by Jenna Kernan
She continued, voice raised. “A vacation? Is that what you got from our last conversation?”
“I missed you.” He held his grin, but felt it dying at the edges. Drying up like a dead lizard in the sun. She didn’t look back.
“You told me you understood. That you’d take this time to think...” She turned and tapped a finger on his forehead as if to check that there was anyone home. “Really think, about my concerns.”
“You said a break.”
“You knew exactly what kind of a break I wanted. But, instead, you went for the grand gesture. Like always.”
He reached to cup her cheek, but she dodged and his arm dropped to his side. “Honey, listen...”
She looked up at him with disappointment, the hill not quite evening their heights. Then she placed a hand over his, and for a minute he thought it would be all right. Her eyes squeezed shut and a tear dribbled down her cheek.
Dalton gasped. He was making her cry. Erin didn’t cry unless she was furious.
The pinkish woman appeared at the edge of the meadow, stepping beside them as her eyes shifted back and forth between them. She tugged on her thick rope of a braid as if trying to decide whether she should proceed or speak.
Dalton looked at his wife. She hadn’t kissed him. When was the last time that she had greeted him without a kiss?
When she’d left for adventure camp yesterday, he recalled.
An icy dread crystallized around his heart. He would not lose her. Everything was changing. He had to figure out how to change it back. Change her back.
“Erin, come on,” he coaxed.
She was listening, and so was the interloper. He turned to the camper.
“Seriously?” he said, and she scuttled away toward the others, who all stood together facing him and their camp leader, his wife.
Erin faced her group. “This man is my husband, Dalton,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting him.”
The assemble stood motionless, only their eyes flicking from him to her.
Erin growled and strode away. She reached her tent, paused at the sight of his pack and dropped the rope. Her hands went to her hips. She turned to glare at him. He swallowed.
When he gave her his best smile, she closed her eyes and turned away. Then she stripped out of her tank top and into a dry sweatshirt, leaving her wet suit on underneath. He tried to hide his disappointment as she dragged on dry shorts. She spoke, it seemed, to her pack.
“If you were listening, you would have respected my wishes.”
“I heard everything you said. I did. I just...” Ignored you, he thought, but wisely stopped speaking.
“I don’t think listening is enough.”
“What does that even mean?”
“You always listen to me, Dalton. And then you do as you darn well please. My feelings don’t change your decisions. They don’t even seem to weigh into your thought process anymore. You want to go on living like you always have, and that’s your right. And it’s my right to step off the roller coaster.”
“Is stepping off the roller coaster punishment, Erin? Is that what you’re trying to do? Is that why you left?”
“I can’t talk to you here. I’m working.”
“I’ll wait.”
“It won’t matter how long you wait, Dalton. You don’t want to change.”
“Because everything is fine just the way it is.”
“No, Dalton. It isn’t.”
The way she said “it isn’t” froze his blood. The flat, defeated tone left no doubt that she was ready to cut him loose.
Erin opened her mouth to speak, but instead cocked her head. A moment later she had her hand shielding her eyes as she glanced up toward the sky. Her hearing was better than his.
He’d fired too many shots with his M4 rifle without ear protection over in Afghanistan. So he followed the direction of Erin’s attention and, a moment later, made out the familiar thumping drone of the blades of a helicopter.
“That’s funny,” Erin said.
The chopper broke the ridgeline across the river, wobbling dangerously and issuing black smoke from the tail section.
Dalton judged the angle of descent and the length of the meadow. The pilot was aiming for this flat stretch of ground beyond the tents that ringed the clearing. Dalton knew it would be a hard landing.
He grabbed Erin, capturing her hand, and yanked her toward the trees. In the meadow, standing like startled deer amid their colorful tents, her charges watched the approaching disaster in petrified stillness.
“Take cover!” he shouted, still running with his wife. “Get down!”
Chapter Two
Erin cried out in horror as the rails below the chopper snapped the treetops above them. Branches rained down from the sky, and Dalton dragged her against him as the roar of the engine seemed to pass directly over her head. She squeezed her eyes shut as her rib cage shuddered with the terrible vibrations of the whirling blades.
She opened her eyes as the chopper tipped in the air, the blades now on their side rotating toward her and churning upright like a window fan gone mad. It was going to hit the ground, blades first, right there before her.
In the meadow, Brian Peters, the skinny seventeen-year-old who was here because his father wanted him away from his computers for a week, was now running for his life. She judged he’d clear the descending blade but feared the fuselage would crush him. Brian’s acne-scarred cheeks puffed as he bolted, lanky and loose limbed. Behind him Merle Levine, the oldest of her group, a square and solidly built woman in her late fifties, lay prone beside her cheery red tent with her arms folded over her head. Merle was a single biology teacher on summer vacation and directly in the path Erin feared the chopper would take as it hit the ground.
Erin squeezed her face between open palms as the propeller caught. Instead of plowing into the earth, the helicopter cartwheeled as the blades sheered and folded under the momentum of the crash.
Erin saw Carol Walton lift her arms and then fall as debris swept her off her feet. The timid woman had reminded Erin of a porcupine, with small close-set eyes and spiky bleached hair tufted with black. Erin’s scream mingled with Carol’s as the woman vanished from sight.
The chopper careened toward the escarpment, some twenty feet above the river just beyond the meadow. The entire craft slowed and then tipped before scraping across the rock with exquisite slowness.
Richard Franklin, a twentysomething craft beer brewer from Oklahoma, was already close to the edge and he stood, watching the chopper as it teetered. He reached out toward the ruined aircraft and Erin realized he could see whoever was aboard. Then he ran as if to catch the two-ton machine in his pale outstretched arms. The chopper fell over the cliff and Richard dropped to his posterior.
Erin scanned the ground for the flash of a pink bathing suit. “Where’s Alice?”
Not a bird chirped or squirrel scuttled. The wind had ceased and all insects stilled. The group rose, as one, staring and bug-eyed. The sudden quiet was deafening. They began to walk in slow zombie-like synchronicity toward the spot where the helicopter had vanished. All except for Dalton.
Dalton released Erin and charged toward the spot where Carol Walton knelt, folded in the middle and clutching her belly like an opera soprano in the final act. Only Erin knew the blood was real.
Alice Afton appeared beside her, having obviously been hiding in the woods.
“Alice, get my pack. There’s a med kit in there,” Erin said.
Alice trotted off and Erin moved on wooden legs toward Carol Walton, knowing from the amount of blood spilling from her wounds that she could not survive.
Dalton cradled Carol in his lap, and her head lay in the crook of his elbow. In different circumstances the hold would seem that of a lover. His short, dark brown hair, longer on top, fell forward over his broad forehead, covering
his heavy brows and shielding the green eyes that she knew turned amber near the iris. She could see the nostrils of his broad nose flare as he spoke.
“I got you,” said Dalton. “Don’t you worry.”
“Tell my mom, I love her,” said Carol.
Erin realized then that Carol knew she was dying. But there was none of the wild panic she had expected. Carol stared up at Dalton as if knowing he would guide her to where she needed to go. The confidence he projected, the experience. How many of his fellow marines had he held just like this?
Army never leaves their wounded. Marines never leave their dead.
“Can I do anything?” asked Erin. She couldn’t. Nothing that would keep Carol with them.
“Take her hand,” he said in a voice that was part exasperation, part anguish. She knew he’d lost comrades in war and it bothered him deeply.
Erin did, and warm blood coated her palm.
Alice arrived, panting, and extended the pack.
“Just put it down for now,” said Dalton, his voice calm.
“Why doesn’t it hurt?” asked Carol, lowering her chin as if to look at the slicing belly wound. Something had torn her from one side to the other and the smell of her compromised bowels made Erin gag.
But not Dalton. He lifted Carol’s chin with two fingers and said. “Hey, look at me. Okay?”
Carol blinked up at him. “She’s a lucky woman, your wife. Does she know that?”
Dalton smiled, stroking her head. “Sometimes.”
Carol’s color changed from ashen to blue. She shivered and her eyes went out of focus. Then her breathing changed. She gasped and her body went slack.
Dalton checked the pulse at her throat as Erin’s vision blurred. He shook his head and whispered, “Gone.”
From the lip of the cliff, Brian Peters called. “I can see someone moving down there.”
Dalton slipped out from under Carol’s slack body and rose. He glanced down at Erin, and she pressed her lips together to keep from crying.
“Come on,” he said, and headed toward the rocky outcropping.
He tugged her to her feet and she hesitated, eyes still pinned on the savaged corpse that was Carol Walton just a few minutes ago.
“Erin. We have to see about the crew.” His voice held authority.
How was he so calm? she wondered, but merely nodded her head and allowed him to hurry her along, like an unwilling dog on a leash.
And then, there they were on the lip of rock that jutted out over the Hudson. Twenty feet below them the ruined helicopter lay, minus its blades. One of the runners was snagged over a logjam that held the ruined chopper as the bubble of clear plastic slowly filled with river water. Inside the pilot slumped in his seat, tethered in place by the shoulder restraints.
“Is he alone?” asked Merle, coming to stand beside Dalton, asking him the questions as he emerged as the clear leader of their party.
“Seems so,” said Dalton as he released Erin’s hand.
“He’s moving!” said Richard, pointing a finger at the river.
Erin craned her neck and saw the pilot’s head turn to one side. Alive, she realized.
“He’s sinking,” said Brian. “It’s at his feet now.”
“We have to get him out of there,” said Alice.
“He’ll drown,” added Richard.
“You have rope?” asked Dalton.
Erin roused from her waking nightmare, knowing exactly what her husband planned. He’d string some rope up and swing down there like Tarzan in a daring rescue attempt.
Except she was the better swimmer. Dalton was only an average swimmer at best and today he was four weeks post-surgery. His abdominal muscles could not handle this. He’d tear something loose, probably the artery that the surgeon had somehow managed to close. She squared her shoulders and faced him.
Erin regained control of her party.
“You are not going down there!” she said.
He ignored her and lifted a hand to snap his fingers before Richard’s face. “Rope?”
Richard startled, tore his gaze from the drama unfolding in the river and then hurried off.
“Dalton, I’m the party leader. I’m going,” she said.
He smiled at her. “Honey...”
Her eyes narrowed at the placating tone as she interrupted. “You might get down there, but you can’t climb back up. Who’s going to haul you back?”
He glanced at the drop and the chopper. The water now reached the pilot’s knees.
When Richard returned with the gear bag, Erin dropped to the ground and unzipped the duffel. As she removed the throw line and sash cord, she kept talking.
“I’m a better climber. More experienced.” She reached in the bag, removed a rope and dropped it at his feet. “Tie a bowline,” she said, requesting a simple beginner knot.
His eyes narrowed.
She held up an ascender used to make climbing up a single belay rope as easy as using a StairMaster. “What’s this for?” she asked, testing his knowledge of climbing.
His jaw tightened.
“Exactly. I’m going. That’s all.”
Erin showed Dalton the throw ball, a sand-filled pouch that looked like a cross between a hacky sack and a leather beanbag filled with lead shot. Its purpose was to carry the lighter sash cord up and over tree branches, or in this case, down and around the top of the chopper’s damaged rotor. Finished, she rose and offered the throw ball and towline to Dalton because he was better at throwing and because she needed him to leave her alone so she could work.
“Knock yourself out,” she said, leaving him to try to snag the helicopter as she slipped into her climbing harness and fastened the chin strap on her helmet.
“How deep is the river here?” asked Dalton.
“Twenty feet, maybe. The river is deeper and wider here, which is why there’s no white water. The gorges close back in farther down and the water gets interesting again.”
Twenty feet was deep enough to sink that fuselage, she thought.
Erin selected a gap in the top of the rocky outcropping for her chock. This was an aluminum wedge that would hold her climbing rope. The climbing rope, on which she would belay, or use to descend and then return, was strong and much thicker than the towrope, which was no wider than a clothesline. Belaying to the pilot meant using this stronger rope and the cliff wall to drop to his position and then return using two ascenders. The ascenders fixed to the rope and would move only in one direction—up. The ascenders included feet loops, so she could rest on one as she moved the other upward.
She set the wedge in place and then set up her belay system. Finally, she attached her harness to the rope with a carabiner and figure eight belay device. She liked old-school equipment. Simple was best.
By the time she finished collecting all her gear, a second harness and the pack with the first aid kit, Dalton had succeeded in snagging the chopper with the throw ball and pulled the cord tight.
“Got it.” He turned to her and grinned, showing her the tight towline.
“Fantastic,” she said, squatting at the lip of the cliff. Then she fell backward. She had the satisfaction of seeing the shock on Dalton’s face before he disappeared from her sight. Only momentarily, unfortunately. When she glanced up he was scowling down at her. Holding the towrope aloft.
“What’s this even for?” he shouted.
“It’s like those spinner things, only for grown men.”
She continued her descent, smoothly releasing the rope and slowing as she reached the river’s uneasy surface. As she approached the chopper, she realized the wreckage was moving, inching back as the rotor dragged along the branch anchoring it in place.
The pressure of the water splashed over the dome in front of the pilot, who turned his head to look up at her. She could see little of the man except
that his headphones had fallen over his nose and there was blood, obscured from above by his dark clothing.
Her feet bumped the Plexiglas dome and she held herself in place, dancing sideways on her line to reach the door on the downriver side. It was partially submerged, but the other one took the full force of the current. She’d never be able to open it.
The pilot clutched his middle and turned to the empty seat beside him. He grabbed a red nylon cooler and laboriously moved it to his lap.
“I’m going to get you out,” said Erin, doubting that she really could.
Chapter Three
Dalton watched in horror as his wife opened the side compartment door and gave herself enough slack to enter the ruptured compartment of the wrecked chopper.
The pilot lifted his head toward her as she perched on the passenger’s seat, now pitched at an odd angle. Her added weight had caused the chopper’s runner to farther slip along the anchoring branch. When the chopper tore loose, it would sink and she might be snagged. Cold dread constricted Dalton’s chest as he watched helplessly from above.
If he had been the one down there, he was certain the chopper would already have broken loose. She’d been right to go, though he’d still rather switch places with her. She’d been so darn quick with those ropes. Erin knew he was capable of belaying down a rope. And he could climb back up on a good day, but he didn’t know how to use the gizmos she had in that pack on her back and jangling from her harness. And today was not a good day.
Beside him, the four surviving campers lay on their bellies and knelt on the rock, all eyes fixed on the drama unfolding below.
The pilot was pushing something toward Erin; it looked like a small red bag. Erin was unbuckling his restraints and shoving the harness behind his back.
The water foaming around the wreckage drowned out their words.
Erin succeeded in getting the waist buckle of the climbing harness clipped about him and was working on tugging the nylon straps of his harness under his legs as the pilot’s head lolled back. Erin glanced up at Dalton, a frown on her lips as she exited the compartment and retrieved the towline he had thrown. She was signaling to him with the rope. Pantomiming a knot.
