Surrender: A Bitter Creek Novel

by Joan Johnston

  Brian wanted to hope for the best, but he figured he’d better prepare Tag for the worst. Although, from the haunted look in her blue eyes, she’d already divined the worst for herself.

  “I can’t smell smoke anymore,” she said as they started walking again.

  “Let’s hope the fire is out.”

  “Doesn’t that mean all the smoke jumpers will be heading home?” she asked. “Won’t that leave us out here all alone?”

  “Our families are still searching. They’re out here somewhere. All we have to do is hold on till they find us.”

  He tried to meet Tag’s gaze, but she wouldn’t look at him.

  “Tag? Hey, brat!”

  “What do you want, Brian?”

  “I want you to look at me.”

  “I’ve seen all I need to see.”

  “Which is what?”

  “You’re flushed. You’re sweaty. Your eyes are wells of pain. You’re limping like a pirate with a stump for a leg. What is it you’d like me to notice?”

  “Look at me!”

  When she did, he grinned. Broadly.

  “Oh, you crazy man,” she said angrily. “How can you possibly be grinning at a time like this?”

  “If a few days with you are all I have left, I intend to enjoy each and every one of them. That means being happy. That means thinking good thoughts. That means loving you while I can.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Loving you. Might as well say it. I’ve got nothing to lose. Neither do you. Do you love me, Tag?”

  “You’re off your rocker. Sick with fever. You’ve lost it completely.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But do you love me?”

  “That would be stupid, considering the fact that you’ve written yourself off. I mean, what would be the point of loving a guy who’s only got a few days left to live.”

  “Aha! I see your clever plan. You get me to live in the hope that you’ll say you love me, if I survive.”

  She shook her head, as though he were a pitiful excuse for a man. Maybe he was, but he didn’t intend to waste whatever time he had left. Especially the time he had left when he wasn’t out of his head with fever.

  “Let’s plan our life together after we get out of here,” he suggested.

  “You go home to the Lucky 7, and I go home to Kingdom Come. End of story.”

  “Except now that Matt’s moved in, you aren’t going to have a home at Kingdom Come for much longer. And life hasn’t been too comfortable for me at the Lucky 7 since I messed things up between Aiden and Leah. I suppose that means we should get a place of our own. We need to know how many kids we’re going to have, so we’ll know how many bedrooms to get.”

  “We discussed this in high school,” she said.

  “We did? I don’t remember any such conversation.”

  “I said I wanted two kids and you said you wanted four. We settled on three.”

  “Huh-uh. No way did I agree to that. If you have three, one gets left out. Two or four. That’s my final offer.”

  “Did I mention you’re crazy?”

  “What does that have to do with anything. So three bedrooms.”

  “Three? I’m confused.”

  “You’ll probably have two sets of twins, since they run in your family. One bedroom for the boys, one bedroom for the girls, and one bedroom for us.”

  She laughed, and he absorbed the happy sound as though it were a pail of cool water dumped over his head. “You with me?” he asked.

  “Sure. Why not? The kids go to school in Jackson. No boarding schools.”

  “But college wherever they want.”

  She nodded, then said, “Barrel racing for the girls, calf roping for the boys.”

  “Agreed.”

  “No bareback bronc or bull riding!”

  “I won’t encourage it, but I won’t discourage it, either.”

  She huffed out a breath of air. “I’m not raising sons to have their skulls crushed and their ribs gored by some nasty bull.”

  “They can wear helmets and flak jackets.” When she made a face he said, “I don’t want to tell my kids what they can and can’t do. I’d rather advise them of the dangers and let them judge for themselves.” He put up a hand to keep her from objecting and added, “When they’re old enough to make those sorts of decisions for themselves, of course.”

  “I’m not going to stop flying.”

  “I never said you had to. I’m not going to stop firefighting and smoke jumping.”

  She shot him a look, and he knew what she was thinking.

  If you’re still able. If you aren’t crippled. If you aren’t dead.

  He didn’t say anything. There was nothing he could say. His leg hurt like a sonofabitch, and he was dizzy. He felt himself stagger and grabbed a pine branch to stay upright.

  “Thank God,” she whispered.

  He was so disoriented, it took him a moment to realize that they’d stumbled onto another stream. This one was wider and deeper. He lurched a step or two farther and sank down in the shade of an aspen near the water. “Gotta take a little break.”

  He felt her hand on his forehead, calm and soothing, felt her brush the hair back from his face, as she helped him remove his PG bag and settle comfortably on his back. She was kneeling next to him, and he felt her cool cheek pressed against his, along with something warm and wet. A tear?

  “Don’t cry,” he mumbled. “We’re going to…make it. Just have to…hold on a…little…”

  THE NEXT FOUR days passed in a blur for Taylor. Every moment she wasn’t setting traps or trying to catch fish, or cooking what she’d caught, she spent doing her best to cool Brian’s fiery, fevered body.

  On the first day, he had moments of lucidity.

  “This is what I think you should do when I’m gone,” he said.

  “Don’t you dare talk about your death as though it’s going to happen,” she snapped. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  He tried again. “If anything happens to me—”

  She cut him off before he got any further. “Don’t bother speculating. I’m not listening.”

  “You have to listen.”

  “Blah. Blah. Blah,” she said, putting her hands to her ears.

  When he persisted, she got up and walked away, working on a parachute net she could use to catch one of the large trout in the stream. He was too sick to follow her. She came back bearing a smile and a fish. She was pleased and encouraged when he was able to eat some, after she broiled it over the fire.

  The fever came back with a vengeance, and he was never coherent again for more than a few minutes at a time.

  “Have you heard any planes?” he rasped.

  She shook her head.

  “Have you been shouting so they can hear you?”

  She told him yes, even though the answer was no. What was the point of yelling when there was no one to hear?

  The next time he woke up he asked, “Have you heard anyone yelling?”

  She told him, “No, but I’ve been yelling like you told me to.” She’d decided it couldn’t hurt to yell for two or three minutes every half hour, just in case.

  By the second day, Brian’s wound looked awful. She wondered how he would feel if he survived but lost his leg. She wondered how she would feel if that happened. She tried not to think about it. Naturally, amputation was constantly on her mind. She tried to think how far up his leg a doctor would need to cut to get out all the infection. The longer they were lost, the more of his leg the imaginary doctor took off.

  Brian wouldn’t be able to fight fires anymore. Maybe he could do an administrative job with the Jackson Hole Fire Department.

  He would hate that.

  Smoke jumping would be out of the question.

  He would hate t
hat, too.

  Sometimes she thought it might be better if Brian died, because his life, if he survived, was going to be so different from anything he’d ever imagined. Then she would picture a world without Brian Flynn and knew it would be a darker, sadder place.

  So she struggled to keep him alive.

  She stripped off his shoes, socks, and jeans, so she’d have easy access to his leg. She saw the deepest claw mark was filled with pus. She wasn’t sure what to do, and Brian was no help. He was out of his head with fever.

  Taylor decided to lance the wound and drain the pus.

  The thought of cutting into human flesh was nauseating. Cutting into Brian’s flesh was horrifying, but she knew getting rid of as much of the putrefaction as she could was his best hope of survival.

  So she did it. She cut open the wound and pressed out the awful gunk inside.

  Brian cried. He howled and fought to be free.

  She cried, too, but she didn’t stop. She sat on his legs facing the wound to hold him down. It was a sign of how weak he was that he couldn’t throw her off.

  When she was done, she decided to do something she’d seen in movies that were set on the Western frontier. She didn’t know if it would work, but she thought it couldn’t hurt.

  She heated Brian’s Swiss army knife till it was red hot, then pressed it against the wound to cauterize the cut she’d made.

  This time he screamed. She screamed too, frustrated by the awful need to hurt him so badly in order to help him.

  When she thought the wound was sealed, she threw the knife aside, then turned to embrace Brian, pressing kisses to his hot face and holding him down on the sleeping bag to keep him from touching his leg or injuring himself further.

  “Shh. Shh. It’s all over now. You’re okay. I won’t hurt you anymore.” She kissed away the salty tears that seeped from his closed eyes. She would willingly accept the condemnation she was sure to see, if he would only open them and recognize her.

  On the third day, despite her efforts, he wasn’t any better. She knew she had to do something to try and get his fever down. She loaded Brian onto the parachute and dragged him into the water, letting it cool his body and ease the swelling in his leg.

  Although she was unable to get him to eat, she forced water down his throat. She took care of all his needs, even the most private, all the while watching his strong, masculine body waste away. She studied every shallow breath in and out of his chest, wondering when he would breathe his last.

  Taylor woke up the morning of their fourth day at the stream, took one look at Brian, and knew he probably wouldn’t survive until sundown. She splashed his body with cool water. She listened to him murmur and mumble in his delirium, and wondered who would take care of her when the end came.

  Her stomach growled. She hadn’t caught a fish or a squirrel or a rabbit in the past twenty-four hours. She felt weak and sick, although she was more sick at heart than anything else. She’d done everything she could to try and save Brian. She was out of tricks.

  Brian was going to die.

  It had been only twelve days since her Twin Otter flamed out, and they’d jumped into the wilderness. Twelve hungry days. Twelve terrifying days. Twelve wonderful days, because she’d finally found a man who loved her, a man she might have been able to love for the rest of her life, if only he managed to survive the infection in his leg.

  It had been her habit to stoke a fire all night to keep the predators away and snatch a nap every morning. She was exhausted and having trouble keeping her eyes open. But she didn’t want to be asleep when Brian passed away. She didn’t want him to die all alone.

  She sat beside him, lifted his head onto her thigh, and tried to force a little water into his mouth. It dribbled down the sides of his face.

  “Damn it, Brian! Open your mouth and swallow. Do you hear me? I’m not going to die out here alone. We’re going to be saved. So swallow!”

  To her amazement, he did.

  “See? You’re not gone yet. Keep fighting. Just keep fighting. Don’t give up. Please don’t give up.”

  She sobbed. There was no one to hear her cry. No one to chastise her for being weak.

  In a fierce voice she said, “I love you. Do you hear me? I admit it. I’m willing to take a chance with you. If we get out of here alive, I promise I’ll give it a try. I’ll love you more than anyone’s ever loved you before, and I expect you to love me just as much. We’ll have those twins—two sets of them—and raise them to care about their aunts and uncles and grandfathers on both sides. We’ll put a stop to this feud as surely and completely as you’ve put a stop to all those fires.”

  She swiped at the tears blurring her eyes, unwilling to lose sight of his beloved face.

  “Helloooo!” she screamed. “Is anybody out there! Can anyone hear me? Heeeelp! Somebody answer me! Just open your goddamn mouth and say something!”

  “I can hear you!” a female voice called back. “Keep yelling!”

  At the sound of another human voice, a voice that meant salvation, Taylor’s throat had swollen completely closed, and though she opened her mouth, no sound came out. Tears of frustration spurted from her eyes. She swallowed hard, to get rid of the painful knot preventing speech, then took a deep breath and screamed at the top of her lungs, “We’re here. We’re right here!”

  She reached out with two fingers to check the pulse at Brian’s throat. She couldn’t find it.

  “I TOLD YOU they were still alive,” Leah cried. “That was Taylor’s voice!”

  “Brian!” Aiden shouted. “Brian, answer me!” What came back was the same female voice he and Leah had first heard, from somewhere west of them in the forest. Aiden fought back the rising fear that the reason Brian hadn’t answered was because he couldn’t answer. Maybe Brian had left Taylor behind and was off hunting somewhere.

  In his heart of hearts, he didn’t believe it. He’d seen Brian’s limp in his footprints, seen him drag his right foot in the ashes rather than pick it up. Brian was badly hurt.

  They’d followed Brian and Taylor’s trail easily for about the first hour after they’d left the cave. Then the rainstorm had hit and washed it out. They’d headed in what they thought was a logical direction the two could have taken, but they didn’t find their tracks again. They’d searched in one direction and then another. The past four days had been a nightmare of disappointments. Aiden had begun to lose hope. It had been difficult to admit that Brian might be gone.

  His father had exhorted him to give up the search and come home. “Either he’ll walk out of the forest, or he won’t,” Angus had said. “You’re not going to locate Brian in a wilderness that vast.”

  “Don’t argue with me, Dad,” he’d replied in a steely voice. “I’m not coming back until I find him.”

  King had apparently said pretty much the same thing to Leah. Her response had been considerably more blunt.

  After she’d ended the satellite phone call to her father, Aiden had looked into Leah’s desolate—and determined—hazel eyes and seen that she had no intention of giving up. He would cheerfully endure a little obstinacy in the woman he loved for the sake of spending his life with her. That is, assuming he could get her to forgo an annulment.

  At least she’d been speaking to him, sharing stories about her sister. When they’d exhausted that topic, she’d asked him about Brian, to keep him talking. He’d realized that Leah needed their conversation to hold back the fear that threatened to overwhelm her.

  He’d resisted the urge to offer the comfort of his arms. He could tell by the way Leah occasionally eyed him askance that he’d given her food for thought in his recent confession. It was equally clear, from the way she kept her distance, that she had no inclination—yet—of offering dispensation. It wasn’t easy to give her the space to make up her mind, but he knew enough about Leah to understand that she measur
ed all the pros and cons before coming to any decision. And she couldn’t be rushed.

  This morning, they’d finally stumbled onto Brian and Taylor’s trail again, but it had been days old. Nevertheless, they’d shadowed their siblings’ footsteps. Taylor’s shouts confirmed that, at long last, they’d located their missing family.

  “This way!” Leah cried, running off in the direction of Taylor’s voice.

  Aiden listened to Leah’s frantic shouts and Taylor’s hoarse replies until they could see Taylor sitting on the ground beneath an aspen, Brian lying beside her, his head in her lap.

  Leah kept running until she was able to drop to her knees and wrap her arms around her sister.

  Aiden stopped short, unable to breathe, his heart caught in his throat.

  It was hard to believe that the gaunt woman Leah was hugging, her blond hair a mass of rat’s nests, her face filthy, her clothes ragged and hanging off her body, was Taylor Grayhawk. He looked from Taylor to the equally emaciated man on the ground, his damp hair sticking up, brushed away from his brother’s forehead, he imagined, by a soothing hand. Brian’s bearded face was devoid of color and his chest lay still, with no air moving in or out, at least as far as Aiden could tell from where he stood.

  He tried to take a step closer, but the shock of seeing Brian laid so low had rooted him in place. He met Taylor’s despondent gaze and knew the awful truth without having to be told.

  Taylor said it anyway. “He’s dead.”

  Leah immediately pressed two fingers to Brian’s carotid, then leaned over and held her cheek next to his nose. “No, Aiden. He’s still alive!”

  That bit of hope freed Aiden, and he threw himself across the last few feet, dropping to his knees at Brian’s side. He took Brian’s cold hand in his own and urged, “Hang in there, Brian. We’re here. Help is on the way.”

  Then he smelled the gangrene that was killing his brother. He choked on the stench, then swallowed his gorge.