Big Luke
I still had enough time to grab Brittany around the waist but I wasn't able to turn in time.
The front skis of the snow machine were driven into the snow and the track left the ground. The whole thing pivoted, launching us off of it and into the sticks. I tried to make it so that I landed first to break Brittany's fall. Which meant using the momentum of the snowmobile-gone-catapult to roll farther and land us on my back. It knocked the wind out of me.
"Ouch," complained Brittany. "You alright?"
She rolled off of me and looked me over on her knees
"Ooo, just dandy," I coughed. "We need to move, before they find us here."
I stood up and helped her to her feet. Then we took off into the woods, just trying to get out of there without getting killed. Brittany was slow being in bare feet. I felt sorry for her but there was nothing I could do about it at this point.
We found ourselves in a little clearing in the middle of the woods. That's when I decided to stop and hide behind a tree. I tried to quiet my breathing. Brittany stood next to me with her arms around my middle. I put my arm around her reassuringly and waited. I tried to listen for footsteps.
I heard a twig snap. Unlike in the movies, I didn't pop out form behind the tree and open fire from the hip. I waited. The sound came from my right, around the back end of the clearing. Brittany's grip around me got tighter. I tapped her on the shoulder and gently pushed her arms off of me. I needed to be able to move when the time to strike came. I nodded to tell her that it would be all right.
I took my rifle off my shoulder and set it down on the ground as quietly as possible. I needed to take this guy out without tipping off any of his buddies. Which meant I had to kill him or knock him out before he could get a shot off. Yeah, I had a suppressor but it wasn't going to make my gun completely silent.
I watched as the guy stepped out from around the tree. He didn't have his G3 up and it took him a second to register what he had seen in his brain. I went for the gun with my left hand and punched the guy in the face with my right. I knocked the rifle from his hand. I tackled him with one hand over his mouth to keep him from screaming. We fell over and I started to beat his face in. It was easier with my hard-knuckle gloves. My knuckles didn't get as banged up.
When the guy stopped moving, I dragged him well away from the clearing. This was where we were going to make camp for the night. When I came back, Brittany had found a log to sit on. It was still pretty dark which meant I couldn't build a shelter until day.
"So, what do we do now?" asked Brittany. "It's cold. We don't have any shelter. No food."
"Come here," I told her. We walked up to each other and I gave her a hug. "It'll be OK," I told her. "We just need to lay low for a while until rescue comes."
She rested her head on my chest, wrapping her arms around me. "You mean you hope it comes."
"No. It'll come. It's just going to take time."
We broke our hug and she walked back over to the log and started to pick the splinters out of her bare feet. I walked back over to the tree that we hid behind. I picked up my M16 and turned to face Brittany.
"Hey, I'm going to go search for firewood and anything else we can use. You want this?" I held up the rifle to show her.
She looked at the meat ax for a second or two. "No. Just... just don't take too long."
I shrugged and walked into the woods. Every time I came across some dry wood, I picked it up and stuffed the small stuff in my pockets. I carried the bigger stuff in my hands. I tried to make my way back to the dead guy I made in the clearing. When I got to him, I searched all his pockets on his tac vest. I found a HK45 handgun on his right hip. I took it. He had a tiny survival kit in one of his utility pouches. I took that too. All of his G3 ammunition was .308, or the metric equivalent. My M16 wouldn't be able shoot it but I took a couple mags. I could take the bullets apart and use the powder to help start a fire. Plus, I could use them in the G3 that was left back in the clearing.
When I found every thing remotely useful, I started walking back to the clearing, picking up more wood as I walked. I got right to work on the fire when I got back. I tried to build it closer to the log where Brittany was sitting, hugging her knees. She was cold.
"I don't suppose you found me a pair of shoes. Did you?" she asked.
"It's bad luck to wear a dead man's boots," I replied, stacking small sticks over a small pile of gun powder from some of the G3 ammo.
"You went back to his body?" she asked.
"He had stuff we could use. i.e. his shoelaces, ammo, this survival kit with a magnesium fire starter and this space blanket that's going to save your life. So, yeah, I went back to his body," I guess it came out a little snappier than I intended.
"OK, you left me. Remember? You left me in that suite by myself! They almost raped me. Almost killed me! And now you're snapping at me?" she yelled at me.
I let out a sigh. "I'm sorry, Bo. I'm sorry my mistake put you through that. I just didn't think that anything would happen. Nor did I think that we were going to find Percy without actually searching for him. Now, if we are going to get out of this place alive, we need to work together."
She just shook her head and hopped over to the other side of the log. I sighed again. This shit sucks. It really, truly, fucking sucks, I thought to myself. I hated me at the moment. This was where the reality of my decision started to come into mind.
I went back to lighting the fire. I took the steel part of the fire starter and scraped it along the flint side and watched the sparks ignite the gunpowder. I started to add all the smaller pieces of woods and then the bigger stuff so it could catch. It was long until we had ourselves a small campfire. I kept it small to minimize our chances of getting spotted.
The next thing I did was stick three long, shaved tree branches in the ground on the other side of the fire. The one in the middle was set back a little. Then I broke out the space blanket and tied it to the two branches on the outside. The stick in the middle was used to make the blanket concave out away from us.
"Hey, Bo? If you're not too pissed at me, I got a fire lit. I even got the space blanket up," I said in my best honey-dear voice.
She didn't say anything but reluctantly, she climbed back over the log and sat next to the fire. "Aren't we suppose to get under the space blanket?"
"Not when we got a fire going. They are designed to reflect heat. So this bounces the heat back at us," I explained.
"What makes you think you're going to cuddle up next to me by the fire?" she asked like a wife who was trying to punish her husband for doing something she's already forgiven him for.
"Well, for one..." I said as I got to my feet. "I built the damn thing. For two: you're are probably the most beautiful girl in the Aphrodite cabin that I've ever had the pleasure of saving- like four times now. And for three..." I walked over and sat right next to her up against the log. "You're not big enough to stop me."
She leaned her head on my shoulder and grabbed my arm in a hug. "I give. You're too charming."
"You could call me Prince," I replied in my best mock gangsta voice.
Brittany just laughed. "Don't ever talk like that again."
She looked up at me, I didn't see her because I was staring at the fire. She reached up and started lightly pulling at my short hair. "You should grow this out."
"How come? I like it short," I replied, turning my head to look at her. The fire light was glistening in her clear blue eyes.
"I think you would look better. Like if you could get it swoop up in the front. You know?" she explained, grabbing the hair at the front of my head.
"Maybe. I'll think about it," I replied.
She scooted a little closer to me and rested her head back on my shoulder. She shifted a little then crawled to sit sideways on my lap. She bent her knees so her feet rested between my legs. She buried her face in the crook of my neck. She had turned my hat around on her head so the bill cleared my neck. "I'm cold." was her excuse. I wrapped my arms around her. I'm not sure why, just felt right.
"I'll stay up and take the first watch," I volunteered. "You get some sleep."
She was out before I could finish my sentence. I yawned. I had been up for two damn long. I needed coffee. I looked up at the trees. I had heard of guys taking the needles of pine trees and boiling them to make tea. I wasn't much of a tea drinker (was never British enough, he he) but I might be able to get into it if it could substitute for straight coffee.
I didn't realize that I fell asleep, dreaming about espresso. The warmth of the fire plus the reflected heat from the space blanket created the illusion of the comforters back at camp. I was hoping that being a light sleeper could wake me up if the shit hit the fan.
Nothing came by that night. Otherwise, we would be dead or captured. Our fire went out though. Not a big deal, I could lite a new one easily. The fire was the first thing I noticed. The second was that Brittany was still asleep, sitting in my lap with her right hand resting on my chest and her left sitting in her lap. She still had my hat on backwards on her head. My night vision monocle had been knocked off at some point. No biggy, I could always get another if necessary.
"Hey, Bo?" I whispered to her, gently shrugging my shoulder to wake her up.
"Mmmm?" she groaned before slowly sitting up straight and stretching her arms. "Morning."
"Morning," I replied. "Today, I'm going to get to work building a shelter. Unless we get lucky and somebody who loves us finds us."
"Well, I hope they hurry up. I miss shoes," she replied, looking at me and giving me this little smirk. "What do you need me to do?"
"If I brought you some logs, could you lash them together to make a lean-to?"
"Sure. I would need some rope."
"We could use some shoelaces. I'll go check for some cordage some where. Maybe take a trip back to the snow machine to see if I could find something more we could use."
She grabbed my hand and ran her fingers over my knuckles. "Are we going to make it out of here? Alive? Be straight with me."
"Yes! Would you stop doubting me?" I told her with a half grin. "I got this."
I grabbed her wrist and pulled her into a bear hug with her shoulder in my chest. She let out a giggle. "Your brother made me promise before we left that I had to bring you home safe. I intend to keep that promise. You two are the closest thing I have to a family. I'm not just going to give that up without dying first. And you know that I won't go down without one hell of a fight."
Brittany grabbed my chin and kissed me on the cheek. "You love me. You just don't want to admit it."
"Like I said: you're like family."
"Hey, hey! What do we have here?" asked a voice behind me.
I rolled to my right with Brittany still in my lap. I laid her down behind cover and drew my 1911. I pointed it right at Brandon who didn't even have his 416 raised. I let out a huge sigh of relief, letting my wrists hang loose so my muzzle dropped down. I rested my forehead on the log.
"Please tell me you have coffee," I begged.
"And an extra pair of shoes, maybe?" added Brittany sitting up to look over the log.
"No coffee, but I got an extra pair of shoes that you could squeeze those pretty little feet into," replied David.
"Hey, hey. Hold up," I started, looking up from the log. "You're telling me that you brought an extra pair of shoes, but no frickin coffee?"
"Sorry. We don't drink coffee," David and Brandon said in unison, holding their hands out like Wasn't me.
"Ugh," I groaned, laying my head back down on the log.
"How are we going to get out of here?" asked Brittany.
"We got a ride coming. You remember Dasha?" asked David.
"Yeah, she's that Russian skank that tried to kill you guys last summer." I cocked an eyebrow at her. Apparently, Brittany was none too fond of Dasha.
"She never tried to kill us. Just her teammates did," Brandon explained.
"And Brandon's got a stiffy for her," David added blatantly.
"I had a crush on her. Yes." Brandon admitted. "She's going to bring a chopper to pick us up and take us to some place where we can hitch a ride to the states."
"Well, at least we got a plan," I said. "Let's make our way farther from the resort and find a bigger clearing for the chopper to land. Then we'll all go home."