by Bill Rancic
The first people back were Zach, carrying an armful of magazines, and his mother, handing Phil a few paperboard boxes that once had held food. He thanked them and piled everything carefully on top of one of the suitcases to keep it dry, tearing out a few pages from the magazines and twisting them into strips, setting them beneath the tent of twigs.
Now they only needed a lighter. Kecia and Amber were going from passenger to passenger, hoping someone had a lighter or some matches. Something. Amber came outside and gave Phil a look: nothing yet.
“You wouldn’t have had one stored in the galley?” he asked. “Nothing tucked away somewhere?”
“No, I already checked. Lighters aren’t usual equipment. They don’t really want to encourage us to start fires on board.”
“I suppose not.”
Then something seemed to come over her face. “Wait a minute,” she said. “One of the pilots was a smoker. He must have a lighter on him. If we could get in there . . .”
Amber grew quiet. If there was a lighter on one of the pilots, someone would have to get into the cockpit to retrieve it.
“I’ll go,” Phil said, before she could volunteer.
She laughed. “Why, because you’re a guy?” She gave him an appraising look, up and down. “You’re hurt, though you’re trying your damnedest to hide it.”
“I’m not so bad.”
“Don’t be brave,” she said. “You’ve been clutching your side all day long. Even bending over makes you wince. You’re not in any shape to climb up into the cockpit window.”
Phil thought about arguing with her, but in fact she was right: the dull throbbing in his pelvis was growing alarmingly in size and seemed to get worse whenever he bent over or tried to sit down. Even scraping the snow away from the fire pit had made him a bit light-headed. And he’d started pissing blood, the snow tinged pink whenever he went outside to relieve himself. He’d started covering it up with snow after, so no one would see, no one being Beverly. There was nothing she could do about it.
But he wouldn’t think about that now. He could afford to be scared when they were all safely rescued, safely home. Until then, he’d do whatever he could to keep them all alive.
“All right,” said Phil to the flight attendant. “Lead the way.”
—
All that day the snow fell, and though Phil could have sworn he heard a plane’s engine overhead once or twice, no sign came from above that they’d been found. Over and over the passengers ran outside, hoping against hope, but by the time darkness started falling in the early afternoon and it had been several hours since they’d heard an engine, Phil was starting to realize they would have to resign themselves to spending another night in the plane. The last one, if they were lucky.
They had to be lucky this time. They simply had to be.
It was the third day since the crash, the one when the survivors would start to turn on each other. They had enough water, barely, but hunger and fatigue had left passengers snapping at each other over a piece of floor or a blanket, over the warmest spots in the cabin or an unclaimed coat, and anyone suspected of hoarding food was threatened with spending the night outside. Everyone was tired of peeing in the snow, of sharing a cabin with fifty other snoring, farting people during nights too long to sleep. They were tired of being in pain, of being simultaneously bored to death by waiting and terrified that the waiting would never end.
So it had been no little bit of relief when, with the lighter Kecia found in the co-pilot’s pocket, Phil finally got a fire going outside the fuselage, in the snow, just before dark—a little flicker of orange in the growing blackness. Catching his breath a little, he had knelt in the bare spot, lit a twist of magazine paper, then tucked it beneath a tented pile of dry twigs. When the flames grew, he arranged a few larger twigs on top. The wind whipped up for a second and the flames withered, threatening the whole enterprise, but after two or three seconds the wind died back down and the flames rose up again, crackling cheerfully in the dim and the snow. After about ten minutes, the fire was hot enough that Phil put the larger branch on top, watching the fire grow, a small but significant victory in the battle for survival.
Word had gotten out quickly among the passengers that the fire was going at last, and they trickled out in groups of two and three to come see it, their faces reflecting the warm bit of light and their expressions easing little by little. They nodded to him in gratitude and crowded around close: if they could have a fire, they seemed to be thinking, then everything would be all right. They’d make it. The storm would die out and the sun would rise and the smoke from their fire would lead the rescue teams to them. With a fire, they didn’t need the ELT; they only needed to wait.
Phil went inside to get the second IV bag from Beverly, stopping for a minute to check on Kerry. She was so still that for a moment he was afraid, until he saw the slight rise and fall of her breath, the tiny flutter of a pulse at her throat. She was alive, but barely. The IVs couldn’t wait any longer.
When he’d come back outside with the bag, there were so many passengers crowded around the small fire that Phil could barely see the pit he’d dug, much less catch any warmth from the small blaze. He tried ducking through, but the crowd wouldn’t part for him, and as he tried to push his way toward the fire, he started to notice movement within the mass of the fifty survivors, here and there an arm or a leg pushing out, a head jutting forward. The survivors were jostling each other for position, the strong pushing away the weak, everyone muttering about the cold, the impossibility of cold and fear. Each one insisted he needed to get close to the fire first, and Phil watched them with horror until one of the men, a big guy with the face of a punching bag, pushed young Zach out of the way, picking the kid up by the hood of his coat and tossing him aside into the snow.
Phil picked the kid up and brushed the snow out of his eyes. “You okay?” he asked.
Zach nodded, but Phil was still incensed. He and Amber and Kecia, and Alice and Zach, hadn’t worked all morning to get the fire going for only the handful of passengers who were big enough and strong enough to push the others out of the way. He needed to get Kerry’s IV bags warmed, for one thing—not to mention that Zach had helped build the fire and now found himself outside the circle of warmth. He stood looking at the man’s back, thinking, How dare he? I mean really—how dare he treat us this way?
He stepped forward and tapped the man on the shoulder. “Excuse me,” he said. “We need to get through.”
The big man kept his head down and pretended not to hear him.
“You pushed this boy,” Phil said. “He has more right to be here than you do.”
Still nothing. Zach said, “Don’t worry about it.”
“I will. It’s not right. You helped me build this fire, and now it’s being taken over by people who were too scared or lazy to come out here and help us.”
The man stopped pretending he didn’t hear Phil. He turned around and said, “What did you say to me?”
At home Phil would never have confronted the other man; confrontation wasn’t his style. He was a negotiator, a mediator, the person who prevented disputes, not caused them. But it was possible he’d never been so angry in his life, finding himself and the boy pushed away from the fire they’d worked so hard to build in the few minutes he’d taken to go inside the plane.
“You heard me,” Phil said. “I built that fire. Now, move your ass.”
The bigger man turned away again. “It’s a nice fire. Thanks so much.”
“I didn’t build it for you to push this boy away. He helped me gather the materials for the fire. You didn’t.”
“Oh?”
“That’s right. He made the fire, he gets to stand in front of it first. That’s the fairest way to do this.”
Phil felt his hands shaking, but he wouldn’t back down now. He needed to get to that fire, and he needed it now. Kerry n
eeded it.
“That’s right,” he said, raising his voice so all the survivors in the clearing could hear him. “That’s the rule. If you tend the fire, you can warm yourself over it. We’ll take turns, twenty minutes each. But if you don’t help gather wood to keep it going, or if you let the fire go out, you won’t get to sit by it anymore.”
The big man shifted so that he was staring straight at Phil. “You think you’re going to stand around and give the rest of us orders? You aren’t in charge here. No one’s in charge here. We have to do what we have to do to survive, and that’s all.”
Phil caught Kecia’s glance. The flight attendant’s eyes were wide as she wondered what Phil was going to do. Imperceptibly, she gave him a little shake of her head, no. She didn’t want him to start trouble. And he didn’t want trouble, either, but there were only so many times a person could stand by and let things happen to him instead of the other way around.
The fire was too small to give them all much warmth, but big enough to warm Kerry’s IV bags and the frozen hands and feet of the passengers, but not if a few bullies decided to take it all for themselves.
“What are you gonna do if we don’t move?” said another passenger, with the wiry look of the oil-riggers who worked for Petrol. “Nothing, that’s what. You’ll go back inside and freeze your balls off like everyone else. I don’t care what you do.”
Phil kept his hands in his pockets and said, “I can put out that fire.”
The huddled passengers lifted their heads to look at him. “What?” said the first man, the red-faced one.
“You heard me,” Phil said quietly.
“You’re full of shit,” said the second man, folding his hands under his armpits again. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would, and I will,” he said. “You get twenty minutes, then you move away and let someone else have a turn.”
“And what gives you the right?”
“I built that fire. I scraped the ground for a spot to build it, and I gathered a lot of that wood. This boy and his mother gathered the paper to help get it going.” Phil didn’t raise his voice, just said quickly and quietly what he would do. “I’m the only one who knows where the lighter is. You don’t move away after twenty minutes, then I let the fire go back out, and you won’t have another one.”
He stood back with his arms folded, keeping his expression completely still at all times, betraying no passion. If they were going to survive out here, they were all going to survive, or else they would all perish together.
The bigger men stood back and seemed to consider Phil anew. Would he really go through with it? He could see the doubt on their faces, the uncertainty—but he was absolutely serious. He didn’t move, didn’t twitch. They would know he was serious, or they would pay the consequences.
“What do you say we kill you and take the lighter?” said one of them in a low voice.
Phil felt the tremor start in his belly and work its way up his body. They could kill him and take the lighter—but they didn’t know that. “If you kill me, you’ll never find the lighter. I’ve hidden it someplace completely safe, and I’m the only one who knows where. So you will listen to me, and you will be fair about the fire, or I will let you freeze to death.”
He felt Zach start to say something and put a hand on the boy’s arm to keep him silent. In the quiet outside the plane, they all waited. The fire flickered and started to die; the logs settled into coals. Phil couldn’t quite believe he’d found the strength to stand up to these men, but it was too late to do any differently. Besides, he’d been angry. It wasn’t fair of them to hog the fire, and they knew it.
Finally the first big man stepped aside and said, “I was getting too hot anyway,” and let them pass.
Phil and Zach moved through the hole in the crowd toward the fire, which Phil built back up with a smallish log and a little breathing on the coals. In a minute, the fire was crackling again.
“Wow,” murmured the boy so only Phil could hear. “That was amazing. You weren’t scared of those guys at all.”
That wasn’t precisely true—his hands were still shaking, the adrenaline coursing through him. “I was scared,” Phil whispered to the kid. “But I was more pissed off than anything. You deserve to get warm, too.”
Phil gave Zach one of the frozen IV bags and the two of them sat holding the bags up to the warmth of the fire, close enough to melt the ice but not the plastic itself. In just a few minutes, the IV liquid was thawed, ready to use at last. Phil tucked the spare one in his shirt to keep it warm and went inside to give the other one to Beverly, the crowd parting without a word of protest or anger to let him pass.
He sat next to Kerry while Beverly worked to hook up the IV. He picked up her hand and held it wordlessly, Beverly watching him the whole time, waiting to see what he would do. “I can feel you watching me,” he said.
“I’m not.” The nurse was barely visible by the light of the emergency flashlight, which was flickering, starting to die—the batteries were wearing out.
“You are. Might as well say what’s on your mind.”
“I was just thinking how wrong I was about you.”
The sarcasm level in Phil’s voice went up two or three notches. “You were wrong about something? Got to be the first time that’s happened.”
She made a little huffing noise, almost a laugh, and said, “You were kind of amazing, really. I saw the whole thing. They could have killed you, but you didn’t back down.”
“Didn’t feel like it just then.”
“I was proud of you.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I know that sounds condescending, and I don’t mean it that way. I mean it was kind of thrilling to watch. To see another person stand up for someone else like that.”
“I was just angry, that’s all.”
“It took courage. Something not everyone around here has.” She nodded to the sleeping form of Kerry on the floor. “She would have appreciated it, I think. “
Phil could feel his face burning. “Why should that matter?”
Beverly gave him a strange, knowing look, the corners of her mouth turning up just a little. “I’m just saying.”
“Okay. You’re just saying.”
He clicked off the flashlight and sat in the dark so Beverly could not catch a glimpse of the wetness on his cheeks. It was the only privacy he would find out here, in this place, and he welcomed the darkness, where no one could see him weep.
19
When Daniel woke in the morning in the hollow underneath the fir tree he’d chosen for their shelter, he caught a patch of blue sky through the boughs and felt the first ray of hope he remembered for days, a lifting of his spirits that made it seem almost possible that they would all get out of this situation alive. The storm had blown itself out at last, and instead of pushing on into the bush, he and Bob could return to the plane and the rest of the passengers to wait for rescue. Now that the skies were clear, they could build a signal fire to catch the eye of rescue flights. Even if the ELT had been damaged in the crash—by now he had to think absolutely it was, it had to be—it wouldn’t matter, the clouds had lifted and they could finally be seen by human eyes. Thank God, he thought, unwrapping himself from the extra coat and airline blanket and pine boughs he’d used to trap his body heat during the night, shaking from hunger and thirst and adrenaline. Thank God. It’s almost over.
He clambered onto his knees and parted the branches, eager for the sight of the sun, but outside the shelter he saw a low gray sky still, the snow falling steadily. The blue he’d seen was nothing but a small break in the midst of the ongoing storm, gone in a few more seconds as if it had never happened. A temporary reprieve, nothing more.
He let the branch fall back into place, shaking off the gloom that threatened to overtake him. Of all the things that continued to work against their survival, the weather was e
asily the most daunting, the storm so large, so persistent, so blinding. The cloud cover continued to hide them from sight of any rescue teams; the snow was slowly burying the wreckage and making travel by foot difficult, if not impossible; the incessant wind and bitter temperatures threatened them all with exposure. They’d all be lucky if they didn’t freeze to death by the end of the day, Daniel thought, letting his hands fall limply to his sides. He looked over and saw Bob bundled up against the cold, his face completely covered and his body curled into itself, hands tucked inside his armpits like Daniel had shown him, his chest rising and falling with each breath. It was a wonder the man had survived the night. It was a wonder either of them had.
Daniel gave a great sigh and started packing up his gear, fighting the urge to curl back up into a ball on the floor of the shelter and go back to sleep himself, but he couldn’t. He had to keep going while there was even the smallest chance.
He picked up the blanket and tried to fold it, only then noticing that his own hands felt numb, the tips of his fingers strangely absent, as if they’d been amputated. He pulled the first layer of gloves off with his teeth, then the second layer, and there it was, just as he’d feared—a frosty whiteness at the tips of his first and middle fingers. A border of redness surrounded the edge of the damaged spot, creeping down across the nail, though the skin below was still relatively healthy-looking, if a little pale. A few blisters had popped up on the back of the hand and along the side, pale pink and filled with fluid, like bubble-gum bubbles someone had glued to his flesh.
Frostbite. Damn.
The patches and blisters weren’t too painful, at least not yet—but they would be, especially after they warmed up. If they warmed up—and how on earth would he warm them properly out here?
He sat back in the shelter and held his hands out in front of him, not caring in that moment that with the gloves off he was only exposing them more. All his careful precautions, and here his hands were frostbitten. A well-built shelter and two layers of gloves and blankets and even a fire hadn’t been enough to prevent it, not out here, where the temperature was still well below freezing. He made a small, sharp sound that was something close to a laugh, but not quite, tinged as it was by anger and self-loathing. He’d been an idiot, thinking he could walk out into the wilderness to find help. An absolute goddamn idiot.