(#00139)
Cold. Remember the three O’s.
Objective. Orientation. Orders.
Objective. Get the survivors safe.
Orientation. Back to the plane. If plane empty, downhill and downstream.
Orders. Stay safe.
Sara hunched inside her impromptu space-blanket cloak and wished her bio-mimetic battle outfit (a) covered more territory and (b) was warmer than it was.
Splint done. This individual would need help getting down. Travois. Skis and blankets and gaff. Loads of gaff. Drag them out and catch up with the last of the walking wounded. Pass them on and then back.
Someone was coming up.
“Not safe! Go down! Go down!”
Not a survivor. A friend.
“What t’ hell you doin’ up here?” Todd demanded as he landed from yet another magnificent leap. “Why’d you forget to radio?”
Radio? There had been a radio. “I dropped it.”
“…jesus fuck it’s cold…” He pulled something out of his belt and rattled off some numbers. Then he added, “Judging by the tracks, the actual crash is uphill. I’m’a get some readings an’ tell you. Start at those cords anyway. Don’t wait fo’ us.”
He snugged her onto his back. Leaped uphill, along the tracks the others had made. So much faster than slogging through the snow.
Inside the plane was out of the wind, but not by much. Sara headed to the nose and checked the pilots. Gone. If Todd radioed or gave co-ordinates, Sara didn’t hear him. She checked seat-by-seat towards the broken end. Empty. Empty. Empty. Gone. Empty. Gone. Gone. Empty.
Child.
Sara extracted the poor little scrap. Limp. Not bloody. Not broken.
“She’s gone, too,” said Todd. “Everyone left is dead, sweets.”
“Baby,” said Sara. Or at least, the little bit of her that was still functioning. “Not dead ‘till warm and dead.”
“You don’t got the warmth t’ spare…” He dithered for a moment, and made a sling for the little girl out of whatever came to hand. Tying her onto his chest. Then he tied her to his back and half leaped, half skidded away.
Following the sinuous curve ploughed into the snow by the walking wounded. By the survivors.
So cold.
So easy to go to sleep…
*
HOT!
Sara breathed in. Kicked and thrashed. Yawped.
“Easy now. Easy. You’re going to be okay. We need to get your body temperature up.”
“Mortimer? Baby?”
“Your… companion is in the men’s ward, undergoing the same treatment. He’s going to be fine.”
“The baby. There was a baby with us.”
The medic’s stony face said it all. “We tried everything.”
There was a horrifyingly small lump on the gurney just opposite her tub. Human-shaped. Child sized.
“I didn’t catch her name.”
The medic found a clipboard, flipped through sheets. “Peri Smith.”
There was one other name on that list. Sara could see it through the lax sheet flapping off the clipboard. The one name that mattered most.
Sam Adrien.
“Is that… all… a list of the dead?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I know you did your best, but many of them were gone before you got there. If you’d like to talk to a councilor…”
“The Sam Adrien on that list. Was… was he—” shivering came back. Violently. Making her stutter. “W-www-ww-w-w-was-s-s-s he S-s-s-sam-mmmmmm-muel L-llllyle Ad-d-d-rien?”
“I’ll have to check with the document recovery team. You stay put. No wandering off out of there without a thorough check up.”
“I’ll b-b-b-b-be g-g-g-ood….” Admittedly, her own last name was not as prolific as, say, Smith or Jones. There had to be other Sam Adriens out there.
Someone else’s husband. Someone else’s love. Someone else’s…
Daddy…
Not him. Not now. Not him. Not today. Not him. Please. If there’s any mercy in this universe. Any higher power who could…
Not Daddy.
Not today.
Her tears would not come. Not when the medic came back with a too-familiar wallet. Not when she saw the blood on it. Not even when she saw his smiling face on his driver’s license.
The one person who meant the most in her entire life. The man who kept her alive just by coming home.
Was never coming home again.
He’d died instantly. Painless. The same lie all doctors told relatives. It was quick. It didn’t hurt.
She must have passed him a hundred times. Checked for a pulse every time she stopped at his seat, in spite of the evident injury that killed him. She must have laid her hands on him so many times, checking for anyone alive. And never seen who he was. Never known.
The three O’s never let her see faces. Faces let her make mistakes. Got her involved in illogic. And illogic killed people in situations where the three O’s were necessary. It was for the greater good.
But right at that instant. Shivering fit to shake her skin off. Sara hated the three O’s with a vengeance beyond a million suns.
Because she had seen him. She had known. And now that it was confirmed… she couldn’t cry.
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