by Bill Rancic
Phil didn’t say anything. He was angry; what Daniel was talking about was insane. He was going to leave his fiancée to play the hero, taking stupid risks when his place was here with Kerry. And here Phil had just started to like him.
“I can’t believe you’d do this to her.” He glanced over at Kerry. “You know what it will do to her if you die out there. You don’t even care—”
“That’s not it at all,” Daniel said, standing up inside the cramped space, towering over Phil.
“You’re going to freeze to death, you’re going to kill yourself this time, and all because you’re constantly trying to prove yourself to Bob—”
“I told you, that’s not it.” He spoke through clenched teeth.
Phil went silent. If he thinks I’m going to go along with this, him and Bob getting themselves killed to prove what men they are . . . Stupid macho posturing . . .
But Daniel was looking over at the two pairs of snowshoes he and Bob had made the night before, one pair made of colorful shoelaces, the other of silver-gray duct tape. For a minute he seemed much older than thirty-seven, like he’d aged ten years overnight.
“Look. Kerry took a bad turn last night. She had a couple of seizures. Beverly says she needs IV fluids, maybe oxygen, too. She’s dehydrated because she’s been unconscious too long.” Daniel was shaking, actually shaking, and not from the cold. “Phil, she’s pregnant. I just found out. I can’t let her and the baby die like this. I can’t, I can’t sit here and watch it happen.”
Phil felt the world slow down around him, everything gone heavy and slack, as if he’d fallen into a deep pool wearing a heavy woolen cloak. She was pregnant. And what would Phil have done, if he and Emily had been able to have kids? If he could have saved even a part of her?
He knew the answer: anything. He would have done anything at all.
“Don’t we have IV bags in the first-aid kit?” Phil asked. “I could have sworn I saw some yesterday. We could get her hooked up, it could be fine—”
“Bev is trying to thaw them out right now.” He gave Phil a mirthless smile. “The problem is that even if she gets them working, they won’t last very long. Not more than a few hours at most. They’re really not meant as a long-term solution.”
Immediately Phil saw the problem: if she didn’t wake up soon, she’d die from dehydration before they could ever get her treated for the concussion.
“It’s already been at least twenty-four hours since she’s had any water,” Daniel said. “We can’t afford to wait any more.” He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You see what I mean, don’t you? Someone has to go try to get help. I’ll never be able to live with myself if I don’t do everything I can.”
Phil could see the need on the other man’s face, his desperation. He was going to do this. He had to.
“All right,” Phil said, taking a deep breath and blowing it out again, slowly. “I’ll do whatever I can to help her until you get back. You can count on me.”
“Thanks. I know—I know it’s not easy for you, either. But I know you’ll look after her. You won’t let her die, will you?”
Phil looked at the still form of Kerry on the floor of the cabin. He couldn’t bear to look at Daniel, for the other man to see the pain on his face, the fear. They both loved her. They would both try to save her life, if they could, but only one of them was the father of her child.
“No, I won’t let her die.”
“I swear I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Phil felt his jaw clench. It was all wrong. Daniel should be staying here with Kerry, not Phil. Phil didn’t have anyone waiting for him, no one to rely on him. Maybe he could make it. Maybe he could put on the snowshoes and make it up the hill . . .
He was kidding himself. Phil was no kind of outdoorsman, even in the best of health, and he knew it. He’d never make it five feet, much less to the top of that hill or to a town or a road, not when every step caused him so much pain he saw stars, when the hard spot in his abdomen grew hour by hour. No—if anyone was equipped to walk out into the wilderness, if anyone had a chance, Daniel was right: he had to be the one to go.
Already Daniel was layering himself up in two pairs of socks, two pairs of gloves and a knit hat in addition to his own down parka. “If we get to the top and don’t see anything, and if the rescue crews don’t come today, we’re going to have to keep going. You’ll need to tell the rescue crews where we’ve gone. We’ll be walking over the hill and straight west. That’s the direction the plane was headed. If we come to a road or a creek, we’ll follow it.”
“How will you know which direction to go?”
“If it’s a creek, we’ll head downstream. More chance of running into a town. If we find a road instead, we’ll keep heading west and south and hope we can get picked up by someone on their way to town. Can you remember that?”
“Downstream. South and west. I’ll remember.” Then Phil said, “What happens if she wakes up? Then you wouldn’t have to go.”
Daniel looked thoughtful for a moment. “If she wakes up today and I can still see the camp, you can signal me. Light some of those green branches. They’ll send up a bunch of smoke, and we’ll come straight back down. If I get to the top and there’s nothing, and if I don’t see your signal, though, we’re going to keep going. Got it?”
“Yeah. I still think you’re crazy, but I’ll do it.”
Daniel stuffed a few supplies into a backpack he’d found among the luggage: a few candy bars, a couple of bags of peanuts, an extra coat and blanket. He hesitated, then packed a black book from his suitcase, the one Phil had seen him scribbling in from time to time. When he was done he tied it all up in a small bundle. It wasn’t enough. It would run out fast, and they’d be working hard, climbing up those hills on nothing but a little sugar and a few nuts.
When he was done, Daniel stood and fixed him with a sympathetic look. “I know you’ll do everything you can for her. I trust you.”
Phil shook his head. “I don’t know why you would.”
Daniel put a hand on his shoulder. “You didn’t do anything wrong, you know,” he said. “Emily, I mean. You left for a few hours. You needed a break.”
“She nearly died.”
“But she didn’t die. You didn’t abandon her. You came back, and the fire department got there in time. Listen, I understand why you’re being so hard on yourself. It must have been hell, trying to take care of her under those circumstances. Anyone could understand that.”
Would they? Would his wife forgive him, if she were here in front of him now? He’d left when Emily had been near the end. When she’d needed him the most, he’d run away. He’d never be able to make it up to her, never. He could never take it back.
You idiot, said the voice of Emily, the one that lived still in his head. You know I never blamed you for any of it. You’re the one who won’t forgive yourself.
Daniel had turned and knelt down beside Kerry, stroking her hair and kissing her. Her eyelids never fluttered as Daniel whispered in her ear. When he stood up, he looked back at Phil and said, “You’ll take care of them for me?”
Them. Kerry and the baby, that little spark of life, barely more than a promise. “I’ll stay by her the whole time. I swear.”
He’d said the same thing to Emily once. He’d meant it just as much then, too.
He watched Daniel make his way out of the plane to join Bob outside, a little snow swirling in behind him. Maybe this time I can do something right. I can’t make it up to Emily, but I can be here for Kerry and Daniel now. I can do that much.
He looked down at Kerry’s face, still unconscious. Phil didn’t want to say asleep, knowing there was nothing restful in the way she lay on the floor inside the dark cabin of the crashed jetliner. She looked even more pale than she had the day before, her skin utterly devoid of any of its normally healthy pink color, her
eyes sunk in hollows like the shadows between hills. She hadn’t moved a millimeter, not even when Daniel kissed her, not even when Daniel said he loved her.
“You’ll be okay,” he’d said. “Both of you. I’ll make sure of it.”
Phil watched him go and felt a wave of despair wash over him, large enough to bury them all. Hurry up, Daniel. Hurry up, or you might be breaking that promise whether you want to or not.
17
They were just about at the midpoint of the rise, halfway between the top of the hill and the floor of the valley below, when Daniel heard Bob’s labored breathing coming up the hill behind him like the sound of a steam engine about to break down—they would need to stop soon to let the old man rest. Bob would never admit he was out of shape, that it was taking everything he had to keep up with Daniel, though Daniel was thirty years younger and a hundred pounds lighter, not to mention that Bob had been a two-pack-a-day smoker for years. He had his pride, and though Daniel was irritated that he had to slow down for the other man’s sake, he still stopped, announced that he wanted to take a break, and stood back to look down the hill at the crash site far below them. With a little luck, he might be able to talk Bob into turning back now, before the going got any harder than it was already.
Daniel sat down on a fallen trunk, pulling the bottle of melted snow out from inside his coat and drinking it down in a few swigs. It was warm from his body heat—which was a good thing, cold water being a hazard in these temperatures—and tasted wonderfully clear and clean. Then he filled the bottle again with new snow, capped it and replaced it in its spot next to his skin, which was hot with exertion. In a little while, when the snow melted down, he’d drink again, preferably at the top of the ridge with a view of the city of Whitehorse below his feet.
The snowfall had picked up once more while they’d been climbing, filling the air with whiteness and obscuring the far distances, but Daniel hoped that by the time they got to the top of the ridge it would fall off again. How many days in a row could it snow here? Even during the famously bad Chicago winters, a snowstorm would only last a day or two and then clear out, which made him think that today, the third day since the crash, the storm would surely begin to blow itself out, and then the airline would be able to get rescue vehicles into the backcountry to pick up the survivors.
Finally Bob huffed his way over to the spot where Daniel was sitting and plopped down heavily on the trunk. “Why are we stopping?” he asked, between breaths.
“Just taking a break,” Daniel said, not looking at the other man. He didn’t need Bob collapsing on him here, so far from help.
Bob took out his water, swigged it, filled it back up with snow and replaced the bottle in the waistband at the back of his pants, then took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one, taking a long draw and blowing the smoke out into the air.
“Is that a good idea?”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
Daniel didn’t say anything else on the subject of Bob’s smoking. If Bob had ever planned on quitting, it probably wasn’t going to be now. Still, he hated the smell of cigarette smoke and turned away a bit so he wouldn’t have to breathe it in. “A bit harder than it looks, isn’t it?” he asked.
“A bit. I thought it would be more like walking. The tape is holding, at least.”
“That’s good,” Daniel said. “Your legs tired?”
Daniel’s own thighs burned with the effort of climbing the ridge in deep snow, but Bob said, “Not at all. I’m doing fine.” Bob was too proud to admit he was hurting.
Daniel looked back down the hill at the crash site. Even from this close, maybe less than two miles away, the body of the downed jetliner was nearly invisible, buried almost completely by the snow that had been falling incessantly for the past three days. The groove that the jet’s body had worn in the snowpack as it slid down the hillside had been erased, and all the other small traces that might have given them away—the broken wings, the debris field, even the broken trunks of the trees that the plane had hit on its violent descent—were completely covered with a heavy blanket of new snow. Utterly invisible.
No smoke rose from the crash site, which meant Kerry was still unconscious. Daniel felt his hopes sinking further and further.
He said, “The rescue planes aren’t going to be able to see them from the air like this. They should start a signal fire. Make themselves visible. Something.”
Daniel could feel Bob looking at him. “There are smart people down there. Phil. Those two stewardesses. I’m sure they’ll know what to do when the weather clears.”
He shook his head. “It’s not just a matter of knowing. They don’t have anything to make a fire with.” He glanced at Bob. “You should have left them your cigarette lighter.”
“I’m sure I wasn’t the only smoker on the plane.”
Daniel put his hands on his thighs and stood up. “Maybe you should go back down, Bob.”
“You’ll need a fire tonight, too.”
“I’m not just talking about the lighter,” he said. “I don’t even want to think about what we’re going to have to do if there’s nothing over this hill.”
“We stick to the plan,” Bob said, stubbing out his cigarette. “Just like you told Phil. Follow a road or a river. Find a town. Bring help.”
“It’s just a lot of risk.” He looked over at his boss. Bob’s face was red from exertion or cold, or both. “I’m not trying to embarrass you. It’s just—I might be able to go faster on my own.”
Bob stopped, fixed Daniel with a cold, still look and said, “Don’t bother trying to get rid of me, Albrecht. I’m still your boss. I can do this by myself if I have to.”
Daniel sighed. It was no use trying to reason with Bob—he followed his gut. This time, his gut might be getting them both killed.
A blast of cold air shook the trees, and Daniel shivered. He could still feel Kerry’s mouth under his, how still it had been, how she hadn’t even stirred when he said her name. He was feeling it as he sat looking down at the crash site, the dark shapes of the passengers coming outside in twos and threes to check the sky. The brush of her lips on his. The metallic smell of her breath, sickly. The pale skin over her closed eyes. He had tried to memorize her face, to absorb every bit of her before the task that lay ahead of him. He’d gathered her hair into his hands and breathed in her scent: soft, faintly floral, a little smoky. She hadn’t opened her eyes, hadn’t said she loved him, too. The stillness of her only served to remind him of all the reasons why he was determined to go, determined not to wait. It had to be now.
Still, he watched the sky, hoping beyond hope that even now, he’d hear the sound of a plane’s engine, a helicopter’s rotor. But there was nothing but the sound of the snow falling, softly falling through the branches of the trees, burying the wreck a little more every hour.
He bent down to check the laces on his snowshoes. They were holding well enough at the moment, though it was less than a day that he’d been walking on them. Daniel worried what would happen if he did have to walk all the way to Whitehorse.
When he was sure his feet were still tied securely to the snowshoes, he turned to Bob and said, “All right. Let’s keep moving.”
He looked up at the ridge, trying to gauge how long it would take them to get to the top, whether they’d make it before the daylight ran out. The ridge wasn’t particularly impressive, not anything close to a real mountain, but it was probably at least a thousand feet high from the valley floor, if not more, and it had taken them nearly two hours to get this far. Reaching the top before dark would be no easy feat, especially with a sixty-seven-year-old man trying to stroke his own ego by tagging along. With any luck there would be a road or a town or a cabin on the other side where he could call for help. Something.
And if there wasn’t, he’d deal with that problem, too. But one thing at a time.
—
/> Daniel pushed the two of them hard to make it to the top of the ridge—he wanted to get there before darkness fell again, before it would be impossible to see what was below—but Bob seemed to go more slowly minute by minute, his breath labored. With each step, Daniel became more and more determined to send him back down the hill to the wreck to stay with the others. It would be the right thing to do for Bob’s own sake. It was clear now he’d never make it ten miles out here on foot, much less a hundred or more.
The snow was tapering off when they cleared the trees near the top of the ridge, the snowpack lighter here, scoured away in places by the fierceness of the wind. The ground as well grew more rocky, the footsteps of the two men less certain, until Daniel stripped off his snowshoes at last, going the rest of the way to the summit in only his leather boots. He couldn’t wait for Bob any longer—he reached the top about twenty paces ahead and pushed the last few steps until he saw the slope fall away below him.
The line of hills was unbroken as far as he could see, one after another after another like waves on the ocean, some nearly bare, some covered with trees, all burdened with a heavy cover of snow. Down below, glinting faintly, he could see the dark line that marked a creek or small river meandering between the hills. Flowing north, as far as he could tell, but there was no town, no city, not even a road, nothing that hinted that human beings had ever been here.
Even though he knew it was futile, he pulled out his cell phone and turned it on. No signal, just as he’d feared.
When he turned and looked back toward the crash site, hoping to see the black smoke of a signal telling him that Kerry was awake, there was nothing but swirling white. The snow was obscuring the crash site. Even if Phil had built a signal fire, Daniel wouldn’t be able to see it from here.
They could go back. They could return to the crash site and wait with the others. For a moment that’s exactly what he thought he would do. Then he remembered Kerry and the baby, and sat down hard on a rocky outcrop.