Withering Hope (2 page)

"No," Tristan says, and he slumps in the seat opposite mine on the other side of the slim aisle. "Listen to me. You need to calm down."

"How deep in the forest are we, Tristan?"

He leans back, answering after a long pause. "Deep enough."

"How will they find us?" I curl my knees to my chest under the blanket, the dizziness growing. I wonder when Tristan put the blanket over me.

"They will," Tristan says.

"But there is something we can do to make it easier for them, isn't there?"

"Right now, there isn't."

"Can we contact someone at base?" I ask weakly.

"No. We lost all communication a while ago." His shoulders slump, and even in the moonlight, I notice his features tighten. His high cheekbones, which usually give him a noble appearance, now make him look gaunt. Yet instead of panic, I’m engulfed in weakness. My limbs feel heavy. Fog settles over my mind.

"What happened to the engine?" I whisper.

"Engine failure."

"Can you repair it?"

"No."

“There is really no way to send anyone a message?”

“No.” As if in a dream, I feel Tristan put a pillow under my head and recline my seat.

I close my eyes, drifting away, thinking of Chris again. Of how worried he must be.

I
t's daytime when I open my eyes; weak sun rays illuminate the plane. I've slept with my head in an uncomfortable position, and it’s given me a stiff neck. I massage my neck for a few minutes, looking around for Tristan, but he isn't anywhere in sight. I try to breathe in, but the air is thick and heavy, and I end up choking. Desperate for fresh air, I look up and discover the door at the front of the plane is open. So Tristan must be outside. I stand slowly, afraid the dizziness from last night might return. It doesn't. I avoid looking out the windows as I walk through the aisle between the two rows of seats, running my hands on the armrests of the three seats on each side. If I'm about to have the shock of my life, I prefer to face it all at once, through the door, not snippet by snippet through the windows.

I stop in front of the door, my eyes still on the ground. The metallic glow of the airstairs—the stairs built into the door of the plane—throws me off for a second. I clench my teeth, pick up my courage, and step forward into the doorway, looking up.

And then I wince.

The view outside the door does not disappoint. It is as terrifying as it is beautiful. Green dominates. The vivid, shiny kind that seems to flow with life. It comes in all shapes and sizes, from lush, dark leaves the size of a tennis racket to the moss covering trees. There is no pattern to the leaves of the trees. Some are heart-shaped, some round. Some spiky, and some unlike anything I have seen before.

Rays of sunlight lance shyly through the thick canopy above us. Trees block a good chunk of the light. Many trees. Tall trees. They tower over us, and I have to lean my head all the way back to see the canopy properly. I frown.

How did Tristan land this plane here unscathed? One look at my right tells me he didn’t. I gasp, my grip on the edges of the doorway tightening. The right wing of the plane is a complete wreck. I assume the other wing isn't much better. Two gigantic trees have toppled over the right side of the plane toward the back—with such force they have carved a very deep dent in the plane. Glancing back inside the plane, I see they have fallen right over the only bathroom. I realize with horror the bathroom is probably unusable.

Shuddering, I decide to get out of the plane. When I step off the airstairs, my feet get wet. It must have rained a lot recently, because the ground is fluid mud that engulfs my feet right up to the shoelaces of my running shoes. Each step sloshes, spraying muddy water in every direction as I walk. I inhale deeply. Or at least attempt to. The air is thick with suffocating moisture, but it's not excessively warm. It’s been warmer in L.A., where I’ve lived my whole life. But never this humid. My shirt and jeans have already begun to stick to my damp skin.

"You're up," Tristan says, appearing at the front of the plane. His hands are darkened with dust, and he wipes them with a cloth. His white shirt is unbuttoned at the neck and soaked, molding to his muscular frame. The air seems to get thicker by the minute, and I'd rip open my shirt—or skin—if that would help me breathe better.

"Engine still good?" I ask.

"Still dead, just checked it. There's no risk of anything blowing up; don't worry."

“And the communication system?”

“Also dead. The entire electric system is.”

“I know it’s unlikely they work here, but how about checking our phones?”

“I checked mine last night after the crash. Yours, too; I hope you don’t mind. I found your purse. Your tablet, too. No reception, obviously.”

I nod, but the sight of the damaged wing unnerves me, so I turn to look at the jungle instead. The wilderness unnerves me even more.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" he asks.

"I'd prefer to view it on TV. I feel like I've stepped into a documentary."

Tristan steps in front of me, eyeing my cheek. "You have a scratch here. I didn’t see it last night. But it's very superficial. Nothing to worry about."

"Oh, well…" I raise my hand to my cheek and my voice trails away as I stare at the diamond engagement ring on my left hand. Chris. The wedding. My beautiful, perfect wedding that should take place in less than a week. I shake my head. It
will
take place. They will rescue us in no time.

"I’m thirsty," I say, turning away from him so he won’t see the tears threatening to fill my eyes.

"There are some supplies in the plane. Not much, though. Four cans of soda, which are nothing given the rate at which we'll dehydrate in this climate."

I raise an eyebrow. "We're almost ankle-deep in water. Surely we can find some clever way to have clear water."

"I don’t have anything to make a filter good enough to turn this"—he points at the ground—“drinkable. Our best bet is rain."

“How about the water tank in the bathroom?” I ask half-heartedly, thinking of the trees that fell right on top of the bathroom.

“The water tank ruptured—I suspect the moment the trees fell—and the water leaked out.”

“Is the bathroom usable at all?” I ask.

“No,” Tristan says, confirming my fears. “Everything is wrecked. I crawled inside, and those are the only useful things I could retrieve.” He points toward one of the trees that’s fallen over the plane. At first I’m confused, but when I look closer I notice there is a pile of what looks like shards of a broken mirror just in front of the tree. “Mirror shards?”

“They are good for signalling our position, among other things.”

We both walk toward the pile. I shudder at the sight of the pile of uneven shards. Most are the size of my palm, a few even smaller. If those trees had fallen over my seat, or the cockpit…

I notice there are a few other things lined up next to the mirror shards. A pack of Band-Aids, eye pads, a pair of scissors, a whistle, needles, thread, a pack of insect repellent wipes, and two multifunctional pocket knives.

“These are part of the supplies from the survival kit,” Tristan says. “I brought them out to make a quick inventory.”

“Why just a part? Where’s the other part?”

“Part of the survival kit was in the cockpit. It contained the things you see here. The other part was in a compartment at the back of the plane, next to the bathroom.” He gestures toward the point of contact between the fallen trees and the plane. “It was crushed.”

“Great.” I debate for a second asking him what items were in there but decide against it. Better not to know what we’re missing out on.

My stomach rumbles—I'm growing hungry.

"There are also some peanuts, chocolate sticks, and two sandwiches," Tristan says. "Peanuts and chocolate will make the thirst worse, so I suggest avoiding them." The scant supplies don’t surprise me. Chris and I flew to the ranch two weeks ago to oversee the final preparations for the wedding. Since he didn’t need the jet while at the ranch, he had it sent for its annual technical inspection. A lousy job the technicians did too, considering the crash.

My boss at the law firm I work for unexpectedly asked me to come back to work the third day we were at the ranch, saying he needed help with a case. I flew back to L.A. on a commercial airline. My boss promised it would take less than a week, so I would still have a full week before the wedding to get things ready. The private jet was supposed to take me back, since the inspection would be done by then. I worked day and night, finishing a day early, and told Chris I wanted to return immediately.

The plane had been emptied of all supplies before the technical inspection and was supposed to be restocked the day before taking me to Brazil. Since I insisted on leaving a day earlier than planned, Tristan did some quick supply shopping for this trip.

"We're good,” I say. “The supplies should last until they rescue us."

Tristan doesn't answer.

"Won't they last?" I press, turning to him. He's bent on one knee between the pieces of the wrecked wing, inspecting something that separated from the plane and lies on the ground.

"They might last," he says.

"I've read about emergency location transmitters—”

"Ours is defective."

"What?"

"Useless."

“But the plane just had the technical inspection…”

“They did a terrible job,” he says angrily.

For a few moments, I am too stunned for words. "The flight plan…" I mumble.

Tristan stands up, his dark brown eyes boring into mine. Somehow I know, even before he opens his mouth, that what he is going to say will kill the last hope I'm clinging to. "We did file a flight plan. But I deviated considerably from it last night when I was looking for a place to land. We lost communication before I deviated, so there was no way I could inform anyone."

"What are you telling me, Tristan?" Desperation strangles my voice. "That there is no way for them to find us?"

"It's not like that. They can still guess how we—”

"Guess? We're in the middle of—” I stop, looking around wildly. "Where are we? Is the Amazon River nearby?"

"No."

"How do you know?"

"I've climbed that tree to look around." He points at one of the giant trees next to us. "The river isn't anywhere in sight."

"I don't believe that," I whisper. "I don't…" Swirling on my heel, and sinking about an inch further in the muddy earth, I head to the tree.

"What are you doing?" he calls after me.

"I want to see."

"You'll hurt yourself."

"I don't care."

Driven by rabid determination, I curse the overgrown roots around the tree for blocking access to it, but once I find my way through them I'm grateful for them because they help propel me upward until I reach the first branches. I'm not an outdoors girl, and it shows. I'm panting when I'm only halfway up the tree. In my defense, this tree is higher than a three-story house. Once or twice I slip, which may be because I can't bear to look too closely at where I'm putting my hands. The entire surface of the tree is covered with a mushy moss, and by the creepy tingles on my fingers every time I grab a branch, I have the uneasy feeling there are plenty of tiny, multi-legged animals I don't want to see lurking inside it. I've never been a fan of animals with more than four feet.

When I reach the top and wedge myself between two branches, I breathe relieved, happy I made it.

And then I taste bile in my mouth as I take in the sight in front of me. Nothing but green tree-tops. Everywhere. Dense, and stretching as far as I can see. The tree I'm in isn't even high compared to the ones I see in the distance, which makes me think we are on some kind of hill. No sign of the river, or anything that might indicate there are human settlements nearby. If we leave the plane, there is nowhere to go. I make a full turn. From what I can see, in a radius that seems like a few hundred miles, there's no sign of civilization, or a path.

Our best bet is to find the Amazon River and walk alongside it. Human settlements are most likely close to the water. But there's no saying how many miles there are to the river or which direction is the right one. And the jungle isn't a good place to set out on foot, hoping for the best. No… Our hope will have to come from the sky. Which is empty. No planes or helicopters. Not even a distant sound.