Chapter Seven

  Day Six

  Location – Temporary camp near the crash site

  ---

  Screaming wind

  Fire in the trees

  A face turned toward her, eyes wide and silent

  —The SNAP of a parachute

  ---

  Ashes wakes sore, hungry, and cold. She doesn't want to face the day—but knows she has no choice. After taking care of her business, she quietly sets a few snares nearby, hoping to catch something for dinner. Still, she doubts her luck this close to the wreck; the smell of fire and melted plastic is sure to scare anything away.

  Afterward, she stands staring at the broken aircraft, trying to figure out the best way in. A thought creeps in, stiff and unwelcome—it’s been days since she saw that plane circling overhead. So where were the rescue teams? She’s heard enough stories from other outdoors folk to know that, in most developed countries, search and recovery for a downed plane or missing person usually starts within hours.

  She shakes her head. She can’t afford those kinds of thoughts right now.

  Ashes approaches the wreck’s right side and shudders at the sight of the open emergency door. Visions of tearing wind and screaming metal try to replay behind her eyes.

  She pokes her head inside—

  —and recoils with a sharp gasp, falling backward onto the ground, landing hard on her rear.

  Once the shock wears off, Ashes buries her face in her hands.

  “Ugh… you knew there’d be bodies, girl. Toughen up and deal with it.”

  She gets to her feet and brushes herself off, forcing herself back toward the plane.

  Inside, it’s a charred, soot-covered mess. Most of the fire seems to have consumed the seats and the passengers—but the metal shell remains largely intact. The air smells of melted plastic, scorched fabric, and something far worse.

  Ashes moves slowly, cautiously picking her way into the wreck. She passes three bodies in what’s left of the passenger section, avoiding looking at their faces. Her eyes lock onto one spot—an empty seat.

  “Oh god… that was her seat.”

  The cockpit is barely recognizable. It’s the worst of it—burned down to metal and bones, the panels and wires long since turned to ash. The air feels heavier here, as if the fire had carved a hole through time itself.

  Ashes sets to the grim task of digging through the ash for anything useful. At first, there's nothing but melted plastic and scorched debris. But then—beneath the pilot’s seat—her hand strikes something solid.

  A small fire-safe.

  It’s charred on the outside, but intact. Big enough to hold… almost anything. She hauls it outside and sets it down, deciding to open it later.

  She doesn’t bother disturbing the bodies. After what the fire did, there's no hope of anything usable being left on them.

  Face set in grim determination, she makes her way toward the luggage compartment.

  Unlike a normal passenger plane, the luggage on this one was stored behind the passenger seats. When Ashes pops open the compartment door, she sees that while it clearly got hot in there, the metal walls held—the bags survived. Nothing burned.

  Her eyes land on a small, familiar pack. Her bag. Lightweight, streamlined. Exactly what she’d packed for a short hop.

  She exhales, sagging in relief, and unzips it with trembling fingers.

  The first thing she pulls out is her trusty Fallkniven F1, still nestled in its sheath. A graduation gift from high school—its edge has seen dozens of fires, trails, and sharpenings.

  She holds it for a moment, feeling the weight in her palm.

  With this, she thinks, I can handle the world again.

  Next comes her thick green sweatshirt. She pulls it over her head and sighs, the fabric still faintly smelling like home. The chill of the morning slips away.

  She carries the bag out and sets it next to the fire-safe, eyes flicking back inside. There’s more clothing in there—nothing fancy, but anything warm or dry is a treasure now.

  After another hour of going through the remaining bags—feeling more like a thief than a survivor—Ashes steps back to assess her haul. She found a thick winter jacket. “Why would someone bring this in June?” she mutters, then shrugs. “Oh well. Better for me.”

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  Tucked in a side pocket of a worn travel bag, she found a small bottle of Tylenol, the plastic warm and rattling with a dozen precious pills. One bag held a “toy”—some kind of adult novelty she avoided like the plague, tossing it into the brush with a grimace.

  Mostly, it was clothes and toiletries.she managed to sort the best pieces into two of the emptier duffel bags: socks, dry shirts, a pair of decent boots a size too big.

  All in all, not a bad haul.

  She forces herself not to look back into the cabin—not at the bodies a few feet away. Not at the rows of faces she imagines watching her in silent judgment.

  Finally, it’s time to see if there’s anything useful in the cargo area toward the rear of the plane.

  Ashes enters the wreck again, whispering a soft apology to the bodies as she passes. Her footsteps are careful, but the creaking metal floor still echoes too loud in the eerie silence.

  Beyond the luggage compartment, she reaches the main cargo hold—a wide, soot-darkened space where the worst of the fire didn’t reach. She has no idea what might’ve been back here, other than what the pilot vaguely called “dangerous cargo.”

  In the far corner, lit by shafts of pale light through the torn fuselage, she sees a pallet stacked with cardboard boxes—their labels half-singed but still readable.

  A familiar brand.

  Frozen food. The kind that needs to be shipped cold.

  Ashes raises an eyebrow. The boxes are intact—miraculously—but when she presses her hand against one, it gives slightly, and the cardboard feels warm to the touch. Whatever was inside is long thawed and spoiled.

  She glances around the hold, sniffing faintly. No real smell—must’ve been sealed well.

  The dangerous part must’ve been the dry ice, she thinks. Would’ve kept everything frozen in transit… and suffocated anyone in a sealed space.

  “Yeah… that’s definitely not edible anymore.”

  She turns to poke around the rest of the cargo hold, stepping carefully between warped containers and broken crates.

  That’s when she spots it.

  Tucked against the far wall, half-buried under a collapsed metal shelf, sits a bright red case. Scorched around the edges, but unmistakable.

  A first aid kit—not a pocket one. A real one. The kind used by medics, built to treat trauma, stabilize fractures, and stop serious bleeding. She hurries over, kneels, and flips the latch.

  Inside, everything is sealed and intact.

  Bandages. Gauze. Tourniquets. Burn cream. Antiseptics. Even injectable painkillers in glass vials she doesn’t know how to use, but keeps anyway.

  She exhales shakily, hands trembling a little as she closes the case again.

  “Short of a locator beacon… this might be the best damn thing I could’ve found.”

  Outside the plane, Ashes sets to work on the fire-safe.

  It takes nearly twenty minutes and a lot of swearing—plus a couple of large, well-aimed rocks—before the stubborn latch finally gives with a sharp clunk. She braces as the lid creaks open, unsure what to expect.

  Inside is treasure.

  And probably not legal in Canada.

  A Browning 1911-22—a compact, .22 caliber handgun. It’s lighter than a full-size pistol, but it feels solid in her hand. She checks the safety, drops the magazine, and racks the slide a few times to clear it. Eleven rounds total. Somehow, they didn’t cook off in the crash.

  It’s not a miracle weapon. She knows a .22 lacks stopping power and accuracy beyond about ten yards—but up close? It could scare off predators. Or worse.

  Ashes’ fingers tighten around the grip of the Browning as a memory surfaces—clear and warm against the cold around her.

  She was ten the first time she held a handgun.

  By then, she’d been steady with her little .22 rifle, but her mother had decided she was ready for more. “It’s a useful tool,” she’d said, “especially out in the bush. Predators don’t wait for second chances.”

  Her mom had handed her a stubby .38 Special revolver. Not heavy, but serious in a way the rifle wasn’t.

  “Hold it tight,” Mama said, kneeling beside her. “But not so tight you shake. Don’t lean forward. Good. Now… just squeeze the trigger.”

  Ping—the shot cracked through the clearing, the bullet hitting high and left on the rusted target a few meters out.

  Her mom had smiled wide and proud, ruffling her red hair.

  “Good job, little ember.”

  Ashes swallows hard, wiping at her cheek. The memory flickers out, but the warmth lingers—just long enough to steady her hand again.

  Ashes sets the pistol aside carefully, the weight oddly reassuring.

  Beneath it are several documents: a flight logbook, standard stuff, and a cargo manifest that just lists pallet after pallet of frozen food. Nothing strange. No mystery chemicals. No blacked-out pages.

  Just food, fire, and fate.

  Ashes estimates she has a little less than half the day left to get things done. She’s hungry—but not in the mood to even think about food.

  For a long while, she stands outside the wreck, staring at the fuselage, locked in debate with herself. Should she try to bury the bodies? It would take the rest of today and probably most of tomorrow, and all she has to work with is a bent metal panel and some sticks. And even if she managed, any late-arriving rescue party would likely want to recover the bodies properly.

  Her stomach growls, a sharp reminder that the last real thing she ate was a squirrel. The decision, while brutal, is clear: the bodies will stay in the wreck.

  She sets her jaw and shifts focus. It’s time to hike back to the lake. Time to build something more…

  She shudders.

  “Permanent.”

  But first—she checks her snares. Nothing. Not even a nibbled cord. She sighs, disappointed but not surprised.

  Knowing she can’t carry everything she found, Ashes gets to work on a simple sled. She returns to the cargo area and cuts down the heavy cargo netting, her knife sawing through thick straps one by one. It’s good material—strong and flexible—and should work to lash everything to a makeshift drag.

  Ashes drags the lengths of cargo webbing out into a clear patch near the plane, brushing aside debris and scorched leaves. The sun’s past its peak, and she knows she doesn’t have time to waste.

  She lays out what she has: thick nylon straps, a few unburned lengths of aluminum tubing from a broken cargo frame, and the panel she pried off the wing earlier—bent, but wide and flat.

  “This’ll have to do.”

  She uses the knife to notch holes into the panel’s corners, threading the straps through and tying them down with tight, practiced knots. The aluminum tubing, once part of a support brace, becomes the sled’s runners. She lashes them to the underside using more webbing, cinching everything down as tight as she can manage.

  Every few minutes she stops to rework something—adjusting a knot, adding a cross-tie, retightening a loop. Her fingers ache by the time she’s done, but the end result isn’t bad: a low, crude sled that should drag across dirt, grass, or even snow if it came to that.

  She loads her haul onto it—first the two bags of clothing, then the winter jacket and first-aid kit, then her pack with the pistol tucked carefully inside. The sled creaks but holds.

  Ashes wipes the sweat from her forehead, breathes in deep, and tests the pull strap. Heavy, but doable.

  “Alright,” she mutters, “Let’s go home.”

  By the time Ashes makes it back to the lake, she’s dead on her feet.

  The return trip was faster—cutting a straighter path this time—but the sled’s weight turned every step into a grind. Roots, brush, and uneven ground pulled at her boots and legs like anchors, her arms aching from dragging her salvaged world behind her.

  When she finally reaches the shore, there’s no ceremony.

  She tugs the sled into the clearing, unfastens the straps with shaking fingers, and spreads the chute over a flat patch of ground. She piles the scavenged clothes into a rough nest, crawling into the middle of it without bothering to change.

  “Mama… Papa…” she whispered.

  Her voice cracked on the second word, so she started over, more quietly this time. “Mama, Papa… I hope you’re not too sad.”

  She swallowed hard, pressing the heel of her palm to one eye. “I hope you keep looking for me. Even if it’s dumb. Even if you’re mad I didn’t text you before the flight.”

  “I’m still here. I’m trying. I have tools and…” she glanced at the sled beside her, the dark shape of the first aid kit, her knife, the pistol.

  “I’m okay. Mostly.”

  She didn’t say “I miss you.” She didn’t need to. It hung in the silence between breaths, thick as the smoke curling into the sky.

  Wrapped in worn fabric and the smell of smoke, Ashes slips into a deep, troubled sleep—dreams already waiting to meet her.