Crash

by Joseph Monninger

  “Anything?” Seldon asked.

  The boys squatted next to the fish.

  “No, but we saw more bear tracks. We should police the area after Buford eats,” Titus said, leaning the crossbow against a rock. The crossbow pointed up at the sky. “Bears can smell fish like this for miles.”

  “I’ll splash some water around,” Seldon said.

  “Three today?” Paul asked.

  “We might get more this evening,” Jill said. “We don’t want to lose too many hooks.”

  “Good thinking,” Paul said, his hand out to touch the fish lightly. “We need a sauce pot in the worst way. If we could make a soup, the food would go a lot further.”

  “Web’s been all over the plane?” Seldon asked. “No one has found a knife, either. That’s bizarre. There must be a knife on board somewhere.”

  The knife was a genuine piece of Camp Lollipop lore. Everyone agreed there had to be a knife somewhere, but no one had found it yet.

  “Web almost lives in the plane,” Titus said. “He’s always in the plane.”

  It was true, Jill knew. Lately, Web had been constructing a sleeping platform with pine boughs on top of the seat backs. It was a little weird and a little … animal-like, she thought. Like an animal building a nest.

  “If we could find a pot,” Paul continued on his line of thinking, “we could make a soup and get more from the fish.”

  “Bones and everything,” Titus said.

  “Maybe we can manufacture something,” Seldon said. “Maybe we could bend some of the plane skin into a pan of some sort.”

  And that was where the conversation stood when they heard the whistle begin blowing. It blew over and over again, sending out a general alarm, and Jill rose to her feet and looked toward camp.

  The heaven watcher’s whistle, she knew. She started running almost before she knew what she was doing.

  Walter Eliot tried to get the barb of light trained on the plane. It was a small plane, not easy to hit with a ray of sunshine, and it had already passed to the west and south before he had realized it was a plane. For a moment, it had been a simple sound, a drone buzzing the sky, and anyone in a civilized place would have let it pass unnoticed. Planes traversed the sky every day, he realized, and you never paid attention to them.

  That was what he thought as he came out of his reverie and realized the plane was there, here, now. It was just above him, and he reached and blew the whistle. He blew it long and hard, and it was while he was blowing it that he realized he had reversed the order.

  Use the mirror first, then blow the whistle.

  That would be the proper order. That was the smartest way to go. The plane couldn’t hear a whistle, but it could sure see a reflected light.

  But his nerves felt jumbled and crazy and he understood in a deep, horrible place inside him that he had …

  … been asleep.

  He had dozed off in the warm sunshine. Then suddenly, the plane was past him, heading south toward hotels and food and warmth, and he had snapped awake when the plane was at the farthest edge of their bowl of sky.

  He was still flashing the mirror when Paul and Titus arrived. Seldon and Jill arrived a moment later.

  “Did you get it?” Seldon yelled, skidding to a stop. “Did they see you?”

  Walter Eliot kept flashing the mirror.

  “Did they see you? They must have passed right overhead, Dad.”

  That was his son. His son had asked that.

  Walter kept flashing the mirror.

  “Sometimes they wiggle their wings if they see you,” Titus said. “Did they wiggle their wings?”

  Walter shook his head no.

  No, they didn’t wiggle their wings.

  “They’re probably too far away now,” Jill said. “They’re miles away now.”

  “It was a small plane, too,” Titus said, his eyes up at the sky. “The kind that would be in a search party.”

  “I don’t know if they saw us,” Walter Eliot said.

  He continued flashing the mirror, but it no longer mattered to him where the spear of light bounced.

  “They’ll radio our position,” Seldon said, his tone tentative. “Right? Isn’t that right?”

  “It’s hard to know if they saw us,” Walter Eliot said.

  “I bet they heard the report about us, so they would have been looking,” Jill said. “Everyone’s probably looking.”

  E came up to the group then. Her hair dripped, and she had obviously been swimming.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, her breath shaky, her hand holding her ponytail and wringing it out. “Did a plane see us?”

  “Hard to say,” Walter Eliot said.

  What he thought was: I was asleep.

  “What are you saying?” Seldon asked as Walter Eliot put down the mirror. Walter sat down on the heaven watcher’s stump. Seldon stepped closer and bent over to see his eyes.

  “I’m not saying anything,” Walter explained, feeling annoyed at their questioning. How could he know for sure what the plane saw or didn’t see? “I just didn’t see them acknowledge us. That’s all.”

  “They would have wiggled their wings,” Titus said, apparently puzzled that they hadn’t.

  “They must have seen us,” Paul said. “They flew right over us.”

  “Hey, where’s Web?” Jill asked. “Didn’t he hear the whistle?”

  Walter was relieved to see the attention switch away from him. He put the mirror down where it was stored against the heaven watcher’s stump.

  “He was in the plane last I knew,” Walter said. “He’s always in the plane.”

  “But they saw the mirror flashes, right?” Titus asked. “They had to. On this kind of day …”

  “I’m going to go check on Web,” Paul said. “He must have heard the whistle.”

  “I’m sure he heard the whistle,” Walter Eliot said, remembering the one thing he had done well. “I blew it like crazy.”

  Paul went up the side of the plane as nimbly as he could. He had come through the water quietly, and now he scrambled up soundlessly, trying to catch Web at whatever Web was doing.

  Because Paul knew Web was up to something.

  He didn’t know what, and he didn’t know why, but his suspicions were raised. He knew Web better than anyone else on Junior Action News Team. He had played video games with him, and talked about zombies with him, and had hung out with him in the hotels when they were able to get movies on the pay-per-view channels. He knew Web wasn’t building his little nest in the plane for fun. Web didn’t do fun that way. The fact that Web hadn’t come when the whistle blew confirmed everything. So Paul went up the fake ladder and stuck his head in the opening of the plane, and he saw Web scrambling to put something away.

  “What are you doing?” Paul asked, climbing forward. “Web, I know you’re doing something, so what is it?”

  It was dark inside and hard to see.

  But Paul heard crinkling. Like wrappers being crumpled away.

  “Are you … Do you …” Paul asked, climbing into the plane’s belly. “What are you …”

  “Shhhh,” Web said.

  Web slammed one of the overhead compartments closed. He had just hidden something away.

  That’s when it began to make sense.

  “You have food, don’t you?” Paul asked, his voice rising in amazement.

  “Shhhh.”

  Web had built a nest, true enough, from pine boughs and scraps of wood. It was a wide platform near the back of the plane, not far from the overhead compartment where he had hidden the food. Paul found he couldn’t really speak or think of what to say because he was so furious.

  “We can split it,” Web said, his voice coming from the back of the plane. “It’s nothing great.”

  “You’re keeping food for yourself? Keeping it from the group? I can’t believe it!”

  “They didn’t want to come in the plane and look. I found it. No one else. I found it, and it’s mine.”

&
nbsp; Paul crawled down the pine platform headfirst and opened the overhead compartment. He had to reach back and down a little behind the shelf, down into a secondary compartment. His hand closed on something — it felt like a sleeve of crackers and a jar of some sort — and then suddenly Web attacked him.

  It almost didn’t seem real. Web slapped at his arm, making him drop whatever he had held a moment before, and Paul shot his knee up and tried to gouge it into Web’s ribs.

  But Web was heavy. Paul felt his wind leaving him as Web pressed on him and kept him away from the overhead compartment.

  “What, are you going to kill me?” Paul hissed. “Is that what you want to do?”

  “It’s mine.”

  “I’m going to tell everyone. That’s all there is to it.”

  “It’s not theirs. It’s mine. I found it when no one else wanted to look.”

  Paul pretended to relax. That sometimes worked. When you were a small kid, and a nerdy one to boot, sometimes playing possum worked. You went limp, and fairly often, the other kid gave up. Then you could squirt away. Paul was a master of it, but he didn’t know if Web would fall for it. Web was a nerdy, unathletic kid himself. He probably knew most of the tricks.

  For a weird moment, they lay together, inhaling and exhaling almost in unison.

  “Get off me,” he said finally in a firm, flat voice, and Web did.

  “We’re not friends anymore,” Paul said. “We’re done.”

  “Are you really going to tell them?” Web asked, pulling back and retreating to his dark corner. “It’s just some peanut butter and crackers. It’s no big whoop.”

  “I can’t even talk to you,” Paul said, slowly pulling himself toward the door. “I don’t even want to see you.”

  “Go ahead, then,” Web said, his voice suddenly defiant. “See if I care.”

  Paul tried to think of something to say, but nothing came to mind. He scrambled across the pine platform and then out the open door. Then the sun blinded him when he finally sat on the edge of the door frame, looking back at camp. He didn’t know what he’d gain by telling the other members of the party, but he also didn’t know if keeping Web’s secret involved him in it. It was strange all the way around. It was especially strange to think of them wrestling on the pine boughs, down in the darkness like two wild animals.

  Which way would you go?” Seldon asked.

  “West. Southwest, probably,” Titus said. “We’d follow the river. We’ve been over this a hundred times.”

  “I just want to go over it one more time,” Seldon said. “Humor me. I need to act like an adult a little. It’s my job. Someday, someone may come along and ask about what went on here, and I want to be able to answer that I did what had to be done. So tell me again.”

  “Paul, E, and I,” Titus said, his voice practiced with repetition. “We’d leave soon, in the next day or so. We’d take the crossbow for protection. We’d take some matches, too, and the usual camping materials. We can make horseshoe packs out of our blankets. I know how to do that. We’d be near water, so we wouldn’t need to carry it. We’d walk seven days, one week, in that direction. No more. If we didn’t get anywhere or find anything, we’d turn around. That’s about it.”

  Seldon nodded. He had to hand it to the kid: The plan made sense. It was compelling in its simplicity. Titus did not promise to bring help or find a homestead. He simply promised to try, and it was hard to argue with that given their circumstances.

  Seldon looked at the other faces through the wood smoke inside the pine hut, trying to read them. It was tribal meeting time. Web had scraped another notch in the calendar pole. Seventeen days had passed since the crash, and the temperature outside the hut had gone to the other side of freezing. Food supplies had shrunk to near zero. Nothing about their situation had improved in the past week or more.

  “You’re staying with me,” Walter Eliot said to his son, Paul. “That’s the last word on it.”

  “We may all die if he stays,” Jill said. “You can’t say one way or the other. Everyone has to choose.”

  “I’m his father.”

  “I’m going, Dad,” Paul said softly. “If the group decides an exploration party is a good idea, I’m going.”

  “He’s proven himself over and over,” E said from the other side of the fire, her face blended in smoke. “He’s good at this stuff. Almost as good as Titus. And he’s in good condition. Almost as good as I am. I’m not bragging; I’ve just been a dancer all my life, so I’m in shape. Paul should be one of the three.”

  “Then why shouldn’t everyone go?” Web asked. “I mean, at least theoretically. If help is out that way, why don’t we all go?”

  “We’ll travel faster with just the three of us,” Titus said, his voice serious and obviously fleshing out thoughts with which he had wrestled. “We’ll cover more ground as a small party, and we will need less food. We’ll take some of the fish jerky Jill made. But we’re going to require some serious calories, and it’s harder to provide for six people than for three.”

  “He’s got a point,” Paul said from his spot next to Jill. “You know he does. Honestly, we’ve been over all this. At this stage, we’re not really asking for permission anymore. We’re saying what needs to happen.”

  “Who made you king of the world?” Web asked, his voice covered with scorn.

  He still had the calendar pole across his lap. He used the sharp end to massage Buford’s rump.

  Nobody responded to Web, Seldon saw. Web didn’t count for much after the news about the stashed food came out. Seldon had a hard time tolerating the kid’s presence in the pine hut. But the kid had a thick skin, for sure. Rhinoceros skin. Knowing everyone hated him didn’t seem to make a difference to Web.

  “We should leave tomorrow,” Titus said. “The longer we delay, the colder it will be for us and for the people who stay. We’re not getting any stronger, any of us. If we don’t make it to civilization, we can come back and be in the exact same situation we’re in now. I don’t see a downside.”

  “You could die out there,” Mr. Eliot said, his voice drifting into the fire. “Or get lost. A thousand things could happen.”

  “Better to try than to sit and wonder about it,” Paul said. “It just is. And once it starts to snow, we probably can’t walk out no matter what. So if we’re going to try it, we need to start soon.”

  No one said anything for a little while. The fire continued to flicker. Outside, the sun had already set. The interior of the hut had become blue with the combination of the last light and smoke. Seldon looked down at his shoes. He had duct-taped them twice already, trying to keep them together. He had even taken to wearing the rubber boots around — the short pair, not the long pair — but they had proved too heavy for everyday use. His good loafers had sprung out at the seams. It seemed years, rather than weeks, since he had bought them.

  “I’m going with you,” Walter said. “You should have an adult along.”

  “Why?” E asked.

  “If Paul’s going, then I want to go, too,” Walter Eliot said. “I’m not letting my boy go off by himself.”

  “I should go instead,” Seldon said. “We need an adult here. That only makes sense. I’m younger than you and in better shape. And I can fish nearly as well as Jill. They’re going to need fresh fish. We have to be clinical. We can’t be emotional about this.”

  “I won’t be separated from my boy,” Walter said. “I’m going to go no matter what, so you might as well stay here, Seldon. I know I’m not very good at this survival stuff, but he’s my son, and I refuse to be separated from him. That’s not negotiable.”

  Seldon passed his eyes around the circle. No one seemed prepared to speak against Walter’s inclusion in the discovery party. Seldon gave the man credit. He didn’t blame him for not wanting to be separated from his son. It made sense, too, that an adult should remain behind, so Seldon accepted that role.

  “Tomorrow,” Walter said for emphasis. “First light. I’m in.”r />
  Web slept on his pine platform in the plane. It was cold and wet, but at least he didn’t have to deal with the idiots from Camp Lollipop. Besides, the hut was cold and wet, too — wetter, really, than the tube of the plane. He had been inside the pine hut in a hard rain, and it hardly offered any protection besides the outline of the aluminum wing. The plane, on the other hand, was at least out of the rain. Showed how much they knew.

  He rested on his back and felt his stomach. He was hungry. He was always hungry now, his stomach a burning little engine revving and cooling under his belt line. He had lost weight, actually, and his hands sometimes roamed to his hips, where he could feel his hip bones sticking out a little through his chubbiness. Not bad. That was one benefit, probably the only benefit, of the crash. He felt fitter than he had in years, maybe in his whole life. On heaven watch the other day, he had stared into a mirror at his reflection, astonished to see his chin wattle had slipped away and his cheekbones had taken on shape.

  But he was hungry.

  What he wanted was a cheeseburger. Cheeseburger and fries. No, popcorn, he decided. Popcorn and a soda, a tall, ridiculously large soda with a straw that jabbed in and out of the top hole like a trombone slide. And maybe some Swedish Fish for afterward, the fish stale and a little gummy so you could stick them on your teeth and they looked like tiny red shoes. Definitely Swedish Fish.

  Thinking about food made him restless.

  He slid out from under his blanket and crawled across the pine platform, then stuck his head out of the opening at the top of the plane. He looked around. He liked looking at Camp Lollipop, observing it from a distance. It looked pretty in the moonlight. And the air smelled good. The scent of the mountains and lake mixed with the pinewood smoke coming from the hut. That wood smoke was the one thing, he thought, he would actually miss if they ever got rescued.

  That’s what he was thinking when he saw the bear.

  But he didn’t really see it. Not at first. It came along the shore and blended with the shadows and the darkness, and he had to squint to see if he was going crazy. Then, little by little, the bear’s shape came out of the darkness. It walked with its head down, its nose sweeping back and forth like a cat’s tail when it hunts. Web couldn’t determine the species, but he guessed it was a grizzly. It looked big enough to be one.