Echoes of Darkness (30 page)

Cold. The storm has passed, but the wind is still up, fierce against my exposed face and hands, and I hurry, as best I’m able, to check out the situation. I was right about standing, though: I’m only halfway to my feet before I vomit into the snow.

The plane has come to rest against a rise, along the edge of a clearing about half the size of a football field; probably what Bill was aiming for as a landing strip. The storm did its best to bury us while I was unconscious, but the same wind that’s drifting snow over the plane and against the hill also scours clean the windward side; a row of windows and the door protrude from the snowbank, the one remaining wing jutting from the ground at a slight upward angle. Apart from the broken wing and shattered windscreen, the body of the plane appears intact—a miracle, considering the trail of broken trees behind it. It looks a mile long, the snow littered with pine needles and shattered limbs. Admittedly, though, I’m a city boy: anything more than a couple of blocks looks like a mile to me. I go back inside to get out of the wind.

Searching the plane is slow going, and I can see the light is changing as the sun makes its way toward the far side of the hill. Sundown is approaching, I think, and though that gives me a sense of urgency, my body doesn’t seem to have any hurry left in it. Investigating the shattered windscreen, I try my best not to look at Bill, his face ribboned by flying glass. Strapped to the side of his seat, though, I make a fantastic discovery: an emergency survival kit. Matches, fire-starting plugs, a half-dozen self-lighting flares, a knife, two of those foil survival blankets, a first-aid kit, and quite a bit of other stuff. No food, though: a crumpled granola bar wrapper and several empty antacid and aspirin packets lead me to suspect Bill’s been using his “emergency kit” like a medicine cabinet.

Terrific.

I look at the matches and kindling plugs, thinking of all the broken branches lying in the plane’s trail, then of the rapidly fading light coming through the broken windshield. I feel the breeze coming in as well.

I can try for a fire tomorrow
, I think.
When my head’s maybe calmed down a bit. That’s what they do in the movies, right? A signal fire? But for tonight . . . well, the plane’s not heated any more, but it’s insulated enough to fly at a few thousand feet, right?

I drag myself back outside and crawl to the front of the plane, then in under the engine housing. The nose of the plane, the propeller snapped off somewhere in the crash, is held out of the snow by the cabin roof, angled slightly upward due to the way the Piper is lying. In the shallow lean-to created by airplane and hillside, I push and pack snow in front of the hole in the windshield. I’m sick again as I work, but nothing comes of it, just a dizzying bout of dry heaves; apparently, I’m empty. I cover the hole as best I can, finishing just as the sun touches the top of the hill. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best I can do.

Back inside the Piper I go through the luggage, just trying to see what I have, but the light is failing fast. I give up; as cold as it is, it’s about to get colder. Dumping all the clothes into a pile, I tear open one of the crinkly survival blankets, as well as another find from the kit: one of those break-and-shake emergency chemical lights. In the cold, green glow of the light stick, I take off my boots, struggle out of the jeans I wore in the snow and into a dry pair, then put on every sock I can find, trying to warm my feet. I wrap myself in the blanket and snuggle into the pile of clothes like a nest. I’ve read somewhere that people with head trauma shouldn’t go to sleep, but I’ve never been this tired, and sleep is coming whether I want it or not.

I look up at Maggie, still hanging from her seat. From this angle I can’t see her face, but I suddenly remember my earlier promise. I actually start to fumble with the blanket, thinking that I have to get her down from there, but I fall back, exhausted.

“I’m sorry, babe,” I whisper, and I’m pretty sure I’m crying again. “I’ll get you down tomorrow, I promise.” Her hair is the last thing I see before my eyes close, and consciousness flees back to its hidey-hole in the black.

I wake to light from the low morning sun streaming through the windows, and my feet are numb. I peel off all those socks and see a pair of white, dead-looking things that frighten the shit out of me. I can still move them, though, and take that as a good sign, covering them with two pair of socks and wedging them back into my boots. My head feels a little better, I think, but it’s all a matter of degree: I don’t vomit when I move, but it still throbs like what my father would have called
a mad bastard
, and I don’t feel like moving all that much. I rummage through the first-aid kit and come up with a packet of extra-strength Pain Away (“Compare to the active ingredients in Excedrin!”) and bring it outside to wash them down with a mouthful of snow.

I have a few more mouthfuls of snow to quench my thirst, but I try to keep it to a minimum. I seem to recall reading somewhere that eating snow directly isn’t good in emergency situations, though my head is foggy, and I can’t remember why, or where I read it.

Strange, the things your mind latches onto when you think you’re going to die.

It takes a while to collect enough wood to make a fire, moving carefully. Slowly. It takes even longer to build a woodpile to last me the day—the longer the fire burns, the better chance some passing search plane will spot the smoke, right? Besides, when I get a fire going, I don’t want to be off gathering wood while it’s burning; I’m going to sit right there and thaw my feet.

Eventually a massive woodpile sits next to the Piper. I use a pair of Maggie’s shoes as shovels and clear a spot in front of the door, pushing the snow into a sort of fire-pit wall, to protect my the flames from the wind and hopefully reflect some of the heat back at me. Will snow reflect heat that way? God, I hope so. I break out the matches and one of the fire-starter plugs. The plug looks like just a stick of rough wax, but the thing lights and stays burning, and soon I have a small blaze. The twigs and branches covered with pine needles are dry from the cold winter air, and burn well once they catch, though they smoke like hell. That’s good, though: I hadn’t thought of it before, but the smoke might attract a passing plane. I wonder if they’re out searching for us yet? I huddle closer for warmth, feeding wood to the fire—then huddle
too
close, and take a big lungful of smoke. Though the scent of burning pine reminds me of camping trips I took as a kid, and by extension hot dogs and marshmallows roasted over the flames, the smoke itself is merely choking, and I have to back off slightly, each hack and cough making my head throb as tears wash the smoke-sting from my eyes.

My tears flow in earnest later on, as I limp through the snow looking for wood again. What I’d thought of as a massive pile turned out to be only enough wood to keep a fire burning for an hour or so, just enough time to thaw my feet and get almost comfortable before realizing I was running out of fuel.

My feet had hurt as they thawed, my boots off and steaming next to the fire, my stockinged toes as close to the flames as I could stand. They’d hurt like hell, but the pain had eventually gone away—all but the underside of those big toes of mine. Peeling the socks off again, my feet had looked pink and slightly puffy, except under my toes. There I’d found a pair of fat, red blisters. I don’t know if they’re a sign of frostbite (isn’t frostbite white, or is that just in the cartoons?) or if they’re from walking in wet boots, but the effect is the same: I mutter curses at the pain of each step as I search for wood, looking for bigger, thicker, longer-lasting branches to bring back to the fire.

Those blisters are doing one good thing
, I think.
At least they’re distracting you from your stomach.

My stomach. Christ,
why
did I have to think of my stomach? As if in answer, my gut rumbles, reminding me again of the bagel and coffee back in the airport. Actually—

I pull my useless cell phone from my pocket. There may be no signal out here, but the clock still works: 11:13 am. The flight left yesterday morning at 7:00 am. I try to do the math. That’s
more
than twenty-four hours, right? There’s twenty-four hours in a day, so I . . . I have to . . .

It’s a simple calculation, one I should be able to make, and the fact that I can’t figure it out, or even remember
how
to figure it out, is frightening. I start to worry if my confusion is a sign of concussion, or if there’s something even worse going on in my head—and then my stomach chimes in again, like thunder rolling across the valley, reminding me just what I was doing in the first place.

I’d puked up everything I’d had inside me, but once the nausea had faded my stomach had started bitching loudly, a constant nagging, like some spoiled toddler in a department store whining for a toy, just whining and whining and . . . and when the pain from my toes isn’t enough to distract me any more, here I am checking the time and trying to figure out just how long it’s been since I’ve eaten, like knowing that will somehow cow my belly into shutting up.

I look down at the cell phone in my gloved hand, just in time to see the readout click over to 11:14. Another minute gone. Another minute since I last ate. Another sixty seconds I’ve spent freezing and hungry, lost somewhere in the Canadian wilderness, all because Bill the pilot said we’d be fine. Said the weather would hold off, and then had us up in the air before learning the storm had shifted, and instead of skirting it just to the east, we’d flown right into it.

I look around at the snow. The trees. The snow.

Right into
this
, I think, and a sudden rage takes me; rage at the hunger, and the cold, and Bill, and this fucking
phone
that won’t even tell me how long this has all been going on. I cock my arm, intending to hurl it far away into the snow, where it’ll never be found, so it can die all alone in the cold . . . just like me.

At the absolute last instant, I check the throw, stumbling a little as I pull the phone to my chest. It gets no signal out here. It’s not a help to me in any way I can think of. The battery’s even going to run out soon. But I can’t get rid of it. I can’t throw it away. Not while the clock works. It’s my one last little reminder of my life. Of civilization. Besides, Maggie gave it to me, and I—

A thought comes through the fog that’s been shrouding my head since I woke. Maggie. She’s still hanging in the plane, and I promised to get her down. I
promised
.

I tuck the phone in my pocket and try, as best I’m able, to hurry in my search for wood. I have to get enough, and I have to do it quickly. I promised I’d get Maggie down.

Then, maybe, I should make some kind of signal fire . . .

I try. I try for a while, I really do. But I can’t get her down.

There’s not a lot of room to work in between the seats, but I wedge myself up there with her, forcing myself to try to unbuckle her seatbelt. I
have
to force myself: even though this is Maggie, I’ve never touched a dead person before, never mind
handled
one. Gravity tried to pull her legs toward the floor, but her shins and feet fetched up against the seatback in front of her, only allowing her knees to drop until they touched her chest; her lower half is curled into a sort of fetal position around the restraining belt. Somewhere in the middle of this knot of flesh and bone is the buckle with the belt release, but I can’t get to it . . . especially since rigor has set in. I try to push her knees out of the way, but all she does is rock in the seat, inflexible as a statue.