Protecting the Flame by Ilsa J Bick

Author:Ilsa J Bick [Bick, Ilsa J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Twisted Page Press LLC
Published: 2019-12-02T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 3

“You know what this reminds me of?” Will said, suddenly.

“What?” she asked, grateful he’d broken the silence. Neither had spoken in the last ten minutes as they’d followed the trail left by the cockpit. She hadn’t known what was safe to say, though she wasn’t stupid. He’d invited her trust in him—and she couldn’t. God, there were days when she wondered who that fool in the mirror was.

“Those kids in the Andes. Look at this and then look at the fuselage.” They turned back to face the way they’d come. Through the trees, she could make out the bright orange flicker of their signal fire; the wind was with them and laced with a scent of resin and burning wood. “Their cockpit ended up some distance away, too, as I recall. I think that’s what happened here. Burke kept turning us in a square, remember, to keep us clear of the peaks? But then the engine caught and he started pulling up. I remember him yanking back on the yoke. So he came in from the north.” He pointed at a faraway saddle between mountains. “He threaded us through that. We might have made it, too, if he’d only been able to pull us up faster and higher.”

Which Burke obviously hadn’t. Judging from a series of broken, splintered trunks thrusting up from the snowpack behind the fuselage, the plane had smashed into tall spruces, which had caught them by the wings, shearing those away and sending them spinning before the plane had slammed down in a hard belly flop and then slalomed down an incline. The impact fractured the plane and their portion, which wasn’t as streamlined, had plowed to a halt, while the cockpit had bulleted into the forest.

“But how does that remind you of the Andes crash?”

“The slope. It’s a natural chute, maybe even a sometime waterway, you know, when there’s spring melt? I can feel the incline. With the momentum the plane had built up, once it got going on this, it would be like bombing down a ski run. Same thing happened in the…”

He stopped as a small, static-filled fart blatted from a pocket of his parka. Pulling out a small yellow walkie-talkie, Will depressed a button. “You okay, Mattie? Is there a problem? Over.”

“No. I’m checking in to make sure you guys are all right.” There was a long pause. “Oh. Over.”

Will grinned. “Well, we still see you. In fact, I’m waving, even if you can’t see it. Is your mom still asleep? Over.”

“Yes. How long are you going to be? What if she wakes up while you’re gone? Over.”

“If she wakes up, you get on the horn, and I’ll hustle back. You know, you’d probably feel better if you got outside into the sunshine. Over.”

A pause and then Mattie came back. “If she wakes up and I’m outside… Over.”

“Set up a schedule. Thirty minutes out, fifteen in, something like that. Keep an eye on the fire and don’t forget to keep drinking. Over.”

“Okay.

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