by Dani Atkins
‘Is this it?’ I asked, my voice was hoarse, partly from the filthy lake water, but mostly from shock. ‘Is this all that’s left of the plane?’ He didn’t answer, and his silence said more than words could ever have done.
I couldn’t take it in. It was all too much. The plane. The people. So many lives. Were they gone? Were we the only two who had survived? How was that possible? With each fragmented thought I could feel a tightening in my throat as the air in my lungs began to falter. Suddenly my ears were filled with an incredible roaring sound, and idiotically I looked up, believing for a moment that it was our plane, still somehow flying overhead. But the skies were empty, and it was only as I felt my knees give way and I sank awkwardly down onto them that I realised the sound I could hear was my own blood racing at speed through my veins and capillaries. They call it ringing in your ears, but that makes it sound tuneful and melodic. It wasn’t like that at all, and if there was ringing, then it was just one solitary bell, that was tolling mournfully for those who were lost.
‘Kate!’ I cried in alarm, frantically slapping my hands against the pockets of my jeans in search of the small oblong device that was never far from my side. ‘Where’s my phone? I have to phone Kate. I have to tell her I’m all right.’
I hadn’t realised my hands were still beating uselessly against my empty pockets until they were suddenly captured by Logan’s, who halted the brutal frisking. He was crouched down low before me, his face a portrait of worry.
‘I need to speak to Kate. Please give me my phone back, I have to call her.’
There was real anxiety in his eyes as they held mine.
‘Hannah, breathe. Calm down.’
What did he mean breathe? I was doing that, wasn’t I? Probably far better than anyone else who’d been on the plane was now doing. No. Don’t think of that. Don’t go there. Just think of Kate. I had to speak to Kate. She’d know what to do. She always did.
‘You don’t understand. I have to call her. She’s my sister. You see, she was worried earlier on, and I didn’t listen to her. I should have listened. She was right, you see. I have to tell her she was right.’ I was gabbling, my words and sentences running into each other as I tried to make him understand the urgency.
‘Hannah, listen to me.’ His voice was firm, almost harsh, but the hold he had on my hands was gentle. He brought his face closer to mine, so close that our noses were virtually touching and it was impossible to see anything of the beach or the flaming pieces of wreckage. All I could see were two brilliant green eyes which stared deeply into mine with hypnotic intensity.
‘Hannah, you’re going into shock. You need to breathe slowly and calm down. Breathe with me now.’
I shook my head in sharp denial, but he was having none of it. Releasing one of my hands he held it flat against the broad expanse of his chest. Beneath my palm I could feel the strong steady beat of his heart. ‘Come on, Hannah, breathe with me.’ He took a deep exaggerated inhalation and my hand rose several centimetres. Very slowly he let it out again. His breath warmed my ice-cold cheeks and settled almost intimately on my lips. Compared to him, my own breathing sounded like a terrified animal’s, a fox’s, just before the hounds catch up with it. ‘And again,’ he encouraged, repeating his actions, willing me to comply with his voice, his eyes and his body, which were trying to force mine to mimic him.
The clearing was silent for several minutes, except for the sounds of our mismatched breathing. Gradually I could feel my racing pulse begin to ease and while my respiration never became as regulated as Logan’s, at least it was now under control.
‘That’s better, you’re doing it,’ he congratulated, as though I had mastered a complex discipline, rather than simply managing to breathe at a rate that wouldn’t make me pass out at any moment. ‘That’s good,’ he said, and something in the gentleness of his tone or the approving smile he gave was my undoing. Without warning I burst into unexpected raw and noisy sobs, which echoed off the pine trees and rocks circling the clearing and ricocheted around us like a maniacs’ chorus in an asylum.
Logan folded me into his arms and rocked me like a child until the sobs eventually diminished into quiet gulps. ‘It’s just reaction,’ he said, very gently easing me away from him and studying my face. I nodded, not trusting my voice, or even sure I could summon it up past the clattering chatter of my teeth. Logan too was visibly shivering, and I knew enough from my lifeguard training to realise that hypothermia was fast becoming a high priority concern.
Almost as though he had read my mind, Logan got to his feet and reached for my hands, pulling me up to join him. ‘We have to get warm,’ he urged. ‘We need to build a fire and dry out, or we’re not going to make it until morning.’ I nodded in agreement, to a Spanish castanet accompaniment from my teeth. ‘Were you injured at all when we came down?’ he asked. ‘Does anything hurt?’
‘I . . . I don’t think so. I’m too cold to know for sure.’
Logan nodded, his eyes worried. ‘We need that fire. Now.’
‘Do you know how to build one? Because I don’t. And how are we going to light it without matches or anything?’
Logan turned his head, and nodded towards the score or more of tiny flaming pyres blazing in memory of the plane they had once been a part of. ‘I don’t think that’s something we need to worry about,’ he said, a grim smile passing over his lips, which were alarmingly beginning to look a little more blue than pink. ‘Come on, help me find some wood to get it going.’
Lighting the fire we so desperately needed proved more of a challenge than either of us had anticipated. Taking my hand in his, Logan led us towards the edge of the clearing, where a scattering of deadfall lay around the base of the trees. I dropped to my knees on the frozen ground and began gathering up random armfuls of fallen sticks and branches. ‘We need to look beneath the top layer and find the dry stuff, or it won’t burn,’ Logan said gently, resting his hand lightly on my shoulder. I looked down at the bundle in my arms, most of which were covered in a fine coating of frozen crystals and threw them down with a small sound of disgust. Damp wood was no good for a fire. I should know that. I did know that. ‘It’s okay,’ Logan said consolingly, ‘we’ll find what we need, we just need to – oh shit!’ My head flew up at his exclamation. He jumped to his feet and I scrabbled inelegantly up beside him and followed his worried gaze.
‘They’re going out!’ I cried in horror, my eyes flashing across the clearing as one by one the flaming pieces of wreckage began to splutter and snuff out, extinguishing with them all hopes of our survival.
‘Not if I can help it,’ muttered Logan darkly. ‘Find some dry wood, I’ll see if I can keep one of them going.’ He set off at a run towards one of the largest twisted pieces of debris which was still alight. His long legs covered the distance quickly, but even as I stood watching, I could see the flames were already beginning to dwindle. There was no way we were going to be able to build a fire quickly enough.
I thrust my numb and strangely white hands into the bed of fallen pine needles, as though hunting in a lucky dip for the prized dry wood, but the cold was making me slow and clumsy, in a way I simply couldn’t afford. Eventually cradling an armful of sticks, I headed back towards Logan, finding it harder now to negotiate the wreckage obstacle course with so few flickering flames to guide me.
I’d only taken a few steps before I almost lost my balance as my foot caught something large and square lying haphazardly on the ground amidst the fallen wreckage. I glanced down and saw – bizarrely – that it was a suitcase, its red lid ripped open in a long gash which reminded me horribly of a screaming mouth. I leapt awkwardly over the scattered contents that had spilled out of the case and tried to force my frozen legs to move faster before the night air smothered the last of the flaming debris.
Logan was on all fours, his face down at ground level, gently feeding fine wispy handfuls of some sort of strange curly dried moss onto the glowing cinders.
Tree lichen, actually, supplie
d that curious portion of my brain that retained the most useless and idiotic pieces of information. Whatever the stuff was called it seemed to be working. Although the misshapen piece of aluminium was no longer alight, its jagged edges still glowed red and Logan carefully placed the dry moss strands against the heated metal and gently blew. A few wispy tendrils of smoke swirled and writhed and rose up. Without waiting to be asked, I snatched up further handfuls of moss and held them out to him.
I don’t suppose it could have taken more than a minute or two for the pieces of dried foliage to finally ignite, but they were the longest two minutes of my life. Logan kept blowing gently on the fledgling sparks, while I hardly dared to breathe at all. How could our potential survival, our entire future, be condensed down to something so inconsequential. Live or die, could that really all be decided on whether or not we could do something ancient cavemen had mastered around twenty thousand years ago?
Cautiously, as though the sputtering fire might go out if I spooked it, I crouched down beside him, instantly smelling the lingering pungent odour of aviation fuel still clinging to the gnarled piece of wreckage.
‘What can I do to help?’ I asked, not sure why I felt the need to whisper the question.
‘Separate the wood out by size,’ Logan instructed, selecting three thin dry twigs from the pile I had brought. ‘We need to build it up slowly, or it’ll go out.’
I did as I was told. I had no trouble at all with his take-charge attitude; I was just thankful that he seemed to know what he was doing. I hadn’t been joking when I’d told him I couldn’t light a fire. I was a central-heating-all-the-way, sort of a person. My days as a Girl Guide were a very distant memory, and the only recollection I had of campfires was sitting round them singing silly songs, not actually building them.
‘Come on, come on,’ Logan urged the tiny flames as he carefully propped the sticks up beside them, creating the world’s smallest Indian teepee. I stared with intense concentration at the orange glow, which was still no bigger than a struck match and willed it to take with a fervour just short of desperation.
Gradually the small shards of timber made a welcome crackling noise, then another. Logan looked up with a glow of achievement on his face, which was more warming than any fire. He nodded, and I nodded back. We’d done it, or rather he had.
We built it up together, stick by stick. He held out his hand like a surgeon waiting for a scalpel, and like a practised scrub nurse I laid the next piece of kindling into his outstretched palm. No operation could have held higher stakes, given that the lives we were saving here were our own.
Logan continued to carefully position the sticks, allowing the licking flames to taste the dry wood, savour it, and then consume it hungrily. I inched closer to the growing fire, holding out my hands to steal its meagre heat.
‘What do you think happened to everyone else, Logan?’ I asked at last, my eyes fixed on the dancing flames. ‘Do you think they made it? Did they land somewhere?’
Logan looked up from the fire, his face still looking pinched by the cold. He took his time answering, and I think he may have been assessing whether I was strong enough to handle the truth. I’m really glad he didn’t lie to me, because then I wouldn’t have been able to trust him. And I already knew that trusting him was probably the only way I was going to survive.
‘No, Hannah,’ he replied sadly. ‘I don’t see how they could have landed. They’d have lost control and altitude when our section of the plane broke away.’
I looked towards the razor-topped mountains to the north and south of us and shuddered, this time not from the cold. ‘So where is it? Where did it come down? If it’s near here, shouldn’t we try to find it?’
‘No,’ Logan answered decisively, shaking his head. ‘We need to stay here, with the wreckage. That’s our best chance of being found.’
I didn’t like the way he phrased that. ‘Our best chance’ made it sound as though not being found was an option we had to seriously consider. Was it?
‘But they’ll be looking for us, right? They’ll know where we are from the radar and things . . . they’ll send planes and helicopters, won’t they?’
He nodded, and I felt the ball of tension inside me begin to unfurl slightly. ‘Yes, of course they will. Eventually.’
The word hung in the air, suspended over the flames of the fire like a spectre.
‘But not yet? You don’t think they’ll come tonight?’
‘No, Hannah, not tonight.’ He gave a smile, though his frozen lips made it look more like a grimace. ‘Tonight it’s just you and me. But at least neither of us is alone.’
Despite standing so close to the fire that I was in danger of setting myself alight, I still couldn’t seem to get any warmer. Logan was already looking better, but the heat wasn’t penetrating through my sodden clothing, let alone into the icy marrow of my bones.
‘We need to get you out of those wet things,’ Logan said in concern.
‘No way,’ I replied, winding my arms around my waist as though he was about to rip the offending garments from me.
He reached out to hold my hands in his own, his eyes clouding over in concern.
‘You’re freezing, Hannah. You need to get warm. And fast.’
‘Yeah, well, I don’t see how taking off my clothes is going to do that.’ My teeth clattered together before I added, ‘Nice try, though. Get much success with that line, do you?’
He laughed then, a warm and throaty chuckle that sounded strange in the frozen night air. I could feel my own lips curling into a smile, before my mouth fell open in shock as Logan stepped back and began to shrug out of his own wet clothing.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ I asked, not knowing where to look as he began undoing the buttons of his shirt to reveal a firm torso with the type of clearly defined musculature you only get from serious gym time.
‘I’m not getting undressed,’ I declared stubbornly as his hands flipped open the stud opening of his jeans and reached for his zipper.
‘Oh yes, you are,’ he said pleasantly. ‘You’re getting out of those wet clothes, even if I have to take them off you myself.’ There was a thread of steel in his words, and I could see he wasn’t joking.
‘No, Logan, I can’t. I’ll freeze. You’ll freeze. Oh God— ’ I cried as his trousers were added to the pile of wet clothing on the ground. He’d already kicked off his boots and was now totally naked except for a pair of boxers.
‘We won’t freeze,’ Logan promised, somewhat rashly, I felt. ‘We’ll keep each other warm. We’ll double our body heat. I just wish we had something dry to wrap ourselves up in.’
I stared at him blankly for a moment, before I remembered the suitcase. I guess he was right, the cold was affecting me more than I realised; it was making me sluggish and slow.
‘There’s a case over there. It must have fallen from the plane,’ I said, pointing with an unsteady, shivering arm.
Logan was back with the broken piece of luggage just moments later, as well as the items that had been thrown from it on impact. He dropped the case down and flipped open the catches to reveal its contents. The owner was clearly a man, who unfortunately looked like he preferred to travel light. But at least the clothes and items within the case were dry.
‘There must be something in there we could wear,’ I said hopefully.
Logan looked up from his rummaging, a couple of pairs of socks in one hand, and a thick fleecy dressing gown in the other. ‘There are, but that’s for later, for when we’ve got you properly warmed up.’ He stood before me and held out his hands in wait. ‘Take them off, Hannah.’ There are probably hundreds of scenarios when having a man – an extremely attractive man – ask you to get naked for him is sensuous and erotic. But this wasn’t one of them.
He watched me struggle for several moments, trying to ease my arms out of the sleeves of my waterlogged jumper, which suddenly seemed to be made of lead instead of wool. He stepped closer.
‘Lift your arms
.’ I did as he said, and the jumper rode up my body and over my head with a gentle tug. Despite his assurances, I instantly missed the thick knitted garment, even if it had been locking the cold into my already frozen body.
Beneath the jumper I had on a simple button-through t-shirt that was plastered against me like cold sodden skin. Not bothering to ask permission, Logan’s hands went to the buttons.
‘I can do that,’ I protested, brushing his hands aside. Only it turned out I couldn’t. My fingers were almost totally devoid of feeling, and the task of guiding the buttons through the tiny holes was beyond them. He gave a small sigh and reached for the row of small pearl-shaped fastenings. He paused with his hand on the top one and I could feel the warmth from his fingers as they rested against the skin of my chest.
‘Okay?’ he asked. I nodded dumbly, glad of the heat of the blush that bled into my cheeks as the buttons were swiftly and efficiently popped open. He pulled the sides of my top apart and shrugged them down my arms, while my hands instinctively crossed over my breasts which were encased in a very flimsy see-through bra. He had better not be thinking of getting that off me.
‘Can you manage your jeans?’ he asked, his voice sounding strange. I shook my head mutely. We’d gone this far; there really was no point in stopping now.