Chasing Mercury Read online

  Nora used some of the water to clean her hands. Then she squirted a generous amount of anti-bacterial hand gel she found in the first aid kit into her palm and rubbed her hands together. Once her hands were clean, she carefully picked most of the hair and larger pieces of debris from the area around the wound before she soaked the edge of her t-shirt in water and cleaned the area, starting from the edges in. Thankfully, the cut wasn’t as large as it seemed and the bleeding had already slowed again. Most of the ugly mess washed away from smooth skin, revealing a deep cut about two inches long running vertically from the hairline to down above the woman’s left eye. When Nora poured water over it to wash the last of the dirt away, a flap of skin folded up revealing a white line of bone. Nora, had to remind herself that she was normally fine with blood, as she continued to rinse away as much dirt as she could before she pushed the flap back into place. Finally, she applied a liberal coat of anti-bacterial ointment onto a gauze pad and placed it over the wound before she taped it down.

  4B didn’t react to anything during the entire procedure, and Nora wondered about the extent of her injuries. Nora had better than average medical knowledge, but anyone with any sense knew head injuries could be very serious, and she knew the longer 4B remained unconscious, the less of a chance she had of ever waking up, especially without the medical attention she so obviously needed.

  Nora stashed the first aid supplies in her pack and then pulled the battered airline seat next to the panel the woman was lying on. She braced the unsteady base of the seat with a few loose rocks, sat back in the cushioned seat, and studied 4B’s pretty face in the darkening shadows. The temperature was rapidly falling with the rain and the coming night. Nora pulled a hooded sweatshirt from her pack and put it on. She laid another over her lap and wished she had something to build a fire. She knew it was unlikely a search party would continue to look for them in the dark, but if help didn’t come by morning, she would climb down to the smoldering airplane and see what she could see.

  4B’s chest rose and fell steadily. The fading light was already making it hard to see. Nora pulled a travel flashlight and her harmonica from the top compartment of her backpack, and sat back in her chair. As she blew into the instrument and the first few warbling notes filled the air, she willed the woman to wake up.

  Nora awoke with a start, her hand squeezing the hand of her unconscious companion. It was very early the next morning and the other woman slept on. Heart racing, she took stock of where she was, and sat up a little straighter. Adrenaline raced through her body, but she was groggy. The final moments of the plane crash she had been reliving in her dreams faded quickly from her mind, the cries of a baby echoing in the fading darkness. She stretched, trying to ease away the stiffness caused by sitting still for so long in the cold night air. Several times during the long night, she’d thought about curling up next to 4B to share the blankets and body warmth, but the strangeness of getting so close to a person she didn’t know, someone who might die at any moment, kept her in her chair. Surprised she’d actually nodded off, she picked up the harmonica that had fallen near her feet, rubbed it on her pants leg, and dropped it into her shirt pocket. The watch she wore with the self-illuminating dial indicated she had only been out for a few minutes. That meant she had been awake almost all night, listening to every sound of the dark and unfamiliar forest, conserving the battery of her small flashlight, and wishing she could make a fire. She watched with relief as the first weak morning light crept through the treetops. In the gloom beneath the wing, 4B was exactly as she had last seen her. Nora let go of the woman’s hand, tucking it under the thin blankets against the woman’s side. 4B may have been unconscious, but the limp hand wrapped in hers had been a comfort to Nora during the long, dark night.

  Nora poked her head out from the wing. Through a small break in the treetops, she saw the clouds were grayer and lower than before. The smattering of rain had stopped some time during the night without ever really turning into a steady rainfall, but the damp scent of rich earth and pine tinged the air. She shivered and worried the cloud cover would hinder rescue efforts.

  Nora ducked back into the shelter and pulled the blankets up over the unconscious woman’s shoulders. Back out in the wind, her dark brown hair whipped against her face as she lifted her arms high and twisted the kinks out of her lower back. She pushed the strands behind her ears and walked around the wing to the edge of the ravine. As she had done the day before, she held onto a tree trunk and leaned over to look down. She half-expected to see flames, but the fire had almost burnt itself out overnight. Occasional lazy billows of black smoke rose from the wreckage, indicating the fire still smoldered. She studied the area surrounding it, looking for signs of anyone down there. Nothing moved in the early morning shadows. She hadn’t expected to see anything, but still she was disappointed.

  Blurry from exhaustion, she checked on her patient one more time, and then picked her way along the rim, over to where the cliff rose up. She found the game trail and started down. It wasn’t a very friendly trail. She slid about as much as she hiked, but she managed to get all the way down. She just hoped she’d be able to make her way back up again.

  By the time she arrived at the bottom, the morning sun had lightened the thick gray sky. The floor of the ravine was more rugged than it looked from above, the result of a millennium of glacial surge and retreat. A narrow stream of water ran from the glacier and through the middle of the ravine, but other than that, the floor was a barren, boulder-strewn ally. Nora walked through the rocks toward the wreckage, intending to keep a wide berth. As she drew closer, she could smell the effects of the fire. As she circled the wreckage, she found the entire other side of the fuselage had been torn away. The sections still retained some shape, and although the insides were now completely burned out, and black smoke continued to waft out of it, she couldn’t see any flame. It was hard to tell how much of the plane was actually down there.

  More debris littered the floor on the far side and Nora walked among it, not sure what she was looking for, but hoping for signs of survivors.

  She wasn’t expecting it when she came across the first body.

  Stepping around a waist-high boulder, she saw him spread at an impossible angle, burned and unrecognizable. At first, she didn’t know she was looking at a dead man. When recognition hit her, it still didn’t seem real. She just stared, trying to make sense of the position he was in. And then it hit her. He was broken and twisted, and horror washed over her. Sick to her stomach and frightened, she turned and walked away, but a few feet in that direction, she found another body. Burns left the body almost unrecognizable.

  Part of her had known she’d find bodies in the wreckage, but for some reason, she hadn’t thought it through before she approached the scene. Her focus had been on finding survivors. She had no idea what to do about bodies.

  Her tour in Search and Rescue hadn’t prepared her for this. She’d never gone on any missions that required emergency response to major events. Her time in had mainly consisted of drills and exercises. And when she hadn’t been practicing, she had been helping local agencies find lost or hurt hikers in the Colorado mountains and helping stranded rock climbers down from places they shouldn’t have attempted. Aside from funerals, the one and only time she had come close to a dead person was a hiker who had been hit by lightning on Pikes Peak. Some of her unit had been deployed to the Middle East, where they had seen and talked about the death they’d witnessed there, but since she had been a full-time college student during her time in the Guard, she had been spared the nightmares her team members had been haunted by. Now, she felt wholly incapable of dealing with this situation.

  Her search found no other survivors. Just bodies.

  Unable to process the carnage, she shut down her emotions and concentrated on finding anything that would help her and the woman from 4B to survive until help arrived. With numb concentration she collected what she thought would be useful. Among her finds: a couple of backpacks
; a length of rope; a professional-sized first aid kit that contained more airplane blankets; a tote bag containing several bags of gourmet beef jerky; half-dozen bottles of water; a jackpot computer bag that contained two apples, a hoagie sandwich, a sleeve of fig cookies, and an unopened bag of trail mix; a red ball cap; a pilot’s suit jacket; a few handbags, in which she had found two lighters, three candy bars, a pack of gum, a package of sunflower seeds, and two travel bottles of hand sanitizer; and a box of airline peanuts.

  Several suitcases were scattered along the floor of the ravine, but Nora couldn’t find the courage to look through them. She’d save them for later if the situation came to that. She tried not to think about it, though.

  Back at their makeshift camp, Nora crouched next to the fire she’d started in a ring of rocks she had assembled under the shelter of the wing. On the pallet, a safe distance from sparks, 4B lay motionless near the rock wall. The weather had cleared up some, but help had still not arrived. Nora shivered, more from the stress of their situation than the cold. The gray clouds that had threatened to douse them the day before were mostly gone. Blue sky tinged with sunset pink had emerged, but it was still cold in the shade. Visions of what she had seen in the ravine tried to fill her mind. She pushed them away. If she spent any energy on that, she might break down and she couldn’t afford it. Not when she had 4B to keep safe. She watched the smoke from the fire roll out and away from the shelter.

  “It’s nice and toasty now, huh, 4B? Your old pal Nora reclaimed her badge in campfire building today.”

  She poked the long stick she was holding into the fire and smiled at herself. She felt a little weird talking to the unconscious woman, but it comforted her and helped to pass the time.

  Not being a smoker, she hadn’t expected to find a lighter or matches in any of the carry-on items she’d found, thinking they weren’t allowed beyond the airport security checkpoints. She was glad she was wrong.

  It was her father’s advice, and not the search and rescue instructor’s, that had echoed through her mind when she had built the fire.

  “Put the dry leaves in a pile and make a teepee with the sticks we gathered, Hasenpfeffer. Space them apart so the air can flow. Fire needs oxygen. It needs to breathe.”

  “Like this, Potato Head?” she asked, when she was nine and intent on the job of setting up the fire they were making. It had been serious work, but she’d still gone along with their game of calling each other food items as endearments.

  “That’s perfect, my little brisket!” he’d said proudly. “Now you’ll never go cold if you get lost in the woods.”

  She thought back to all of the times her father had taken her camping as a child. Hikes, whitewater rafting, horseback riding, teaching her how to play the harmonica—hundreds of cherished memories paraded through her mind. She was grateful it was the pleasant memories that came to her now, and not the darker ones from later on. As she watched the fire, she let her mind linger on the good times: her father’s strength, his easy smile and the safety of his nearness. Those memories kept her calm.

  She glanced over at the sleeping 4B. There had been no other survivors down there. It was just the two of them now, and she didn’t have the luxury of dealing with her emotions. She carefully added another piece of wood to the flame. The fire was crackling and popping, casting an almost cheery light through the underside of the shelter. She opened one of the airplane-sized bottles of wine she’d discovered in the back of a drawer of the beverage cart she’d found. There were thirteen of the little bottles, and she was tempted to drink them all right then. But she wouldn’t. She drank half of the bottle and then set it down before she took the harmonica from her shirt pocket and began to play. It helped to keep the loneliness and fear away.

  *****

  “Careful. You have a nasty cut on your forehead,” Nora said as she slid her harmonica into her shirt pocket. She caught one of 4B’s hands just before it landed on the soiled bandage that covered her furrowed forehead. She held the woman’s hands still and watched 4B regain consciousness.

  It was mid-morning of their third day in the wild and Nora had been playing a tune on her harmonica when the woman had started to stir. The sudden quiet was broken by the new sound of her patient’s moans. 4B hadn’t moved a finger in over two days. The unexpected movement had startled Nora, who slid out of her seat to kneel next to the woman, holding her hands and willing her eyes to open.

  The woman continued to move weakly, uttering incoherent snatches of words between moans. She shouted a word—“milagro!”—and then fell to mumbling. Nora couldn’t understand any of what she said, but her heart pounded in her chest. Awake! She was awake! 4B’s eyelids fluttered, and then opened, revealing a brilliant green that disappeared again when the lids slid shut. The woman turned her head away from the light spilling in through the open side of the wing they were under. Nora was taken by how stunning the woman was. She’d thought her beautiful before, but animation gave a new depth to her beauty. It was a fleeting assessment, though, as concern over the woman’s well-being eclipsed other thoughts.

  “Is the sunlight hurting your eyes?” asked Nora, grabbing the sweatshirt she taken off earlier and using it as a shade against some of the sunlight that now peeked between the late afternoon clouds. “That should be better. I’ve blocked the glare a little.”

  At the sound of Nora’s voice, 4B opened her eyes again and turned her head toward Nora. In the next second, she closed her eyes again and was still. Nora hadn’t realized her isolation until those eyes had seen her—and then didn’t.

  “4B? Are you still awake? Or did you fall back asleep?” Nora asked barely above a whisper, afraid to startle the woman. Afraid it was neither.

  The woman’s eyelids parted slightly, fluttering, the hand wrapped in Nora’s tightened around her fingers. She moaned again and Nora exhaled. Green eyes—the color of new leaves, Nora decided—opened and then remained focused on Nora in a squint. Exaltation flared within Nora.

  4B stared at her for several seconds and Nora wondered what to do. What was the woman thinking? Were there more injuries she couldn’t see?

  “Who are you?” whispered the woman. The words were so faint, Nora barely heard them.

  Nora used the back of her hand to wipe away a sudden and unexpected surge of tears that blurred her vision. She cleared her throat and smiled.

  “I’m Nora Kavendash,” she said. “I can’t believe you’re awake.” Nora continued to stare at the woman, who grimaced and rolled her head back to center. The movement appeared to take considerable effort, as if her head were heavy and painful. The woman tried to swallow.

  “Thirsty.” The word was barely audible.

  Nora let go of 4B’s hand and picked up the bottle of water that was sitting next to her chair. She unscrewed the top and was about to offer it to the woman, but just as she turned back, the green eyes lost focus and slid shut. She tried to wake her again, but short of slapping her, she couldn’t rouse the woman. She replaced the cap on the bottle and relaxed into her seat.

  Although the woman slept, she seemed more present now. The animation, although less active in sleep, was still there and Nora studied the woman’s beautiful features. An unexplainable emotion linked Nora to her now. The woman’s chest rose more often with deeper breaths, her eyelids fluttered with internal thoughts, and her fingers twitched as she slept. The hand Nora clutched was warmer, and her color was better. Nora dared to think the woman would be okay, and the anxious pressure that had made it hard for her to breathe eased.

  She studied the woman, a habit she’d settled into as she’d passed the time since she’d found her. Now that her color had returned, the woman’s face had gone from pretty to beautiful. Free from the dirt Nora had washed away when she’d cleaned the wound, the skin was smooth and clear, and with the subtle animation of consciousness, the woman’s features came to life. Her lips, now a darker pink, were slightly parted to show perfect white teeth. Nora leaned forward to move a strand of
hair away from the woman’s cheek.

  “I think you’re going to make it, 4B,” she said as she rubbed the woman’s hand between both of hers. This time when she spoke, the woman squeezed her hand.

  Twenty minutes later, Nora stared into the fire thinking about rescue. As the days passed, her hope waned and she tried to think of plans should help never arrive. How long should they wait? When would 4B be well enough to hike? What would they do for food when the meager rations she’d collected ran out? Questions spun through her mind in a haze of doubt and fear.

  When Nora looked up to check on her sleeping patient, two green eyes stared back at her.

  “Hi,” she said, sitting up. She tried to push her dark thoughts away. “You’re awake again.”

  The woman nodded and Nora realized she was still holding her hand. She let go and the woman slowly withdrew it, pulling it under the blanket.

  “How do you feel?” asked Nora. The woman closed her eyes and swallowed. Nora could see she had trouble with it. “Are you thirsty? Do you need a drink of water?”

  “Yes, please,” the woman croaked. Nora dribbled a little water into the woman’s open mouth and felt a pang of pity at the look of relief she saw reflected in the woman’s face. Nora poured and paused, poured and paused, until 4B sighed and relaxed.

  “Where am I?” the woman asked, using a shaking hand to wipe her mouth and then pull the blanket up to her neck.

  Nora didn’t know how to answer the simple question. The woman was barely coherent—she should let her adjust to being conscious before getting into the details of their situation.

  “You’re safe,” she offered, hoping it was enough for now. She saw the woman’s eyes slip down to the bottle in her hand and she handed it to the woman, who tipped it to her mouth, gulping greedily.