Ruby Tuesday

by Hayley Lawrence

  Erik hoists himself in, shutting the door behind him.

  ‘How far are we from the airport?’ I say.

  ‘Not far.’ He squints up at the sky, assessing it.

  ‘Don’t do anything if it’s not safe.’

  He pulls out his phone. ‘Just checking the aviation forecast.’

  He holds his phone up, angles it this way and that. Looks at me. ‘You got reception?’

  I pull my phone out. SOS only, it reads. I show him.

  Think of my fire plan – Mum.

  ‘Can we get out?’ My voice is shaky and quiet.

  ‘We need to try.’

  ‘Is it . . .’

  ‘It’s safer than staying. Grandad knew I was taking you up. He’ll check the flight plan.’

  If he can get to the airport. How big is the fire? In these winds it will spread rapidly. Where did it start? Is Mum safe? Is anyone?

  Erik glances at the sky again. Looks across at me. ‘Okay, strap in.’

  He pulls on his headset, and I do the same. He turns the ignition.

  ‘Henry Ford said, when everything seems to be against you . . . ’ He’s quoting Grandad.

  ‘Remember the airplane takes off against the wind,’ I finish.

  ‘Ready?’

  I give him the thumbs up, a grimace of a smile.

  The propeller sputters a few times before kicking to life in a round blur. The Bluebird buzzes beneath us, eager to fly. Erik bumps forward and, as the wingtip draws a line over the edge of the cliff, I watch Rawson Falls disappear.

  Erik turns the Bluebird around, pointing her nose into the gusting wind. The windsock is stretched out into one long cylinder. He guns the engine. It roars.

  In seconds, we’re tipping back, airborne. Into the red mist of the sky.

  We fly through the thick, smoky air and when I look up, there’s a dark, curling mass to my right. Erik’s focus is between his instruments and the skyline. The altimeter needle is climbing as we leave the clearing behind.

  ‘Visibility’s poor,’ he says.

  I feel the clunk as the wheels retract in.

  ‘Come on,’ Erik breathes.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I need vision.’

  Erik climbs higher, but we’re almost blind in the smoke, thick as fog, so he descends again. The altimeter needle is stuck on five hundred feet, and the mountain tops are swallowed by smoke.

  ‘Shit,’ he says.

  We’re flying through a valley. Mountains either side. Smoke clogging the air. I can’t get the thought out of my mind that planes and mountains are not a good combination even in clear weather.

  Erik looks out his window. ‘We’ll see if the smoke clears ahead. If I can just get around these mountains, we can track south.’

  But I watch the altimeter needle slowly fall – 500 to 450, 450 to 400.

  ‘It’s getting worse,’ he says. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Can you punch through the smoke?’

  ‘And hit a mountain?’ He looks at me like I’m mad. ‘Ruby, I’m not qualified to fly using just my instruments.’

  ‘Should we head back?’ I say.

  He shakes his head. ‘We’re passed PNR.’

  ‘P and what?’

  ‘Point of No Return.’ He looks across at me for a second.

  My heart starts thumping in my chest. It’s a feeling I’m so familiar with, it no longer alarms me. It means danger. And getting out of it.

  ‘Tell me what to do,’ I say, levelling my voice. ‘Give me a job.’

  Erik gives a short laugh. ‘Unbelievable.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m gonna have to do a PSL.’

  ‘I don’t know what that means.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘You need to tell me what that means.’

  ‘Precautionary Search and Landing.’ Erik’s breathing fast, eyes darting across the cockpit instruments. ‘For an emergency landing. The mountains are close. It’s too dangerous.’

  ‘What?’ The shock of those words.

  ‘We’re gonna glide down, all right?’

  ‘Glide?’ I look out my window at the smoke enveloping us. The sky is bleeding, red fingers streaking through the smoke. I remember gliding paper planes as a kid. Every one I made nose-dived. ‘We can’t go down in this.’

  Erik’s glancing from the instrument panel to the horizon, over and over.

  ‘Erik,’ I say, loudly into the headset mic.

  He’s checking lights on the panel, pressing buttons, touching instruments, muttering to himself. ‘Fuel, oil, flaps, undercarriage . . .’

  He’s not hearing me.

  ‘Erik!’ His head snaps in my direction. ‘Talk to me. Give me a job. Tell me what I can do.’

  ‘All right. Uh, just keep her wings level, nose up. I need to find a place to land. Hopefully not in the middle of a damn fire.’

  The blanket of forest beneath us is thick, but at least not alight.

  ‘Wings level, nose up,’ I repeat, watching the artificial horizon tilt like a seesaw one way, then another.

  I pretend we’re not catapulting down to earth in an aluminium capsule from hundreds of feet in the air. Try to forget that I’m a co-pilot who doesn’t know a damn thing about flying.

  All I know is falling.

  The rush of it comes back to me. That feeling of jerking awake as I hit the ground. But this is vastly different to those dreams. Both calmer and more terrifyingly real.

  Work with what you’ve got, I tell myself. That’s what Mum’s done half her life. Kick the shit out of Plan B.

  Erik’s face is red and sweat is beading on his forehead. He mutters furiously to himself, before pressing the radio transmitter. ‘This is Tango Romeo Yankee. Declaring PAN-PAN PAN-PAN PAN-PAN.’

  There’s no response on the radio.

  ‘Sqwark code,’ he says, turning a couple of dials to 7-7. ‘Activate Emergency Locator Transmission.’

  Panic bolts up my throat, but I swallow it. Who will know to look for us? Grandad. But how long will it take him to come searching? And will anyone find us with a fire raging?

  I look down. Bad idea. We’re coming in fast.

  Trees that were just a dark smudge across the landscape are now plainly trees. Is this the last thing I’ll see?

  I glance across at Erik, the control column gripped in both his hands.

  ‘You’ve got this,’ I say.

  My palms are slippery against my own control column as I focus on keeping that horizontal bar level. This is my job. Keep her level. Nose up. It’s all I can control in the small space around us.

  ‘Vis is better here. I’m taking over controls. Let go.’

  Erik grins at me, but it’s a mad grin. A make-it-or-break-it grin. Hope floods my heart. He’s got this. He has to have this.

  ‘There’s a clearing just past these trees,’ he says. ‘Is that water? Your eleven o’clock.’

  I look ahead to my left and see a murky khaki patch.

  ‘I think that’s the junction, maybe.’ It looks tiny from here, but Rawson Falls used to fill up all the creeks, until they converged in the swollen junction. I once went swimming there with Alex.

  ‘Right. I’m gonna land her near that junction.’

  ‘In the junction.’ I nod firmly. I can do this.

  ‘Near the junction,’ he says. ‘But we could end up in it. Your door unlocked?’ He leans across me and unlatches my door, so it’s hanging loose. Hot air buffets in. It feels wrong to have my door open mid-flight. Against every safety guideline. Something you would only do to escape a horror of unimaginable proportions.

  ‘Tighten your harness,’ he says, talking fast. He reaches across me, yanking it so hard I can barely breathe. ‘Assume the brace position. Head down, arms across your chest.’ He checks to see that I’m doing it right. ‘We’re gonna come down hard. When we land, exit to the rear of the aircraft. The rear, got it?’

  ‘Why –’

  ‘The prop– just do it, okay?’

>   I nod.

  ‘You ready?’ He looks at me.

  I’m not. But no is not an option, so I nod.

  ‘If your door doesn’t open, come out my side. Exit to the rear. Got it?’ His cheeks are flushed. Sweat is running into his eyes. ‘Run or swim.’

  ‘Run or swim.’

  Then branches screech beneath us. Lights skim the treetops.

  ‘Brace,’ he says.

  I close my eyes tight. God, not yet.

  I hold my breath and brace for impact.

  Darkness. A ticking noise.

  My head aching like a bruise.

  ‘Ruby.’ A whisper. ‘Ruby.’ Louder now.

  The throb of beating drums in my head.

  A sensation of sliding, dragging.

  I open my eyes and squint against the glare. A hunk of blue metal blurs past. Vaguely familiar. Vaguely wrong. Upended. A buckled wing.

  But I’m not still. I’m sliding along the grass, my shoulder catching something hard, my face wet.

  A groan, distant.

  Grass slipping beneath my palms. Another crash to my shoulder.

  The dragging stops, and I lie face up, squinting into the red sky, tree tops fuzzy at the edge of my vision. I wipe the tears from my eyes, but my fingers come back bright red. It’s not tears.

  Erik’s face is above mine now. ‘How many fingers?’ he says.

  ‘Two.’

  He touches my head. I draw a breath between my teeth.

  ‘Does it hurt anywhere else?’

  ‘No.’ I try to sit up.

  ‘Don’t,’ he says, gently pushing me back with his right arm. I notice his other arm. Looped in some kind of band.

  ‘What happened?’ I prop myself up on my elbows. ‘Is it broken?’

  ‘I think so.’

  I sit up more, my vision fuzzy. I close my eyes and wait for the dizziness to subside, then reach for his arm.

  ‘Don’t,’ he says again.

  Then I notice Erik’s shorts are rust-coloured, torn up one side. A thick sludge of red down his leg.

  ‘You’re bleeding,’ I say.

  ‘So are you.’

  My senses sharpen as I take in our situation. We’re in a clearing in the middle of the forest. No water in sight.

  ‘Where’s the junction?’ I say.

  ‘We overshot.’ He nods to our left. ‘It’s back there. Through the trees.’

  Smoke hangs like a mist across the clearing, making me cough. Ash continues to rain from the sky, like black snow. It’s almost beautiful, except it means destruction.

  ‘How far away from it do you think we are?’ I ask.

  ‘We didn’t go far, maybe a few nautical miles to the south.’

  ‘Your survival bag,’ I say suddenly. ‘Does it have a first-aid kit?’

  ‘It’s in the plane,’ he says.

  We both look at the Bluebird. Belly up, one wing bent, her shiny blue surface puckered and covered with dirt and clumps of grass and leaves. ‘Too dangerous. Fuel’s leaking everywhere. One spark and she’ll go up. We have to get away from her.’

  Flashes of memory return. The scratching of branches on her belly, twin beams of light, the earth rushing up to the cockpit, the thud of contact . . .

  ‘I forgot,’ I say.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You told me to run.’

  ‘You were blacked out.’

  ‘Really?’ I ask. The clearing is shrouded in an eerie half-light. Not day, not night. Completely disorienting. ‘For how long?’

  ‘Don’t know. Took me a while to unbuckle you.’

  ‘You got me out?’

  The ghost of a grin crosses his pale face. ‘You can thank me later. When we’re not burned to death in a fire.’

  There’s no time to think about that, though. Blood is pooling beside Erik on the dirt and his face is a strange, ashen colour.

  ‘Erik, you’re losing a lot of blood. I’m getting your survival kit,’ I say, pushing myself up.

  My head throbs and the ground wobbles in front of me.

  ‘Ruby, no. It’s not safe. One spark . . .’

  I hear Erik’s voice behind me, but he’s too weak to stop me so I ignore him. Doubled over, I walk to the Bluebird.

  The plane is still making ticking noises as I near. I guess it’s hot metal cooling. Erik’s door is open, so I climb in. The roof of the plane is now the floor, belts and bit of canvas dangling down.

  The cockpit reeks of fuel. I can almost taste it. Erik’s warning rings in my ears, but I block it out. Find the bag. I can feel blood trickling down my forehead, my knees shaking beneath me.

  The aluminium roof creaks under my weight and the plane starts to yaw, so I balance myself in the middle with my hands. Scattered across the roof of the plane are books and papers, pens, protractors, headsets, a phone! Erik’s phone. I grab it. The screen is smashed and dirty, but I shove it into my skirt pocket. Then crawl through to the back, grimacing as debris digs into my knees. At the narrow rear end, I find the backpack, wedged alongside a torch. I yank at the bag, and it comes free, dislodging the torch, which I grab too.

  As I back out of the plane, the Bluebird groans beneath my weight again and begins to tilt. This time, I’m not fast enough to balance my weight.

  The plane tips to one side, one wing digging into the ground.

  I slide across the cockpit and slam into Erik’s door, which is now jammed against the earth. I wedge it open, but can’t even get my leg out.

  The only way out now is up. My heart is pumping hard, aware of the danger. The wound to my head is throbbing. I can feel liquid oozing down my cheek, into my eyes. I wipe it away and clean my hand on my shirt. I am now completely alert, my senses sharpened. I throw the torch and phone into the backpack, zip it up with shaky fingers and hoist it on. Block out the smell of the fuel, of smoke, the burning smell of twisted metal, the knowledge that I could be trapped in here. One spark, one hot ember. An inferno.

  This is my space. My Plan B. Work with it.

  I take a deep breath and climb up the seats of the cockpit like a ladder. The door on my side of the plane is unlatched and I pray that it isn’t buckled shut. I push against it, but it needs to open like a hatch from this angle and I don’t have the strength. I climb onto the armrest of the seat, getting myself as much height as I can. Take another deep breath, and grunt as I push it open. The door opens halfway, then clicks firmly back down, like a lid closing me in.

  Focus, Ruby.

  I wipe the blood from my eyes with my shirt. It’s dirtied and muddy. I visualise using enough force to open that door. Then throw myself up against it and yell out as I thrust it forward. This time, I don’t wait for it to swing shut. As it opens, I throw myself up, and when the door comes back down it slams into the backpack, winding me.

  I lie there, half in, half out, struggling to breathe, unable to move, knowing only that I will be able to. And as the breath comes back to my lungs, I lift the door just enough to push myself out. I tumble out of the plane, jarring my elbow as I land.

  Around me, gusts of hot wind buffet everything, almost knocking me over with their force. Cradling my elbow, I limp towards the tree line, where Erik had dragged me to safety. Now he doesn’t even look like he can stand. The stain of his blood on the ground is larger. His face looks yellowish and twisted with pain.

  ‘I said don’t go,’ he admonishes weakly.

  I open the backpack, pull out a red case with a white cross on it and rummage for a bandage.

  ‘There’s not much I can do about your arm, but I’m going to try to stop the bleeding from your leg,’ I say, crouching beside him.

  He props himself up on one elbow and watches my face as I pull up the leg of his shorts.

  ‘Ruby, I’m sorry. I should never have taken you up.’

  I shake my head. ‘I told you to. We agreed. And you just saved our lives. So be quiet.’

  The wound to his leg is worse than I thought. Above the jagged cut I’d seen earlier, a meaty, lumpy
mass is bulging out. A muscle? I can’t bandage over it, so I grab a wound pad from the kit and lay it over the top, hoping to god I’m doing this right. Then I grab the bandage and wind it firmly over the top of the pad.

  ‘Argh!’ Erik flexes up with the pain.

  ‘Sorry.’

  I keep going round his thigh until there’s nothing left of the bandage, then pin it in place and slump down beside Erik.

  ‘Your turn,’ he says, gesturing at my head.

  I don’t know what my own damage looks like. I only know head wounds bleed a lot and I can feel the blood caking down one side of my face. Erik beckons with his good hand, and I pass him a swab.

  ‘This might sting,’ he says.

  I turn towards him and let him dab at my face.

  ‘Might need a few of these,’ he says.

  He traces his fingers gently down the side of my cheek and studies me.

  ‘Always been brave, haven’t you, Ruby Matthews?’

  Brave is not a word I’d ever pick for myself. Not in one hundred million years.

  ‘You didn’t have to go back into the Bluebird.’

  It’s his mention of the Bluebird that reminds me. I dig his phone out.

  ‘I found this.’

  I hunch over the screen. It’s shattered and smeared with blood. When I press the buttons, it stays black.

  ‘Is it dead?’

  I hand the phone over, and he tries it. Same result.

  ‘I activated the Emergency Locator Transmitter,’ Erik says. ‘Someone will come for us.’

  I look at the smoke sweeping the mountain tops – difficult to penetrate, visibility poor. If we couldn’t fly in this, how can a rescue chopper? Can anyone come by foot through a bushfire? Erik’s bleeding is bad. I’m not sure I’ve done enough about it. But I can’t afford to doubt anything right now. I can only afford to hope.

  ‘Someone will come,’ I say.

  In the survival pack I find a thin, folded tarp. Sound grabs from news reports flood my mind. Search has been called off due to poor visibility. Search for missing persons delayed by fire. After the fire passed through a few years back, the search did resume. That’s when they found the burned-out car. The couple huddled in the front seats.

  Grandad helped with the search. Needle in a haystack, he’d said, trying to find the people from the air . . . except that they’d stayed with the car.