay with Rachel. We divide up the food, you ladies take the rifle, pick a direction, and start walking.”

  “What?” Mattie cried at the same moment Emma said, “You’re out of your mind if you think I’m leaving—”

  Someone shouted.

  They all went rigid. Almost as one, they turned toward the distant woods in line with the fuselage.

  Mattie whispered, “Did you…”

  “Hush.” The word smoked in the starlight. Will put a finger to his lips. “Be quiet, honey.”

  The silence stretched and crackled. What had that been? Years back, she’d seen The Blair Witch Project at a Halloween party. At certain points in the film, a character would shout something fleeting and formless. No matter how many times they rewound the stupid thing, they couldn’t make out the words, not even the tone.

  This was like that. Something so formless, it might have been anything or nothing. Emma cast her mind back to three nights before when she’d been alone and heard that…that something that could’ve been anything: a rabbit, a bobcat. Even a person? And she had said nothing, mentioned nothing because she hadn’t wanted the responsibility. God, she was a monster.

  “Hello?” Will’s bellow made them jump. Cupping a hand to his mouth, Will shouted, “Is somebody there?”

  Nothing came back, not even the wind. “It could’ve been an animal,” Emma finally said.

  “Or it might have been a person,” Will replied.

  “Could it be someone who’s come to save us?” Mattie asked.

  “Not at night and not like that. Hello?” Turning, Will shouted into the darkness and the direction the fuselage pointed. “Is there anybody there?”

  They all listened. Emma’s skin was fizzing with apprehension. After what felt like forever, she said, “I don’t think—”

  The sound, short and sharp, came again. It had no more personality or form than before, and there was no way of knowing if it had been made by a human. But it was there.

  “Will, even if it’s a person, we can’t do anything until daylight and then only if the snow holds off. It’s not safe,” she said and then added, almost hating herself, “Bobcats sound like a person screaming. Coyotes scream. So do wolves.”

  “I know. Mountain lions do, too.”

  “Well, which one is it?” Mattie demanded.

  “Without seeing it or a print? I don’t know, but if I had to guess, I’d say wolf or mountain lion. Maybe a bobcat. They’ll all go into the mountains if that’s where the game is.”

  “What does that mean? Emma said deer probably don’t come this high in winter.”

  “We don’t know what that is or was.” She had a feeling she knew where this was going and didn’t like it one bit. “We should go back inside. I’m getting cold. It could’ve been anything. Rabbits scream, too.” So did anything getting its throat ripped out.

  “But if it is a mountain lion or something,” Mattie persisted as they trudged back, “what does it mean?”

  “Two possibilities,” Will said. “One is its den might be close by. The other is what Emma said. Maybe that lion, if there is one, found dinner.”

  She should say nothing. She should make like Spock. An omission wasn’t the same as a lie. Besides, she’d thought of something Will had not mentioned.

  Yes, that might be a mountain lion, and it might have found dinner.

  But who said a person wasn’t the main course?

  Chapter 2

  “I cannot believe you,” Will said, his long strides on his personal pair of snowshoes lending him an almost easy grace despite his pack. Stopping, he scanned the woods dead ahead. He held a hiking pole in his left hand because, as he’d pointed out, even with his snowshoes and those they’d taken from Burke’s locker for her, the snow was deep, and there was no way to know what really lay beneath their feet. Still, now that the snow had stopped, the path the cockpit had taken was clearly marked by a rough trench of humped snow and shattered limbs that ran away through the woods. “You are a real piece of work, you know that?”

  “What are you talking about? I’m out here, aren’t I?” God, she was this close to stabbing him with a hiking pole. This should teach her that honesty was not always the best policy. The only bright spots this morning so far were that they’d gotten a signal fire going and she’d only puked once, quite possibly because there was precious little in there to begin with. Her stomach was as shriveled as a raisin. “I told you, didn’t I? Say I had said something earlier about maybe hearing someone…something…whatever. What did you think you were going to do, Will? Run off to the rescue? First off, you had a dislocated shoulder; second, it was snowing and visibility was crap and stayed crap until today. Third, it was dark. So, what, you’re going to rush out and put the save on somebody?”

  His jaw set. “We could have gone out the next day.”

  “It…was…snowing,” she reiterated. “We couldn’t have helped anyone, if there even is anyone. I was thinking of what made sense at the time.”

  Will shook his head in disbelief. “You don’t get it, do you? Say, it was you out there…”

  “No.” She gave the air a karate chop. “Don’t pull that bullshit because it isn’t me or you or Rachel or Mattie. You don’t think I thought about that? Well, I did. But think, Will. We’ve been out here for the last fifteen, twenty minutes, right? We shouted, we called. Has anyone answered? No.”

  “Maybe that’s because they can’t.” Will paused. “Now.”

  She gave him an incredulous stare. “Don’t be such a sanctimonious asshole. For your information, I really did think it was the wind or an animal or, you know…” She fumbled for the right term. “Wishful thinking.”

  “You sure about that?”

  That stung. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Exactly what it sounded like. But then, again, I’m a sanctimonious asshole, so…whatever.”

  “Fine. Fine.” She was cranky, winded, huffing like a blown horse from floundering around in snowshoes made for a man with larger feet. The pointed metal rear end of her shoes kept catching and snagging, flipping up clots of snow as she wallowed. She was about two seconds from ripping the stupid things off. “We don’t know if there is a them.”

  “I agree. It might have been nothing. Tell me something, though. Three days ago, did you bother giving a shout?” Before she could reply, he added, “Because I wasn’t asleep when you went out, and I’m pretty sure I would’ve heard you.”

  She blinked, her eyes swimmy with angry tears. “It was snowing,” she said, forcing the words through clenched teeth. “It was windy. You were inside the fuselage, and I was a good hundred yards away. You wouldn’t have heard me yell either.”

&nb
sp; His reply was nearly as frosty as the air. “Well, I guess we won’t be able to test that, will we?”

  “Why are you being like this?”

  “You honestly want to know?” His bruises were an ugly shade of green and yellow, and there were coffee-colored smudges under his hazel eyes which held none of the warmth or easy charm they had even last night. “I think the responsibility of caring for even one more person right now completely freaks you out and, believe me, I understand, I really do. You think I’m not scared?”

  “You? You’re always so calm.”

  “Not inside. I’m scared to death. But I also think Kipling was right.”

  If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs… Her mother would be proud. “I’m not losing my head. There’s a difference between panic and dealing with, you know, with facts and things you can’t change no matter how much you wish things were different.” If he only knew what she was dealing with… The funny thing, of course, the bust-a-gut hilarious thing was this: working up the courage to do a little slicing and dicing had been a piece of cake compared to what she faced now. She thought again about the pills in her pack. Why was she hanging onto them? She should chuck them before, God forbid, Mattie found them. She could see it now: Mattie, holding up those blister packs. Gee, Emma, what are these? And what would she say? Oh, those little things? I’m saving those for a rainy day.

  Richard Gere’s line played on the soundtrack of her mind. Well, guess what? It’s raining. Will was a doctor. One look at those pills, and he’d know. Wait, what did it matter if he knew?

  “I think all this talk about responsibility is a bunch of baloney, too,” he said. “I think it’s a cover for something else that’s eating at you. You’re a much better person than you’re letting on.”

  Was there an invitation to confide something in there? “Don’t be too sure. You don’t know me.”

  “I know you well enough. Mattie told me what you did in the airport.”

  “Oh, that?” God, that seemed to have happened to another person. “That was nothing. Scott was a turd, bad news. He’s no loss.”