by Dinah McCall
When she finally reached him, she stifled a cry of dismay. He’d crawled up into his grandfather’s lap and wrapped his arms around the old man’s neck. One quick glance told Molly that the child was in shock. His body was shaking, and his cheeks were streaked with tears. Stifling another wave of nausea, she reached for him and gently touched the side of his face.
“Johnny…your name is Johnny, isn’t it?”
His expression was blank. Glancing around to make sure they were still alone, she began looking for his coat and backpack.
“My name is Molly,” she said. “We need to grab our coats and get out before the plane catches on fire.”
Johnny O’Ryan had been taught never to speak to strangers, but he couldn’t help himself; he clutched desperately at the pretty woman with the soft voice.
“Granddad won’t talk to me,” he whispered.
Molly’s vision blurred, but she blinked away tears. This was no time to cry.
“I know, honey. I’m sorry.”
Johnny looked up at her then, searching her face for the truth.
Molly glanced nervously around, then looked back at the child. His expression was nothing short of desperate. A fresh set of tears welled and rolled down his face.
“Did the bad man kill them, too?” he asked.
Molly gasped. Dear God, had the child also been a witness to Patrick’s death?
“What man, honey?”
He pointed to the man Darren had just killed.
“The man who choked him. I saw him do it. Did he choke my granddad and gran, too?”
“Oh, Lord,” Molly muttered.
That settled it. There was no turning back. They had to leave, and leave now. She couldn’t trust the boy not to let slip what he’d seen once Darren came back—and he would come back, she was sure of it—any more than she could hide what she knew.
The way she looked at it, their only chance for survival was if the killer didn’t know they were alive. She didn’t know where he’d gone, but the timing of their escape was urgent.
Ignoring the pain in her head and back, while suppressing the urge to vomit, she lifted Johnny out of his grandfather’s lap. As she picked him up, he cried out in pain. Her heart dropped. She hadn’t considered that he might be injured, too.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Where do you hurt?”
“My side,” Johnny said.
“Do you think you can walk?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I’m really cold. Are you?” Her gaze fell on a small fur-lined khaki parka. “Is this your coat?”
He nodded, then looked back at his grandfather again.
“Granddad’s head is bleeding.”
His voice was so faint, she had to lean forward to hear.
“I know, honey. I’m so sorry.”
The little boy’s chin quivered.
“Is he dead? My cat French Fry died. We buried him down by the creek.”
Molly put her arms around him and pulled him close.
“Yes, I think he is,” she said. “Hold out your arms, honey. You need to put on your coat.”
Johnny thrust his arms into the fur-lined sleeves, standing silently as Molly zipped up the coat, while he tried to understand why his grandparents could no longer see or speak. The blood on their faces was scary. He knew blood meant pain. He was sad that they were hurting.
“If we put Band-Aids on their ouchies, would they be okay?” he asked softly.
Molly stifled tears. She felt as helpless as he looked.
“No, darling, I’m afraid not. The plane crash hurt them too much to get better, just like it hurt all these other people. But your grandparents would want you to get home safely, wouldn’t they?”
Tears rolled silently down Johnny’s face as he nodded.
She patted him on the back and glanced over her shoulder, afraid that they would be found out before they escaped.
Just then she saw the SpongeBob SquarePants backpack Johnny had carried on the plane and remembered noticing that he had snacks and juice boxes in the bag. She picked it up.
“Here, honey, maybe we should take this.”
Johnny allowed her to put the backpack on him as his gaze slid to his grandmother.
“Is Gran dead, too?”
Molly glanced at the elderly woman as she pulled her own coat out from beneath a laptop computer and quickly put it on.
“Yes, I think she is,” Molly said.
Johnny leaned against Molly, as if his legs had suddenly gone weak.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” she said softly.
His voice was shaking. “Can’t you make them wake up?”
Her heart ached for the little boy. His world had been shattered, and there was nothing she could do to make it better.
“No, I can’t,” she said. “No one can. But they would want you to be okay. They would want you to stay well so you could go see your daddy, remember?”
Tears rolled down his cheeks, but he didn’t let out a sound.
“We need to leave, Johnny. We need to leave now. Will you let me help you?”
This was against everything he’d been taught, but his world had just been destroyed, so he decided it would be all right to go with her.
Finally he nodded.
Molly breathed a sigh of relief as she pulled herself upright. Thankful for her heavy coat and the fact that she was wearing wool pants and a sweater, she led him toward the opening where the plane had broken literally in two.
Ignoring the fact that her whole body was one big ache, she glanced around quickly, making sure the killer was nowhere in sight, then felt in her coat pockets, assuring herself that her gloves were still there. She took a wool scarf from a carry-all that had been ripped apart and wrapped it around her neck. The weight of the clothing felt comforting, but there was no time to waste.
She didn’t know where the killer had gone, but every now and then she thought she could hear bumping and thumping below where she was standing. It was only a matter of time before he reappeared, and when he did, they had to be gone.
A handful of the airline’s lightweight blankets were bunched beneath a dead man’s leg. She paused in the aisle long enough to grab a couple of them, which she tied around her waist. Then she took Johnny’s hand, and together they made their way through the debris and bodies until they reached the jagged opening. Along the way, she grabbed all the snacks and drinks the backpack would hold, then zipped it back up.
“God be with us,” she muttered, and stepped out into the snow, then turned and helped Johnny down.
Debris was scattered as far as the eye could see. She didn’t know where they were. All she could see was that the plane had landed on an incline and there were trees everywhere. It appeared that they’d gone down in the mountains—her best guess was the Appalachians.
She looked up at the sky. It would be dark soon, but it was still light enough for her to see the setting sun. Assuming that the man would eventually come back into the cabin to spend the night, she prayed that the darkness would give them time to get away undetected.
With a quick glance down at the boy, she tugged the hood a little closer around his face and softly whispered, “Come on, Johnny. Let’s go see if we can find some help, okay?”
He didn’t answer, but he also didn’t argue. For now, it was enough.
Darren Wilson’s knee was throbbing, as was his head, and every time he bent over, there was added pain in his chest. He wasn’t sure, but he might have broken some ribs. He wanted nothing more than to crawl back into the plane, cover himself with some blankets and wait to be rescued. The inevitability of rescue was without question, but he needed to find the bag with his money first. It had been in the overhead compartment, but now it was nowhere in sight.
He had no choice but to backtrack along the trail of scattered debris and hope he could find it before dark. It didn’t take long for him to discover that the job wasn’t going to be as simple as he’d hoped. To his dismay, most of
the bags looked alike.
“Son of a bitch,” Darren muttered, then glanced up at the sky, judging the amount of light he would have before night fell and wondering if they would be found before morning. He couldn’t know for sure, but either way, time would be short. It didn’t give him much leeway to find his money. With a muttered curse for the pain in his body and the mess he was in, he began his search.
He started out with confidence, but by the time an hour had passed, he had still come up empty. Frustrated and miserable from the pain and the cold, he suddenly looked up and realized he was quite a distance from the crash, and it was getting dark. Added to that, it was starting to snow.
A light dusting of flakes was drifting across the surface of the wreckage, sugar-coating the carnage. Somewhere off to the south, he thought he heard a howl. His pulse spiked. Was that a wolf…or just a lonely dog? In either case, it gave him the creeps enough to abandon his search in favor of the relative safety of the plane. The fact that it had never caught fire was good—the fact that the bodies inside were being kept in cold storage was also good. He began telling himself that everything was going to be all right. Surely he’d been blessed, or else why would he have been the only survivor?
A spurt of conscience reminded him that there had been another survivor after all, but he’d taken care of that. He started toward the plane, lengthening his stride. He was almost there when he stumbled on something buried beneath the snow and fell flat on his face. The pain in his leg shot all the way up his back, and he was blinking and cursing and rubbing snow out of his eyes when he saw them.
Tracks.
Two sets—leading from the plane and out into the forest, and not yet filled in by the new snow.
Ignoring his pain, he scrambled to his feet, staring down at the tracks in disbelief.
Other survivors?
Where had they been when he had been in the cabin choking the life out of Senator Patrick Finn?
Had they been unconscious—or witnesses to what he’d done?
Why would they leave the relative safety of the plane for the dangers of unknown snowbound territory unless…
“Oh, shit…no! Tell me this isn’t happening.”
He ran toward the plane as fast as he could and began searching the interior, trying to remember who’d been on board compared to the bodies scattered about. He paused beside Patrick’s body and as he did, automatically looked back to the seats behind him. There had been a young woman there. And she was nowhere in sight! He thought back to the ongoing argument he and Patrick had been having. What if she’d overheard?
He pivoted sharply, counting bodies on the other side of the aisle and trying to remember how many seats had been occupied and how many had been empty.
His gaze fell on the elderly couple. A kid. There had been a kid with them. Where the hell was he now?
“Hey! Where are you?” he yelled, then said it again, and again, only louder and louder, until he was screaming.
Panic set in as he began tearing through the compartment in the gathering darkness. He had to know! He had to find them and look into their eyes. If there was fear there, he would do what he had to do, just as he’d done with Patrick.
But how? It was almost dark.
Light. He needed to find light.
Grateful to have a plan, he began searching for a flashlight to help him follow the tracks. Finally he found one inside the cabin near the co-pilot’s body, and with no thought for the possibility of getting lost in the dark, he grabbed a heavy coat from the debris beneath his feet. The sleeves were a bit too long, but fashion savvy was the least of his worries.
He jumped out of the plane just as the sun disappeared behind the trees. Within minutes, night would be official. He didn’t know how long the woman and kid had been gone, but it was too risky to assume they hadn’t seen anything.
“Damn, damn, damn,” he muttered, then aimed the flashlight down at the tracks and began running, dragging his injured leg as he went. If he was lucky, he could catch up with them before the falling snow covered their tracks.
It never occurred to him that the snow would cover his tracks, too, or that he might have survived the crash only to risk perishing on the mountain in the dark.
3
The snow wasn’t as deep beneath the heavy cover of trees as it was out in the clearing. This made it easier for Molly and Johnny to move at a swifter pace, but at the same time, it was easier to get lost, because there was less light. Full darkness was only minutes away when she realized that they’d come upon what appeared to be a small cave. Since they were going to have to sleep somewhere, this appeared to be a better place than out in the open.
She had hoped against hope that they would stumble on a house, or a ranger station, but it hadn’t happened. She wondered if the airline was aware of the crash yet, if they’d begun notifying next of kin. She didn’t have anyone, but Johnny did. She could only imagine his father’s grief and fear when he learned of the crash.
There had been plenty of cell phones scattered around the plane, though she’d never bothered to get one of her own, but she’d never thought about grabbing one. She’d been too focused on getting them out alive. Now she had no idea where they were and no way to contact anyone, but she was more concerned about Johnny than about being lost.
She suspected he was still in shock. He hadn’t cried out once—not even when a low-hanging branch slapped him in the face, not even when he stumbled and fell. Not even when they came close to walking off into a ravine. Despite her degree in child psychology and the new job waiting for her with child protective services, her experience with children in general was somewhat limited. She would have expected him to cry or complain, anything but maintain this eerie silence and blank, empty gaze.
She stopped, eyeing their footsteps in the snow leading up to the cave and gave silent thanks for the continuing snowfall. Their tracks would be covered soon, so if the killer had noticed they were gone and tried to follow them, he would be unsuccessful. Still, she stood outside the cave for a few moments more until she was satisfied that their location should be relatively safe. Now all she had to do was deal with Johnny.
“Johnny?”
He didn’t look up.
Molly knelt, winced as the pain in her back rippled down the length of her leg, then ignored it and took him by the shoulders.
“Johnny…please talk to me. Are you all right?”
“I’m cold,” he said.
Relief shifted within her. At least he was talking.
“Me, too,” she said, then hugged him gently. “Are you hungry?”
He nodded.
“So let’s see what we have in that backpack,” she said with forced cheer.
She took it off his shoulders and led him into the cave.
The entrance was small, as was the cave itself. Johnny could stand up in it, but Molly had to crawl on her hands and knees to get around. There were some old animal bones near the back, as well as a large pile of leaves. The leaves would make good bedding, but the bones would have to go.
As soon as she got rid of the unsavory bits and pieces, she settled Johnny onto one of the blankets she’d laid over the leaves. One of the best things about spending the night in here was that it was dry. She had no way to build a fire, but at least they wouldn’t be lying in the snow.
As Johnny sat down, he gazed nervously around.
“What about lions and tigers?” he asked.
Molly started to smile, then suddenly shivered. He did have a point. What about the wild animals?
“Oh, I think we’ll be fine,” she said. “But just in case, I’ll find us a great big stick, okay?”
Johnny hesitated, then shrugged.
“Yes…I guess it will be okay.”
“Good boy,” she said, and hugged him again, then dug through the backpack, found a granola bar and a juice box, and handed them to him. “Eat this, honey. I’m going to find that big stick.”
Johnny grabbed her arm.
>
“No! Don’t go! Don’t leave me!” he cried.
The panic on his face hurt her heart. Poor little boy—grandparents dead, and a man murdered before his eyes. She couldn’t imagine what he must be thinking.
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t think. Of course I won’t leave you. We’ll find the stick together. We’ll eat together, then we’ll sleep together. Okay?”
She felt him shiver and suspected it wasn’t from the cold.
“Okay,” he said.
She put the food back in the backpack, then set it against the wall of the cave before taking him by the hand.
“There’s a big dead tree out there beside those pines. See all those limbs poking up out of the brush?”
His little voice trembled as he fought back tears. “Yes.”
She gave him a quick hug. “I bet we can find a really big stick there. What do you think?”
Johnny clung to her all the way across the clearing, turning loose only when she began to sort through the limbs. Finally she found one she thought would work and managed to break it off from the main trunk.
“How about this one?” she asked as she hefted it up to her shoulder.
“All right,” Johnny said.
The remark was a little odd, but Molly figured Johnny didn’t care what it looked like, he just wanted to get back inside the cave. By the time they returned, it was completely dark. Once again, Molly dug the food out of the backpack, and they ate more by feel than sight. When they were done, she laid the makeshift weapon near her feet; then, using a large pile of leaves as a pillow, she rolled them both up in the blankets and pulled the child close.
There were a few awkward moments. Molly could feel his body stiffen, but rejection didn’t last long. When he started to cry, she pulled him as close against her as she could and rocked him where they lay.
“It’s okay to cry, honey,” she said. “I’m cold and scared, too. But I’ll keep us safe. I promise.”
“Okay,” he whispered, and with the innocence only a child could give, relaxed in her arms.
“I’m sorry about your grandparents,” she said softly.