It was a clump of snow falling off a branch and landing a few inches from her face that finally snapped her out of her despair. It sounded like a footstep, and a thrill of panic — a new panic — shot through her head. I’m not dead. I’m going to be captured. Should I pretend to be dead or unconscious? What if they just shoot me to make sure I’m dead? What if I …?
NO! she screamed at herself. Stop it! Stop talking yourself into dying or screwing things up even worse than you already have! She had a crew member out there somewhere who probably needed her help. She had a duty to herself and to her country to get out and make it back into friendly territory. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Annie Dewey, and get on your damn feet and move! If Dev Deverill dies because you were too busy feeling sorry for yourself, then you do deserve to die! Get up, you bitch, and act like a real American airman instead of a whiny overprotected coed!
She heard no voices and no more footsteps. Good time to get the hell away from here. Hands and arms, working. Good. Try to roll over … no, bad, very bad, excruciatingly painful back pain, like ice picks were being driven up her spine. She tried to return to her original spot to try to relieve the pain, but her body was telling her, too late, Annie, there’s no pain-free way to move now. She cried out as she rolled over on her back. The pain seemed to constrict her throat, cutting off her airway, strangling her. Now panic was setting in again. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, and the pain in her back was mind-numbing. Stars swam in her field of vision, and she prayed she would pass out to save her from the pain.
She wasn’t that lucky. The only soothing thing she felt was the cold and wet snow against her back. The pain was still there, still as sharp as ever, but at least she felt it, and at least she could move. She wasn’t paralyzed. Even through the shattering pain, she felt a twinge of hope. Maybe she would be all right.
Annie reached up to her eyes and immediately found one source of her vision and breathing problems — her helmet had shoved itself down over her face. Making the slightest movement only increased the pain even more, but she was able to unsnap the helmet and pull it off her head. Her fingertips found a deep crack in the helmet — it had saved her life. A gash like that on her skull would’ve easily killed her.
The snow on the back of her head felt good, and several moments later she started to see and sense more things — flickers of fires in the distance against the stormy skies, the acid smell of burning jet fuel, and the creaks, shrieks, and groans as the Vampire bomber continued its death-rattles; wet icy snow falling on her face, cold moisture seeping through her flight suit and cold-weather gear against her butt. She wasn’t wearing ultra-cold-weather stuff, but she was wearing insulated long-underwear, thick wool socks, a turtleneck long underwear shirt, and cold-weather Thinsulate flying gloves. The pain felt like it was subsiding. Now she started to be afraid of going into shock if she got too cold, so it was important that she get moving. Get up, Annie, she told herself Find Dev. Find the survival gear. Find shelter. Get away from the crash site and hide.
The pain came back full force as soon as she tried to get up, but she knew she had no choice — either get up and have a chance of surviving, or stay on the ground and freeze to death or get captured. With the helmet no longer muffling her, she was able to cry out as loud as she dared, but she knew searchers would be on their way and she didn’t want to risk being captured. Crawling to her hands and knees seemed to take a half hour, but she did it. Reaching up to unfasten her parachute risers and unbuckle her parachute harness seemed to drain every erg of strength from her body, but she did it. Pulling on the nylon strap that connected her harness to the survival pack seemed an impossibility, like trying to pull a cruise ship into its dock after someone o n deck threw her a line, but she did it. Now, with the survival pack clutched safely in her arms, she felt better. I may be hurting, she thought, and I may be down hard, but I’m not out of the game yet.
Walking was out of the question, so she crawled. She didn’t know which way to go, so she decided just to go away from the glow of the fires from the crash scene. That seemed a good choice, because the direction she chose was downhill. After a few dozen yards, she found a big pine tree. Feeling around its base with her hands, she noticed the ground underneath the thick bottom branches was dry, so she crawled underneath. Hey, she thought, those survival instructors were right: it’s surprisingly comfortable in here. It smelled good, and after a few moments, it even started to feel warm. Man oh man, what a break. She heard a scampering sound and figured she had probably disturbed some ground squirrel’s rest, but she didn’t much care who or what she was sharing that warm, soft, pine-needle-cushioned ground with right now.
She knew she had to keep going. She had only moved a very short distance away from her landing spot, and they could find her easily by her drag marks. But she had to take time to check herself out, get her thoughts together, decide on a plan of action, then do it.
The first thing she had to do was take care of herself. Annie opened the survival pack, a square green nylon case about eighteen inches square, three inches thick, and weighing about twenty pounds. A tiny red-lensed flashlight was right or, top, which helped her inventory the rest of the kit — even that tiny bit of artificial American-made light helped to lift her spirits. She was finally back in control of her environment, at least a little bit.
Four pint-sized cans of water — she drank one can immediately and put the others inside the leg pockets of her flight suit. Waterproof matches — inside her flight suit, between her T-shirt and long-underwear shirt. Survival rations: dried beef bars, granola bars, fruit bars, chocolate bars. One dried beef bar and one fruit bar in her flight suit, the rest back in the survival pack. Folding knife, in her flight suit. A space blanket, silver on one side, black on the other, in her flight suit. Vacuum-packed sleeping bag, compressed and squished into a nine-inch-long, three-inch-diameter tube, in the survival kit. Pretty amazing shit. Signal mirror, around her neck, along with a magnetic compass. Wool cap, on her head. Aha, the good gadget: combination satellite survival radio and GPS satellite navigation receiver — in her flight suit pocket, along with two spare batteries, which went inside her T-shirt next to her skin to keep them warm.
Signal flares, smoke signaling devices, flare gun with forest-penetrator cartridges, back in the survival pack. Booklets, fishing kit, first-aid kit, mittens, compression bandages, snare wire, a wire saw, aspirin tablets, water-purification tablets, a small tarp to make a tent, nylon twine, a radiation tester, two pairs of socks sealed in plastic, a canteen — all stayed in the survival kit for now, except she popped two aspirins and washed them down with water to help take the edge off the pain in her back and shoulders. Everything but nylon stockings, chewing gum, gold pieces, Russian rubles, and condoms … oops, a moment later she found the condoms. They stayed in the survival kit.
Annie felt immensely better after she closed up the survival kit. She had read that the vast majority of crash victims who died while in a survival situation never even bothered to do the simplest things, like seek shelter or open their survival kits. They were either in a daze, in shock, or simply couldn’t believe the situation they were in. Most of the time they ended up dropping all their gear and walking off in circles until they died of exhaustion, hypothermia, or shock. The old saying was that crash victims who died in survival situations died of embarrassment. Annie understood that feeling very, very well right now.