by Marion Myles
“But if we’re not, it’ll make the night a lot better,” she pressed. “Please.”
“Okay, okay. But I’m going to relax for a moment first.”
She wanted to shout at him. Tell him what a stupid, drunken asshole he was. But given her condition, there was no way she could survive without help. Antagonizing him didn’t seem like the smartest decision. So, instead, she nodded and closed her eyes. In her head, she counted to one hundred, two hundred, and was almost at three hundred before she finally heard him moving.
He was outside for a while. The sound of the snow thumping against the shell of the plane was comforting. She could swear she felt warmer already. Digging around, she found another container of melted snow and sipped. It was vitally important to stay hydrated. Between the shock, the elevation, and the cold, ensuring they ingested enough liquid was a matter of life and death.
When Liam crawled back into the airplane, his face was bright red and his nose running. “It’s cold as a witch’s tit out there. At least there’s hardly any wind.
“If we don’t get rescued today, we’ll have to bury Rory’s body. He’ll attract animals as he decomposes. I’m guessing there’re probably mountain lions living around here. We sure don’t want one of them stopping in for a visit.”
“But it’s so cold,” Liam protested. “Isn’t it like being in a morgue?”
“Sort of…but with our combined body heat and the snow insulating us, it won’t be cold enough.”
“Well, it’s not gonna be a problem ’cause we’re getting rescued today. I guarantee it.”
He crawled back into his nest and covered himself with two navy blue blankets, wrapping them tightly around his body. He was also using socks as mitts and slipped them on before pulling his hat farther down over his ears.
“I got nice and warm shoveling snow, but I know it won’t last.”
She shifted, carefully using her left hand to move her injured arm. It hurt to take a breath. All she could think was that she was lucky one of her broken ribs hadn’t punctured her lung.
“I’d kill for some Ibuprofen right about now. Or better yet, some Percocet. Are you sure you didn’t stash any in your pockets?”
His smile was sad. “I wish I had. Here,” he leaned forward, handing over the bottle of whiskey. “This will help.”
Her eyes fixed on the bottle then flicked to his face, and she thought, what the hell?
“Can you take off the top for me?”
He did and realizing because the bottle was practically full she’d have trouble controlling it with one hand, scooted over and lifted it to her mouth. She took a small sip, the liquid dripping a path of warmth down her throat and all the way to her core. After pausing for a breath, she drank again and then once more, each gulp getting bigger.
“I can’t believe it took us being stranded alone on a mountain in the middle of frickin’ nowhere before you’d finally have a drink with me.” This time his smile was the thousand-watt one he’d flashed from stages around the world. “Here have some more.”
“I got sick on whiskey once when I was about fifteen. Swore I’d never drink it again. But right now, this tastes better than anything I can ever remember having,” she admitted. “Just goes to show, never say never, right?”
“In a little while, the pain won’t feel so bad.”
“It’s already better,” she said. “Is that the last bottle?”
“I’m afraid so.” He rested in the crook of his arm and caressed it as if it were a small child. “And don’t you dare say we should be rationing it.”
“I wouldn’t bother wasting my breath. Though it’s always handy having alcohol around for wounds and the like.”
“There won’t be any more wounds. We’ll be heading out of here in a few hours.”
“Liam, I really don’t—”
“Shut up. Don’t say it. Knowing we’re about to be rescued is the only thing keeping me from freaking out.”
She sighed. “Okay. Fine.”
Over the next few hours, it became gradually darker. Not that there was much light in the plane, especially now that Liam had banked snow all around it. But when the tarp flapped, Rebecca could see the darkness settling in.
No way anybody would find them today. Not that she, for one minute, believed they were even looking. She figured Jack would’ve assumed the phone lines were down due to the storm. Plus, the owner of the rental cabin had warned that cell service was hit or miss, but mostly miss.
Jack was likely thrilled Rebecca was unreachable because it meant he didn’t have to deal with the problem of Liam. Siobhan would be the one who’d soon start pushing to make sure her brother was okay. Still, it might be another day or so before they realized he was actually missing.
As far as being found, from what she remembered of the map of the area, there was a huge expanse of wilderness with one state park rolling into the next. Added to that were the multiple mountains. She hadn’t studied the map well enough to remember all the names, but she could at least be certain they weren’t on Mount Rainier or Mount St. Helen’s because those were located well southeast of Lake Chelan.
By her best guess, she figured they were considerably north of their intended destination. When the storm had ramped up, Rory made the decision to route them that way, and she distinctly remembered him saying something about being blown even farther north shortly before they slammed into the mountain.
The rescue mission, when it eventually got underway, would probably start well south of their crash site. She had a dim memory of reading news reports years ago about the attempts to find a lost pilot. It had taken almost a year to locate the wreckage of his plane, and he’d been long dead by then, of course. That could be the case for us, she thought, pushing the bubble of panic back down.
“Liam, I have to go to the bathroom,” she said. “Can you help me?”
His eyes sprang open, and she could see the gleam of them in the darkness. “Um…what do you want me to do?”
“Help me get up.”
She started peeling away the layers of sleeping bag and clothing, and he crouched down beside her. “You want to go outside?”
“Not really, but I’m not going to pee in here. That’s just gross.”
She shifted forward and held out her good arm. He grabbed her hand and elbow and pulled, and she tried to get her feet under her. Her right hand slipped off her thigh, and the arm bumped down. Rebecca screamed, the sound raw and guttural like something an animal would make.
“Shit. I’m sorry. What should I do?”
Liam held out his other arm. She collapsed into him, breathless and nauseated. “Just wait,” she gasped “Don’t move.”
Bit by bit, the pain settled, and her breathing leveled out.
“Should I try and carry you?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. I need to tie this arm up. Can you think of anything that would work?”
“Um…maybe if we knot a bunch of socks together? No. Wait. I have an even better idea. How about my long johns? They’re clean. Brand new.”
“They sound perfect.”
“You’ll be okay if I leave you for a second?”
“Put me closer to the wall first.”
Liam helped push her back against the side of the plane before hunting the long johns. He eventually found them among the clothes in her sleeping bag.
“There you go,” he said.
He threaded her injured arm through the wide part and pulled the fabric along until her hand was nearing the ankle section. Then he looped the second leg around her neck and tied the whole thing together, adjusting until her arm rested diagonally across her chest. Her hand lay flat by her good shoulder.
“That’s so much better,” she said. “Thank you. How come you’re not wearing them?”
“That’s my spare pair. I’ve already got a set on. You ready?”
It was still painful, and she had to keep stopping to catch her breath, but they eventually made it out throu
gh the tarp and into the crisp, night air. They were situated on a narrow shelf of rock roughly twice the length of the plane. Between the snow reflecting the almost full moon and the cloudless sky filled with thousands of twinkling stars, it was more than bright enough to light their way. When she turned her head from side to side scanning the area, she realized there wasn’t a single man-made light anywhere to be seen.
It was beautiful and eerie and the hairs on the back of her neck rippled with apprehension.
“So…um…you’re okay to go to the bathroom now?”
“I know this is weird, but could you help me tug down my yoga pants and maybe hold my hand so I don’t fall?”
He cleared his throat. “Sure. Here we go.”
She carefully squatted down, balancing on him. “Can you…maybe talk about something?”
“Oh, yeah. Okay…um…let’s see. All right. There was this one time, in the early days before I bought the plane, I was supposed to play in a festival in New York. It was a big deal at the time ’cause I’d never played to such a huge audience. And wouldn’t you know it, the airline lost my guitars. Both of them. I only had the two back then. So I had to borrow a guitar from this other band. I felt like such a chump. I mean, what kind of rock star shows up without his guitar?”
She laughed. “Did it go okay?”
“Actually, it was pretty great. A turning point, you might say. After that I was asked on the Ellen Show, and then my career more or less blew up from there.”
She struggled upright. “All done. Thanks for talking me through it. I guess I have a nervous bladder.”
“You must have seen hundreds of people peeing by now. How can you have a nervous bladder?”
She let go of his hand and worked to pull up her underwear. “Because it’s different when I’m the one peeing in front of a stranger.”
“I’m hardly a stranger. Here. Let me help.”
He straightened the waistband of her yoga pants where it had rolled over on itself and patted down her top layers. “I think the problem is you don’t like to be the one who needs help.”
“Maybe. Guess I’ll have to get used to it, won’t I?”
They slowly made their way back inside the plane. After baring her backside to the frigid night air, it was a blessed relief to squirm into the sleeping bag and arrange the extra clothes around her.
She was pretty sure she’d shattered her collar bone. It screamed now, obviously not happy at all the jostling around during the last few minutes, and she sat as still as she could and breathed deeply against the pain. The tears were unexpected, and she turned her head away and pretended to rub her nose while she hastily wiped at them.
“It’s bad, huh,” Liam said. When she nodded, he sighed. “Here, have some more whiskey. I’ll fill up those bags with snow so you can ice your shoulder.”
“Thank you,” she sobbed, too embarrassed to tell him the tears weren’t solely from the pain.
She accepted the bottle—which was now only about half full—and took a couple of hearty gulps while Liam fished the plastic bags out from beside her. They were fully melted, and she heard the water swishing around in them.
“We should save that,” she said.
“All right. I’ll find something.”
She took another drink, the warmth melting her from the inside and soothing her, and carefully leaned against the side of the plane. When Liam returned, she shifted flat. He packed the snow along the top of her shoulder and down beside her ribs. She sighed and closed her eyes.
“Thank you for taking care of me,” she said.
Chapter Eighteen
Rebecca’s first thought upon waking the next morning was that they had to get out of there. Liam was still sleeping. His head was buried under a pile of clothes with the blanket bunched around his calves. The empty bottle of Jack Daniels lay next to him.
She squirmed up to sitting position. The pain shot straight down her right side, but she scrunched her eyes shut and focused on her breathing. After a few minutes, she struggled to her knees and finally managed to stand in a half crouch.
Slowly, making every effort not to jar her arm, she made her way out through the tarp and away from the plane as she found a jut of ice-covered rock to lean against. With some whimpering and swearing, she wrestled her pants down and, using the rock for support, was finally able to relieve herself.
Once she had her clothing sorted out, she rested against the rock again for several minutes waiting for the pain to recede. It was frigid, and the wind had picked up since yesterday. She’d always thought the wind was supposed to increase as the day went on…not start out blowing strong.
She turned and studied the plane. The right pontoon was completely gone, and the left had broken apart with the back piece disappearing into the ground. As for the wings, all that remained was a stubby portion of the left one. The plane was mostly hidden by snow.
Given that it was painted white to begin with, the rescuers would have a devil of a time spotting it against the acres and acres of frozen tundra. She realized they weren’t actually situated at the peak of the mountain because when she looked up, she saw it rose a few hundred feet above them.
Carefully, she shuffled along the rock where the ledge narrowed toward the sheer face. Finding a handhold, she leaned out as far as she dared. They may not be at the top, but they were a long way up. The ground sheared off straight down before leveling out and then once again dropping. The terrain was so lumpy she couldn’t tell exactly where ground level might be.
Looking straight across, she could see another mountain not quite as tall as this one but equally snowy and undulating. She made her way toward the plane and beyond to where the ledge widened, and the ground rose up. The snow became deeper, hitting above her knees, and she struggled on for several steps before admitting defeat and turning back.
She was winded and sweating by the time she crawled into her sleeping bag. When she awoke sometime later, Liam was still sleeping. It was hard to know how much time had passed. She drank some water and for the first time since the crash realized she was hungry.
Crawling out, she found the remains of their luggage piled behind the last seat. There was still some extra clothing in one of Liam’s bags. The next bag she recognized as the one she’d use to pack her textbooks. The only thing they were useful for was burning, not that they had any way to light them. Why, oh why, couldn’t the first aid kit have survived instead?
Finally, she saw the light blue duffel containing the protein powder, two boxes of chocolate bars, and a quart-sized bag of homemade trail mix. There were a total of thirty Dove bars and forty boxes of Smarties. She squinted at the nutritional information on the container of Vega powder. Each scoop provided twenty grams of protein, and if her math was correct, there were forty scoopfuls in the container.
This meant they weren’t yet in dire straits as far as the food situation. The protein powder could be mixed with melted snow and would provide each of them at least twenty days’ worth of bare nutrition. Plus, they could add a small handful of nuts and dried fruit and a chocolate bar. Even after that, there would still be thirty portions of chocolate and the remainder of the trail mix.
Liam stirred, rolling over and rubbing his eyes. “What are you doing?”
“Taking stock of supplies. We need to start eating. I hope you like chocolate as much as I do.”
“I like chocolate martinis.” He clutched at his head and groaned. “Man, I feel like the top of my skull is gonna blow off.”
“Have some water,” she said without sympathy. “Considering you drank most of a forty of whiskey I’d say you’re hung over and definitely dehydrated.”
His eyes searched out the bottle, and when he lifted it and saw it was empty, he flopped back down again and threw an arm over his face. “They’d better find us today,” he mumbled.
“Either way you need to hydrate. Start sipping.”
He lay there saying nothing for the next hour or so while Rebecca organ
ized the remainder of their resources. She piled the clothes as neatly as she could with one hand, filled a few of the empty Tupperware with more snow and shoved several of them next to Liam.
She went back outside to check over the plane and make sure no supply compartments had been missed. Studying the remaining pontoon where it disappeared into the snow along the ground, she tried to remember if there had been a second storage area beside the one Rory had opened for her things. She felt sure there had been one. As excitement coursed through her, she started clearing snow away using her feet.
The snow was tightly packed and mixed with chunks of ice and rock. Every movement wreaked havoc on her injuries and eventually, dizzy and nauseated from the pain, she stopped and slowly sank to the ground. She simply couldn’t do it.
Lifting her face to the sky, she willed a plane to come into sight, but all she saw were fast moving, puffy clouds. Should they try and find a way down the mountain or was Liam right about staying with the plane? Conventional wisdom said if you break down on the freeway, the safest thing to do was get your car over to the side of the road and stay in the vehicle. But wasn’t that because people wandering around on foot on the freeway were likely to get hit?
She shook her head. Well, all she knew was they weren’t going anywhere today. It was already well into the morning, make that around about noon since the sun was directly above her, and Liam wasn’t remotely mobile yet. She tried to imagine walking away on foot, her shoulder and ribs freaking out every time she took a step.
You’ll just have to hang tough, she told herself. Besides, it could be worse. You could have a broken leg.
When the dizziness had passed, she struggled to stand again and walked closer to the edge of the drop-off. She scanned each section between their mountain and the one in the distance, hoping to find anything that might indicate signs of humanity. The glint off a metal roof, a tendril of smoke from a chimney, a flat patch of ground signaling a road or trail, but there was nothing.
For one crazy moment, she wondered if they’d somehow been transported back in time and maybe this area had yet to be settled. If that were the case, certainly no one would be coming for them.
