Brace For Impact. Janice Kay Johnson

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      IT TOOK MADDY half an hour and a panicky realization of passing time to realize the rear portion of the plane wasn’t where she thought it should be. It should have broken off first and thus been behind where she’d regained consciousness hanging upside down. Every step hurt. Even the brush of hemlock or fir needles hurt. If she hadn’t been terrified—Run, Maddy—she would have given up. But she couldn’t, in case Marshal Rankin was right.

      Holding on to a tree limb to keep from falling down the slope, she made herself remember when the plane first hit the treetops. As their trajectory slowed, she’d felt hope. And then a wing must have caught, because the entire plane swung around and then flipped. What came after, she knew only from seeing two large pieces of what had been a shiny, well-maintained and loved small plane.

      So...other pieces could have been flung in almost any direction, couldn’t they? She’d been lucky to find the nose of the plane so quickly. What she’d considered logic wasn’t logic at all. The tail could have ended up somewhere ahead of the nose, or off to one side or the other. It wasn’t as if chunks of airplane would have been shed in a straight line.

      She paid attention to broken branches and scarred trunks. Raw scrapes in the gray rock. Her brain kept latching on to small, mostly meaningless details. What was that harsh call she kept hearing? Had the bang really been loud enough to have been a bomb going off? Could they have, oh, hit a big bird that fouled the propeller or the engine? No, Scott would have seen that; he’d been sitting in front, right beside the pilot. Of course he would. Then she started to worry about what kind of animals would be drawn by the smell of blood. Hadn’t grizzlies been reintroduced into the North Cascades? What if the two men’s bodies got eaten?

      If her stomach hadn’t already emptied itself, she’d have been down on her knees heaving again.

      Even if she had the strength, could she bury Scott and Bill? Find enough rocks to pile on them?

       Run, Maddy.

      No. She had to leave the two men, as Scott had demanded she do.

      Increasingly dazed, she came by pure chance on a duffel bag hanging above her. It took her a while to find a broken limb long enough to poke at it until it fell. She unzipped it and her heart squeezed in relief when she saw her own clothing. She wanted to hug the duffel just because it was familiar. Hers.

      Instead, she made herself toss out everything that wasn’t immediately useful. Shorts? Sandals? Gone. One pair of extra jeans she kept, because the ones she wore were so torn and bloody. Thin cotton pajama pants could be long underwear. She kept a toothbrush and toothpaste, but ditched shampoo. A shower was not in her immediate future. Socks—she’d need those. And thank goodness she’d brought her hiking boots. She’d almost left them behind, because she hadn’t been a hiker until she had to fill long, empty weekends this past year. Now she took the time to sit down, change socks and laboriously lace up the boots with one hand. She wouldn’t need her shoes.

      She never did find Marshal Rankin’s bag, but did finally locate most of the tail section of the plane. Packed in a compartment that hadn’t broken open were two blankets, a pair of parkas, hats and gloves, a plastic jug full of water and a tool kit. Best of all was the cache of energy bars. They might have been in here forever, might be stale, but she wouldn’t care.

      Anxiety continuing to mount with her consciousness of time passing, she stuffed what she thought would be most useful into the duffel bag, finally discarding more clothes in favor of a puffy, too-large parka and the gallon of water. The shovel that unfolded...she couldn’t think what she’d use it for, short of digging graves.

      At last, she used one of the shirts to make a crude sling for her left arm, then slung the duffel as comfortably as she could—which wasn’t comfortable at all—over her right shoulder.

      Straightening, she looked around. She couldn’t actually see enough through the trees to orient herself at all. Downhill would surely be easiest. She’d be bound to find a stream eventually. All that snow she’d seen from above must be melting, and the water had to go somewhere.

      The flaw was that anyone in pursuit would assume she’d choose the easiest route. Which meant...she couldn’t.

      She’d go up.