Someone yelled, “Brace yourselves!”
I still held both my daughter and girlfriend’s hands. I knew I might be squeezing too tightly, but could not help it, could not stop. I was scared; terrified. The fact that it felt like we’d been falling for several minutes, and continued falling, was disheartening to say the very least. With each foot we fell, we picked up speed. I wondered if my stomach would stop dropping. It didn’t. Catching my breath was difficult, except for screaming. And we continued to, what felt like plummeting towards earth.
I kept thinking about the landing gear. Did it go up when we took off? Had it been lowered as we fell? Were we pointing straight down? Would we just smash and explode on impact?
Closing my eyes and keeping them closed made the most sense. I couldn’t do it. I needed to see what was happening. I did not like not being in control. Sitting back here and not up at the controls irritated my OCD.
I turned my head to look at my daughter. Her eyes were tightly shut. Her mouth was pulled down into a frown, and then opened wide into an O. She might be screaming, but I couldn’t tell. I could not hear her over the whine of engines. I wanted to hold her, hug her. She shouldn’t die this way, should never have to live through something this catastrophic either. No one deserved it, but she didn’t deserve it the most.
Allison’s fingernails dug into the top of my hand and drew blood.
Then we smashed into the earth. The seatbelt pulled tight against my waist, and I felt the air launched from my lungs in a pained gasp. My head rocked back, slammed into the wall of the inside of the plane. Something exploded through the floor of the plane only a foot away from Sues’ corpse, protruding up like a malfunctioned missile. The plane tipped to the left, toward her. I knew what it was that stuck up from the base: part of the landing gear. Despite being bounced back and forth, I saw the wheel. It wasn’t rolling. It was, instead, wedged. Sparks like fireworks sprayed inside the plane.
We were spinning and sliding along the ground.
We hit something hard. This sent the plane spinning in the opposite direction as simultaneously rivets popped and metal tore as the left part of the hull ripped open and peeled away from the plane. Everything and anything loose was sucked toward and out the opening.
We continued to spin, shake and bounce. I saw something like welding sparks split the nighttime darkness, and realized I was looking at the wing tumble and roll away. This felt surreal and seemed to unroll in slow motion. All I could think was, did I just see the wing severed from the body.
Thankfully, seatbelts held us securely in place.
I didn’t think we’d explode since we didn’t have fuel. This did little to calm the fear and flooding emotions.
Then…it was over.
We’d come to a grinding stop. My ears rang. The sound of metal on, what I believed to be asphalt reverberated between my ears. I thought I might be deaf, and that the screeching might never subside, but we’d lived through a plane crash. Only thing I could think, ironically enough was, “Add that to my bucket list.”
# # #
Despite wanting to sit still, eyes closed and take deep breaths until my heartbeat slowed to normal, I unfastened my seatbelt and dropped to my knees in front of my daughter. “Charlene,” I said.
She did not move. Eyes closed. My heart almost stopped. “Char?”
I put my hands on her shoulders, and gently shook her.
Her head lolled from side to side. “Honey?”
“Chase?” Allison winced. Her hands fumbled with her seatbelt. She seemed unable to unfasten it. I saw the blood on the part of the plane behind her head. She must have smacked her skull good.
“Daddy,” Charlene said.
I unfastened her belt, leaning forward to hug my daughter. “Scared me, honey. God, you scared me.”
She was crying, her fingers curling into fists in my hair.
Allison managed to get free of her belt, stood, and fell forward.
“Alley,” I said, and had to reluctantly pull away from my daughter. I knelt beside Allison. “Hey, Alley?”
Her eyes were open. “I got dizzy.”
Had to be a concussion. I wasn’t sure how to verify it. Too dark inside the plane to check her eyes, wasn’t sure what I’d look for even if there had been better lighting.
Dave.
I looked to my right. Dave was just getting out of his seat. He looked as battered and beaten up as I felt. “Hey, buddy, you okay?”
Dave shrugged. “I guess. How are you guys? Allison?”
“A little woozy,” she said, and laughed.
Charlene stood up, stretched out her legs. “Should I check on our pilots?”
“I’ll do that. You stay with your dad.” Dave walked past us, not with steady legs. His knees wobbled and he held his arms out for balance. He may have hit his head as well. Two concussions. Fucking wonderful.
Charlene knelt on the opposite side of Allison. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know, honey,” I said. I figured we were someplace in Pennsylvania. I don’t think we made it to the Pittsburgh Airport. If we did, we’d just done a job to the tarmac.
“Ah, Chase?” Dave leaned into our area of the plane and waved me over. Couldn’t be good. Being cryptic wasn’t going to hide anything from Allison and Charlene, either. One or both of the pilots were dead. I knew it without going to look in on them, and they knew it. I stood up and walked toward the cockpit.
“What have we got?” I said.
He shook his head. “It’s not good.”
I walked past him and peeked into the cockpit, and nearly shrank back a step. A shiver slid down my back as if a skeleton’s icy finger had traced my spine.
I did not expect to see so much blood.
“Don’t worry about me, not me. Check on her.” Palmeri sucked in a deep breath and winced.
I reached around as best I could and placed my fingers on Erway’s neck, feeling for a pulse. I pressed my fingers hard against clammy skin, blood soaked skin. “I’m not getting anything,” I said. I didn’t remove my hand. I moved to a different location, tilted my head to the side and closed my eyes, like that might help me feel for the pulse better. It didn’t, I still could not find one.
The front windshield was smashed out. Debris littered the cockpit. Her head was not split. The wound had to be somewhere else on her body and I couldn’t see it. It didn’t matter. She was dead.
“She’s gone,” I said. “Let’s get you out of that seat.”
Palmeri nodded, lips pursed. She looked down. “Don’t think that’s going to be easy.”
What looked like a metal shaft protruded out of her thigh. “Ah shit.”
I’d said that out loud. Hadn’t meant to.
“Exactly,” she said. She offered something to me. A pocket flashlight. I took it and saw her tears and her lip quivered. She seemed to be fighting the urge to cry. I wasn’t sure why. If there was ever a time to ball, this was it. This was definitely it.
“I’ll be right back.”
Dave stood with his back to the wall between the cockpit and the area where Allison and Charlene were. “Erway’s dead,” I said. “And Palmeri, she’s pinned with a shaft through her thigh. Thick shaft. Only way to get her out is to lift her directly off the shaft, straight up. Cockpit’s cramped as fuck. Don’t think that’s going to work. And, if we do, good chance something inside is severed and then she’ll bleed out fast, know what I’m saying?”
Dave looked thoughtful for a moment. “Maybe under the plane we’ll get a better view. If we can free the shaft, then she just keeps it in her leg until we find a safe way to remove it?”