by Dani Atkins
‘We are not victims here, Hannah. We’re survivors, you and I, and we’re going to get through this because we’re strong, resourceful and determined, not just because we got lucky.’
I shook my head sadly. ‘But we did, didn’t we? We’re here through sheer dumb luck.’ His eyes were questioning, and I could do nothing to keep the tremor from my voice as I continued. ‘If that baby hadn’t been screaming beside me, if the guy on the other side had eaten just a few less burgers and a few more salads, then I wouldn’t have moved seats, I wouldn’t have been in the back of the plane at all. And if you hadn’t come looking for me, then neither would you. Don’t you see what I mean? We’re only here by some stupid, one-in-a-million, stroke of luck.’ I looked bleakly around us at the barren frozen surroundings, littered with wreckage from the crash. ‘If you can call it that.’
‘You’re damn right I’m calling it that!’ Logan replied, his voice suddenly angry. ‘Do you know what kills people most in these kind of survival situations?’ He gave me no time to answer, but thundered on, his eyes glinting dangerously. ‘Giving up. That’s what does it. Weakness and negativity. We’re not going to do that, you or I. We can’t afford to, so we’re not.’ There was a challenge in his voice that scared me a little in its intensity. ‘This whole situation is horrible, tragic, a living nightmare. And yes, if you want to know what I really think, then I believe the plane came down in the mountains, and probably a great many people died.’ I gasped, because even though I knew it to be true, it was still brutal to hear it put that way. ‘But we didn’t. And you need to stop focusing on why them and not us? Or poor me, because neither of those trains of thought are going to help you. Your frame of mind is all wrong.’
I winced, totally unprepared for this brand of tough love. ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ I said, my own anger rising up to meet his. ‘This is my first plane crash. I’m not entirely familiar with the appropriate code of conduct.’ I was breathing heavily, and could feel adrenaline coursing through me, pumping and firing me up with rage. I felt alive.
It took me a minute or two to realise that Logan had deliberately provoked just this reaction in me. He waited until the fires of indignation had dwindled in my eyes.
‘That’s better. That’s survivor talk. That passion, that anger, that rage against what has happened, is what’s going to keep you strong. You need that. Keep it. Use it.’
I shook my head, almost bewildered. How had he done that, how had he eliminated my feelings of helplessness and despair? I felt suddenly empowered, as though I had a duty to myself, my family and to all of the other passengers who had boarded the plane with us, to survive. I added motivational speaker to my list of his possible professions.
Logan got to his feet and held out his hands to draw me upright. I placed my hands in his and let him. He would lead us through this, and out of this, and I would let him, because he was stronger.
There was no anger or censure in his voice as he continued, just a calming authority and confidence. ‘Until we’re found and picked up, we have four main priorities: Shelter, Water, Warmth and Safety.’
It seemed almost inappropriate to add the word Food to that list, but my stomach suddenly made a very large growl and spoke for me.
He smiled. ‘And food too, if we can find it. But that one is low down on our priorities.’ I wasn’t sure the continued rumbling noise from my abdomen actually agreed with that.
‘People can survive for weeks without food,’ he said, not telling me anything I didn’t already know. ‘But only a day or two without water, so that is what I suggest we concentrate on finding first, because I don’t know about you, but I’m getting pretty thirsty.’
I was almost surprised to realise that he was absolutely right. My throat felt rough and thick and there was a weird metallic kind of taste in my mouth, unpleasantly coating my tongue. I was parched. Still, finding water to drink was hardly going to be difficult, was it? Not when we had literally fallen out of the sky and landed in a lake. I turned in the direction of the body of shimmering water, its surface a kaleidoscope of colours in the light breeze.
‘I think I’ve found it,’ I said, taking a step towards the water’s edge. I could almost taste the icy cold liquid trickling down and soothing my raspy dry throat. Logan stilled me with a restraining hand on my upper arm
‘I don’t think we should drink that water. At least not without boiling it first,’ he advised.
‘Do you really think that’s necessary? Won’t we just know by the taste if it’s bad?’
Logan shrugged. ‘Maybe, maybe not. Can we really afford to risk it? The last thing we need now is to make ourselves sick.’
He was probably wise to be cautious, and without his warning I would right now be kneeling at the edge of the lake lapping up mouthfuls of refreshing chilled water like a thirsty dog. It wasn’t a pretty image, but then neither was throwing up for the rest of the day.
I looked longingly at the water, and then turned back to Logan with a sigh. ‘So, what now . . . hope that a kettle mysteriously fell out of the plane’s galley and landed here with us?’
Logan’s eyes creased into small fantails of grooves when he smiled. I liked that: it meant he did it a lot, and he wasn’t bothered by vanity. I doubted very much he was the kind of man who worried about lines or surreptitiously borrowed his girlfriend’s eye cream when he thought she wasn’t looking.
‘I take it you weren’t a girl scout then?’ he teased.
I shook my head in apology. ‘More of a library and books kind of a girl, I’m afraid. I’ve never even been camping.’
‘Lucky I’m here then,’ declared Logan without conceit.
You have no idea, I thought silently. He was clearly a highly competent take-charge kind of a guy, and I was probably as far at the opposite end of that particular spectrum as it was possible to go. Without him, I wouldn’t have a clue.
He sent me off to look among the wreckage for something that could hold water and withstand the heat of our fire, while he went to the edge of the trees to look for wood to make a stand. I wasn’t happy with either of us being that close to the area where any manner of wild animal could be waiting to attack us, but Logan didn’t falter as he walked along the line of trees, searching for just the right shape and length of wood from the low hanging branches.
It did strike me as a little strange that throughout his brief scavenge he kept up a continual flow of conversation and questions. ‘So, you’re a city girl then, are you?’
‘I am now,’ I replied, an image of the smart docklands flat I shared with William overshadowing my view of the barren clearing. I remembered the day we first saw it. The rent was more than I could afford, and our plan to go fifty-fifty on all bills meant that we probably shouldn’t even have been looking at it. But the moment we’d walked in and seen London laid out in a breathtaking panorama beyond a wall of plate glass windows, I’d known that nowhere else could possibly compare. William, who never paid anything without trying to haggle on the price, who worked in the City and was used to dealing and negotiating, took one look at my face and turned decisively to the estate agent. ‘We’ll take it.’ I had gasped in a truly unsophisticated way, and yanked on his arm. ‘I can’t afford half of this, nowhere near. We shouldn’t have come to see it.’ I remember he had kissed me then, right there in front of the letting agent. ‘Don’t worry about it. Pay what you can, and I’ll make up the rest. You love this place already, it’s written all over your face.’ I closed my eyes on the memory. I had forgotten how spontaneous he had been back then and how very much I had loved him in that moment. But that was a long time ago.
‘So where are you from originally?’ Logan’s question jarred me out of the memory and back to the present.
‘I grew up in a converted farmhouse, in the countryside. It was a great place for kids. Kate and I had a magical childhood there. I lived there until I went to university.’
‘Kate’s your sister? The one who lives in Canada?’
&
nbsp; ‘Uh huh.’ I bent down and plucked up a piece of misshapen fuselage from among the littered debris. The piece of aluminium was about half a metre square, and had been bent by the impact into a vaguely conical shape. It would easily hold water. I held it carefully, mindful to keep my fingers away from the serrated edges where it had been ripped from the body of the plane. I turned it over and recognised a portion of the airline’s bright red insignia which cut through the piece of wreckage like a bleeding wound.
‘So what was your major at university. Where did you go?’
‘We don’t have “majors” at UK universities. My degree was in marketing, hence my job now.’ I stepped over the littered items on the ground and held up my find. ‘Will this do?’
Logan glanced in my direction and nodded, before returning his attention to a long tree branch. He leant heavily on it, using his weight to make it bow down. Suddenly the branch snapped, and the sound ricocheted around the clearing like a gunshot. He picked it up, together with several others at his feet and crossed to where I was standing.
‘You ask a lot of questions,’ I said, my head tilting to one side in curiosity. I wondered suddenly if he might be a journalist.
‘It was for the bears,’ he said, relieving me of the sharp edged piece of metal and examining it more closely. He nodded again, so I assumed it would fit the bill.
‘Sorry? The bears? Why? Do they want to know my life history before deciding whether or not to eat me?’
Logan’s laughter rang around the clearing, following the sound path of the snapping branch.
‘No. It’s to keep them away. They’re less likely to come close if we make a lot of noise around them. It will scare them off.’
‘Ah, of course,’ I said, pretending I had known his reasoning all along. ‘You had me thinking for a minute back there that you were just incredibly interested in my life story.’
His eyes went to mine and his voice was suddenly more serious. ‘And who’s to say I’m not?’
Logan dropped his collection of branches beside the fire, where they clattered noisily upon the stony ground. I sat down on a low flat rock, which felt pleasantly warm from the heat of the fire and watched him. He studied the sticks for a minute or two, repositioning and realigning them a couple of times. I was suddenly reminded of the one and only time William had attempted to assemble a piece of flat pack furniture. Three hours and one nastily sliced thumb later, he’d shoved the pieces back into the box along with the screwed up sheet of instructions. The next time I’d seen that box was in the large refuse container in the basement garage area. The next day a much more expensive pre-assembled unit had been delivered from a large furniture retailer. I’d said nothing.
Logan didn’t look the type of man who was easily bested by a set of flat pack instructions. In fact, within just a few minutes he had repositioned the lengths of wood and I could already see the makings of a very solid-looking structure to go over the fire. He crossed to the suitcase we had rummaged through earlier for clothing and flipped its catches.
‘Do you need any help?’ I enquired, feeling largely useless just sitting on my backside and letting him do all the work.
He was crouching on the floor, his back to me, and he turned and looked over his shoulder. ‘No, I’m fine. I just need to see if Bob has a . . . oh yes, he does. These will do.’ He pulled a pair of brown leather shoes from the case.
‘Bob? Who’s Bob?’ I hadn’t seen any name tag on the handle of the case.
‘Well,’ said Logan, his fingers busily unthreading the laces from the shoes. ‘Bob might not be his actual name. But I think he dresses like a Bob, don’t you?’ I looked down at what we were both wearing, and couldn’t help the smile that tugged at my lips.
‘I guess he does.’
‘And while I don’t want him to think we’re ungrateful, I’m afraid Bob’s feet are way too small for me and far too big for you. He pulled the second lace free from its eyelet like a bird with a worm. ‘But his shoelaces, however, are just the right size.’
I watched in fascination as he found a sharp-edged piece of rock and ran each shoelace against it until the two lengths had become four. Working with confidence and speed, Logan began to lash the sturdy sticks together, his fingers moving nimbly, knotting and testing the strength of each joint before moving on to the next.
I know how to do precisely one knot – it works admirably on my shoes and when wrapping presents, but Logan was performing some sort of intricate creation with loops and twists. His fingers moved so swiftly it was hard to follow what he was doing. Who knew how to do stuff like that, unless they were a scout master or a fisherman? I shook my head. Neither of those sounded likely either.
‘There, that should do it,’ he declared, getting to his feet and lifting the frame over the campfire. It was far enough from the flames not to ignite, and low enough to hold our makeshift container above the fire’s heat. I scrambled to my feet and reached for the piece of fuselage.
‘I’ll get the water,’ I volunteered. The lake chilled my hands as I submerged the metal wreckage beneath its surface and lifted it carefully. Some of the water slopped out and I held the container away from my body to minimise wastage. But as I got slowly to my feet my eye was caught by something just protruding from the lake. Something brightly patterned, which I instantly recognised. It was the scarf I had purchased at the airport. I had tied it to the handle of my carry-on bag, and when I’d moved seats I had looped the straps of my bag around the base of the seat in front of me.
I strained my eyes trying to see through the glinting water. The scarf was about four metres from the lake shore, and it was impossible to see if it was still attached to my bag or the seat I had clipped it to.
‘You okay here?’ I jumped as Logan came to stand beside me and the rest of the water slopped back into the lake.
‘Over there,’ I said, pointing in the direction of the red scrap of material bobbing on the water’s surface. ‘I think that’s my bag, I’d fixed it to the seat in front of me.’ I threw the conical container onto the stones and bent down to pull off my trainers.
‘Hannah, what are you doing?’
‘That’s my bag, I know it is. It’s got all of my belongings in it. My phone’s in it.’
‘Your phone isn’t going to work out here,’ Logan explained patiently. ‘There won’t be any reception for a start and it’s been totally submerged.’ But I wasn’t listening. My socks tumbled down onto the ground beside my trainers and I took a step closer to the freezing cold lake.
He moved quickly, his arms coming around my waist like a vice and holding me back.
‘We only just managed to avoid getting hypothermia the first time. Do you really want to risk it all again, just for a bag, for God’s sake?’
‘It’s my bag,’ I said pathetically, as I felt tears slowly creeping down my cheeks. ‘My passport is in it,’ I added stupidly, as though that might be a clinching argument.
‘You know what, given the circumstances, I bet they let you into whichever country you want without one.’ But his attempt at humour didn’t even pierce the hard outer shell of my determination. I struggled against his arm, but he was holding me very tightly against him, and showed very little sign of letting me go.
‘It’s my bag,’ I repeated sadly.
We both stared at the scarf bobbing like a buoy in the water. ‘It’s that important to you?’ I turned my tear-stained face up to his and nodded. ‘Okay. Then I’ll go in and get it.’
Suddenly the arm around me sprang clear and he began pulling the boots from his feet. ‘Logan, no. I’ll go.’
But he shook his head in determination. ‘The seat is inverted, which means someone is going to have to dive down to release the bag.’
‘All the more reason why I should go,’ I reasoned. ‘I told you I’m a good swimmer. I used to work as a lifeguard, so I can dive and rescue people and do CPR and stuff.’
‘Good,’ declared Logan, pulling Bob’s sweatshirt from his bo
dy and shivering involuntarily as the cold air hit his naked torso. ‘Because you’re probably going to need to revive me by the time I get out of there.’ I wasn’t entirely sure if he was joking or not, but I was momentarily distracted as he unzipped his jeans and stepped out of them. He didn’t waste any further time in useless conversation but strode into the cold water, the hiss of his indrawn breath the only indicator that the water was every bit as cold as I had imagined it would be.
He paused for a moment, the water up to his mid thighs.
‘Logan, get out of there. It was a stupid idea. Forget the bag. Come out.’
‘It’s not so bad. Quite refreshing actually,’ he said, at least I think that’s what he said. It was hard to tell exactly, because his teeth were chattering quite noisily by that point.
‘Logan,’ I implored, but it was too late. He took one step further and launched himself into the water and down beneath its surface. I stood and looked on helplessly at the concentric rings of water where he had disappeared. Seconds ticked past and grew into minutes. The average person can hold their breath for up to sixty seconds on land, longer when under water, but that wasn’t when they were exerting themselves, and it certainly wasn’t in icy cold conditions like these. Stupidly I hadn’t been keeping count of the time, but it seemed to me as though Logan had been gone for much longer than just two minutes. Neither of us knew what lay below the surface of the water. The lake could have shelved deeply just beyond where the chair was lodged. He could have hit his head on a rock as he dived down, he could be caught up in the wreckage of the chair, slowly drowning while I stood on the shore and watched. What on earth had possessed me to make such a fuss about my stupid bag? What did it matter what was in it?
My hands were shaking as I fumbled for the fastenings on my jeans, which I scrambled out of and tossed onto the ground next to Logan’s. I pulled off my sweatshirt but didn’t bother wasting a single second in removing any more of my clothes. How long had he been down now? Three minutes? More? I stepped into the water, fighting every instinct in my body which was screaming at me not to do this. How could it possibly feel even colder than it had the night before? I took two more steps. The water was just below the level of my lacy underwear.
