Securing Zoey

by Susan Stoker

  Once she had the moss in place, and the small sticks ready to catch the fire to set the larger ones ablaze, Zoey sat back on her heels and took a deep breath.

  “That’s it, Z-Zo. You c-can do this,” Mark said softly. He didn’t demand she pass the flint to him. Didn’t try to take control of making the fire. He had faith that she could do it.

  Nodding to herself, Zoey bent over the moss and hit the flint with the metal striker. Sparks flew like they were supposed to, but just like every other time she’d attempted to start the fire, they went every which way, not down at the moss where she needed them.

  “Take your t-time,” Mark encouraged.

  Gritting her teeth, Zoey struck the flint again. And again. With each hit, she got more sparks. She was slowly getting the hang of it and determination set in. She needed this fire. Mark needed this fire. It was going to start, dammit, no matter what.

  It took probably two dozen strikes, but finally a spark landed right where she needed it. It was probably luck more than anything specific she’d done, but she didn’t care. Smoke rose from the moss and, feeling her adrenaline spike, Zoey leaned over the precious spark and very gently blew on it, just like Mark had taught her.

  Within seconds, the spark had turned to a flame.

  Not wanting to do anything that would make the precarious fire go out, she moved a few sticks over to the smoldering moss. Slowly but surely, they also caught fire.

  Five minutes later, there was a crackling, warm fire burning.

  Zoey turned to Mark in disbelief. “I did it.”

  “Yes, you sure d-did, s-sweetheart.”

  Hearing his stutter, Zoey brushed off the feeling of accomplishment and shuffled over to Mark. “Come on. You need to get closer to the fire.”

  Very slowly, and holding her shirt to his midsection, Mark stood. Zoey quickly went to his side and wrapped a steadying arm around him. Within moments, he was sitting once more, this time right next to the fire. She could feel the heat coming from the flames, and for just a second she considered sitting down next to Mark to soak them up, but she had more work to do.

  Leaving Mark by the fire, she gathered his clothes and squeezed as much water out of them as possible. Then she draped them over some logs she’d carried to the fire. He couldn’t continue on without his clothes, and he couldn’t put them on if they were wet. So the only choice was to do everything possible to dry them out. Luckily, the cargo pants weren’t one hundred percent cotton like a pair of jeans would’ve been. She figured they should dry fairly quickly. But his T-shirt and underwear would take much longer to be ready to wear again.

  Then she set about seeing what she could find for them to eat. Making a snare and killing a squirrel was outside her abilities, but Zoey did manage to forage some berries, a few mushrooms, and even a bunch of cattail plants. They didn’t taste the best, but Colin had taught her that, in a pinch, they could be consumed.

  The sun had completely disappeared behind the afternoon clouds, and Zoey shivered. But she did her best to ignore her discomfort. Mark was in much worse shape. She could deal with a little chill.

  She brought her bounty back to where she’d left Mark and found him lying on his side. Zoey put more wood on the fire, ignoring the amount of smoke that was curling up into the sky. As long as they had flames, she didn’t care how smoky things got.

  The sound of her messing with the fire woke Mark, and he pushed himself upright.

  “I found some stuff to eat,” Zoey told him with a small smile. She saw the look of admiration in his eyes, but ignored it for now. “As well as our usual berry and fungus feast, I found us some cattails.”

  “Cattails?” Mark asked.

  Zoey was pleased that he didn’t seem to be shivering as much anymore, and he hadn’t stuttered. “Yeah. Your dad taught me. I’m going to roast the shoots, as that’s the easiest thing to do out here. The roots can also be eaten, but they’re not as good.”

  “My pop taught you that?” Mark asked.

  Zoey nodded as she used his knife to cut the shoots. “Yeah. We were talking one day about all the stuff in the wilderness that was edible. He told me cattails were, but I didn’t believe him. So of course, he had to prove me wrong.” Zoey chuckled. “Honestly, this isn’t going to taste all that good, but since I can’t catch any meat for us, this will have to do for now.”

  “I didn’t know about cattails,” Mark said.

  He sounded so different, Zoey looked up at him in concern.

  “You’re amazing, Zo.”

  Blushing, Zoey shrugged. “If I was all that amazing, I would’ve been able to catch us a moose and make us some moose burgers.” She wasn’t used to compliments. Not ones that were accompanied by a look like the one on Mark’s face. “I need to go wash these. I’ll be right back.”

  “Don’t fall in,” Mark quipped.

  Zoey rolled her eyes. “I think one of us taking an impromptu dunk is enough. Although I am kind of jealous that you were able to take a bath and wash off the worst of the dirt from the last week.” She couldn’t believe she was actually joking about what had happened, but she supposed it was a good way to let off some nervous energy.

  Bubba was pissed. At himself. It wasn’t as if it was his fault that the tree had come down stream at exactly the wrong time, but he should’ve at least planned for something like that. He could’ve taken off more of his clothes, just in case he got dunked. If he had, he wouldn’t be sitting on the ground, practically naked, watching Zoey take care of him.

  It was a weird role reversal, and he didn’t like it. Didn’t like the way Zoey was flitting around in only a tank top. He could see how cold she was by the way her nipples were poking through her bra, and the goose bumps that rose on her arms every time she stepped away from the fire. He didn’t like that she’d literally given him the shirt off her back, and her socks as well.

  If they’d both been soaked, they would’ve been fucked. Zoey had done everything right.

  All his adult life he’d taken for granted that his teammates would have his back. If he’d been with one of them, it would’ve been a given that they’d have done what Zoey had. But she wasn’t a SEAL. Wasn’t his teammate. And yet, she’d acted immediately and kept him from suffering needlessly. He wasn’t exactly out of the woods yet, but the warmth from the fire was going a long way toward making him recover sooner rather than later.

  Bubba was as proud as he could be that Zoey had managed to get the fire started. He couldn’t have done it, his hands had been shaking too hard. But she’d managed, and the feeling of accomplishment that he’d seen on her face was beautiful.

  She’d started the fire, gotten them food, taught him something he didn’t know about edible wild plants, and now it was time she stopped moving for two seconds and relaxed. “Come here,” he told her after she’d put another log on the fire. Bubba held out an arm, encouraging her to snuggle up against him.

  She came to him without hesitation, which made him feel ten feet tall. His colossal mistake hadn’t seemed to diminish her willingness to be near him. When she snuggled against him, he could feel the chill of her body against his own.

  He held her tight and moved them a little closer to the flames.

  “You know what I’m wishing right now?” she asked when they got comfortable.

  “For a large steak and potato dinner?” Bubba asked.

  She chuckled. “Besides that.”

  “No, tell me.”

  “Back home, when I did laundry, one of my favorite things in the world to do was take the towels and sheets fresh out of the dryer and curl up on the couch under them. The warmth would seep into my bones and warm me from the inside out. They smelled fresh and clean, and it’s always been one of those small indulgences that I know other people would think is weird, but I did it anyway. I wish I had a dryer right here, and I could take those warm towels out and wrap them around us.”

  Bubba could picture Zoey in his mind right now. She’d be smiling and her eyes would be
shut as she enjoyed one of the little things in life. He wanted to give her that. Wanted to give her everything.

  “When we get to Anchorage, I’m gonna make that happen for you, sweetheart.”

  He felt her shrug against him. “It’s fine. Mark?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You scared the shit out of me.”

  Bubba closed his eyes. He’d kinda scared himself. For a second there, when he was trapped under the tree branch in the fast-moving water, he’d thought he was a goner. And once free, the only thing that kept him from being swept away had been the rope around his waist and Zoey holding on to the other end.

  He reached out and picked up one of her hands. It was dirty from putting the last log on the fire, and she had debris caked under her nails. He turned it over and saw a dark red burn mark from the very rope she’d used to save his life, and a bruise forming around her wrist, probably from wrapping the rope around it. Bubba kissed both gently.

  “Thank you for being there. You did everything right, sweetheart.”

  She didn’t respond, but curled into him tighter.

  “I’m sorry I scared you. I can’t promise not to do anything in the future that will make you uneasy or frightened, but I do promise to be more careful. To not take chances. We should’ve just turned around today. Or I should’ve thought a little more about alternative options to get around the stream. I’m sorry.”

  Zoey nodded against him. He liked that she didn’t say it was okay. Or try to convince him he didn’t fuck up when they both knew he had. But he also liked that she didn’t berate him or say anything that would make him feel even worse than he already did.

  “But you know what?”

  “What?” she mumbled.

  “I think after today, you’re officially a ten out of ten on the outdoor comfortability scale.”

  She picked her head up at that. “Seriously?”

  He chuckled. “Yeah. You pulled my ass out of the stream. You got me warm. You made fire. Started drying my clothes and got us food. I’m sure if you had to, you could also make us a shelter if we needed it. So yeah, I’d say that brings you up to a ten out of ten.”

  “Well, yippee for me,” she said sarcastically. “When do I get my merit badge?”

  Bubba felt better right that moment than he had in the last couple hours. He was wearing only his shirt, had on a pair of women’s socks, and had her pink and purple fleece wrapped around his waist, but he’d never felt more comfortable.

  They sat in silence for quite a while. Enjoying the heat from both the fire and each other’s bodies. Zoey had stopped shivering, which relieved Bubba.

  He was about to ask her some random question…when he thought he heard something.

  For the last week, the only things they’d heard were leaves blowing, birds singing, their own voices, and the wind and rain. What he was hearing now was definitely out of the ordinary.

  “Zoey! Quick, put more logs on the fire!”

  “What?” she asked, sitting up.

  Bubba pushed at her shoulder a little harder than he’d meant to. “Now, Zo. Do it! A wet one if you can find it. We need smoke. Lots of it!”

  She moved then. Without any more questions, she leapt up and hurried over to the stack of wood she’d dropped earlier and quickly worked on stoking the fire.

  Bubba stood, and while he wobbled at first, he quickly regained his equilibrium. He stood in Zoey’s purple socks, clutching her fleece shirt to his nether regions, his ass facing the fire as he looked up into the sky.

  The clouds were low, which might fuck them, but Bubba hoped not.

  Zoey came up to his side and put her arm around his waist. He put his around her shoulders and they both stared upward.

  “Is that what I think it is?” she asked, the hope easy to hear in her voice.

  “Yeah. It’s a helicopter. But there’s no guarantee it’ll stop. No way to know even how close it is. Sound travels really far out here. It could be miles away,” he warned.

  “It’ll see us,” Zoey whispered. “It has to.”

  Bubba glanced back at the fire and saw Zoey had done an excellent job at making it bigger. There weren’t any trees above to block the smoke either. If the chopper got low enough, there was no way it could miss them. But that was a big if. With the clouds being as thick as they were, it was possible the helicopter was flying above them and wouldn’t see the smoke from the fire. Or it could be miles away.

  Zoey turned into him and wrapped both her arms around his waist. She buried her head against him and held on tight. He knew she was praying as hard as she could, and he joined in.

  “Come on,” he said softly. “We’re right here. See us.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Rex was frustrated. He’d been in an Alaska State Trooper helicopter all day. They’d flown west of Anchorage on their assigned search grid and had been at it most of the day. The weather had started out sunny and clear but had slowly gotten more and more cloudy. The pilot said they’d have to be heading back to the airport soon, as visibility had decreased to the point where it was dangerous to continue the search.

  They hadn’t found hide nor hair of Bubba or the plane he’d been in. It was as if he really had disappeared into thin air. It was frustrating and demoralizing. The pilot had gotten updates from the others, who hadn’t found anything either. They’d flown as far east as Whitefish Lake, a fairly large and popular destination for nature lovers and hunters alike, but hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary.

  The trooper who was in the back of the chopper, searching with him, hadn’t complained about the long and boring work, understanding the driving need to find and rescue a teammate. They’d lost a pair of troopers when the helicopter they’d been on had crashed after rescuing a stranded snowmobiler. There had been no survivors, but they’d all worked around the clock to get to the wreckage and recover the bodies of their brothers-in-arms.

  The chopper had descended and was flying much lower than the pilot would’ve normally flown because of the clouds. They’d crossed the mountain range that housed Denali, the twenty-thousand-foot-high peak north of where they were, on their search earlier that day. It would be much trickier to go back over the mountains, now that the weather was crappy. There weren’t any huge twenty thousand foot peaks like Denali, but even an eight to ten thousand foot high mountain was still enough to be concerned about.

  They would’ve already been back in Anchorage, but the troopers got a call from a VPSO about a situation they needed help with, and they’d stopped at the small town for a few hours to deal with that.

  Rex had appreciated the break, as it was hard on the eyes to constantly scan the countryside for anything that looked like it might not belong. Now he was getting tired again, and he wanted to lie down for a few hours before heading out again the next day with a new plan. Tomorrow, they’d hug the coastline to see if they could find anything.

  Rex was thinking about the huge cup of coffee he was going to pour for himself the second they landed when something caught his eye. Turning his head, he stared hard, wondering if what he was seeing was merely clouds…or something more.

  After mere seconds, he was sure it wasn’t clouds.

  “Four o’clock,” he barked into the microphone at his lips. “Smoke. Where are we? Could that be from a house?”

  “No way,” the pilot said immediately, turning the chopper in the direction Rex had pointed out. “We’re directly over the Lake Clark Preserve and Wilderness. There’s nothing out here. No hunters are allowed and there are certainly no residences.”

  Rex’s heart began to beat faster.

  “Unless that’s an out-of-control wildfire, which is unlikely with the amount of rain we’ve gotten recently, there’s someone down there,” the other trooper said.

  Rex did his best to not get his hopes up too high. It was possible it was a hunter breaking the law, or someone camping. Just because there was smoke, didn’t mean it was Bubba. But after seeing absolutely nothing all
day, and with the current weather, even seeing the smoke from the fire was a minor miracle.

  The smoke continued to roll upward, and the closer they got, Rex could see it was coming from some sort of campfire. The pilot slowed the chopper as much as he could and began to fly in circles above the smoke. They descended slowly, and Rex prayed harder than he ever had in his life.

  When the helicopter banked and came back around, Rex saw what he’d been looking for. What they’d all been looking for the past week.

  Bubba was standing in the middle of a clearing with a woman against him. A fire blazed merrily behind them, belching smoke as if the person making it had no idea that the wetter the wood, the more smoke it would produce.

  Rex leaned out as far as he could, knowing the safety line attached to the harness around his chest would keep him safe. Using hand signs, he asked Bubba if he was hurt.

  The best sight Rex had ever seen was when Bubba lifted an arm, made a fist, and tapped the top of his head.

  He was all right.

  Fuckin’ A. Bubba was okay, and they’d fuckin’ found him.

  Rex vaguely heard the pilot radioing in to someone that the targets had been located and seemed to be alive and well. He kept his eyes on his friend as they hovered above them. There was no place to land, so they’d have to haul up Bubba and the woman, Zoey, using a Stokes basket. Rex couldn’t wait to get them into the chopper. He didn’t know where the plane was, or the pilot, but for the moment, he was relieved that he’d found his friend.

  Rex could see that Bubba was practically naked. He wore a long-sleeve flannel shirt but his legs were bare. He had what looked like two shirts wrapped around his waist, one that tied in the front and the other in back, making it look like he was wearing some sort of odd loincloth. He also had purple socks on his feet. Then he noticed what he assumed were Bubba’s clothes draped over a log near the fire. The woman wore pants and shoes, but only a tank top otherwise.

  Knowing whatever had happened wasn’t good, Rex was even more antsy to get his friend in the helicopter and out of the fucking middle of nowhere. His concern was tempered by his excitement and relief. He’d honestly started to believe he’d never talk to Bubba again. He was happier than he could say that he’d been wrong.