Page 58 of Protecting the Flame

Chapter 3

“Well?”Outside the fuselage, Mattie jumped up from a seat they’d dragged over to the fire. “Where are they? When are we getting rescued?” She looked around Emma in the direction of the forest. “Where’s Will?”

She answered the last question first. “He’ll be here later to check on your mom. He wanted to get in as much time as possible on the cockpit before it got too dark for him to get back in time to see your mom and then hustle back to stay with Hunter.” She was so tired, her eyeballs were going to merge above her nose. It had been all she could do to pull herself up the rock scramble. She supposed it was the tail-off of adrenaline conspiring with lack of sleep and little food that made her want only to curl up in a sleeping bag and sleep until the rescuers arrived with a one-way ticket out of here.

“Is Scott coming back tonight?” Mattie swallowed. “To stay?”

The poor kid sounded as if she hoped her stepdad might trip into a black hole and get sucked away to the Delta quadrant. “I don’t think so. It’s the guys’ turn tonight.”

“Oh. Good.” Mattie’s shoulders relaxed. “I mean, I don’t like that Will has to stay out but… Oooh, careful!” Mattie pointed. “Don’t mess up the six. Why aren’t we getting rescued tonight?”

“Well, drones have a pretty long range.” Skirting the wobbly numeralMattie had sketched in the snow, she dropped into the seat the girl had vacated. “So, I guess a rescue team could be a day or so away.”

“Really?” Mattie’s forehead wrinkled. “But if it’s got a camera, and they know we’re here, why not send a helicopter or something?”

She’d thought of that. After she’d finished with Burke, she’d asked Will the same question. There was only one thing either of them came up with that made sense. “It’s possible there isn’t a good place for a helicopter to land.” That, she’d pointed out to Will, only sort of made sense unless there was something about the mountain they didn’t know about. We’re not up that high, she’d said. The only other thing that might be a problem is the slope. On a steep incline, a helicopter would have trouble maintaining a stable hover. Most people tended to overlook the fact that a helicopter was never truly stationary but constantly matching its speed to the rotation of the earth beneath it. A steep slope made sticking to a single point extremely difficult.

“Really?” Planting her fists in her hips, Mattie turned a circle, scanning the small ellipse of their plateau. “This isn’t big enough for a helicopter?”

“A small one, maybe, but beats me. It might be that there’s more than one team, or they want to bring in something big enough to get us all off at the same time. They could already have a team or two on the ground in the general area, too.”

“And they’ll climb up?”

“Or take snowmobiles, but yeah. That could be.” She watched Mattie turn that over. “What?”

“Welll,”Mattie drawled, “if they couldn’t land or anything, couldn’t a helicopter at least have dropped some food or something?”

“I…” she began then stopped. Not even Will had thought of that. But it was an excellent question, wasn’t it? “I don’t know what they’re thinking, Mattie. But it’s enough that they saw us. That’s what counts. By this time tomorrow, we’ll probably be off this rock. So…what are you going to eat first when we do?”

“Pizza,” Mattie declared. “With extra cheese and pepperoni and sausage. Mom always makes me have vegetarian because she says it’s healthier and good for the environment, and I know she’s right, but…” Mattie let out a dreamy sigh. “I like really want grease, you know? Ooo, and French fries with mayonnaise. And a cheeseburger with mushrooms and bacon. What about you?”

They spent the next few minutes talking food until their stomachs growled, and Emma finally pushed to a stand. “Come on, let’s feed the fire and go eat something.”

“That’s all I think about.” Mattie tugged at her sagging pants. “I can barely keep these up.”

Hers were also loose, which was worrisome in more ways than one. And to think she’d been worried about how tight her clothes were getting around the middle. “How many MREs are left?”

“Two.”

“Two?”She was in the middle of stooping to worm through their tunnel but now turned back. They’d rationed themselves to one a day for the three of them and, along with a packet of ramen, Will had left a whole one for her to dole out between her, Earl, and Hunter. She’d given the lion’s share to Hunter. “We had five a day ago.”

“Scott ate a whole one and then another half all by himself.” Emotions warred on Mattie’s face. “I didn’t want him to, but Will said he needed the calories.”

Well, he probably had. Hadn’t she done the same with Hunter? Although, with Scott now in the mix, and in light of what Hunter had said, she wasn’t sure how safe their food supply was if they left Scott here unsupervised. On the other hand, Scott wasn’t stupid. If he scarfed down their food, he’d be out that much faster, and it wasn’t as if Scott could go running off on his own. There was nowhere to run, for starters, and no reason either, now that rescue was on the way. Besides, there were wolves out there and at least one mountain lion. Although she wouldn’t put it past Scott to try and sneak food while Will slept. He would, too, and then claim Will must’ve miscounted or whatever. Still, the good news was if he did that, grabbed something to eat and then snuck off somewhere into the night to stuff his face, the wolves might catch a whiff and decide Scott-tartar wasn’t a half-bad idea. (Yes. Mean.) The bad news was the wolves might decide Scott-tartar was only the first course. Hunter was the definition of a sitting duck. She made a mental note to remind Will to be on the lookout.

Once she was inside, she brushed snow from her pants and, with a groan, lowered herself next to Mattie “You want to eat now or wait?”

“We should wait,” Mattie replied. “At least an hour or so past dark. Do you want to play cards, or maybe I could read to you?”

“Sure, let’s hear more quantum cat,” she said, catching a yawn in a cupped hand. The combination of snow mounded on the fuselage and the day’s sun meant the fuselage was almost cozy, though the air was close with the combined smells of too many people crammed into too small a space.

Mattie opened her mouth, closed it again then said, “Well, I have another book. It was in my luggage. I packed it under a sweater so Mom didn’t see.”

“Yeah?” The kid was acting like it was contraband. “What book?”

Mattie nibbled at the chapped skin of her lower lip. “Charlotte’s Web.”

“Really?” She’d never have guessed. “Aren’t you a little old for that?” At the sudden pinched look on Mattie’s face, she said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I love that book. It’s that I’m surprised because you seem so…”

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