Echoes of Darkness (31 page)

I’ve seen a couple of movies where a coroner “breaks the rigor,” actually snapping the tendons, but I can’t do that. I barely consider it before thrusting the idea away. I can’t . . . break her that way. I just can’t. My headache has come back from all the activity, and the crying, and I’m so, so tired.

While I’m up there, though, I find something I missed in my search of the plane: Maggie’s purse, its strap tangled on the armrest beside her. Unhooking it from its perch, I sit down right there, my ass striking the ground hard enough that the shock to my head makes me momentarily dizzy. I lean back against the bulkhead for a moment and close my eyes to let it pass.

I wake with Maggie’s purse in my lap. Where the hell did
that
come from? I look up at her and she stares back with her mismatched eyes.

“Did you give me this, hon?” I say, then utter something halfway between a chuckle and a sob. That idea; it’s crazy, right? Yeah, I know it is. It’s almost funny. Almost.

I look down at the pocketbook. Seeing it reminds me that Maggie usually has—I rummage through the bag—there they are.

Two rolls of Certs: one peppermint, one wintergreen.

The wintergreen roll is already open, one or two missing, so I tear into that one first. I force myself to eat them one at a time, rather than just dumping the whole thing into my mouth, wrapper and all. The
his name is Bill
part of my mind points out that before yesterday I’d have been horrified at the thought of crunching through them as fast as I am; would have been slowed by the threat of a broken tooth. Nothing slows me now, though, Certs cracking loudly as I chew, tearing my way through the whole roll in less than a minute. It’s been more than thirty hours since breakfast yesterday (at least, I
think
it has), and the whole time I chomp the candy I’m wishing Maggie’d had a whole oven-roasted turkey in that purse. Or maybe a ham. At least a Powerbar, for Christ’s sake, but she’s never carried food in her handbag, other than a little something to freshen her breath.

We were supposed to land in Saskatoon before noon yesterday, and were scheduled to go out to lunch with my mother. Why
would
we have brought food on the plane?—and then I remember that Maggie
did
bring food, one of those little bags of pretzels from the vending machines back at the airport. An hour into the flight, she’d offered to share them with me, but I’d said no thanks.

Jesus Christ
,
I said “No, thanks.” What the hell was I thinking?

I wasn’t thinking I’d ever be here, I can tell you that. I look down at the unopened peppermint Certs in my hand; while I’ve been daydreaming about pretzels lost, my fingers have already started picking at the edge of the wrapper, searching for that little pull-tab that opens the roll. I stop my fingers, actually have to concentrate to get them to cease, and set the roll aside. It seems a little silly, considering they’re just candy, but it looks like they’re going to have to last me a while. Every movie I’ve ever seen about people stranded in the middle of nowhere, marooned, or plane-crashed, or whatever, they always try to ration their food, no matter how meager their stores. You can’t get much more meager than a single roll of Certs, but in those movies,
somebody
always makes it.
Somebody
always survives.

I want to
be
that somebody.

I set the Certs aside and tip out the contents of Maggie’s purse to see if I missed anything: a wallet, keys, a cell phone (I check, but she has no signal either), a mini makeup case, a hairbrush, and a flat clamshell case I recognize as her birth control pills. I place the pills next to the unopened Certs. They must have
some
sort of nutritional value, right? When I open the makeup case, more out of curiosity that any real hope, her lipstick rolls out into my lap.

An image flashes through my head: a smiling woman with lipstick smeared across her teeth. I’ve seen it countless times, but never heard of it hurting anyone.

At least it’s not poison.

I add it to the small pile.

Steeling myself, I creep into the cockpit, a space that’s barely separated from the rest of the plane. I’ve been avoiding this place ever since doing what I could to stop up the hole in the windshield, because Bill is so . . . Bill is nailed to his seat by a wooden stake as thick as my calf, and his face is a ruin from flying glass, or wood splinters, or both. His eyes, though they were wide open with fear when he died, were miraculously untouched by the debris storm. Now, with his heart stopped, and gravity pulling all of his blood down into his head and hanging limbs hard enough to leave his flesh puffy and bruised, the pressure in his skull has his eyes practically squeezing from their sockets. I was creeped out by touching Maggie, but that was nothing compared to the skin-crawling that goes on while I search through Bill’s jacket pockets, his bulging eyes staring, as if indignant at my actions, the countless small cuts and slashes gaping like tiny lipless mouths in the purple, swollen face hanging mere inches from my own.

I find a dollar and thirteen cents in change, a little notebook and pen, and a Big Red gum wrapper. I don’t even find any keys, and I assume he left them behind in some locker at the airfield or something—especially when I notice the name patch sewn onto the breast of the jacket: Phil.

Bill
, I think,
you couldn’t even find your own coat, and we were expecting you to fly a plane? No wonder we crashed
.

I peruse my tiny pile of supplies: one roll of peppermint Certs, eighteen small pills in a clamshell case, and one rose-colored Maybelline lipstick. I shake my head without thinking, sending a sharp spike of pain through my temple and into my eye, my whole head throbbing in sympathy. I’m not sure when I last took any of that Pain Away, but it seems to be wearing off. I open the first-aid kit again and take four more pills, which leaves just four in the kit. I add them to the supply pile.

Suddenly exhausted, I crawl out to the fireside and throw on one of the thicker branches I found this morning. That’s all I manage before I slump onto the woodpile for a rest.

It’s not as if I have an axe, or hatchet, so this isn’t one of those tidy woodpiles you see in images of hearth and home, all cut to length and neatly stacked. This is broken branches I found on the ground—
every
broken branch I’ve found on the ground—and just dragged here to the pile, an intertwined, springy mass about the size of a large couch, though shaped more like a nest. I only sit here because if I don’t sit I’m going to fall, and it’s a spot near the fire where I won’t be in snow . . . but the shapeless springiness of it allows me to lean back, my three shirts and winter coat padding me pretty well. The fire is warm, and this is actually the most comfortable I’ve been since the airport yesterday. I’m exhausted. My head is throbbing. I close my eyes. Just for a minute, I tell myself.

Just for a minute.

I open my eyes to darkness.

No, that’s not quite right. It’s only dusk, but the difference between that and the sun-brightened snowscape I closed my eyes to is striking. Confused, I look down to the fire, wincing at my stiff neck and the
whomp
of headache the motion gives me, expecting the same blaze I’d last seen. Instead I find the thick log I threw on right before I took a seat is nearly gone, its thin, blackened remains lying in a bed of softly glowing coals.

Jesus Christ, how long have I been out?

I grab a long, thin branch from the edge of the pile under my ass and sit up, squinting at the even bigger
whomp
this causes, and start snapping it into smaller sections over my knee. It’s from the end of a limb, thin, with lots of smaller branches and twigs coming out of it this way and that, and I know it’ll make great kindling—which is good, because I have to stoke this fire up again. I’ve already used two of the six fire-starter plugs from the survival kit; keeping the fire going would be a
lot
better than having to start it again. As I lean forward, however, motion in the clearing catches my eye. I change my focus without
turning my head, looking over the bed of coals rather than into it.

A wolf gazes calmly back.

I freeze, staring stupidly, feeling the cold spot in my chest where my heart has stopped. I can’t remember ever seeing a real wolf, not even in the zoo. It took me a minute to spot it, its gray and white coat matching the snow well in the dusky light, but now that I’ve seen it I know it for exactly what it is, and even from thirty feet away it’s bigger than they ever looked on television and in movies. From beneath my lowered brow the thing looks
huge
, a Shetland pony with long lean limbs and golden eyes. I’ve read that all animals have an instinctive fear of man, but this animal can’t read, apparently: head up, ears erect, it watches me with an expression I choose to interpret as curiosity, because whatever it is, it ain’t fear.

I drop my fistful of kindling onto the coals and, like the wolf itself might have done in a child’s storybook, huff and puff, blowing the soft glow into a sharp red one, until the kindling flares, shooting out waves of heat and light.

The wolf watches all this without moving until I sit up from the fire, dizzy and surprisingly out of breath for such a small amount of work. When I sit up tall the wolf wheels about and trots off into the trees without a sound, a gray shadow fading into the darker shadows between the trunks. But it doesn’t fade before I get a good look at it broadside: at the ribs, sharply defined in the light of the rising moon, even through the coat of fur; at the tiny waist, a thing worthy of a racing grayhound, not a beast with this one’s obvious muscular bulk.

That wasn’t curiosity in the thing’s eyes. That great canine was looking at me with hunger—at this thought, part of my mind makes a quick count of everything left in my small supply pile: twelve Certs, eighteen of one pill, four of another, and a rose-colored lipstick—and it’s not alone. As it disappears into the shadows, I make out motion here and there under the trees. I don’t see another one clearly, and I have no idea how many there are, but my curious, hungry visitor brought friends. The whole pack is out there, all lean and hungry from the harsh winter.

I make the mental count again.

I wake in the plane.

I’m confused. I was out by the fire—I saw a wolf, for Christ’s sake!—and now here I am, one of the dome lights, or whatever they’re called in a plane, digging into my back. I open my eyes, though it barely makes a difference: it’s night, and inside the Piper it’s pretty damn dark. I sit up—then sag to the side as my head swims. My shoulder butts up against one of the hanging seat backs and I realize I’m in the center of the upside down cabin, below the narrow aisle between the left and right seats—lying next to Maggie, in effect, though I can’t see her in the dark. The pain in my head is back, and strong, though not as strong as it’s been in the past. I lie back, as gently as I’m able, and gaze through the low windows, at the moonlight on the snow: a soft glow in the night. Is my head getting better? Or am I just used to the pain?