Page 53 of Protecting the Flame

THE DRONE

Chapter 1

On the fifth morning…

“Okay, enough.”Will caught her by a forearm as she dropped another armload of wood onto the pile she’d been building up for the last two hours. “Stop. Go back and get some rest. You’re beat. You also haven’t eaten enough to feed a tick.”

“I’m not that hungry.” Her head was pulsing as if some mini-me monster were inside having a temper tantrum. In another minute, her brain was going to liquefy and dribble out of her ears. Before Will and Scott had appeared, she’d forced down a cup of tea, waited to see if it would stay down, and then followed with half a packet of ramen and broth. That did her in. Five minutes after she was done, a woozy kind of heaviness mantled her brain, and she heaved everything back up again in great, racking spasms that left her stomach sore and her throat burning with acid. Disgusted, she kicked snow over the mess and wondered when the hell the vomiting was going to stop. There was no good time to survive an airplane crash, but not being able to keep down food was going to make her no good to anyone, least of all herself.

Eventually, Will would say something, and then what? She kept remembering his expression, the way his eyes had narrowed almost imperceptibly when feeling her belly. Her waist had thickened, but could he have felt, well, something else? She wondered if there was some graceful way she could get out of eating in the mornings. Somehow, she didn’t think saying she wasn’t a morning person would cut it.

And why do you even care? He’s married. He has a life.

“Hungry or not, you have to eat.” Reaching into his pack, Will pulled out an energy bar. “Eat it,” he said before she could protest. “The last thing we need is for you to get all light-headed and slip on a rock.”

“Fine.” She unwrapped the bar and caught a whiff of peanut butter and chocolate. Her stomach cramped. All of a sudden, she was ravenous—and that was as scary as her morning heaves. There was this thing in charge, growing inside, asserting its control. Maybe she needed to take those pills after all. But that might not be smart out here. First thing after they were rescued, though… “There’s still a lot to do,” she said, taking a tiny experimental nip and nearly fainting because the bar tasted so good.

“Which is true, but it’s already noon, and you’ve gone more than thirty-six hours without sleep.”

“We need more wood.” She’d never truly appreciated how hard people in third world countries had it. A person could spend her whole day gathering wood and hauling water.

“Scott can do that while I work on getting Hunter out.” He gestured at a spread of tools and the inflatable raft which he and Scott had brought over from the fuselage that morning. “Really, we got this.”

No, really, you don’t. She eyed the two glass cockpit displays Will had already managed to jimmy free from Hunter’s side of the cockpit. Those displays represented over three hours of work which had done diddly squat. The only thing decluttering the cockpit had accomplished was to give them a better sense of what the situation actually was. They weren’t talking about a bent console or an easy fix for Hunter here. The impact had jammed the cockpit’s frame in upon itself, crumpling and folding metal into large folds like a deflated accordion. No screwdriver or hammer or crowbar…they didn’t have a crowbar, but just supposing…none of that was going to make a dent here. What they needed was a blow torch or jaws of life, something that could cut through metal. They could probably take out every display and every knob, and it wouldn’t make a difference. The situation reminded her of that hiker, the one James Franco played in the movie, who’d slipped and gotten his arm wedged between boulders where he’d hung for a week before cutting off his arm.

“We got this,” Will said again. “Please, go get some rest. I’ll call you as soon as we get Hunter out. Then we probably will need an extra pair of hands to get the raft up that slope.”

“Man, if someone was saying I should go lie down, I’d sure do it.” Hands in pockets, Scott crouched in a dispirited hunch near the fire. “Maybe I should. I’m not feeling too good.” Using a thumb, Scott blocked a nostril and blew a runner of snot from the other. “I think I’ve caught something. I think I’m getting sick. On account of the cold.”

“Yeah?” said Hunter. Will had jimmied out Hunter’s side window, the better to get at the various displays and now, holding up an arm to block the bolts of sun splashing into the cockpit, Hunter squinted at the other man. “Happy to trade places, man.”

“I think you can probably muscle through this, Scott.” She’d dug deep, trying to find a squeak of sympathy for the guy but had come up empty. She took another nibble of her energy bar then rewrapped and tucked it into a pocket. Best not to push it. “At least you get to walk away.”

“Barely.” Scott dragged a sleeve across his nose. “If you guys hadn’t come, I’d be some wolf’s dinner by now.”

She sincerely doubted this. In fact, she wouldn’t put it past Scott for him to back off and let the wolves or that mountain lion take Earl and Hunter first. “If he needs to go back, I can stay,” she said to Will.

“Scott will pull through,” Will said, dryly. “Sometimes the best medicine is to get your mind off your own worries and focus on how fortunate you are.”

“Who said that?” demanded Scott.

“Me,” said Will and then to Emma, “Go.”

“Yeah, please. Seriously, you look worse than me.” Hunter’s mouth moved in a wan grin. “And I look like shit.”

What he looked like was a very sick man. Even with the bruising to mask it, she saw the high flush of fever in his cheeks. Despite the cold, his face shone with sweat, and his eyes were glassy. She remembered how bluff and big he was, but he seemed to have collapsed and shrunken into himself.

Will was also right. Her body was wobbly, her legs were water-weak, and she was starting to stumble over her own boots. If she could’ve curled up right then and there to sleep, she would’ve. Still, as relieved as she had been to see the sun rise and that awful night end, she didn’t want to leave. There was so much left undone. She cast a glance at Earl’s body. The old man seemed much smaller in only his blue jeans and shirt. Everything else Will had stripped from the body. Hunter got the parka, scarf, hat, and gloves. The boots were two sizes too big for Hunter, but Will said when they got Hunter out, they’d probably have to cut off his boots. So, they needed a spare pair.

It all seemed a little barbaric. She understood that Earl would have no more use for any of these things, that survivors had done this over the centuries. But it still felt vaguely obscene. She’d gone through his pockets and pulled out a wallet, a pocket watch, and a small folding knife with a staghorn handle, all of which she would give to Rachel. (Scott had offered to hang onto the items, but she’d refused.)

There was still the problem of what to do with the body—and also with Burke, who still lay in pieces, and whom no one had touched yet.

“What we do about Earl will be Rachel’s call,” Will said when she had brought it up.

“Rachel’s not awake,” she pointed out. She didn’t add that the other woman might never wake up.

“Makes me his next of kin, then,” said Scott.

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