Chapter 2

The sunlight streaming in through a couple of gashes in the helicopter's fuselage woke me. I was surprisingly warm and chalked it up to the two naked women snuggled as close to me as they could get. It damned sure wasn't warm out or in, because my breath was making a hell of a fog with every exhale.

I didn't even wiggle after I opened my eyes. It was colder than a witch's titty outside the sleeping bag and I was warm where I was. I didn't intend to do a thing that might wake the girls.

We'd have hell soon enough with what I knew was coming and I intended to put it off as long as I could. I felt sure that planes would be out looking for us pronto, but hell, we were several hundred miles from where they'd have to start and I figured another ten or fifteen minutes rest wouldn't hurt a bit.

For one thing, I was sore all over. There was a knot on my head and my body felt like I'd been through the spin cycle in a washer with an unbalanced load. Not to mention the clean up I'd need to do in the former cockpit that was now doing duty as a morgue. Damn it all, Carl's head wasn't even attached to his body any longer and Jim, the pilot, looked like he'd been in even worse shape.

That whole job would be mine too. I was sure the girls wouldn't be able to help and I wouldn't ask them to anyway. The fuselage was all we had for reasonable shelter though and the bodies needed to be put outside and covered up or buried until someone of the rescue persuasion got here to take better care of them.

As I considered what I needed to do when I got started, it came to me that the floor was surprisingly level considering it had crashed not long ago. All our gear was where it had been loaded. Some of it was still on pallets and the rest was stowed where it had been tied down. The few gashes in the skin were all there was back here to even hint about what had happened.

Mary woke first and when she wiggled a little it woke Chris. They both tried to put on a brave face at first but it slipped away from them pretty fast. At least they didn't start blubbering and tried to keep the old stiff upper lip.

"What are we gonna do Jack?"

"Mostly it's me that has to do stuff. I need to get things squared away up front and then try to seal up the holes in this thing to help us stay warm in here. We'll need to get dressed first though. It'll probably get even colder in here when I have to open the door to get outside."

"Why do you have to go outside? Won't someone come to see about us?" Mary asked.

"I'm sure they will, but I need to try and make some kind of big marker outside so they can find us easier. The helicopter should have one of those crash radios to help them find us, but it will only get them to the general area.

"I need to do something with Carl and Jim's bodies too. We can't let them stay where they are since we'll have to use this thing as shelter until someone finds us."

"Oh," she said, and didn't cry, but both of them came close again.

After taking the plunge, so to speak, and getting out of the sleeping bag, I made short work of getting into my clothes. I needed to bleed my lizard pretty bad by now, but I knew I'd have to unpack one of our camping potties. What the hell, Carl had told me to get everything we needed and with two women along on the trip I'd known potties were something we just had to have.

The girls stayed in the bag while I was doing my manly duty of getting the shitter in business. I congratulated myself over and over for buying more of the special liquid deodorant for the damned things than I'd thought we would ever need and plenty of the biodegradable ass ribbon. Of course I'd also bought a case of my regular Scott Toilet Tissue too. After all, manly men like Carl and I could brave the wilds and shit in the woods, but using pine needles and other detritus to wipe my ass held no fascination for me. I did spring for one of those little stools that had a regular commode seat so we wouldn't have to squat to do our business.

With a potty and some butt wipe made ready for the girls, I opened the big side door enough to look out but closed it again even faster. The first thing that came into sight as the door slid back was a real live pack of wolves. There were six or eight of the fuckers sniffing around and the noise the door made sliding back had every fucking one of them looking right at me as I took a peek.

"What's the matter?" Chris asked, as I slammed the door shut.

"There are wolves hanging around outside and they look hungry. I didn't get time to see exactly what they were up to but my best guess is they smelled the blood and have come to see if there's a meal near us," I said, as I headed for the pallet that held our young armory.

"Do you have to kill them?" Mary asked, and I hoped we weren't in for an endangered species lecture.

Mary hadn't given any hints of being an environmentalist whacko up to now, but that last question put me on my guard. I was as environmentally friendly as the next sensitive Texas lad, but I considered myself eminently practical too. When there was something hanging around thinking I might make a good meal, my first thought was to consider it a proper target of opportunity.

"I hope not. I'm hoping the sound of gunfire will scare them off. If it doesn't I'll have to kill at least some of them so the others will haul ass. I can't work outside with them hanging around and there are things I need to do out there," I said, trying to make it sound like killing them was the last thing on my mind.

"Well I don't think you should fuck around with warning them. I think you should shoot to kill from the get go and see what happens. Those things could be dangerous and teeth marks in my ass don't sound like fun," Mary said, and I'll admit it made me feel much better.

What I wanted to do was fish out one of the surprises I had bought for Carl. Since it had been his dime, and since he wanted some actual hunting, shooting, and fishing experience I'd gone a little overboard at the last. What the hell, I'd always wanted a Wildey and a Dirty Harry Special since I'd seen the movies that brought them fame. Now I had two each since Carl would never get a chance to use the two I'd bought for him. I was nearly salivating to see what kind of damage they'd do on our nosey neighbors, but this wasn't the time.

Putting on my web belt and attaching a holster, I loaded both Carl's and my Glock 21s. With one in the holster and one in my hand I had Chris slide the door open and started blasting. The damned things had crept up nearly to us by now and were sniffing around diligently. Chris pulled the door back so fast they had barely looked up before my first shot. I nailed three of them and got a good count on the five that scattered and kept running. Damn they were big, much bigger than I'd thought wolves got.

"I hate to ask you to do it, but I think one of you should load a Glock and the other should load a rifle and then come out and watch over me while I'm busy outside."

"You bet your ass we will. If anything happens to you we'll be further up shit creek than we are already," Chris said.

"It's a lot colder out here than I expected. We'd better dig around for the cold weather long Johns and snow boots too. Hell, we might even need our snowshoes."

"It's probably my fault. I was hoping for a lot of snow," Mary said.

"I don't think it's your fault unless you were hoping for that freak storm too," I said.

"I didn't. I guess I'd better load my Glock and let Chris use her rifle. I've practiced some but not nearly as much as Carl did and I know I'll do better with a pistol than a rifle."

"Hell, we'll both load our Glocks and our rifles. I think we should load those shotguns too. We can lean them against this crate's side and change out if we need to make long shots or wide shots. I don't think we should take any chances," Chris said.

"I didn't even know we had shotguns. I'm a lot better with one of those. I like to shoot skeet," Mary said.

It was a good thing the damned Jolly Green Giant was so big inside. More than half of it was taken up with our supplies and equipment but we still had room to unpack things and get dressed in the cold weather clothes. After that we sorted out the weapons, loaded them - including all four shotguns and the two thirty-ought-sixes for the girls. When I slid the door open again we were fresh out of wolves except for dead ones and I was glad.