Chapter 7

“We’re going to have to sleep in your sleeping bag tonight while mine airs out some,” Sharon told me with a mischievous grin the next morning.

“But mine’s just a little bigger than a regular single bag ... it isn’t a big double, like yours,” I objected.

“So... ?” she replied with a little giggle. I got it; it wasn’t like we spent our nights squirming around, trying to get away from each other as we slept. And if I could avoid it, I didn’t want to lie in a big wet spot either. Her bag did need airing out—it really, really did.

It wasn’t the only sleeping bag in camp that required airing that morning. Sharon and I hadn’t noticed, but apparently all of the other couples in camp had done a lot of reaffirming their humanity and continued existence in the face of deadly peril also. We were all a little tired, but we were feeling just fine. Everyone grinned at each other.

We heated creek water in our two aluminum buckets—they didn’t hold but about a gallon each—mixed the boiling water with cool water and then did what we could to wash off last night’s activities. That began a practice we kept in place for all the days ahead, that of keeping as clean as we could in the circumstances in which we found ourselves. The soap we’d found in the package loaded on the rear seat in the plane helped enormously. Cleaning up cost us a couple of hours, but it was worth it.

Washing ourselves off began another custom too. We paid no attention to the normal rules of modesty. For one thing, living so closely, being modest was a losing proposition, anyway. Second, we weren’t over the bear attack, and had no intention of ever getting over it. We dug holes for our waste products and whenever someone had to use the “facilities” someone else had to stand guard. At least, we thought it was necessary—and we didn’t see any need of discussing the issue.

Modesty took another blow when it became apparent that we were going to be stripping down every night in preparation for sleep. No one wanted to sleep in the same clothes we’d sweated in all day long, if we could avoid it. Getting nude every night meant we would get up the next morning sans clothing, and then we’d don “fresh” shirts and pants in the daylight, outside the tents.

All of the tents were low-silhouette, lightweight hiking tents and barely had enough room for two people lying down—there was no head room to change inside—so we changed our clothes in public. We all had some changes of clothing with us and we rinsed soiled garments in the river, but that only went so far.

We never heard a word of protest from the Reverend Parker Anderson, our twenty-seven-year-old resident theologian. In fact, he and his wife, Michelle, were doing the same thing the rest of us were. I liked Parker. He never seemed to get down on himself or our situation and was always ready to talk to anyone who was dispirited.

I asked him if I could call him “Padre” because I’d read somewhere or other, the chaplain aboard Navy ships in WWII, regardless of their religious order, were normally addressed by that title. Parker didn’t mind a bit and the salutation, Padre, caught on in the group right from the start. It just felt right.

The day after the bear attack was our first full day on the trail, hiking from we-didn’t-know-where in a vague direction toward civilization and safety. We’d rushed all yesterday afternoon, trying to put as much distance between us and the dead bear as we could. We succeeded, but there were a lot of sore legs and achy backs that first morning on the trail. We probably didn’t make ten miles that first full day of hiking, though we were on the move for twelve hours. It was comparatively easy, walking near (but not beside) a river for most of the way. That was good. We needed easy going for a while until we worked ourselves into good condition.

We were lucky in that we were all pretty fit, for a normal group of men and women, but our daily lives before this adventure had not included long distance hiking. It took our bodies a couple of weeks to adjust to the physical stress of always being on the move in the daylight, climbing or descending ridges, and scrambling over boulders when our path forced us to negotiate the river’s shoreline. Three weeks after we started out, though, we had all settled into a routine and no longer had to fight tired, tender muscles every morning.

Individual traits began to surface. Penny Martin, who worked in banking, as did her husband, had competed in track and field in high school, and she’d kept running as an adult. She found it easy to acclimate herself to hiking all day long and she could probably have put all of us under the horizon every day if she’d exerted herself.

Her husband, Lyle, was another avid fisherman and he took his turn with the gill nets. Between him and the Padre, anytime we were near a creek or river, we had fish to eat, courtesy of their expertise.

Ryan Delaney proved to be the best cook in the group and he took over that task on a permanent basis, broiling whatever Lyle and the Padre brought in from the river or game anyone else brought in. As we walked, we gathered berries from bushes near our path, wild onions or whatever, to add to the community pot Ryan was in charge of.

I was the designated hunter. I’d take the Remington rifle and move away from the line of march and try to down a deer—sometimes a reindeer—or a moose, or whatever. I only had thirty rounds for the rifle at the beginning and I’d fired three into the grizzly. I husbanded the remaining very, very carefully and made every round count by getting as close to the target as I could.

Sharon became the camp guard, generally carrying my .357 magnum to escort one or two people to and from the latrine trenches we dug, guard parties gathering berries, or generally keep watch over anyone who needed to go somewhere. Everyone found a way to contribute to the overall goal.

A month into our journey, I was out in front with the rifle, hoping to find a deer or moose we could have for dinner. We wanted to try smoking whatever was left of the meat to carry along with us, so I was also looking for a place with lots of firewood.

I was following one of the multitude of game trails that seemed to lead everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Drifting down a ridge, I saw two good-sized deer apparently licking at a rock about a hundred yards away downslope. I’d been moving against the wind, so I was already downwind of them, staying close to the ground and moving slow. They had no idea an intruder was anywhere near. The larger of the two raised his head to look all around and I froze, concerned I’d done something to spook him.

Crouching over a small boulder, I could see him clearly through the four power scope and I knew precisely where the bullet would strike. The big male took a couple steps in my direction and tossed his head. Taking my time, I took a deep breath, let some of it out, then touched the trigger and squeezed. The loud crack of the rifle echoed around the mountains for a long while. The big buck dropped, dead before he hit the rocks he’d been stepping over. The smaller one took off running across the slope. I probably could have gotten him too, but it would have been chancy, and we didn’t really need the meat. With a severely limited amount of ammunition, I didn’t want to waste anything, so I didn’t fire.

I walked down the slope to the dead deer and studied the scene. The rock they’d been licking was a few yards away, undisturbed by the blood and brain matter from the deer’s death. Then it came to me. Something bubbled up from a long-ago TV reality show. Wild animals need salt, just like human beings, but there aren’t any convenient one-pound canisters of iodized salt out in the wild. Animals had to lick necessary minerals and salt from deposits nature provided.

We wound up shaving licked portions of the deposit off with our knives, and using a hatchet to chip off large chunks. We could see there was a lot of mineral residue in the surrounding soil, but we left it where it lay. We had enough chopped up and ground up mineral to give everyone a pound and a half or two pounds to carry along. We had no idea how much we’d actually need, but it seemed prudent to carry too much rather than run out. It made everything our chief cook, Ryan Delaney, prepared taste just that much better.

The salt added to everyone’s load, but we accepted the penalty weight because of the benefits. For quite a while, we’d been trying to do just the opposite—shed weight. Sharon and I were sleeping under the rain fly that had been over her tent. That saved us from having to carry the weight of the tent and the rain fly.

We’d tossed my sleeping bag away, and just carried her double-sized one to save even more weight. Everyone else was doing the same. We kept all of the ammunition for my two guns, one or two changes of clothing, and now the salt, but most everything else was strictly optional. We were shaking down into a lean, tight-knit group of hikers moving cross-country through the wilderness.

“Do you have something to say to me, Matt?” Sharon asked softly as we cuddled in the coolness of the twilight, which was the darkest it was going to get, even at midnight, in summertime Alaska. “ ... Three little words, perhaps?” she teased.

She and I had been steadily getting closer. We’d been intimate already, so we were working at things backwards from the normal process—we were hard at work learning about each other. We talked almost constantly, sometimes forgetting the other survivors were there, and almost always spent an hour or so each night whispering to each other in our sleeping bag.

“Well... , “ I mused. “Oh, I know... ‘It’s going to rain’? Oh, no ... that’s four words.” I glanced out at the twilight visible under the rain fly. “Oh, I know... ‘It is raining!’ ... yeah, that’s three.” I told her teasingly.

We were snuggling together; I was spooning into her back with my right hand casually cupping her right breast. Her right elbow came whistling around and snapped into my upper ribcage.

“Try again,” she suggested.

“Oh ... I just don’t know,” I returned wishing I had some football pads to wear to bed with my lady. I rubbed the impact point just above my third rib. “Well ... I suppose ... ahhhh ... no, I couldn’t say that!”

“What?” she demanded impatiently.

“I was just thinking ... I could say ‘I love you’, but heck, you already know that ... it wouldn’t be anything you’d want to hear...”

I have no idea how she rotated her body around to face me, but she did ... and in only a split second, too.

“Say it again!” she insisted softly after a quick kiss.

“I love you, Sharon Kincaid,” I told her. This time the kiss was longer and very gentle. No tongue, but very tender and heartfelt.

“I love you,” I said again. I liked these kisses—I could probably live on them alone without any deer meat or fish at all.

“Why didn’t you say that ever before?” she asked.

“Why didn’t you?” I replied, tossing the ball back into her court.

She kissed my nipples, gently nipping at them before she tilted her face up to mine for another hot kiss. “ ‘Cause the boy has to say it first,” she told me, giggling.

“Hey! Here we are in the twenty-first century, with women’s lib taking over the whole world ... and you can’t say ‘I love you’ first?” I asked unbelievingly.

“Nope!” she said adamantly, shaking her head. “ ... Has to be the boy!”

“Well, I said it now,” I pointed out, “ ... and you haven’t said it to me at all.”

She touched my lips with hers and climbed atop me, winding her arms around my neck. “I love you, Matthew James Singletary!” she told me softly and kissed me again. “I love you so much!”

We didn’t say too very much for the longest time, but we communicated our feelings very, very well. Eventually, she was beside me again, facing me and cuddling into my chest. Her legs were intertwined with mine and her hands were doing things to my member that were excruciatingly wonderful.

“I have four more words,” I offered gently. “They go right after those three...”

“What?” she asked tenderly.

“Well, let’s see ... how about, ‘I love you ... and then four more words like, ‘Will you marry me?’”

Sharon was a strong woman, and these past few weeks on the trail with all the strenuous activity just made her stronger. About the time I got the last word out, my woman was scrambling on top of me, arms around my neck like a steel trap, and she was mashing her lips to mine again while bawling her eyes out.

After a few minutes, I had to take a timeout to breathe.

“You could just say ‘yes’, you know... , “ I suggested.

“Yes, honey,” she whispered, “ ... yes now and forever!”

“Would you marry me tomorrow ... if we could?” I asked.

“Yes,” she murmured in my ear.

I turned my head as far as I could to the right; I didn’t want to yell in her ear. “HEY, PADRE!” I called out.

“Yes, Matt?”

“Can you marry somebody without a marriage license?” I asked.

He paused for an instant. “Well ... I guess so, and I think you’d be married in the sight of God, but the state of Alaska probably has some strange idea they should be able to charge a fee for the privilege...”

“How ‘bout you marrying Sharon and me in the morning ... an’ I’ll pay the fee when we get to the next town, how ‘bout that?”

“Okay!” Padre agreed readily.

“Right after breakfast!” I told him. I was sure he could hear the smile in my voice.

“About damn time!” someone remarked; I think it was Spencer Carlyle. There was a faint slap. His wife, Wendy was a spunky woman who didn’t mind correcting Spence’s manners from time to time.

Early the next morning, after a breakfast of left-over deer from the night before, the Padre officiated at a little ceremony, uniting Sharon and me in the bounds of matrimony. We were high on a ridge, looking out over a river valley with snow-capped mountains in the background; truly God’s cathedral.

I presented Sharon with a “wedding ring” I’d hollowed out with my pocket knife from a small chunk of pine. It wasn’t much of anything; just a symbol. She seemed to appreciate the thought, though. I presume that’s what all the crying meant. She didn’t slap me for being impertinent; that was always a good thing.

We trudged on, still holding to vaguely southwest line. We checked the position of the North Star every night and selected a course toward a major landmark the next morning. Days drifted into weeks, and weeks into a month—then two months and more. Still we marched. I don’t know how many linear miles we trekked. It was impossible to know because we were forever having to walk around a sheer rock face we couldn’t scale, or take a route around a mountain slope we couldn’t descend safely, or find a ford over a river we couldn’t wade—it was always something.

It was the middle of August—our plane had been forced down in early May—when we came to another wide river. It was too deep to wade, so we would have to build a raft and paddle, or pole, ourselves across. We’d already done that twice, so we were experienced in what we needed to do. We’d be able to make short work of it if we could just find the logs we needed.

Logs are heavy. Carrying them is hard work. We needed to find a place where the forest came nearly to the water’s edge so the carry would be as short as possible.

I turned my back on the river to scan the trees behind us. I’d almost decided our present position wasn’t favorable and we’d have to move up or downstream to find the place we needed when Sharon gasped out loud. She scurried around behind me and began doing something in a pocket on the rear of my backpack.

“Whatcha doin’, honey?” I wondered. She didn’t reply.

She got the zipper undone, yanked something out and raced away from me toward the riverbank. I swung around to see what the heck she was doing.

There, out on the river and not fifty yards away was a skiff, twenty feet long or so, with its wheelhouse painted the brilliant blue and gold of the Alaska State Troopers. The individual conning the boat along had probably already seen us—we were standing in plain sight on the bank—but I made sure. I pulled out my .357 and fired three quick rounds into the air behind us. I was sure the three ear-splitting cracks would attract the guy’s attention.

Sharon made doubly sure of that. She’d dug out the flare gun I’d been hauling around since we’d left the float plane bobbing in that faraway lake. She aimed the gun in the direction of the no-so-distant patrol boat and then fired—almost horizontally.

The bright red flare whooshed out, very much on-line with the skiff. The guy piloting the craft saw us, and the flare, quite clearly. The gunfire doubly alerted him to our presence, and the red ball of the flare marked our position clearly. He waved and hauled the wheel around to point the nose at the bank were we were anxiously waiting.

Then he saw the flare wasn’t gaining any altitude and he apparently also noticed it was dead on target for his patrol craft. He watched as the flare zoomed closer and closer. At the last second, he dove for the bottom of the wheelhouse to avoid being struck. The flare cleared the boat house by several feet, but he couldn’t have known he had that clearance when it was decision time.

“HEY! CUT THAT OUT!” he yelled when he popped back up. “I SEE YA! GIVE ME A MINUTE TO GET OVER THERE, DANG IT!”

All of us standing there on the river bank laughed. It was great, being able to laugh at something good happening to us after so long. I grabbed Sharon and held her tight, kissing her again and again.

The Alaska Wildlife Trooper, that was his actual title, made a long call to his supervisor, using his satellite phone. (I made another note to myself to get one of those, and never, never go outside the city limits without it.) Trooper Adams relayed all our names to his base, and explained everything to his watch commander in general terms as I coached him. He got the headquarters to send a big helicopter to ferry us all back to Fairbanks.

It turned out, our navigation from (wherever we were out in the wilds) to civilization wasn’t all that bad. Even if we hadn’t been found by the Wildlife Trooper when we had, we’d have begun to run into roads we could follow to small towns. Those roads weren’t more than a few more day’s march across the river. That felt good. We were just a group of thoroughly average men and women, but we’d done the unbelievable—we’d saved ourselves.

Sharon told me once on our trek her father had money, but she hadn’t made it clear how much he had. I hadn’t asked. It didn’t matter to me, or her either.

Apparently her father had BIG money and her daddy’s property holdings came in handy immediately. For instance, he owned a really big, really nice, really expensive hotel just outside the Fairbanks city limits. After the State Troopers were satisfied with a preliminary report of how my plane was forced down and how we reacted, we bummed a ride from a motherly secretary in the office who lived vaguely out in the direction of that hotel.

We walked into the lobby and instantly became aware we didn’t fit in. Our rough and ready clothing was worn, even a bit tattered, and we SMELLED! It hadn’t been a big deal out on the trail because everyone else had a pretty ripe odor too but here in this fancy hotel lobby, we really stood out. I mean we really stood out!

We stood around for a moment, wondering how Sharon could connect with someone in her father’s business empire. It was the second day of September and we’d been “missing, presumed dead” for almost four months. We didn’t quite know how to announce we were risen from the dead and ready to start living again.

Sharon resolved that problem quickly. She caught sight of a tall woman in a dark grey business pants suit and white blouse striding from a bank of elevators off to our left, followed by an entourage of business attired women and men.

“TERESA!” Sharon bellowed at the top of her lungs. “TERESA! OVER HERE!”

“Teresa” didn’t even glance in our direction. She heard Sharon—I saw a few heads in her group turn toward us—but the boss lady didn’t react. That upset my Sharon.

“TERESA CUNNINGHAM, YOU HUSSY! YOU BETTER PAY ATTENTION TO ME, DAMMIT!” she yelled.

That got a reaction.

Startled, the woman in the pant suit looked around and eventually found a thoroughly incensed Sharon. The woman’s jaw dropped and a stunned expression came over her features. She held out her phone blindly to a guy behind her, clearly expecting him to take it because she let go of it immediately. He did manage to catch it. In fact, he caught it three times. He batted it back into the air twice before finally capturing it a couple of feet above the floor

“Teresa” trotted in our direction and Sharon met her halfway across the lobby where they came together in a wild hug. I followed more sedately.

The two women were in tears and Sharon was trying to explain our whole nearly four-month’s trek back to civilization in words diluted by a lot of water-works. It wasn’t going that well. I touched Sharon’s arm and she quickly turned to me.

“Honey, Teresa’s always been a really good friend to me,” she said warmly, then turned to Teresa. “Terry ... I’d like you to meet my husband. Terry—Matt ... Matt—Terry!

I held out my hand. “Nice to meet you Ms. Cunningham,” I told her, remembering Sharon had called her that a minute ago.

The woman was a little off her game. She looked from Sharon to me and back again three times. “Sharon ... husband? ... oh Jesus! When ... how ... I mean, where did... ?”

Sharon finally took pity on the woman. “Terry, we have a lot to catch up on ... but for now, do you think you could get us a room? We’re tired and we really, really ... really need a shower!”

“ ... Or two!” I contributed.

Sharon took my hand and smiled up at me. “ ... Or more!” she remarked.

“Oh, God, yes,” Teresa answered. I wasn’t sure if she was reacting to how ripe Sharon and I smelled or whether she was just responding to Sharon’s question.

“SIMON!” she yelled back to the group that’d been marching along behind her across the lobby. “PUT SHARON KINCAID ... I MEAN ... PUT MR. KINCAID’S DAUGHTER AND HER HUSBAND IN THE PENTHOUSE ... NOW!”

“Simon” must have been the hotel manager, or he held some such position, because he was walking toward the check-in desk about half a heartbeat later, gesturing and talking urgently to the hostess there while he was still walking. Seconds later, he brought a key card back to our little group. He gathered all three of us up and escorted us into what was evidently the VIP elevator because he had to swipe the card in a device mounted on the wall beside it before the door would open.

The elevator stopped on the fifteenth floor and Simon ushered us to a set of tall double doors which opened into a mammoth suite. Inside, Sharon and I sat on one of the three sofas in a sitting area, one reached by descending four shallow steps. Ms. Cunningham sat on another one facing vaguely in our direction. I found myself a little uncomfortable because I’d been sitting on hard tree stumps, or the ground, for most of four months. I made myself a promise to get comfortable with comfort again.

“‘Resa,” Sharon began.

Apparently she and Ms. Teresa Cunningham had been close before all the recent drama.

“‘Resa, we ... Matt and me ... we tried all our credit cards and they’ve all been canceled ... and I think Matt has a few twenties that have been soaked in the river, but I don’t have any cash money at all. Could you check with Uncle Cal and see if we could get a couple a’ corporate cards until we can get our—” she checked herself and giggled, “ ... well, until we can get our lives back together?”

“Oh,” Sharon continued, “and I need to call Mom and Dad and let them know the prodigal daughter has returned.”

Teresa turned a bright crimson. “Of course, honey!” she shot back hurriedly. “I’m sorry ... I’ve just been so shocked, I can’t think straight.” She appeared embarrassed she hadn’t already thought of those things.

“Here, honey... , “ she told Sharon, “ ... here’s my cell—it’s not locked—your parents’ numbers are in the contact list. While you talk to them, I’ll call Cal and get things moving, all right?”

Sharon took Teresa’s phone and scrolled through the contacts until she found the one she wanted to call. That left me and Ms. Cunningham at loose ends.

We looked each other over for a moment. Teresa Cunningham was an attractive woman; I guessed she was in her early forties. She was tall, dark-eyed, and with calm, almost serene features. Raven-black hair worn almost shoulder-length, framed an attractive face. She was a senior executive, I was sure of that. Her confidence and the manner in which people around her reacted to her said so.

I leaned toward her while Sharon was trying to get through to her mother. “Ms. Cunningham... ?” I began.

“Please ... I’m Teresa,” she returned. She had a nice smile too.

“Then, I’m Matt—Matthew James, to be precise—Singletary,” I told her and smiled. “If I may ... could we ... Sharon and I ... somehow get a line of credit or something with the shops down on the lower level? We’ll be glad to repay it as soon as we can. Both of us are pretty rank and we desperately need something to wear. We’re beginning to offend ourselves, in addition to everyone else we come into contact with.”

“I’m sorry ... Matt ... crap! I’m better than this ... just so shocked!” She stood and walked to a small table near the door and picked up the handset on a house phone. “This is Ms. Cunningham!” she said into the mouthpiece when the front desk answered. “Do you know me?”

“Good, do I need to ask for Simon Humphrey, or can you make things happen?”

“Excellent! Please find Mr. Charles and Ms. Reardon ... have them come up to the Penthouse immediately, please. Then ... if you’ll arrange to have lunch sent up for three, please ... something substantial—big ... huge servings, okay?” She glanced at me inquiringly.

“Huge servings ... for at least two confirmed carnivores!” I quipped with a grin. “And lots of things to drink ... except water ... we’ve had all the plain water we’ll need for a lifetime!”

She smiled at that and visibly began to loosen up. She relayed the last instructions to whoever she was talking to. “Yes, that’ll be all for the moment, thank you,” she said, ending her phone conversation. She depressed the switch hook and released it, listened for a second, and then began punching her forefinger at the key pad.

“Donna!” she said shortly when a connection was made. “ ... Is Cal in?

“Yes, break in on the meeting, please, this is extraordinarily important ... yes, I’ll wait.” It was only a couple of seconds.

“Yeah ... Cal. If you’re not sitting down, SIT! You’re not going to believe this—Sharon Kincaid is alive!” she said to the mysterious “Cal” at the other end of the line.

“Absolutely!” Ms. Cunningham said emphatically. “I’m here in Fairbanks, in the Penthouse suite with her ... and her husband, right now! Yes ... husband...” She repeated, flicking her eyes at me and grinning tightly. “I don’t know, Cal ... there are a ton of things I don’t know about what’s happened right now...” She glanced at me again.

“Temporary credit cards ... maybe a cash advance... ?” I whispered in her direction.” She nodded.

“Cal ... listen, can you get someone to set up a couple of corporate cards for Sharon and her husband Matt Singletary for them to use ‘til they get their personal cards reactivated... ? Yeah, Singletary ... Matthew Singletary ... great ... and have them brought to them by courier... ? That’ll take care of it. Oh ... Cal, can you call Mr. Kincaid and give him the news? Great!”

“No ... I think that’ll do it for now, thanks a bunch, Cal ... bye!”

“Hi ... Mom?” Sharon asked into Teresa’s phone microphone. There was a pregnant pause. “Mom... ?” Sharon waited another moment, then held the phone away from her ear. She looked at the display suspiciously. “Mom... ?” she asked again, then sighed expressively. “Hello?”

She looked up at me, thoroughly perplexed. “She answered,” Sharon explained, “and then ... just ... nothing—HELLO? Yes, Jenny ... it’s Sharon ... yeah ... yes, it’s me ... we all just walked out of the mountains after the plane crash...”

“She fainted! Mom fainted,” Sharon told us in an aside while she listened to the far-away voice.

When I would have said something about her remark, she showed me the palm of her hand as she waved at me and stuck out her tongue with a grin. In just the short time we’d been back in civilization, I’d been getting progressively more peeved when folks described what had happened as a “crash,” because that most certainly had not happened. And Sharon knew full well it was beginning to get to me.

I turned my attention back to Teresa Cunningham ... who was studying me right back.

“So, Ms. Cunnin—Teresa... , “ I corrected myself. “What is it you do for Mr. Kincaid?”

“I’m a ... well, I am a consultant of sorts ... I travel to Mr. Kincaid’s various holdings and offer ... management assistance to that activity,” she told me. It struck a chord.