Stranded AF (The AF Series Book 1) Read online

Tanner grabbed the straps of all three bags with his uninjured hand, standing beside his dad, both stoically awaiting our fate. Livvie clutched Tanner’s shirt in one hand and a stuffed dog that still had a tag on it in the other.

  I looked back at the dogs, and I remembered the keys to their cage locks that were hanging around my neck. I clutched it in my fist and went back to unlock their cages.

  “What are you doing?” Scotty hissed at me as he grabbed me and shoved me toward the doorway. I’d managed to unlock both cage doors, and they hung open, but only barely. The dogs whimpered in fear. They were terrified. And so was I.

  “I have to save the dogs,” I explained, barely able to breathe, my heart raced so fast. “I’m not leaving without the dogs!”

  “Oh yes you are,” he growled as he forced the plane door open. Water flooded the small compartment, immediately rising to lap around my shoes, and he pushed me closer to the door. He shoved the two packages out the door, and they inflated right in front of us, almost immediately. Life rafts. Two of them.

  He motioned for Tanner to go first into the life raft. Tanner jumped into the middle of it, the inner liner sagging under his weight. Scotty picked Livvie up and tossed her into the raft. Tanner caught Livvie against him and helped her to sit up. He wiped the blood from her forehead with the tail of his shirt. Then Scotty tossed their luggage, which was essentially a few duffel bags, which the boy deflected with his good arm. They landed next to him on the bottom of the raft. Scotty followed those with the first aid kit and bottles of water from a case on the floor.

  “In,” he commanded me.

  “No!” I cried as I turned back toward the dogs. He grabbed me and shoved me so that I fell into the second life raft and started to drift away from the plane. “No!” I screamed again. I leaned over the edge and paddled to get back.

  He turned and opened the doors of the animal cages all the way. The dogs huddled at the backs of the cages and refused to come toward him.

  “I can get them!” I tried to explain. I paddled furiously. “They’ll come to me. You just have to let me back in there.”

  I could see them in the cages, pressed against the back, as they lifted their heads to breathe over the rising water.

  “Please, Scotty! They’re going to die,” I cried.

  The plane tilted as it filled with water. Scotty disappeared for a moment, and then he reappeared. He gave the raft a shove as he jumped on it with me. The kids and I watched helplessly as the plane filled with water.

  I made a move to jump off the life raft, but he held me back, his arm tight around my chest, his front pressed to my back. The plane gurgled as it settled deeper in the water. “Don’t,” he said. “You’re going to get us all killed.”

  I watched as the plane disappeared below the surface of the water. A sob escaped my throat.

  “It’s too late,” he said quietly.

  It was only then that I realized his arm was bleeding. “What happened to you?”

  “I thought maybe I could set them free. I reached in to try to grab them. They didn’t appreciate it.” He had several wounds up and down his arm, and what might have been a big puncture wound that was probably a bite mark on the center of his hand. He leaned over the side of the raft to wash his arm, hissing when the saltwater hit the abrasions.

  “They were terrified.” I tried to explain their behavior, although there was no need.

  “Yeah, well, so was I,” he replied as he splashed off the blood.

  The plane disappeared beneath the waves, and grief hit me like a freight train. I’d raised Spot and Annie from the time they were pups. I’d bottle-fed them. I’d cared for them. And now they were drowning. And there was nothing I could do to stop it.

  Suddenly, I heard a splash next to the raft, and I saw Annie’s head breach the surface of the water. She looked around, dazed, as she paddled there in the middle of the ocean. Then bubbles broke the surface next to her and Spot joined her. They swam in circles, as I hopped up onto my knees and reached over the side of the raft.

  “If they get their claws in the raft, they’re going to bust it,” Scotty called out in warning.

  That was a chance I would have to take. I reached into the water and grabbed Annie by the scruff of her neck, but she was too heavy for me to pull into the raft alone. “Can you help me, Scotty?”

  I grabbed her scruff again and pulled, while he hoisted her rear end. Then he grabbed Spot all by himself, and the regal dog, who didn’t look so regal at that moment, allowed himself to be pulled onto the raft. Both dogs froze as they stared at him, their hair stuck to them as their chests heaved. They shook their heads to get the water out of their eyes and ears.

  Scotty shrugged out of his shirt and leaned over the edge of the raft, tossing one end of the shirt toward the other raft. Tanner caught it and pulled us closer. When the rafts touched, Scotty scrambled from one raft to the other, leaving me with the dogs. We were mere feet apart. Scotty tied the two rafts together with a loose bit of nylon rope that was attached to the raft.

  “Jesus Christ,” I heard him swear. He swiped a hand down his face. He motioned toward me. “Come over here.”

  I shook my head. “They wouldn’t hurt me,” I explained.

  “They might not hurt you on purpose,” he replied. He held up his hand to show me. He turned to his kids. “Are you guys okay?”

  Tanner said nothing while Livvie sobbed quietly. Tanner clutched his useless arm to his side as Scotty looked over her forehead wound. It had already stopped bleeding. Scotty reached out to palm the top of her head.

  “What’s wrong with your arm, Tanner?” Scotty asked.

  “I don’t know,” the boy groaned. “But it really hurts.”

  “I think maybe his shoulder got dislocated,” I said.

  “How do we fix it?”

  “We could try to pop it back in.”

  “Do you know how to do that?”

  “Not really.” I’d seen Claire do it on Outlander. But I’d never been up close and personal with anyone who had a dislocated shoulder.

  I crossed over to the other raft, and it rocked under the added weight. I reached for his arm and Tanner hissed out a breath.

  “It won’t stop hurting until we fix it,” I explained.

  He went completely still and squeezed his eyes shut, as Scotty grabbed the arm and started to move it around.

  “I’m going to throw up,” Tanner warned.

  “Go ahead,” Scotty said softly.

  Then I heard a pop and Tanner released a long sigh.

  “Try not to move it,” Scotty told him. He unzipped one of the duffel bags and took out a small tank top that had to be Livvie’s and quickly made a sling to keep Tanner’s arm as immobile as possible.

  While he did that, I searched through the first aid kit, found an adhesive bandage and antiseptic wipes, and I cleaned and covered the small cut on Livvie’s forehead.

  “Is she okay?” Scotty asked quietly.

  “As okay as any of us,” I tossed back.

  Livvie started to cry again. He palmed the top of her head. “Shh,” he crooned. “It’s okay. We’re safe. We just lost the plane is all.”

  I dug around in the first aid kit until I found some more antiseptic wipes. “Let me see your arm,” I said.

  He shook his head. “It’s just some scratches.”

  “And a bite. No matter how clean an animal is, its mouth is filled with bacteria. If you don’t let me clean that bite, it could get infected.” I stared at him until he held out his hand. I cleaned the wound as thoroughly as I could, and I washed his scratches with more wipes.

  “I lost my new stuffed dog,” Livvie said with a whimper.

  Tanner put his good arm around her and said, “We’ll get you a new one.”

  Even with a dislocated shoulder, a busted forehead, and a sunken plane, I’d never been so relieved in my life as I was at that moment. His kids had survived. The dogs had survived. We had survived a plane crash. We had survived a plummet into the ocean from thousands of feet in the air.

  Scotty flopped back against the side of the raft with a curse and stared up at the blue sky as I transferred back to the other life raft. He said a few choice words to himself, muttering about things I couldn’t understand.

  Then he sat up, looked at me, looked at the dogs, took in the miles and miles of water that surrounded us, and said, “Well, ain’t this some shit?” His eyes searched the horizon. Nothing but water could be seen in any direction. Ocean, more ocean, and even more ocean.

  “What are we going to do, Dad?” Tanner asked, his voice surprisingly calm.

  “We wait for rescue,” Scotty said.

  “Someone will come?” Livvie asked, her voice as quiet as a whisper.

  “Of course, they will.” He nodded. “They know we went down.”

  “Do they?” I asked.

  He nodded again. “I told them.”

  “Did they acknowledge it?” I stared at him, watching his face for clues, but I saw none.

  He finally shook his head. It was a subtle movement and I felt like it was meant only for me.

  “My cell phone doesn’t work out here,” Tanner said as he pulled his phone from his pocket and started tapping. I reached for mine, but at the last minute I remembered that it had been in my hand when we’d hit the water and had gone down with the plane. Scotty had his in his pocket, but he’d sat in a puddle of water, and it had gotten wet. It was dead.

  “There aren’t a lot of cell towers out here in the middle of the ocean, Tanner,” Scotty said.

  “Oh,” the boy said, his face falling.

  “Maybe when we get closer to land. Turn it off for now so you can save the battery, just in case.”

  “Do you have any idea where we are?” I aske
d.

  “I know where we went down. Where we’ll end up is a completely different story. It depends on the currents, the wind, the weather, and how much the universe likes us at the moment.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “How’s your karma?”

  My karma was shit, apparently.

  Spot and Annie sat huddled in the corner of the raft. Spot appraised the little family in the other raft with shrewd eyes, and Annie licked the water from her paws.

  “It’s hot,” Livvie said quietly as she rubbed her arms, which were already turning pink. I grabbed my backpack and opened it to retrieve a bottle of sunscreen. I made a tossing motion at Scotty, who lifted his hands. I tossed it over to him, and he gave it a shake and poured some into his hands. He started to slather it onto Livvie’s arms and face, and then he did Tanner’s, and then his own.

  “We should put up the canopies,” Scotty said, and he reached into a hidden pocket in the side of his raft and retrieved a small canvas bag. I watched his movements and rooted around until I found the same compartment in my life raft. “They double as water collection units when it rains,” he explained, as he started to spread out the cloth.

  “Aren’t life rafts supposed to have emergency beacons?” I asked him.

  “The ones that should have been on the plane do. These, however, do not.”

  “How do you know?”

  “These are too old.”

  “How old are they?”

  He looked at the raft with an appraising eye. “I’d guess World War II. Maybe Vietnam.”

  “You’re joking.”

  He shook his head. “I wish I were. They’re not new. The new ones are yellow, so they’re easier to be seen. And they do have emergency beacons.”

  The little canopy covered half the raft, and the dogs settled in the shade.

  “So, what do we do now?” Tanner asked.

  “Now we wait,” Scotty said.

  I stared out over the water, looking for a glimpse of anything at all. But there was nothing out there. Nothing we could use to save ourselves, anyway.

  6

  SCOTTY

  Frankie’s eyes have glazed over a little as her voice trails off and she stares into the distance. I bump her knee with mine under the table, and she jerks her gaze back to the assembled crowd. They’re either scribbling intently or staring at us.

  “You had food and water?” someone asks.

  Frankie snorts and swipes a hand down her face. “If you call some snack bars, chips, and a couple of old tin cans food, then yes, we had food.”

  “We had a little water,” I tell them. “We had some bottles of water and also there were a few ration packs of water in the life rafts.”

  “Well, in one of them,” Frankie corrects. “The other one didn’t have any.”

  “One of the rafts had a bunch of empty packets where useful items should have been.”

  The representative from the charter company clears her throat, and Frankie closes her mouth.

  “We did find a survival knife on one of the rafts. We used that often,” I add.

  “We had enough water for, what?” Frankie says. She looks at me. “For about three days, right?”

  I nod. “We ran out on day three.”

  “What did you do then?” someone asks.

  I reach for Frankie’s hand. “We prayed for rain.”

  “I’m not sure I’m going to be able to forgive you for this, Frankie,” I admitted softly so that only she could hear me. Our rafts were tied together, and we were inches apart.

  “That’s okay,” she replied softly. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to forgive myself, either.” She looked into my eyes. “I would never do anything to hurt you or your kids, Scotty,” she said. “I really wouldn’t.”

  “You should have been honest with me.”

  “I know, but…I needed a pilot.” She shrugged helplessly. “You were the only one I knew.”

  “How did you set it all up?”

  “Someone who works for the step-monster contacted me. He sent me pictures of the dogs. She only wanted them to keep me from having them. Once she got them, she kept them in cages.” She gestured toward their huge bodies covered in matted fur. “Look at them. They’ve never looked like this. They were like children to my father. Like siblings to me.”

  “So, someone contacted you.”

  She nodded. “He sent me pictures and proof of how they were being neglected. He even sent me a video of someone shocking them with an electric prod to get them to move around their cages. They were being abused.” Her voice became even quieter but no less passionate. “I had to help them, so I made arrangements with the person who sent the videos to get them out of there. All I had to do was rent the plane, and he took care of getting them out. But they couldn’t offer me a pilot. That’s why I came to you. It wasn’t supposed to happen the way it did, and I’m so damn sorry.”

  There wasn’t anything we could do to change it now.

  I looked up at the sky, which was clear, just like it had been ever since we’d launched the life rafts. Every now and then a small puffy white cloud would move across the blue sky, but the days were hot, sweaty, and dry. It wasn’t until Livvie stopped sweating that I knew we were in real trouble.

  “My head hurts,” Livvie muttered from where she lay in the back corner of the raft, under the canopy in the shade.

  “Here,” Frankie said. She held out a small cup and gestured toward Livvie. “Give her this.”

  In my raft, there had been a water desalinization kit. It was essentially a little tent that floated next to our raft, processed seawater through condensation and removed the salt, which made very small amounts of drinkable water. It was a slow process and didn’t make much potable water, certainly not enough to keep four people and two dogs alive. That was what she gave the dogs to keep them alive the first two days. When we ran out of bottled water, we’d started drinking it too. The dogs were as listless as we were by that point, so we knew what they were getting wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough for any of us.

  I pulled the rope to draw our rafts closer together, and I took the cup from her. “Thanks,” I muttered. I lifted it to Livvie’s chapped and broken lips, and she drank it all in one swallow. I handed the cup back to Frankie. She took it and set it back up under the plastic sheet on the desalinization kit. It would be hours before there was enough drinkable water again.

  I reached over and shook Tanner’s foot. He jerked awake and looked at me, his eyes rimmed in red. “You okay, buddy?”

  He nodded feebly and closed his eyes again.

  Frankie looked around, searching the horizon. “The air feels different today,” she said. “Do you think it’s going to rain?”

  “Not a cloud in the sky,” I reminded her.

  “Has Livvie had to pee today?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Not since yesterday.”

  “Tanner?”

  I shook my head again. “No.”

  She drew in a deep breath and blew it back out.

  “What about you?” I asked her.

  “No.”

  “Me either,” I muttered.

  Our rafts came together and bumped gently, putting us side by side again.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked me, her voice low.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. And I didn’t. “All I know is my kids are dying because there’s not enough water, and I can’t save them. They’re not usually with me, you know?”

  Her brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “They live with Gloria most of the time.” It hurt me to say it, but it was true.

  Their mother had made it so difficult to see them that I had pretty much given up. I’d sent my checks and saw them when she allowed it, but that wasn’t very often. “I had them for all of three weeks last year. A week in the spring, a week in the summer, and a week in the fall.”

  “Is that how you wanted it?” Frankie asked, her voice not much more than a whisper.

  “God, no. I want to be with them all the time. But I let her win. I shouldn’t have done that. And now…” I looked toward my kids’ sleeping faces. “Now they’re both in danger.”

  Frankie didn’t say anything. She just stared at me.

  “I took their mother back to court so I could get partial custody. That’s the only reason they’re with me now. The judge said I could have them for the summer.” I scratched my head. “Some summer, huh?” I let out a mirthless chuckle. “I was going to take them to some water parks.” I tried to laugh, but it came out more like a choking sound. I looked over to where the dogs lay huddled at the back of her raft. “How are the dogs?”