Survival: A Military Stepbrother Romance

by Lauren Landish

  Days of usage and dragging over the forest terrain had turned the tip into a rounded point, maybe not spear sharp, but good enough to do the job. It caught the wolf square in the throat, slipping just below his bottom jaw to scrape along the fur before landing solidly in the larynx, catching and twisting the wolf to the ground. I was still knocked back, the wolf’s sixty-five pounds of flying body mass driving the staff out of my hands and driving me to a knee, even though it never touched me. Recovering quickly, I sprung toward the wounded wolf, driving the sharp splinters into the wolf’s lungs. It coughed in agony, unable to stand or even howl with a crushed windpipe.

  The whole fight lasted four seconds at most. I could see Wes running toward me out of the corner of my eye as I calmly retrieved my stick, which I could see was cracked in half, the narrow end hanging on by a thin strip of twisted pine wood that I yanked off. I was left with about a two-foot-long stake of wood with a murderously sharp end, which I looked at before I looked at the wolf. I could see the agony in the dark brown eyes, and I knew what I had to do. Before it could suffer any longer, I drove the sharp end of the stick into the wolf’s side, piercing through the lungs and I had hoped the heart or something that would kill it quickly. I must have hit something, because there was a short gush of blood which coated my hands, and the wolf sagged to the forest floor, dead.

  Wes came rushing next to me as I knelt next to the dead wolf, stroking its majestic head. I had never killed an animal before, aside from the occasional bug, and never one so beautiful. I didn’t feel any sense of triumph over what I had just done, I just felt a weird mix of joy and sadness. I was happy to still be alive and uninjured, but on the other hand, I was sad to have taken the wolf’s life. “I’m okay,” I said to him preemptively as I stroked the wolf’s fur. “It never touched me.”

  Wes knelt down next to me, and I could see his hands trembling when he reached for my hand. I held his hands and we embraced next to the wolf’s body, just holding each other in order to remember we were alive. Breaking the hug, I looked from the wolf to Wes, my adrenalin starting to wane, and the shakes began. I realized then just how close to death I had been, and I shuddered, my stomach clenching dangerously for a moment before relaxing. Wes watched me for a moment before standing me up and looking me over. He took my hands in his, looking over my gloves and jacket for any cuts or scratches before looking over my legs. “Strip,” he ordered, taking off my gloves. “A wolf, even a hungry one, doesn’t normally attack humans. So you either just killed a wolf that was driven by hunger and became familiar with humans, or a rabid one.”

  The black fear that washed over me as I stripped was sickening. The plane crash had been chaotic, frantic, and the fear then was the same. This time, the fear was cold, creeping, and unceasing. While I stripped, Wes grabbed the wolf’s carcass by the hind leg and pulled it away toward the lake shore, where there was better light. Once I was down to my underclothes, he came back and looked me over critically, looking for any scratches or scrapes. I couldn’t see any, especially on my hands and arms, but Wes was thorough, checking me for long minutes until the cold and my fear left me shivering.

  When he was finished, he looked at me and smiled softly. “You don’t have any cuts, and it looks like the wolf’s blood never even touched your skin,” he said, taking my field jacket and gloves and picking them up with the remaining section of my stick. “I’ll go wash these, but the gloves are toast. You’re going to have to wear mine for the rest of the trip.”

  “And what about you?” I demanded, pulling my pants up and buckling my belt. “You’re no help if you lose a finger or two to frostbite.”

  “I won’t,” he said, pulling his glove off. “I have a spare set of glove liners in my bag, and I can keep my hands in my pockets when I need to. Besides, I have an idea that might just save us a few more days of walking.”

  “What?” I said, pulling my top on. Without my field jacket I was already chilly, but it wasn’t too bad. We were in the middle of the afternoon, and the daytime heat was still mostly apparent. I was still a little on edge from the encounter with the wolf, too, so the cool air hadn’t quite hit me yet. Still, I knew as the night approached that I was going to be very, very cold.

  “We need to wash this blood off your jacket, and I’d prefer to dispose of the wolf’s body if we can, to prevent any other animals from getting rabies if it is infected,” Wes answered. “For both of those things, we need a fire. Well, today, we’re going to make not just a normal fire, but something big, something that can be seen if anyone is out there who can see us.”

  “You’re going to burn down the forest!” I replied, hurrying to catch up. “I thought we kept our fires small for that exact reason.”

  “There’s a beach, maybe a quarter mile down the shore,” Wes said, pointing. He went over to his dropped bag and took out our supply of five fifty cord, looping it around the wolf’s rear legs before standing up and putting his pack back on. “Get your bag and follow me, then we get to start the fun part. I’ll wash your jacket, if you want to get the fire started. Just build it like a normal campfire, and we can go from there.”

  It was silly and childish, but I felt proud to be given the great responsibility of building the fire. I guess I just wanted to feel useful. We found the beach easily enough, a good twenty yards deep and fifty wide of pebbly sand, which had some driftwood already heaped up on it. Even more encouraging to me, though, was the fact that for the first time in a week, I saw crumpled up beer cans and tangled fishing line, clear evidence that the lake was at least used by someone recently. “La Blatt’s,” I noted, kicking the can. “If it wasn’t a sign of other people, I think I’d be offended. All my Canadian friends insist on Molson’s if they’re going to drink Canadian beer.”

  Wes laughed and knelt by the water, using the lake and handfuls of sand to scrub at my field jacket. The water turned a muddy, reddish hue while he worked, and I turned, pulling our bags over to the tree line before going to gather wood. As I gathered, I pondered why I wasn’t more scared or upset about what had happened. I mean, I had just killed something, and almost had my life taken for the third time in a week. Maybe that was it, I considered as I got my first armload of wood and carried it back to the beach. Was I starting to get used to this?

  Wes had finished his washing by then, and had laid the now sopping wet jacket on a rock to start to dry in the weak, late fall sun. “Let’s get about another two or three armloads each,” he said. “I’ll start while you get the kindling prepped and going.”

  Starting the fire was actually remarkably easy. Some of the driftwood we found on the beach had been there for a very long time, and once I started breaking it up with a rock, it lit easily. By the time Wes came back with the first of his wood, the fire was already about the size of what we would make at night for warmth, and I turned the whole thing over to him to tend while I went out into the woods for my first load of wood. It didn’t take me long, but by the time I got back, the flames were already about as high as my waist and growing.

  It took us a total of nine trips to get enough wood for the fire to reach what Wes wanted. In the end, we had a proper bonfire, with flames easily reaching twenty or even thirty feet into the air. The waves of heat rippled against my skin even from a good twenty feet away, and the entire beach was lit up in waves of red and orange. It was the warmest I had felt in a week, and I eventually had to strip off my outer layer on top, leaving me in just a t-shirt and my pants.

  Wes grabbed the wolf carcass and tossed it on the fire, making sure to stay far away after the fur started to roast. I caught the odor for a moment, then hightailed it over to Wes’s side, where the air was a lot cleaner.

  Wes dashed across the beach to our bags, rooting around inside to pull out one of our last rations.

  Breaking out the ration pack, we shared out the food. “This is our third today,” I said, keeping track in my head. “By my math, we only have one left.”

  “You’re right,” he said, mu
nching on a cracker. “But you’re losing weight too fast, Robin. Even if it takes us another ten days to reach the other end of the lake because we’re foraging and fishing and stuff, I’d rather do that than have you drop from starvation and exhaustion. But if this fire works, it doesn’t really matter anyway.”

  The night darkened, and we watched the fire dance. Every once in a while, Wes or I would toss in a new chunk of wood, but our supply was starting to dwindle. We were just thinking of breaking out the poncho for the lean-to when the sound came to our ears, so faint we couldn’t hear it at first. “What is that?”

  Wes looked around, but in the darkness of the night we couldn’t see anything. Still, the humming sound increased, and after a moment I realized what it was. “That’s an engine!”

  Chapter Nine

  Wes

  Our story caused headlines when we were picked up. The Park Rangers, who’d come at first to ticket us for an illegal fire, instead ended up rescuing us and taking us to the far side of the lake, where a helicopter was dispatched to evacuate us. Our parents met us in Vancouver, and to say it was a joyful reunion would be an understatement.

  The first thing my father did when I got off the helicopter was pull me into a hug, the type of deep embrace I hadn’t felt since I was seven or eight years old.

  “Wes, thank God,” he whispered as I returned the hug. It was a little weird, considering I hadn’t hugged my dad in such a long time, but I welcomed it. Gerald Brandt looked like he had aged a decade in the week Robin and I were missing in the mountains, his hair thinner than I had ever seen, and with a little more noticeable gray. “When the Rangers called saying they had found the plane with only the pilot’s body, I was hopeful, but as the days went on . . . ”

  I held him as he finally let loose with his emotions, and I felt him cry against my chest. Looking over at Robin, I could see that she and Rebekah were also embracing, and that both of them were crying. I was a little broken up over the whole reunion, but I wasn’t about to show that much emotion. “It’s okay, Dad,” I said as we broke our embrace. “Robin and I are fine.”

  “Still, your next vacation is to Disneyland or something,” he replied, regaining his composure and patting me on the shoulder. I could already see his strength and confidence returning and knew he’d be fine. “Someplace where the biggest danger is indigestion or something.”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle a little. “Well, I already promised Robin a weekend at a five-star hotel,” I said, looking over as she and Rebekah finally stopped wiping at their eyes and embracing. “That sound safe enough for you?”

  “It sounds great, but first, let’s get the two of you home. I know Chef and Winston are both desperate to see you.”

  Coming home was a strange experience, especially after Robin and I had to sleep in separate beds again. The first night, I know I woke up at least twice in a cold sweat, looking around for Robin before I realized that we were back home and trying to hide our feelings for one another—at least for the moment. Her scream at four in the morning told me she was going through her own problems, and the next night, both of us ended up curled up on the couch in the family room together, sleeping peacefully until Rebekah woke us up around nine in the morning.

  “I’d let you two sleep longer,” she said, stroking Robin’s hair while looking at me, “but there are some men from the insurance company who are coming by. They want to talk about the crash.”

  I nodded and let go of Robin, who rolled to the floor with a grace I hadn’t seen from her before. Our time in the wild had taught her a lot about herself. “Thanks, Mom,” I said, trying to convey appreciation for all sorts of things in just those two words.

  That she didn’t ask any questions about how or why we ended up on the couch sleeping together was just the beginning. I’m sure that both she and my Father, who I’d taken to calling Dad more often after our embrace, could see that something had changed between Robin and me. Neither of them pushed the issue, and I wasn’t quite sure if they suspected something between us or if they just assumed it was that we’d grew closer from going through the whole crash ordeal. Robin and I hadn’t discussed the issue much either, although we both could see looking into the other’s eyes that we would have to have a reckoning about it at some point, the sooner the better. I’m not sure how long either of us could keep this up.

  The meeting with the insurance company went better than I had expected. The medical examiner had determined that the pilot had died of a stroke, which had paralyzed him and caused him to send the plane into its final descent. Since neither Robin nor I sustained serious injuries—and let’s face it, our family didn’t need the money—I was more than willing to donate my check to the pilot’s wife, who had been left a widow with two children. Robin did the same thing. Afterward, the two of us went on a walk through the grounds of the mansion, which sat on about ten acres.

  “So what now?” Robin asked me as we walked, looking beautiful in normal jeans and a sweatshirt. “I mean, where do we go from here?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, looking at the trees on the grounds, so different from the pines of the Canadian forest. These were hardwoods, elms and oaks mostly, that Dad had carefully cultivated by gardeners. “I do know I don’t want to go back to the way things were.”

  “What do you mean?” Robin said, her eyes still darting around. It was a habit that died hard, constantly looking out for danger. I know that instinct firsthand.

  I stopped and took her hands, knowing we were alone and out of sight. “Robin, I love you, and I’m not going to just chalk up what has happened between us to the effects of a plane crash. We made love because we wanted to, because you love me and I love you. And I don’t want to let that go just because it’s going to be difficult explaining it to everyone.”

  Robin looked me in my eyes, those obsidian depths of hers boring into my soul for a moment before smiling and kissing my nose. “Good, because I feel the exact same way. I have no damn clue how we’re supposed to tell Mom and Dad, but we’ll figure it out.” She seemed giddy, and it gave me confidence in what I knew we’d soon have to do.

  Our walk back to the house was amazing. We both walked in silence, not saying a word, but just walked hand in hand. As we neared the house, though, we exchanged a glance and let go. It was clear we were going to continue our relationship, but we weren’t quite ready to tell the world.

  When we got finally reached the house, Rebekah was smiling and waiting for us, and I could see by the look in her eyes that she had something interesting to share with us.

  “What is it?”

  “Well, we just got a call from CNN. How would you guys like to do an interview?”

  Robin

  The studio was a lot less glamorous than I thought it would be. I mean, I had anticipated that most of the decoration would be in front of the camera, but other than the stage settings, the entire sound stage was more or less a warehouse. The catering area was set up on folding tables that I swore came from Wal-Mart, although the food was pretty good. Tawny, the production assistant who had met us at the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport, hovered over both of us as we went through makeup, which I thought was kind of funny.

  Watching Wes try to sit still while they applied foundation, color, and everything else left me suppressing giggles like a schoolgirl. I knew he had to be in torture, but watching a man’s man like him sit there and endure it was hilarious. Wes gave me a look that told me he knew exactly what I was amused about.

  Before he could say anything, the reporter came over, and I had to admit I was a little star struck. Sarah Washington wasn’t the top interviewer for CNN, but she was one of their weekend morning hosts, and she was exactly what news agencies looked for in a television personality. Tall, blonde, leggy, with just enough cleavage to tease without looking slutty. She looked like that hot teacher or the sexy executive that every man has a fantasy about, if you know what I mean.

  “Hi guys, I just wanted to come over before the show, ki
nd of walk you through the interview,” she said, her eyes going mostly to Wes. I had to will myself to not feel a hint of possessiveness. “If you want, you can watch the rest of the taping from the sidelines too.”

  Watching the program get filmed was actually pretty interesting. The giant sound stage acted like a three-part circus. In the main section, the lead anchor was sitting doing the live news, along with introducing segments that were being prepped on the two wing sections of the studio. We got to watch as two other interviews were done, one live and another being taped for playing throughout the day.

  When it was our turn, we were set up in the smaller of the two interview studios, in chairs that I thought were surprisingly uncomfortable for the purpose. Sarah was seated across from us, her long legs crossed demurely but the short skirt showing Wes enough leg that I’m sure she knew what she was doing. I sighed inwardly and kept my composure.

  In any case, the interview was pretty cut and dry. The story started with a quick video montage of the crash site and a digital recreation of our flight, along with pieced in clips of the search parties looking for us. Sarah then took over, talking a bit about how we had been found by the Park Rangers, and then she launched into her questions.

  Since our story was kind of a feel good piece, most of the questions were softballs; she wasn’t trying to really pry into what went on. There were quite a few gasps of surprise when we told the story of my encounter with the wolf, and even Sarah’s face lost a bit of that practiced friendly but blank expression. “That’s amazing,” she said honestly, and I could see by the look in her eyes that it was the first time she had actually started to see me as a person, and not just another interview. “And your brother didn’t help you at all?”