Free The Possibilities - Desire - A Collection of Short Stories by Stormy Adams

efforts of the day, their
lovemaking, and the residual trauma of the crash.  She fought to stay
awake, but her eyes closed anyway and she fell asleep in the warm safety of
Brian’s arms.
    On the fourth day they were packing
the duffel bag with the things they would need on their trek through the
swamp.  Brian had estimated their position as best he could on the map,
and had decided to head eastward.  There was a park service road marked
there that was the closest to their estimated position.  There had been
absolutely no air traffic over their area in four days.  It was more than
evident that the small crafts transponder had been damaged.
    Brian had done his best with the
waterproof bag, lining it with plastic he pieced together with a half roll of
duct tape he had scavenged from the aircraft and then filling it with the sweet
spring water.  They stumbled and waded through dense thorny thickets, and
at one point they hit solid ground that was covered with kudzu. Brian said that
the kudzu was a good sign that they were approaching civilization.  He
explained that all Kudzu originated from five plants that were imported to New
Orleans by a botanist who intended it for use in stopping soil erosion. 
The stuff grew like wildfire and now stretched across the southeastern
U.S.  It was a nightmare to walk through.

 
    NO
CONTACT
     
    Towards the end of their second day
of walking that they heard the engine of a small plane puttering above and to
the east of them.  Excitedly, Brian removed the flare gun and one of the
five flares from the waterproof case and fired it into the air.  They waited
breathlessly for the plane to circle back around to them, but it never came.
    “Did you see that flare Jake?” Don
Williams asked his buddy. They were flying a section of power line, checking to
see if the Kudzu abatement crew needed to come out.  The crap grew so fast
that they had to fly the line at least once a month.  Once it started on a
tower, kudzu could destroy the huge power transmission towers in literally no
time at all.
    “No,” Jake said, ‘but you’d better
mark the GPS location, we’re running on fumes.  When you’ve entered it in
the flight log, get on the horn and see if you can find out if they’re looking
for anyone out here.  If nobody else is interested, we’ll come back and
check it ourselves.”  Don did as he was told.
    “I can’t believe they didn’t see that,”
Pat moaned miserably.
    “Where there’s one plane, there’ll
be another,” Brian said affably.  “Why don’t we settle here for the
night?  I saw some squirrel’s nests a little ways back and I can make us a
pretty good supper…you look bushed.”  Tiredly, Pat agreed and sat down
where she stood. Within an hour, Brian was back and cooking the squirrels in
the ragged pieces of tinfoil.
    He looked up at the sky in mid-bite,
dropping his squirrel and racing to the flare gun.  Fumbling the case
open, he loaded a flare and fired it into the air before Pat even heard the
sound of the helicopter.   Within minutes, the Sheriff’s Department
helicopter was on the ground, and they were saved.
    Pat was crying as she watched Brian
get in the patrol car for his ride to the airport. Their goodbyes were said,
and they had exchanged phone numbers and addresses, though they both knew the
information would never be used. She turned and walked back into the motel Paul
had booked for her…he and the boys were ecstatic that she had been found, and
they were on their way up from Jacksonville, where they had been waiting
anxiously for word of her since the day of her disappearance.  Her heart
was filled with gratitude and love for the special man in the funny green hat
and what they had shared together in the depths of the Okefenokee, but her life
was in front of her, and she would very soon be reunited with the man she truly
loved and the two small boys that were the most important things in her life.
She wadded up the paper with