by Nick Lake
“Like a SPOT tracker?”
He looked at her, surprised.
“My dad hunts,” she said.
“Right. Yeah, exactly like that.”
A moment. “No. But come on. My little brother is back there.”
He cursed. “That tracker could be anywhere. We’ll have to hope they got a fix on my signal when I made that distress call. Now…Wait—your little brother?”
“He’s too small to look after himself. We’ve got to keep him safe.” The plane. Leaving. It had all been for Aidan. And now that they’d crashed…it was still true, just in a different way. If she could keep Aidan safe…it would mean she’d have done something. Something big. With her life.
She’d have saved his.
Now, of course, with the plane smashed into the side of a mountain, it was going to be an awful lot harder. She shivered, thinking of the white vastness out there, trackless and blank.
“OK,” said Bob, breaking her train of thought. “But if you and your kid brother die, it’s not on me. You’re not on my manifest.”
She nodded. That was fair. But they weren’t going to die. Definitely not Aidan. Not if she had anything to do with it.
Her fingers brushed against the pocket of her jeans, the small bulge there, where she had put the SPOT tracker. She felt it must be pulsing at Bob, beaming out its location—a heat, almost, came from it, burning her leg—but of course he didn’t notice at all.
CHAPTER 4
IT WAS DARK now. Or at least the sun had set. There was a lot of light from the stars and moon.
Emily had wrapped Aidan in two blankets, for shock and because he was easily chilled at the best of times. They were sitting at the new, torn entrance to the plane. She was wearing her hooded fleece-lined winter jacket, which she’d stowed under her seat before takeoff.
Bob braced himself against the wing that was still attached to the plane, pushed his shoulder into it, and twisted. Emily realized he was trying to pop his dislocated joint back into place. He did it again—and screamed. He staggered for a moment, as if he might pass out, but steadied himself.
He moved his arm tentatively. Then he nodded and grunted. Started gathering supplies. He set down a gas can next to various objects he had already taken from the plane: a rifle, a rope, a sheet of thin metal. Behind them, the peak of the mountain loomed, a blacker mass in the dark of the night. Below, the foothills stretched toward a glow on the horizon. A town? The ocean? Emily wasn’t sure.
“We’ve got food,” the pilot said. “Plus the usual stuff I keep in case of emergency. Had a crate of water too, but it’s somewhere down the mountain. Still, if we get a fire going, we can melt snow—should be able to camp here until someone finds us. We’ll build the fire by the plane, use gasoline to get it going.” He indicated the ground in front of him.
“Here? What if it…sets fire to the fuel tank?”
“Fuel tanks,” he said. “Plural. And they’re above the landing gear.” He slapped the side of the plane. “This part of the fuselage is just metal bulkhead. It’s our best bet in terms of shelter.”
Emily looked at the plane. Or rather, the pieces of it. A plane was something that flew, something with wings. This was just a jumble of broken things. Bob was right, though: around them were only conifers, buried in snow. They offered some shelter, but not as much as the body of the plane.
She took in the gas tank, the snow, the ceiling of the plane and the space inside for protection from the elements.
Her dad always said: water, shelter, fire. Find those things quickly, in that order of priority, or you die.
Once, they’d been caught by a storm in the Adirondacks, too many miles out from the cabin they were supposed to be staying in that night. It had still been full daylight, but within an hour her father had found a stream, made a bivouac, lit a fire. We get cold and dehydrated, he said, and we die. And that hadn’t even been in Alaska. Emily wanted to move, to keep moving, but reluctantly admitted the best course of action was to shelter here. “You’re right,” she said.
“Let’s build that fire,” said Bob.
Aidan looked up. “Do you have marshmallows for roasting?”
Emily raised an eyebrow at him.
Bob grunted, a half laugh. “If you find any, knock yourself out.”
He sent Emily into the trees to find fallen branches to burn. She set off through the snow—grateful for the leather boots she was wearing but surprised by how tiring it was to walk in the deep powder. She gathered a few branches and dragged them back, sweating, even though the air was freezing in her nostrils. Then they broke open some of the packages from the plane and tore up the cardboard—it was drier and thinner than the wood.
With Emily’s dad, it was all military precision and attention: tinder, kindling, firewood. Bob had a different approach. He just made a pile of cardboard and wood, doused it with gasoline, and set fire to it.
The rush of heat was immediate: something primitive, almost alive. The flames shot up, casting a glow on the side of the plane, made the nearby trees flicker and their shadows grow and recede, like breath. The mountain disappeared, and the horizon: they were in a glowing bubble now, surrounded by blackness.
Aidan glanced around. “Quite visible,” he said, “these pyrotechnics.”
It was exactly what Emily had been thinking. She squeezed his hand, as if to say, what could they do?
Then she saw that Bob was staring at Aidan, brow creased.
“Aidan’s…um…different,” she said. “Special.”
Bob nodded slowly.
“We should eat,” she said, so he would stop looking at her little brother.
They opened cans at random: corn, tuna, beans. Even Coke, to drink. There were also cookies and chips, but Bob said to save some stuff for later. He pulled one of the broken seats from the plane and set it up next to the fire. Then he yanked a first-aid kit from under it and took out a bandages, alcohol, cotton balls, scissors.
He walked over to Emily, snagging a water bottle from his pile of stuff, and motioned for her to look up at him.
“This will hurt,” he said, pointing at the cut on her forehead.
“I know,” said Emily.
This will hurt: it was practically her motto, she’d heard it all her life. Those years of pointe shoes, building up the strength in her toes, losing nails, developing calluses as hard as horn. Hiking with her dad. Even Miss Latimer (“call me Rachel”), the cheerleading coach from this past year in Alaska, had said it, about learning the routines. But it wasn’t the routines that Emily had found painful. Not that.
Bob poured water over her forehead—some of it ran into her nose and mouth, and she coughed; turned involuntarily—and when she faced the right way again, he rinsed off the blood before using the alcohol and a cotton ball to clean the wound at her hairline. Finally he put a bandage on it.
“I’m no medic,” he said. “But that will at least improve your odds.”
Emily and Aidan sat on the lip of the fuselage, and Emily shuffled up close to the little boy, wrapped her arm around him, held him close. For warmth.
“Will someone find us?” Aidan asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. She squeezed him tight. “I don’t know.”
She was watching the fire: the shifting colors of it; the constant ribboning movement. Vertical liquid, leaping up from the branches but of them too, using them up—their hot ghosts escaping into the air. There was something unnatural and natural about it at the same time. The way the locker room had gone up, back at her school: as if it had wanted to be turned to black powder, had just been waiting for the fire to start, so it could return to its purest state.
She kept watching the flames. Burning through the wood, turning it to ash, doing what it wanted, what it was made for.
She envied it.
She
hadn’t danced a single time since they’d moved. Like a protest, only she didn’t know whose benefit it was meant to be for. It wasn’t like her mom noticed.
The fire mesmerized her. Always Emily kept half an eye on Bob, though. He seemed harmless enough—had barely glanced at her, his face impassive. But she was wary. He was a man, after all. And not seeing anything didn’t guarantee safety. There were blank white landscapes, sometimes, in which wolves invisibly moved.
When the fire had burned down a little, Bob took the thin sheet of metal he’d found, and bent it into a rough semblance of a pan. Then he piled snow on it and pushed it—with a branch—into the embers at the side of the fire. The snow melted quickly, and he hooked out the rough cookware and poured the water into empty cans for them to drink.
Emily handed one to Aidan first.
“Where are we?” she asked, when they were done drinking.
The pilot glanced at the mountains all around them. They were near the top of one; some kind of glacier above them, and below them a sloping expanse of forest. “Somewhere in the Wrangell–St. Elias National Park,” he said. “I was heading to Anchorage.”
“I know,” said Emily.
He narrowed his eyes. “You wanted to get to Anchorage?”
“Sure.”
“Running away from home?”
“Something like that,” she said.
“Because of the school thing?”
“Sure,” she said again. It wasn’t that. But how could she explain about Aidan? Though, she had to admit, even if she hadn’t had to leave, she’d have wanted to. Not that she could explain that, either. How the town was like Gilmore Girls without the jokes. Like Lost without the mystery. No Jeremy to talk to, except on WhatsApp. The school was tiny compared to her last. And she had to do cheerleading instead of ballet.
Cheerleading.
Brad.
She closed her eyes and saw flames licking up the locker-room wall, heard the cheers, the noise of the crowd, the wolf whistles; felt Brad’s hand on her ass and—
“You OK, kid?” said Bob, standing over her.
She opened her eyes, blinked. “I’m fine.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Seems that fire’s got you in a trance.”
“I’m fine,” she said again. She shifted farther into the plane, away from the fire. Aidan shuffled back with her, and she pulled him in close, trying to share her warmth with him.
Bob went and fetched more blankets for them. He watched as Emily silently wrapped one around Aidan. “Quiet, isn’t he?” he said to Emily.
Emily nodded.
“I want Mom and Dad,” said Aidan, looking up at him. “I want Goober. I can’t sleep without him.”
“Goober?” said Bob.
Emily looked at Aidan for a long beat, then back at the pilot. “His stuffed monkey. He fell out of the plane, I think.”
“Goober keeps the monsters away,” said Aidan.
“Is that right?” said Bob, but his face had relaxed a bit. Like this was more the kind of kid talk he expected. “He’s a tough monkey, huh?”
His tone was friendly but a little stiff—like someone who has nieces or nephews but doesn’t see them that much, Emily thought.
“No,” said Aidan. “But he’s always burping, and the monsters think it smells gross.”
“Oh.” A blink. “OK.”
“Don’t worry, though,” said Aidan. “If they come in the night, I’ll burp at them too.” He patted his tummy. “We had Coke.”
“Uh-huh, we did,” said Bob. He smiled at Emily. “Let’s get some sleep.”
Later, when the pilot was snoring, deep in the cabin by the cockpit, Emily snuggled close to Aidan.
“What was that about Goober?” she said.
“Improvisation,” he said.
“Well…OK. But, like, try to warn me next time.”
“How far is it from here to Anchorage?” he asked.
“Far. Hundreds of miles, probably. And I’m not even sure which way.”
Silence.
“We can’t walk it?”
“No,” she said.
Silence again.
“So we’re lost?”
“Not yet,” she said. “Not yet. I’m going to get you home, I promise.”
CHAPTER 5
WHEN EMILY WOKE, the fire had gone out. She breathed in freezing air; breathed it out as mist. The cold was absolute: like all of winter in one day. It hurt her throat and chest; it put blades in the atmosphere.
She wrapped her blanket around Aidan, who was still sleeping, or seeming to. She got up and pulled on her boots.
“Where are you going?”
Small, sleepy voice. Aidan.
“To fetch wood. Stay here, I won’t be long.”
“Can I come?” he said.
“Won’t you get cold?”
“Not if I’m moving.”
Emily smiled and nodded. She liked having him by her side. She always had. She couldn’t explain it: she’d just loved him, right from the start, the same way she’d loved ballet, from the moment she learned the first positions; he was like dance to her, like freedom. And now that dance was gone, there was only him. His hand fitted into hers like a key into a lock.
Always, and now, he held her hand and they walked together.
They headed to the tree line.
“We can’t stay here,” said Aidan. “We need to keep moving. To Anchorage.”
“I know,” said Emily. “But we need fire first. And then…we’ll plan.”
“What will we tell Bob?” he asked.
“I have literally no idea.”
Quickly, before her hands seized up, she gathered some twigs and fallen branches. Gloves, she thought. Need to find some gloves.
Aidan put out his arms, a request, and she placed a few small branches in them. Not too many.
“That OK?” she asked.
He nodded. He was smart, but he was so small, so fragile. She followed, her heart contracting at the sight of his tiny figure, holding the branches—so big in his small arms.
They walked back to the plane. Past the wing that had broken off and was lying in the snow. Bob had clearly woken with the same idea as Emily: he was dragging a branch, covered in needles, to the fire. It wouldn’t burn easily; her dad would have sneered. But she supposed Bob was counting on the gasoline as an accelerant. Her dad would have sneered at that too, but she had to admit it was effective.
She wondered how old the pilot was. He had gray at his temples, but she wasn’t good at guessing the age of adults. Forty? Fifty? It was hard to tell. He didn’t seem older than her dad, but he didn’t seem younger, either. Different, though. Her dad was all ex-military square lines: shaved, boxlike. Everything in its compartment. Tools: he hung them on racks in the shed out back, neatly. Sometimes she thought the main reason he didn’t like his knee injury, apart from how he’d blown his military career along with his cruciate ligament, was that it offended his sense of neatness to have one leg that worked better than the other.
Bob, on the other hand, seemed more like a…The word that came to her mind was buccaneer. Blurred at the edges.
Before Emily left Minnesota, Jeremy had told her that Alaskan pilots were “cowboys of the cold”—Jeremy often said things like that, a little overblown. He was fascinated by the bush pilots: their exploits, their bravery, their stubbled chins and hard arms too, their eyes washed pale by vast skies. She had teased him about it.
Her mom didn’t like them so much. After their flight into Stafford Landing, a year before, she’d vowed that they’d never go on one of the little planes again. The pilot hadn’t been Bob, but his vibe had been similar: unkempt, a loose cannon. Her mom had said, “If I’m going to trust my life to someone, I want it to be someone who can press a uniform.”
<
br /> Or, Emily thought, glancing at Bob in his jeans and puffy jacket, wear one.
Emily’s mom worked part-time and had spent a lot of time in the gym when they lived in Minnesota; even now she still went running every day. She loved motivational quotes and inspirational poetry and the idea of personal growth through hard work and dedication—she was big on the power of transformation.
When Emily had joined the cheerleading squad at her new school, her mom had been thrilled. Which made one of them. Her mom had never really understood dance—she made that clear. She didn’t understand what it was for. As if everything had to be for something, as if everything needed to be cheered and paraded. All those motivational magnets…and not a single work of art in the house, apart from a Jack Vettriano print that some aunt had given her as a housewarming gift. Jeremy had said, “Your mom is the kind of person who finds Instagram poetry inspiring.”
Cheerleading, she totally got: it was supporting the football team. It was squad goals or whatever. It was motivational, like her magnets.
Emily thought squad goals could go screw themselves.
Anyway. Alaska was, like, the last frontier of flying—on that Mom and Jeremy would agree, though they’d disagree on the romance of it. A place where a person could test themself. A place you could still get lost, if you wanted to—or did if you weren’t careful.
Emily thought about that, looking at Bob. He was the kind of person who might have wanted to get himself lost. Well: he was truly lost now. She winced at that thought.
“You ever crashed before?” she asked.
The pilot looked up. “Nope.”
“Ever been lost in the wilderness before?”
“Nope.”
She nodded. “That’s comforting.”
“They’ll come,” he said. He didn’t sound too convinced. Alaska was a big place. “They’ll see the smoke, don’t worry.”
She squinted up. The mountain was wreathed in fog. “Hmm,” she said.
But that was exactly what she was worrying about—that they might come. Some people wanted to be lost, and she was one of them.