Surrender: A Bitter Creek Novel

by Joan Johnston

  “Maybe we shouldn’t eat anything today,” she suggested.

  “We keep eating until there’s no food. I’ll get a Snickers for us to split.”

  He hissed in a breath when he angled his leg to get up and she said, “We should check your wound first.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  She retrieved the headlamp and turned it on. “How does your leg feel?”

  “It hurts.”

  His jeans had been shredded by the grizzly at the spot of the wound, but the second time she’d treated him, he’d ripped the opening wider, so he wouldn’t continually have to strip. She aimed her headlamp at the wound and asked, “Does it feel better or worse than yesterday?”

  Taylor had been worried that Brian’s wounds would get infected, and she’d been insistent about cleaning the four claw marks with Jack Daniel’s—for its antiseptic effect—and applying Neosporin at least twice each day. Unfortunately, they’d run out of Neosporin two days ago, and there was only a swallow or two of Jack Daniel’s left in the plastic bottle.

  “My skin feels tight,” Brian said.

  That likely meant the wounds were swollen. Swelling was one of the signs of infection. She pressed a fingertip against a red spot near the deepest gash.

  “Ouch! Take it easy.”

  “I don’t like the looks of that fourth gash.”

  “I don’t much like it, either,” he said. “But there’s no pus, so I don’t think it’s infected.”

  Taylor wasn’t so sure. She reached over to press her hand against his forehead to check for fever, but he swatted it away.

  “I’m fine, Tag. Don’t fuss.”

  His body always felt warm to her, but she made a note to feel his skin the next time they were lying close together to see if she could detect more warmth than usual. “I should put—”

  “The whole thing’s scabbed over,” he said irritably. “I don’t think we should waste the last of the whiskey. I’d rather drink it than pour it over my leg.”

  Taylor couldn’t disagree. A scab had formed over each of the four stripes, but she didn’t like the tenderness around the deepest wound. “All right,” she said at last. “But if the swelling gets worse, let me know.”

  “Roger that. Your turn to yell your lungs out? Or mine?”

  “Yours. But let’s eat first.”

  They’d been taking turns, once every half hour during the daylight, crawling up to the cave opening and shouting for help for three minutes, in hopes that someone doing a grid search would hear and rescue them. So far, neither of them had detected any sound at all on the other side of the tree trunk—not even a birdcall or the skitter of a small animal.

  Whoever was doing the yelling also used that three minutes to pry away slivers along the top of the trunk with Brian’s Swiss army knife, expanding the opening a little bit more each time.

  Brian unwrapped the Snickers bar and cut it in half. “I have to admit, when you’re hungry, something full of sugar hits the spot.”

  “Think of all the protein we’re getting from the peanuts,” Taylor said with a wry grin.

  She nibbled at the chocolate and nougat and peanuts, relishing the sweetness on her tongue. “You realize all this sugar is just going to make us hungrier in about a half hour.”

  “I don’t think I could be any hungrier,” Brian said. “I can’t believe how little energy I have after a week on short rations.”

  She decided to broach the elephant in the room. “I wonder if we’re just fooling ourselves. We’re almost out of food, and there’s no sign that anyone out there even knows we’re still alive.”

  “I’m making progress on that stump.”

  Taylor didn’t point out that the entire tree trunk would need to be gone for either one of them to get out. She licked her fingers to get the last bits of chocolate off them. She turned her headlamp toward Brian and saw a speck of chocolate on the side of his mouth.

  “Hold still.” She used her fingertip to catch the chocolate and then pressed it against his lips. “You missed a bit.”

  His tongue came out and licked it away.

  “I would have kissed it off,” she said, “but then I’d be getting all that sustenance instead of you.”

  “I would have been just as happy to retrieve it from your mouth as from your finger.”

  Taylor laughed. “Promises, promises. You haven’t kissed me even once since the last time we made love.”

  Taylor flushed. She hadn’t brought up the subject of their lovemaking, or rather, the absence of it since their first day in the cave. She wasn’t sure why they hadn’t indulged again. She’d been willing, and she thought Brian had been as well, but neither of them had done anything about it.

  “I guess I owe it to myself to see if there’s any more of that chocolate I might vicariously enjoy.” Brian’s hand cupped her nape to draw her close, and his mouth captured hers in a gentle kiss.

  She felt a rush of pleasure as he teased her lips apart with his tongue and they tasted each other. Her hands slid into the hair at his nape, and she groaned as his hand cupped her breast.

  Abruptly, he let her go. His breathing was uneven, and his eyes glittered with desire.

  “Why did you stop?” she asked.

  He took another step back and said in a voice harsh with unrequited desire, “I can’t give up hope that we’re getting out of here. I can’t! I refuse to believe otherwise. If we do this, we’re liable to end up with complications neither of us wants.”

  Taylor felt a flare of anger, followed by a painful ache in her chest. Obviously, Brian had been listening when she’d admitted to having “feelings” for him. She was appalled to see the result of her openness: he was concerned that she might make demands on him if they were ever free. At the same time, he’d made it more than clear—by his silence—that he had no intention of making any kind of commitment to her.

  “Don’t worry, Brian,” she said, her voice filled with scorn. “I won’t expect a proposal. Or a ring I’d eventually have to give back.”

  He grabbed her by her arms and shook her. “Damn it, Taylor! You aren’t thinking straight. I didn’t see a package of pills come out of your pocket. What if you get pregnant?”

  She didn’t have the heart to tell him that she hadn’t been taking pills since she’d broken up with good old Harry.

  “The chances—” she began.

  “It might not happen,” he interrupted. “It probably won’t happen. But what if it did? I don’t want either of us to be forced into a marriage we don’t want. Or end up fighting over custody of a child.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, he added, “And I wouldn’t want you to end the pregnancy.”

  He let go of her and said, “I love having you close, but it’s been hell keeping my hands off you. I’m not pushing you away because I don’t want you. I want you all the time.” He shoved a hand through his hair, leaving it askew. “I’m trying to be reasonable here.”

  She was shocked. And pleased. And confused.

  He wanted her? He couldn’t keep his hands off her? Was his desire merely physical? Or were there emotions attached? And who said they had to be reasonable? Especially at a time like this?

  “All right,” she conceded. “No sex. But I don’t see why we can’t enjoy a little kissing and cuddling.”

  Brian scoffed. “You don’t?”

  She shook her head.

  “Aw, hell. Come here.”

  She pulled off the headlamp and stepped into Brian’s open arms. They closed firmly around her, providing comfort and security. That was good enough for now.

  He murmured, “If I could survive wanting you in high school without having you, I suppose I can survive wanting you without having you here. Turn that face up to me, so I can kiss you silly.”

  Taylor lau
ghed. “I think I reached silly a day or so ago.”

  But she made sure he found her lips in the darkness.

  BRIAN WAS WORRIED about his leg. The way he saw it, he wasn’t going to spend thirty days starving to death. He was going to die of sepsis in ten. He hated the thought of leaving Tag behind him to die alone, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Not if his leg was as badly infected as he feared it was.

  As a firefighter, he knew a lot about treating minor wounds and the symptoms that heralded an infection, like the fatigue that had dogged him over the past forty-eight hours. Sure, he needed a lot more calories to sustain his muscular body than he was getting, but his reduced activity level should have compensated. It hadn’t.

  This morning, their seventh day in the cave, he’d woken up with more pain in his lower leg than he’d felt yesterday. That was a very bad sign. Obviously, the Neosporin had been doing more good than he’d thought, since he’d been healing fine for the first four days. Just as obviously, the lack of it was making a difference. He wondered how much time he had before he developed a fever. And how much time beyond that before it laid him low.

  It was clear Tag suspected something was up. She’d noticed the additional redness on his leg and then reached out to see if his forehead was feverish. He’d have to make excuses to keep her from realizing the truth. Too soon for his peace of mind, it was going to be impossible to hide his condition.

  Brian was scraping hard enough on the trunk with the knife to put a film of perspiration on his face. He took a break to swipe it away with his sleeve, then put his mouth close to the opening and yelled, “Anybody out there? Heeeeelp! We’re stuck down here. Helloooooo! Can anybody hear me?”

  He listened, hoping against hope for some response. He heard an airplane somewhere overhead. He was afraid the air search would already have swept this area by the time he made a hole big enough to slip something through that could be seen. He doubted the planes would come back to the same area again, but there was always the ground search. That was far more thorough, and more likely to result in someone discovering them.

  Brian began chipping away at the log again, harder, deeper, trying to get the opening big enough to push through a piece of the parachute. Since everything was burned to ashes all around them aboveground, the parachute would show up like a spill of bleach on a black shirt. The only problem was how to keep the thin cloth from blowing away in the never-ending Wyoming wind. He figured he could tie a knot in the fabric on the inside, to keep it from slipping away. Hopefully the wind would make the parachute billow and the wafting nylon would be an attraction to anyone hunting for them.

  “Hey!” Tag shouted. “Time’s up.”

  “I want to work a little longer on this log.”

  “You’re the one who set the rules, Brian. You need to abide by them.”

  She was right, but he’d set the rules before he’d known he was living on borrowed time. “Another five minutes. Then I’ll quit.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that.”

  Both the Swiss army knife blade and its tiny saw were losing their edges, which made the work harder. Oh, what he would have given to have his Pulaski in here! He’d have made short work of this tree trunk.

  “Brian! Come quick!”

  Tag’s piercing shriek made his blood run cold. He scurried backward as fast as he could down the tunnel, wondering what had happened. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

  By then he was dropping out of the hole, his system charged with adrenaline. He whirled to face her and was blinded by the headlamp. “Get that damned thing out of my eyes!”

  She made a distressed sound in her throat and yanked it off. It was still aimed upward, so he could see her parchment white face in the stream of light.

  “What happened? Why did you scream?”

  She was staring at him with wide, frightened eyes. “I saw a fox. A red fox, with a white chest and pointy ears and a big bushy tail, like you see in kids’ books for the letter F. You know, F is for fox?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  She grabbed his arm, and he winced when her fingernails pierced his skin. “I tell you I saw a fox! I was at the back of the cave with my pants down and I heard something scrabbling in the dark and I turned and…it suddenly appeared right in front of me.”

  Her jeans were still unsnapped and unzipped, so something had spooked her. But a fox?

  “Are you sure it wasn’t your imagination?”

  “Brian, I’m not sick. I’m not crazy. I saw it!”

  He might have believed her, if she’d said she’d seen a coyote or a wolf. Yellowstone had plenty of both. But a fox? They weren’t unknown in the park, but they weren’t common, either.

  “Do you know what that means, Brian?”

  He understood what she was saying. But he was pretty much convinced she’d dreamed up the fox, because she wished so badly for what the appearance of an animal in this cave suggested. “You think there’s another way out of here.”

  “Yes! That fox had to come from somewhere. We must have missed something the first time we searched for another way to escape.”

  “And the second and tenth and twenty-fourth times,” Brian muttered. Every time he’d gone to the back of the cave he’d looked again, but he’d never found anything, not even so much as a hint of light or a whiff of air to suggest a way out.

  “I saw what I saw,” she insisted.

  “Assuming you weren’t hallucinating.”

  “I had my headlamp on,” she said, her voice rising. “I heard a sound, and when I turned, the fox’s eyes reflected the light. It looked as shocked to see me as I was to see it.”

  “I presume it took off. Did you watch where it went?”

  “It ran away.”

  “You didn’t follow it?”

  Her face looked stricken. “I was…I guess I was too excited…and my pants were down around my ankles.”

  “Finish zipping yourself up, and let’s go see what we can find. With any luck, your fox left a trail we can follow out of here.”

  Brian grabbed the flashlight he’d dropped near the tunnel and followed Tag to the back of the cave. He didn’t think the animal was still around, but he kept the Swiss army knife open in his other hand, just in case they ran into something more dangerous. He slipped past Tag and used the flashlight to see if he could find the fox’s tracks. But there was no paw print on the stone floor where Tag said the fox had appeared.

  He sprayed the light from wall to wall looking for an animal sign, but he didn’t find any. Which made sense. If any animal had been coming into the cave at this end, he would have seen the tracks on one of his previous forays.

  “I don’t see any sign of it. Are you sure—”

  “I saw a fox!” she insisted. “It wasn’t my imagination. It wasn’t!”

  Tag sounded almost hysterical, and Brian turned and swept her into his arms, hugging her tight. Her nose was pressed against his throat, and he could feel her quivering.

  “It’s all right, Tag. I believe you.” That wasn’t entirely true. But he was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, because he could see she desperately needed to believe in the hope of escape that her sighting of the fox had provided.

  “Look again,” she insisted, shoving him away. “That animal can’t have come and gone without a trace.”

  Brian turned and searched again, scanning the floor of the cave, which was made up of stone and hard-packed dirt, with his flashlight. Then he saw it, near the wall of the cave, where the dirt was softer. Half a paw print.

  “Tag,” he said. “Look.”

  She pressed her hands to her mouth, and her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, my God. I didn’t imagine it. The fox was here.”

  Tag joyously threw herself into his arms, and he held her tight, rocking her from side to
side. She was half laughing, half sobbing, and he felt his own throat swell with emotion. They weren’t going to die. At least, not in here. Although, that wasn’t a sure thing, either. A hole big enough for a fox might not be big enough for a human. Especially one with big, broad, muscular shoulders.

  But Tag might be able to fit where he couldn’t. He gave her a quick hard kiss and freed himself. “Let’s see where that print leads.”

  Brian had done plenty of tracking when he was hunting with his brothers. He looked to see whether the paw print was for a right or left foot, and whether it was a front or back paw. It was a right rear paw print. He looked for where the right front foot should be if the fox had left in a hurry and, sure enough, found the barest imprint right next to the wall. No sign of the left front or rear paws showed on the cave’s stone floor.

  Brian kept his light aimed along the edge of the wall and found another rear paw print in the dirt. And then another front paw print.

  And then the prints simply disappeared.

  TAYLOR HAD BEEN choking back tears ever since she’d spotted the fox. She was afraid to hope, yet hope was making her heart beat hard and her breath come in frantic pants. She heard Brian swearing under his breath, and her throat closed so tight she ended up croaking, “What’s wrong?”

  He turned to her, his lips a flat, angry line and his brow furrowed in confusion. “I don’t see any more tracks. Where the hell did it go?”

  “What do you mean? It couldn’t disappear into thin air.”

  “Well, it’s not here, and I don’t see any more tracks, or any opening where it could have escaped.”

  “Show me the last footprint you found.”

  He turned the flashlight toward a faint paw print. “There it is.”

  She took a step closer and leaned down on one knee to examine it. “Why is it so messy around the edges?”