Two Alone Read Online Free Page A

her forward. "Grab his boots, will ya?"
    She stared down at the dead man's boots. She couldn't do this. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this. He couldn't expect her to do something so grotesque.
    But glancing up at him and meeting those implacable gray eyes she knew that he did expect it of her and expected it of her without an argument.
    One by one they removed the bodies from the aircraft. He did most of the work; Rusty lent him a hand when he asked for it. The only way she could do it was to detach her mind from the grisly task. She’d lost her mother when she was a teenager. Two years ago her brother had died. But in both instances, she’d seen them when they were laid out in a satin-lined casket surrounded by soft lighting, organ music, and flowers. Death had seemed unreal.
    Even the bodies of her mother and brother weren't real to her, but identical replicas of the people she had loved, mannequins created in their images by the mortician. These bodies were real.
    She mechanically obeyed the terse commands this Cooper Landry issued in a voice without feeling or inflection. He must be a robot, she decided. He revealed no emotion whatsoever as he dragged the bodies to the common grave that he'd been able to dig using his knife and the small hatchet he found in a toolbox beneath the pilot's seat. He piled stones over the shallow grave when he was finished.
    "Shouldn't we say something?" Rusty stared down at the barbaric pile of colorless stones, put there to protect the bodies of the five men from scavenging animals.
    "Say something? Like what?"
    "Like a scripture. A prayer."
    He shrugged negligently as he cleaned the blade of his knife. "I don't know any scriptures. And my prayers ran out a long time ago." Turning his back on the grave, he stamped back toward the airplane.
    Rusty mouthed a hasty prayer before turning to follow him. More than anything, she feared being left alone again. If she let the man out of her sight, he might desert her.
    That was unlikely, however. At least not right away. He was reeling with fatigue and on the verge of fainting. "Why don't you lie down and rest?" she suggested. Her strength had deserted her long ago. She was running only on adrenaline now.
    "Because night’s coming on fast," he said. "We've got to remove the seats of the plane so we’ll have room to stretch out in there. Otherwise you might have to spend a night in the great outdoors for the first time in your life." He sarcastically added the last as an afterthought before reentering the airplane. Moments later, Rusty heard him cursing viciously. He came out, his brows drawn together in a fierce scowl.
    "What's the matter?"
    He held his hand up in from of her face. It was wet. "Fuel."
    "Fuel?"
    " Flammable fuel , " he said, impatient with her ignorance. "We can’t stay in there. One spark and we'll be blown to China."
    "Then don't build a fire."
    He glared at her. "Once it gets dark, you'll want a fire," he said scornfully. "Besides, all it would take is a spark from anything. One piece of metal could scrape against another and we'd be history."
    "What do we do?"
    "We take what we can and move."
    "I thought it was always best to stay with the airplane. I heard or read that once. Search parties will be looking for a downed plane. How will they find us if we leave the crash site?"
    He cocked his head arrogantly. "You want to stay? Fine, stay. I'm going. But I'd belter warn you that I don't think there's any water near here. The first thing I'm going to do in the morning is look for water."
    His know-it-all attitude was insufferable. "How do you know there's no water?"
    "No animal tracks around. I suppose you could exist on rainwater for as long as it held out , but who knows how long that will be."
    When and how had he noticed that there were no animal tracks around? She hadn't even thought to look. In fact, having no water was almost as frightening as having to cope with wild animals to get it. Search for water? How did