Free Scott Free by John Gilstrap Page B

airplane falls through the canopy, it would have to leave a hell of a mark, wouldn’t it? Broken branches and shattered wood. It’d have to do at least that much damage, right? Up above, from an angle that was invisible to him, there had to be a clear sign of damage that would draw the rescuers’ eyes to his location. That was his ray of hope.
    The snow.
    His stomach knotted even tighter as he lifted his face again, craning his neck to watch the gray specks against the gray sky. It hadn’t let up a bit all night. Whatever damage might have been visible on a clear sunny day was now completely obscured by an even blanket of white. Nobody would be able to see a thing.
    So, what was he supposed to do? Just wait? What was the point of that? Wait for what?
    For rescue. It’s what everyone who’d ever written or spoken a word about being lost in the woods had said: You stay put and wait for the rescuers.
    Who couldn’t see you.
    In the snow.
    When you were freezing to death. And hungry.
    Yes, that’s what everybody said. He remembered Sven telling the class how important it was to decide ahead of time what your response to an emergency was going to be, so that when it finally happened, you’d be prepared to respond. Commit yourself to doing the sensible thing, he had said. And never back away from that commitment, no matter how tempting the alternatives might be. For all Scott knew, a whole battalion of rescuers was just minutes away.
    But what if they weren’t?
    For the first time since last night, Scott felt the claws of real fear kneading his insides. Would he freeze before he starved, or vice versa? And after he was dead, was there even a remote chance that someone might find his body and give it a decent burial?
    He wondered what it would feel like in that last moment. Did you really understand that you were dying, or did it sort of sneak up on you and sucker punch you into the Great Beyond? Would he go to heaven, or had all that cussing and talking back and jerking off sentenced him to hell instead?
    “All right, stop it!” he commanded aloud. “Just stop it.” He gave his head a hard shake and punched himself in the chest. Sven had warned the class about panic. It was the first session, as Scott recalled, and the grizzled Scandinavian was addressing the psychology of the stranded victim. And Scott had taken notes.
    “You are scared,” he’d said, through whatever accent that was. “You are all alone in a strange environment, and you are scared to death. What is going to happen? Will you survive? If you don’t, what will it feel like to die? Will it hurt? Will you know when that last minute arrives?” As he’d asked these questions, he’d paced slowly around the room, making eye contact with each of the dozen or so students, of which Scott had been the youngest by at least five years. Sven had zeroed in on the boy, his piercing eyes blasting all the way through to the back of his head.
    “Well, it’s natural to be scared,” he went on, as if addressing Scott individually. “It’s good to be scared. Healthy, even, because fear makes us all more aware. It sharpens our senses and makes us better survivors. But…”
    Sven paused here and leaned in very close to Scott and he’d lowered his voice nearly to a whisper.
    “But panic kills. This is when the fear switches from its rightful place in your gut and spreads like a cancer to your brain. Panic comes when fear is all that’s left in here.” He’d poked Scott in the chest…
    “And here.”…another poke, between his eyes. “You worry only about death—not how to live, mind you, but about when you’ll die. You visualize death, and when you do, you give up on life. That, young man, is the moment when your fate is sealed.”
    Jesus Christ, it’s like he’d had a crystal ball tuned to Scott’s future. How had he known so precisely? Scott trembled from the chill these memories triggered. As creepy as Sven had seemed, he clearly knew his stuff.