Scarlet Fever Page 3

  “Great,” she muttered. “Now I can look forward to die writhing in agony from botulism. Remind me never to fly RCMP Airlines, again. Your service sucks.”

  Anne crawled out of her seat and stepped out the door, and promptly lost her footing on the angled surface. She slid off the leading edge of the wing and landed on her rear end, in six inches of cold mud. When Cameron reached down to help her up, she slapped his hand away, flinched with pain, and got to her feet by holding onto the wing.

  The nose of the plane was imbedded in the mud, at the edge of the small lake, with the left wheel of the landing gear bent under the fuselage, and the propeller badly twisted. Anne didn’t know much about airplanes, but it was obvious that this one wasn’t going anywhere. The tail and the rear portion were clear of the water, leaving the cabin tilted slightly forward. They were surrounded by the marshy ground he had called “muskeg,” but a few hundred yards away, the ground rose quickly into an area of low, rocky hills. Above that, a line of scrubby-looking brush, then a dense stand of taller conifers of some sort. Cedars, she guessed, or spruce? Not a forest, exactly, but it was difficult to tell how far the wooded area extended.

  “Did you do that Mayday thing airplanes are supposed to do when they know they’re going to crash?” she asked querulously, wiping mud from her pants with her good arm. “On the radio or whatever?”

  “The radio went out just after the fire started,” he explained patiently. “Which means that I don’t know how much of our last transmission was picked up, if any of it. We’re too far from the closest airport to…”

  Anne sat down on the damaged cowling of the right wheel and buried her head in her hands. “Terrific. Is there any good news you’d like to share with me?”

  “Some. When we’re reported overdue in Regina, they’ll begin an air search. That won’t be for several hours, though. There’s a transmitter in the rear of this plane that sends out a signal, that repeats at intervals of every few seconds, or so. If someone picks it up, then…”

  She lifted her head to glare at him. “If someone picks it up?”

  “Flights over this area aren’t uncommon, Miss Wilson,” he said. “The main difficulty, in our situation, will be…”

  “Here’s the catch, right?”

  When he answered her, Anne could tell that the Sergeant was straining to keep his voice, and possibly his temper, from rising.

  “I wouldn’t call it a catch,” he said evenly. “As I was about to explain, the main difficulty in our situation will be the weather.”

  She looked up at the sky. “I didn’t think it was possible, but it looks to me like you’re a worse weatherman that you are a pilot. The weather’s beautiful. Not a cloud in the sky, except for that gray smudgy area, in the distance, and it could be a hundred miles away, for all you know.”

  He ignored the sarcasm. “There’s a storm warning out for the entire area. That’s why I wanted to leave Fort Honolulu as quickly as we did.”

  “How big a storm?”

  “Big enough. The first of the winter. And there’s the problem of the transmitter, itself, of course.”

  Anne groaned. “Naturally. And why wouldn’t there be a problem with the fucking transmitter? Everything else has gone wrong. If you ask me, Sergeant, your lack of judgment is our biggest problem. First, you show up in an airplane that’s older than dirt, then take off in shitty weather, with some damned cockpit gizmo that’s already on the blink. Then, with thousands and thousands of miles of flat, open space, as far as the human eye can see in any direction, you can’t even find a decent place to land without crashing the fucking plane into a goddamned lake!”

  “You have apparently not heard that old but very wise adage that any landing you can walk away from is a good landing,” Cameron said irritably. “And, as it happens, I’m only a part-time pilot. I was relieving Brubaker. Doing him an off-the-record favor for which we will both undoubtedly be demoted, or imprisoned. Maybe drawn and quartered. That’s if we get out of here alive, of course.” He pointed to her right foot. “You’re limping.”

  “I’m not limping,” she grumbled, limping onto dry ground. “Shit! I hope you’re better with your damned horses than you are with airplanes.”

  “We don’t use horses much, anymore. Sit down, somewhere, and let me look at that foot.”

  “My foot’s fine,” she growled, but sat down, anyway. “You’re in the mounted police and you can’t ride a horse?”

  “As a matter of fact, my equitation skills are well above average, perhaps because I’m a member of what is politely called the older generation. So, yes, when the roads aren’t passable, or when I’ve just imbedded my trusty aircraft in a foot or so of mud, I occasionally attend to my duties on horseback. On a loyal, noble beast by the name of Jock. Horses are very good company, you know. They rarely indulge in useless small talk, or insult their owners, and when the situation calls for it, they make excellent eating.”

  “So, why are you dressed that way? Like you see on postcards, and in the movies?”

  He chuckled. “It’s called, 'full review.' Red serge tunic and Stetson, brass buttons, Sam Browne belt, leather gauntlets, and high browns.” He tapped one of his tall, laced boots. “Uncomfortable, hard to get on and off, and hell to clean. I came directly from graduation at Depot, in Regina—what you’d call our police academy. A first cousin twice removed of the Prince of Wales was scheduled to be in attendance, which meant we were expected to dress up in our finest. Like toy soldiers, and yes—like in the movies.”

  Anne scowled. “Yeah, well, you look like that guy in the movie. Dudley DoRight?”

  “Thank you. Dudley DoRight is a hero of ours, as it happens. The cartoons were far better than the film, though.”

  “What cartoons?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Never mind. They were classics, but irreverence and wit is often wasted on the young.”

  Anne looked up at the sky again. “So, go ahead with what you were saying,” she said. “About the signal?”

  “In the event of a major storm,” he said calmly, “the signal we’re transmitting will be harder to pick up. Maybe impossible, if the transmitter was damaged, although that’s unlikely. And when the transmitter finally loses power, the only way to continue a search will be visually—from the air. There’s a huge amount of territory to be covered, and seeing a downed plane in deep snow from the air…Well, it’s bound to be difficult.”

  “So, what you’re saying is that we’re going to die here, in the fucking mud,” Anne groaned. “And then be buried under twenty feet of snow, like a couple of woolly mammoths?”

  “No, Miss Wilson, what I’m saying is that if we don’t want to die, we’re going to have to explore all of our fairly limited options—together. And to do that, I’m going to need you to start behaving like the intelligent woman I think you probably are, under that wiseass attitude you work so hard at. I understand that you’re frightened, but…”

  “I’m not frightened,” she said coldly. “I’m goddamned furious! You people are supposed to know about crap like this. Why the hell do you go flying around in the wilderness, anyway, in awful weather, when you obviously don’t have the right kind of equipment, or at least some properly trained pilots who know what they’re doing?”

  Cameron listened quietly, until she had finished the diatribe.

  “Are you done, now?” he asked. “Or shall we just stand here and shout at one another for an hour or so, when we could be arranging some sort of shelter.” He glanced up at the sky, which had begun to darken.

  Anne ignored his questions. “Why can’t we just walk out of here?” she asked suddenly. “Do you at least have a fucking map? Like any good boy scout?”

  He pulled a crumpled map from a brown canvas backpack at his feet, and tossed it to her. “I’ve already checked the map,” he said wearily. “From what I can tell, the nearest settlement is close to two hundred miles from here. If we’ve come down approximately wher
e I think we have, which I can’t guarantee. By a disagreeable coincidence, the village is due north of here, the same direction from which the storm is coming. So, no, we can’t just walk out of here, as you put it.”

  Anne opened the map and turned it one way, then the other. “My brother was in the army,” she said smugly. “He told me they sometimes hiked sixty miles a day.”

  “Did they, now?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did they make this hike with possibly broken bones, in a blizzard, in seventy mile per hour winds, and temperatures below zero?”

  “My ankle isn’t broken,” she shot back. “It’s just a little sore. And there’s nothing wrong with you, that I can see.”

  “I repeat. You can’t walk, and I certainly can’t carry you.”

  She rolled up the map and threw it at him. “Are you suggesting that I’m fat?”

  “No,” he said patiently. “What I’m suggesting is that you’re stumbling around on a toe that may well be broken, with something possibly torn in your shoulder, and I may have a cracked rib or two of my own. Now, aside from…”

  “Who says I can’t walk?” she interrupted. “Maybe I’ll move a little slowly, but I can…”

  Wincing with pain at the effort, he picked up the backpack and tossed it to her. Anne stumbled forward to catch it, barely managing to stay on her feet. “All right, let me see you walk to the top of that hill, there,” he ordered, pointing to a spot just short of the tree line. “With that on your back.”

  She hefted the pack with one hand. “You think I can’t do it?” she asked coolly. “This thing doesn’t even weigh as much as my damned suitcase does.”

  “Just do it, then, and stop wasting your breath arguing.”

  She slipped one arm through the straps and hoisted the pack onto her back. It was heavier than it looked, and the strain on her face was obvious, even from where he sat. “What did you put in here?” she snarled. “Rocks?”

  “The top of the hill,” he repeated. “And back. Not fast, just a slow, steady pace.”

  Anne put her other arm through the straps and started toward the hill, with her gait a bit wobbly, at first, but becoming steadily stronger as she walked. “What is it you Brits like to say?” she called back. “It’s a piece of cake?”

  “I’m a Canadian citizen, born in Scotland,” he shouted back. “Call me a Brit again and you’ll sleep outside in the snow, tonight— after I blister your insolent backside. Keep walking.”

  The ground was uneven, hard, and strewn with rocks, and by the time Anne reached the base of the hill, her back had begun to twinge. Her shoulder ached, and the ball of her right foot felt like it was on fire. She had gone no more than seventy-five yards—still well short of the trees. She staggered back, and stood before him wheezing slightly. “See? Nothing to it, Sarge.”

  He stood up stiffly, placed one hand on her good shoulder to turn her around, and laid a swift, hard smack across the seat of her jeans. Anne yelped in surprise and pain, and grabbed the offended region with both hands.

  “Consider that a warning, Miss Wilson,” he said pleasantly. “Next time you lie to me, I’ll take my belt to your backside.”

  “That hurt, damn it!” she shrieked. “And I wasn’t lying. Why can’t we at least try to make it?”

  “In the shape we’re both in, we’d be lucky to make it twenty miles, let alone two hundred. We’ll give it until tomorrow morning, and then decide. If we both seem all right, and if that storm doesn’t make things worse, we’ll reevaluate our situation.” He glanced up at the sky, again. “For now, though, we’re not going anywhere. It’s going to start snowing, soon. We’ll stay with the plane, and wait for them to find us.”

  “And what if they don’t find us?” she inquired sullenly. “Whoever they are?”

  He sighed. “Then whichever of us is still alive at the end will be forced to dine on the other. I recommend starting with a haunch. I read somewhere that the human haunch is quite flavorful, similar to a nice rack of lamb.”

  “Terrific” she snarled. “You can’t fly an airplane, or fix one. You don’t know shit about reading maps or predicting the weather, and you’re a lousy doctor. And now, I find out that I’m stranded in the fucking frozen wilderness with a would-be comedian.”

  He sighed. “Make yourself useful, and gather a few armfuls of that moss,” he ordered.

  “What for?”

  “It makes a quite comfortable mattress, in sufficient quantities. And insulates against the cold, as well.”

  Anne sneered. “I’ll bet you read that in The Call of the Wild.”

  He smiled. “The Boy Scout manual, actually. Be sure to shake the dirt clods from the roots.”

  Anne scowled. “You’re kidding, right? We’re looking at freezing to death, and you’re worried about housekeeping?”

  “Tidiness is good for morale,” he explained, trying unsuccessfully to suppress a grin. “There’s no need to start living like savages so early in the game.”

  Anne wandered around for close to half an hour, collecting armfuls of the dusty brown moss, and dumping each batch in a pile not far the plane. But when her foot began to throb, and her shoulders ache, she gave up the search and ducked behind a rocky outcropping to rest. After a quick peek from her hiding lace, to check on the Sergeant’s whereabouts, she dropped the pile of moss she was carrying, crawled up onto a large boulder, and pulled a crushed pack of cigarettes and a book of matches from her shirt pocket.

  The first four matches she tried were extinguished instantly by the wind that whipped around the rocks. On the fifth try, she turned her back to the wind and cupped her hands around the matchbook, protecting the tiny flame until she could light one badly bent cigarette.

  She had taken two long, delicious drags on the first cigarette of the day when Geoffrey Cameron reached over her shoulder, plucked the cigarette from her lips, and ground it out under the heel of his tall brown boot.

  “You might have mentioned that you had matches with you,” he said, taking the matchbook from her pocket. He opened it, and shook his head. “So much for a fire, tonight. There’s only two left.” He stuck the mostly empty matchbook in the pocket of his tunic, and shook his head again. “You’re beginning to get perilously close to that spanking we discussed, Miss Wilson,” he added grimly.

  Anne slid down the rock, and made a futile grab for the matchbook. “Give those back, damn it! They’re my personal property. And while you’re at it, you can dispense with the stupid threats. It’s getting boring. Besides, I thought you boy-scout types could start a fire with two sticks, or smashing rocks together, or whatever.”

  “I can,” he growled. “If driven to it, but I’ve found that matches work almost as well. So, in the event you find another book of matches somewhere, I’ll expect you to turn them over. In any case, there’ll be no further smoking, until we get out of here.”

  “Why not?” she cried.

  “Because smoking is a filthy habit, and it smells, and because until rescue arrives, you and I will be living in extremely close quarters.”

  “You have absolutely no right to stop me from smoking, if I want to,” she sulked. “We’re both probably going to freeze to death, anyway, as you keep pointing out.”

  “I’d rather freeze to death than be blown to kingdom come,” he explained patiently. “I’ve drained the fuel tank, but there may still be fumes in the line, or enough residue to guarantee our fiery demise.”

  “Yeah? Well, all this fucking moss you made me collect smells bad, too,” she grumbled. “A hell of a lot worse than a little cigarette smoke. And it probably has bugs, too.”

  Tired of arguing, Cameron turned, and started to walk away. “Try thinking of the bugs as protein,” he called over his shoulder.

  Anne grabbed up the pile of the moss at her feet, and hurled the tangled mass at the back of his head with all the strength she could muster in her sore arms. The clods of dirt clinging to the dry ro
ots caught him across the shoulders, and exploded almost instantly into a cloud of grit and dust— most of which found its way under the high collar of Sergeant Cameron’s bright scarlet tunic, and down his neck.

  The large boulder where she’d been sitting was slightly too high to be a comfortable perch for someone only a few inches over five feet tall, but for a ramrod straight man of just over six feet and five inches, it was apparently the ideal height. Suddenly aware that she had pushed the sergeant too far, Anne attempted to evade his grasp by darting quickly to the left. She wasn’t quick enough, though. In one swift, fluid move, he caught her around the waist, swung her off the ground, and sat down on the same boulder she had recently vacated. At first, she thought he was simply going to hold her long enough to deliver another lecture about safety, or yell at her. Or explain his duty. He was a policeman, after all—like any other policeman, probably— bound by the solemn oath he had taken. The oath that all policemen in any country took—an oath to protect and defend her—or whatever.

  It was the “whatever” part that had begun to worry her.

  She was still thinking about that oath when it came to her that there wasn’t going to be a lecture. Her position—facedown over his knee—would have made a lecture difficult to deliver, or to hear. Later, she would blame her slowness in reacting on fatigue, but in reality, the actual time that elapsed between her initial escape attempt and the first resounding “thwack” across her rear end was less than two or three seconds.

  The mind is funny that way.

  After that first whack, though, the time seemed to go very, very slowly. In reality, the first spanking of Anne Wilson’s life lasted just under seventy-four seconds, from beginning to end, (excluding the fifteen or twenty seconds spent jumping up and down, holding her scalded buttocks, and calling the Sergeant obscene names.) But Anne didn’t know that it was only seventy-four seconds, and she wouldn’t have believed it if she’d been told the actual number.