With an effort that almost tore his arms from their sockets, Billy unsnapped his belt. Instantly he was pushed over the top of his seat, almost into Niles's lap; he clutched at the seat in front of him, trying to pull himself toward the flight deck.
Wayne leveled the Challenger off and then threw it into a dive again. Billy was tossed like a cork inside the cabin; he rolled head over heels, trying to grab anything to steady himself. His chin cracked against a table; dazed, he tumbled forward. His left shoulder smashed into something, and white-hot pain filled him. Then he gripped the plastic curtain around Krepsin's seat; it ripped down, and through the haze of pain Billy saw feral fear stitched across Augustus Krepsin's pallid face.
At less than five hundred feet, Wayne wrenched back on the control column. The Challenger shuddered and leveled off; the altimeter read four-nine-two. He was aware of strange shapes on the landscape before him, bathed in amber moonlight; he pulled the throttles back, cutting airspeed. Something huge and dark and jagged passed to the right, barely fifty yards away.
Billy was at the flight deck, and Wayne looked over his shoulder with a half-snarl, half-grin.
And then Billy saw it; it loomed up, filling the windshield. Moonlight glinted off wind-etched rock. Wayne twisted around, and instinctively tried to lift the jet over the mountain peak they were almost upon. The Challenger shuddered, caught by an updraft. Then there was a banshee scream of ripping metal as the right wingtip was clipped by rock. The violent motion of collision threw Billy against a bulkhead; he heard bone snap, and then he was on his knees watching blood drip from his nostrils.
The underside of the fuselage scraped rock, splitting open like a sardine can; sparks and fire rippled along the seam, being sucked upward into the starboard jet engine. It exploded, first crumpling the starboard fuselage wall and then bursting through with the scream and whine of popping rivets. Red-hot daggers of metal impaled Niles from behind, going through him and into the seat Billy had left. A flying sheet of metal, rippling with flame, took off the top of Niles's head and splattered Dorn with brains.
Warning buzzers went off all over the instrument panel. The rear of the plane was on fire, the starboard engine gone, the starboard wingtip and ailerons mangled. The rudder wouldn't respond. Wayne saw the airspeed falling. They were going down, toward a wide flat plain rimmed with mountains. Fuses were burning, the cockpit filling with acrid smoke. The ground was coming up fast, a blur of amber-colored earth strewn with sparse vegetation.
Wayne had time only to cut the remaining engine's power. The jet hit, and bounced. Hit again. Dust boiled up, obscuring his vision. He was thrown forward and then backward, the belt almost squeezing him in two, and he lost his grip on the yoke. The jet ground forward on a sizzling sheet of sparks. It split in half, lost its wings, spun, and careened onward over a rough runway of pebbled desert. Wayne's head rocked forward, slarnming into the yoke. The skeletal remains of the jet slid on a hundred more yards, then lay still.
Billy stirred from the floor of the flight deck, where he'd been pinned against the back of the pilot's seat. He saw that the cabin was a mangled mass of burning cables and furniture. Where the jet had cracked in half he could see out across the desert plain—for over three hundred yards there was a litter of burning debris and a trail of flaming jet fuel. The rear section had been ripped away. Through a haze of eye-stinging smoke, Billy saw that Krepsin's seat had been torn away, too. The man was gone.
He tried to stand. There was no feeling in his left arm; looking at it, he saw white bone gleaming at the severe break of his left wrist. A wave of pain and nausea passed over him, and cold sweat broke out on his face. Wayne moaned softly and began sobbing. In the remains of the passenger cabin, the carpet and seats were on fire. The plastic curtain that had hung around Krepsin's seat was melting. Billy forced himself up, cradling his injured arm against his chest. He grasped Wayne's shoulder and eased the boy back; Wayne's head lolled. There was a purple lump over his right eye, and the eye itself was swelling shut.
Moving as if in agonized slow motion, Billy unstrapped Wayne's seatbelt and managed to haul him from the seat. "Wake up, wake up," he kept saying as he dragged Wayne out through the burning cabin with his good arm. With the last of his ebbing strength, Billy half carried, half dragged Wayne as far as he could before his legs gave out. He fell to the ground, smelling his own burned flesh and hair Then the long, terrible pain racked him and he curled up like a fetus against the oncoming darkness.
62
He knew he was moving. Hurtling rapidly through darkness. He was in a tunnel, he thought, and soon he'd reach the far end. He wasn't hurting anymore. He was afraid, but he felt fine.
In the distance there was a sudden glint of bright, hazy golden light. As if a door were slowly being opened.
For him, he realized. For him.
It was the most beautiful light he'd ever seen. It was all the sunrises and sunsets he'd ever witnessed, all the golden sunny summer days of his childhood, all the colors of sunlight streaming through the multicolored leaves of an autumn forest. He'd soon reach that light, if he hurried; he desperately wanted to get there, to feel that warmth on his body, to bask in it and just let everything go. He was able to turn his head—or he thought he turned his head, but he wasn't sure—and looked back along the tunnel at what he was leaving behind. There was something back there on fire.
The door was opening wider, flooding the tunnel with that wonderful glow. He had to reach it, he knew, before it closed again. His forward progress seemed to be slowing . . . slowing .. .
The door was wide open, the light so bright it stung his eyes. Beyond the doorway was a suggestion of blazing blue sky, green fields, and hills and forest stretching on as far as he could see. There were wonders over there, a beautiful place of peace and rest. There would be new paths to explore, new secret places, new journeys to be made. Joy surged through him, and he stretched out his arm to reach the opening.
A figure stepped into the threshold. A woman, with long russet hair that flowed over her shoulders. He knew instantly who it was, and she looked at him with an expression of sadness and compassion.
"No," she said softly. "You can't give it up yet. It's too soon." And the door began closing.
"Please!" Billy said. "Help me . . . let me stay!"
"Not yet," she replied.
He shouted, "No!" but he was already falling away from it, falling faster and faster as the door closed and the light faded. He sobbed and fought as he tumbled along the tunnel, returning to the place where pain waited to grip into him again. Memory ripped through him: Wayne at the controls, Krepsin screaming, the jet skidding along the ground while flames chewed at the cabin, a shriek of metal as the wings tore away, the final violent thrashing of the fuselage. ...
He moaned and opened his eyes. Two dark forms that had been poised near his head spread their wings, making startled cries as they flew away. They circled overhead in the graying sky, then dropped down onto something about a hundred yards away.
I'm not dead, Billy thought. But the memory of the golden light and the beautiful landscape almost cracked his heart; his mother had been there, waiting for him, but had turned him away instead. Why? Because his Mystery Walk wasn't yet finished?
He braced himself with his right arm and tried to sit up. Pain pounded through his head, broken bones grinding in his jaw where his head had struck the table. Then he had forced himself into a sitting position, and he looked across the desert.