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Survival Instinct

By Karen Randau

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Frankie stopped beside the security checkpoint entrance at the Rawlins airport, thirty miles south of where her ranch was nestled beneath Wyoming’s Rocky Mountains. She leaned her bag against her jeans-attired leg, and pulled at the scratchy wool turtleneck her best friend had insisted she wear.

As always, the sincere love in her new fiancé’s ocean-blue eyes melted her insides.

Quint lifted her left hand to fiddle with the diamond ring he had placed there two days earlier. “It’s only a day-long conference.” He directed the words at her, but she wondered if maybe he needed to remind himself. “You’re sure you’re in the back row, right? I’ve heard it’s safer back there.”

With a nod, she wove her fingers through his collar-length sandy hair. “Very last seat by the back exit. I’ll be home before you have time to miss me.” Removing the pandemic-required mask, she stood up on her hiking-boot-clad toes and kissed his soft lips. She was ready to suggest she stay rather than fly out to discuss environmental conservation on a cattle ranch when a tiny pink bag landed across her foot.

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” The rattled young brunette wore a bulging backpack and a parka draped across her muscled left arm. She grabbed her toddler’s hand. “Olivia, apologize for running over this lady.”

The child blushed and lowered her head in embarrassment. “Sawy.”

Frankie winked at the mother. “I forgive you. You’re wearing a beautiful snowsuit. Is that Elsa from Frozen?” She brushed her hand against the sparkly pink and blue fabric.

Olivia grabbed her mother’s leg as she peeked up at Frankie.

“I can’t get her out of it,” the mother said from behind the N90 mask that sported an Army emblem.

Olivia pointed a tiny index finger at Frankie’s shoulder-length hair. “Mommy, why she’s hair ounch?”

The mortified young mother gasped. “Olivia!”

Frankie knelt to the child’s level. “They call my hair color ginger.” She fluffed her waves. “Want to see what it feels like?”

Olivia nodded, then slid a hand across Frankie’s curls before retreating to her hiding spot behind her mother’s leg.

Quint helped Frankie stand. He laid his hand on her back and whispered in her ear, “We could have one of those.”

It was Frankie’s turn to blush; Quint’s words caused butterflies in her stomach.
Olivia and her mother moved on, allowing Frankie to say a final goodbye with a powerful hug and quick kiss, as Quint put her surgical mask back in place.

“They said they wouldn’t let you in the venue without that.” He kissed her forehead and turned her toward the security checkpoint entrance. “I’m praying for a safe trip.”

When Frankie arrived at her gate, little Olivia gave a shy wave from a row of three chairs near the jetway door. Frankie looked for a seat but found none that were unoccupied. Olivia’s mother removed her backpack from the armchair beside her and gestured for Frankie to sit.

“Headed to Denver?” the mother asked.

Frankie offered a fist bump, made popular because of the pandemic. “Yes, Denver. I’m Frankie. You?”

The woman followed her enthusiastic fist bump with another bump to the elbow, then giggled.

“Shannon. I got out of the Army when I got pregnant with Olivia. We’re meeting my husband in San Diego.” She gave an embarrassed smile. “You should have seen me convincing the airline to take our kayak. Anyway, my husband is still serving and just got back from Afghanistan. It’s his twenty-sixth birthday.”

Her excitement showed in the way she pumped her arm. “He has the month off. My mom is going to watch Olivia while we take a weekend to ourselves for a kayak camping trip.”

“Thank you for your service. And I hope you have a wonderful weekend.” Frankie looked up to see two pilots and two flight attendants approach the door beside her.

The younger flight attendant, a blond and blue-eyed beauty in her twenties, touched her pointy-toe pump to the shorter pilot’s three overstuffed bags. “Going on vacation?”

“After all this time with barely enough hours to pay my rent, sumbitches furloughed me. Had to clean out my apartment and my locker.” He glanced at the other pilot and clutched his leather satchel even closer.

Frankie touched her gurgling stomach and tried to smile at Shannon. “Should have eaten breakfast.”

Olivia shoved a package of fruit snacks toward her. Frankie graciously accepted the gift as they called for pre-boarding; the mother and daughter disappeared into the boarding bridge. While stuffing the snack into her pocket, her mind wandered to how nervous she was about this trip. That, combined with the way those two pilots looked at each other, gave her an uneasy edge.

* * *

Soon after reaching cruising altitude, the younger flight attendant handed Frankie a bag of peanuts and placed a steaming cup of coffee on her tray table. Half-way through her pseudo breakfast, Frankie struggled to keep her eyes open. She set down her cup and leaned back in her seat. Next thing she knew, she was awakened by a bump to her head.

A yellow blur swung across her vision but lost her attention when an ear-splitting boom outside her window startled her. Olivia screamed in the seat in front of her; Shannon threw her body across Olivia’s.

As the commuter plane plunged toward a snowbank somewhere over Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park, Frankie’s first thought wasn’t a prayer for mercy or even guidance if she survived.

Where’s my mask? Then she immediately regretted that in her confusion, she hadn’t thought of Quint first. Surely that counted: wondering if she should have thought of him instead of her surgical mask.

She turned her attention to the chaos around her. The older flight attendant, a forty-something woman with red-tipped fingernails, ran down the aisle, then barked instructions for the dozen passengers to brace themselves against the seat in front of them. “Shoes on, jackets zipped, feet flat on the floor,” she yelled over the intercom. “Fingers laced behind your head.”

Time slowed. Frankie squeezed her eyes shut, grimacing while she envisioned the embankment rushing toward her window. She hoped Quint was right about it being safer to sit in the back.

Her hair flew around her face. She fought to keep her arms and head against the seatback. A loud snap, then the seatbelt dug into her abdomen. Icy air stung her face. Something hit the back of her seat before she somersaulted through the air. Her arms, legs, and head flopped; warmth oozed around her thighs when her bladder emptied.

The seat bounced so hard it knocked the air out of her lungs; her arms and legs propelled up and out as it slid backward. She glimpsed blue sky as snow and ice pelted her face like thousands of needles.

Her life and the people she loved sprinted through her mind. The mother who had helped her through dyslexia and died too soon. The father who had taught her ranching and survival skills only to be murdered by a serial killer. Her dead husband and son. Her best friends Cole, Isabella, and their girls. Quint’s sweet proposal spiced by a Texas drawl.

A sudden stop snatched her breath again, and darkness overcame her.

An explosion rudely brought her back to consciousness. Her entire body shook, her teeth chattered uncontrollably, and her ears felt like someone had stuffed cotton balls into them. Her breath came in gasps. There was a weird ringing inside her head, and her heart pounded against her ribs. The seat rumbled beneath her, white surrounded her, with a red glow behind it.

Was she in heaven? Hell wasn’t white, right? Or frosty. But does a spirit shiver in heaven?

“Get out of there,” her late father’s voice boomed in her head.

“What? Dad?” The fog in her brain eased, making her aware that she sat in a puddle of ice-encrusted pee. Vapor spread in front of her as she breathed.
I’m alive. A smile twitched at one side of her mouth but disappeared as she realized she couldn’t feel her fingers. When she tried to dig the thermal gloves from her coat pocket, her arms wouldn’t move.

Snow surrounded her. I’m going to freeze to death pinned in this seat. Claustrophobia set in.

“Breathe,” she yelled while forcing herself to calm down.

Had she signed the will that gave her ranch to Cole and Isabella, as she and Quint had agreed? Had she? Why couldn’t she remember?

Tears stung her eyes when she pictured the last romp in the front yard with her German Shepherd, Lexi Princess Warrior. Would Quint adopt Lexi? Yes, he was the kindest man she’d ever met. She warned herself not to cry about not being able to marry him.

She imagined Dad commanding her to get moving. “Okay,” she croaked at the memory of him.

When she turned her head to search for an escape route, her neck muscles knotted, and a burning sensation climbed up her scalp. She burrowed against the seat back and panted through the cramp. But when she opened her eyes, she realized her head was trapped in an air bubble.

I’ll suffocate on the carbon dioxide I exhale.

The idea evaporated when water dripped to her nose. The red glow was a fire? Too close.

She bounced her head against the slush in front of her. Three times. The resulting hole was big enough for her to see flames leaping from the shattered fuselage. There was something that reminded her of charred flesh in the air, and she gagged. Her fellow passengers.

Tossing her weight from side to side, she tried to move the seat, but it didn’t budge. She thrashed until the mire released her, unclamped the seatbelt and hurried uphill, away from the scalding heat. Falling into a three-foot snowbank behind a boulder, she held her hands over her freezing ears.

I have to warm up fast. On shaky legs, she crawled out of the snow and stumbled toward the burning fuselage, glancing at a piece of metal embedded into the back of the seat she had abandoned.

Debris littered the area, amidst it someone’s black skullcap with an attached face covering. It smelled of men’s shampoo and mint candy. Her hands shook as she slid it over her head, then put on her gloves and collapsed to her knees. She’d never been so cold.

Her father would warn her to avoid hypothermia by getting dry, finding shelter, and melting snow for drinking. She stood and turned to canvass the surroundings for trees, a cave, and anything that could be put to use as building materials, food, or cooking utensils. Her phone showed no service and eighty percent battery life. She turned it off and stuffed it inside her clothing, against her skin to keep the battery warm, then continued to look around.

Scrub brush. A few stunted trees. She was above the tree line, over eleven thousand feet high. She ticked off potential problems. Hypothermia and altitude sickness, avalanches, very little plant or animal food this time of year, black bears would hibernate if they lived this high, and no grizzlies. That part was good.

As her gaze landed on a smoldering corpse that lay between two open suitcases, the peanuts and coffee roiled in her stomach.

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