First Light

by Bill Rancic

  The crashing noise, the jolt. The entire back end of the plane had hit something and been sheared right off.

  “My God,” Daniel said.

  “Daniel,” Kerry was saying as she struggled to her feet, “help me open the emergency exit. We need to get these people out of here.” She was yanking on the handle that would open the exit, her voice edging higher.

  “We don’t need the emergency exit,” he said. “Look.” And Kerry turned to look in the direction he was facing, the gaping hole in the fuselage of the plane, wires and bits of plastic and metal hanging down over the hole, letting in the cold air from outside.

  She made a gurgling sound in the back of her throat. “The fuel,” she said. “If it blows up, if we explode—”

  He exchanged a look with the flight attendant, who said, “The pilot dumped the fuel before we landed to minimize the fire hazard. Standard procedure. I’m asking those who aren’t seriously hurt to help those who are. We need to move quickly now.”

  “Aren’t we evacuating?” Daniel asked. “Wouldn’t that also be standard procedure?”

  “Under the circumstances I don’t think that’s a good idea. It’s too cold out there. If we haven’t had a fire by now, we’re not having one at all. Please,” she said, “if you could help some of the hurt passengers, I would really appreciate it. We need all the help we can get right now.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Daniel said.

  “Thank you,” she said, and kept moving, checking on passenger after passenger.

  Kerry was scrambling toward the hole in the back of the plane, her eyes glazed with pain and fear and Daniel didn’t want to think what else. “We need to get out of here,” she gasped. “I can’t— I can’t—”

  He grabbed her by the shoulders. “Listen,” he said, “the inside of the plane is the only shelter we have out here. We need to stay put.”

  She was shaking her head, but she said, “If there’s a fire, an explosion—”

  “I know you’re scared,” he said, “but it’s not safe outside right now. We’d freeze in minutes.” He could see the panic in her eyes still. “I need you to calm down. Calm down and stay put. Can you do that?”

  “I—I don’t—”

  He held her by the wrists. “Can you please trust me? Can you believe that I would never do anything to put you in harm’s way?”

  She put her head down, letting it fall into place in the middle of his chest. He could feel her heart rate slow and steady under his hands. “Okay. Okay, I trust you. Of course.”

  With Kerry calm, Daniel looked ahead to the first-class cabin, but he didn’t see Bob or anyone else they knew. There were dark shapes among the chairs and debris: bodies, some still moving sluggishly, some very still. Here and there a bright stain of blood. He looked away, gulping air, fighting back a sudden surge of nausea. He’d seen bodies before, most recently at the accident site in Barrow—in his job he couldn’t avoid seeing them—but the line between life and death was too thin just now.

  They’d lived. They’d lived, but maybe not for long.

  He gripped the overhead bins and held on until he felt steady again. He couldn’t fall apart. If this were a Petrol accident, if he were in charge here, what would he do in these circumstances? Plan, prepare. He’d make lists, choose a course of action and begin trying to undo the worst of the damage, as much as he could.

  People always had to come first. He took a quick mental inventory of all the Petrol people who’d been on the plane with them out of Anchorage: Bob was in first class in the front of the plane, of course, but then there’d been Phil Velez, and himself and Kerry, a couple of people from Daniel’s team, an assistant coordinator on Phil’s team. Who else?

  Judy Akers. Kerry’s best friend usually sat near the last row when she could—she always said she liked to be close to the rear galley, where she could stand up and walk around a bit on long flights. He was sure that was where she’d been sitting, but now the tail of the plane was completely gone.

  “Kerry, where was Judy sitting?” he asked, staring at the hole in the back end of the fuselage.

  “In the back, the same as always,” she choked, looking in the direction he was facing. “Oh my God. She’s gone. Where did she go?”

  “She has to be with the tail section. Wherever the tail landed, we’ll find her, I’m sure of it.”

  They should look for their missing people and tend to the injured. The most important thing was to keep Kerry awake as long as possible. A person with a concussion could go to sleep and never wake up again: Daniel had seen it happen before. She had to stay awake.

  Just then, as if in answer to a question he hadn’t asked, there was a gasp from the row behind them: someone was hurt. “Uh,” said a voice. “Help me. I can’t breathe.”

  “Phil? Is that you?” Kerry said.

  Phil Velez had been sitting two rows behind them, just at the point at which the fuselage had broken. Daniel had assumed he’d been one of the passengers lost in the crash, but now here he was, lying on the floor of the cabin clutching his belly.

  Daniel pulled the leg of a chair off him. “What’s wrong?” Daniel asked.

  In the dim light Phil looked green. “I’m not sure,” he muttered. His voice was ragged from the effort of drawing breath. “Something slammed into me. Maybe it was the leg of the seat, I don’t know.”

  Daniel knelt down near Phil. “Where did it get you?” he asked. “Is there any blood?”

  “Knocked the wind out of me. Still hurts.” His voice was sharp with pain.

  “Can I look?”

  Phil nodded, letting his still-clenched hands fall to his sides. Carefully Daniel lifted the tail of Phil’s white shirt, looking for blood, a puncture wound, a sign of immediate trauma. The skin just beneath his belly button was a little discolored, pink around the edges and turning purple in the center, but the skin was unbroken at least. He might have internal damage; Daniel couldn’t tell by looking.

  “Can you stand?” Daniel asked.

  “I think so. Maybe. Let me try.”

  Phil grabbed hold of a seat across the aisle and pulled himself to a standing position, breathing heavily, still clutching his belly. Daniel felt a nagging sense of unease as he looked at the other man: what if it was an internal injury? Daniel was no doctor. He knew some basic first aid, and that was about it. Phil was on his feet at least; that was a good sign.

  “What about you two?” Phil asked. “You all right?”

  “We’re okay, mostly. I think Kerry has a concussion, but she’s up and talking. I need to keep her awake.”

  “A concussion?” Kerry said. “Is that what this is, the headache?”

  The fact that she was asking that question—that she wasn’t thinking entirely clearly—made the last shred of doubt fade away. “I don’t know that for sure, babe. I think so. You need to see a doctor.”

  “I don’t feel so great, either,” Phil said, but he managed to give her a halfhearted smile anyway, the lines on either side of his mouth deepening involuntarily. “You don’t have any aspirin in your purse, do you, Kerry? Ibuprofen maybe?”

  “I don’t remember. I don’t think so,” she said.

  “You shouldn’t take any aspirin or ibuprofen,” Daniel said. “If you have any internal bleeding, the pain meds will just make it worse.”

  “Do you think I have internal bleeding?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Great.” Phil eased himself into an empty seat nearby, plainly hurting, but there was nothing Daniel could do for him at the moment.

  The rest of the surviving passengers were slowly coming to their senses as well, checking themselves for injuries and picking up what few belongings they could find. For the most part they were unnaturally calm, Daniel thought, moving around the cabin like zombies, or maybe it was only the shock of finding themselves still alive
. The only real noise came from a woman a few rows ahead scrambling over her seatmate and Daniel himself to get at the door in the fuselage to Daniel’s left, yanking on the red lever that should have released the mechanism, but it wasn’t working. “Let us out!” she screamed.

  She was wild, completely panicked and irrational, so it didn’t do any good when Daniel pushed her off and said, “We don’t need the goddamn emergency exits, lady! We could fit a circus in here!”

  Still, the woman pushed and pushed, clawing at their faces, their bodies, until finally Daniel had no choice but to shove the poor woman off of himself and his fiancée, back toward her seat.

  She sank back down into what was left of her seat, sobbing into her hands. “Let me out. I need to get out,” she muttered, over and over, and though Daniel sympathized with her—he was beginning to feel the same wave of giddy panic coming over him as the adrenaline rush of the crash and the immediate aftermath started to subside—it was slowly dawning on him that none of them would be alive for long out here if they didn’t get their act together soon.

  Now Kerry was reaching into the open overhead bin and rummaging around for something. “We need to go look for Judy,” she was saying. The crying woman was screaming now, asking people why they weren’t leaving, why was everyone just sitting still? Daniel could feel the tension in Kerry, the rising panic, could see her hands shaking. He had to keep her calm. If they were going to get out of this alive, they were all going to have to stay calm.

  “Kerry. Talk to me, babe.”

  Her head snapped around. “I—” she started, and he realized how terribly pale she was. “I’m sorry. I’ll be okay in a minute.”

  He touched her hands, which were icy cold. He hoped she was not going into shock on top of everything else. “You sure?”

  “I think so. I’m just c-cold.” She touched her temple with one finger and looked around at the plane, the passengers, everything. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  He moved into the aisle to find a blanket, the coats they’d stashed in the overhead bins before takeoff, the giant parkas they’d worn every day for two weeks in Barrow. His own black one was still in the overhead bin, but Kerry’s purple one was missing. A quick glance around the floor showed him that it was nowhere in sight. Probably it had been flung out of the plane when the tail ripped off.

  He took a green parka no one had claimed and wrapped it around Kerry, rubbed her freezing hands between his own, and asked, “Is that better?”

  She nodded, shivering, but in a minute she started to look a little better. She asked, “Can I call my mother?”

  It took a minute for Daniel to realize that she was making what was actually a reasonable request. His satellite phone. He hadn’t even thought about it.

  He felt around in the pockets of his jeans, the back of the seat where he’d been sitting, the pockets of his coat. The satellite phone, the one thing that might really have been useful in this situation, had been in the front pocket of his shirt, the last he remembered. Now it was gone—lost, along with Kerry’s coat and half the plane’s passengers. His regular cell phone was in the front pocket of his jeans, of course. He took it out and swiped the screen. Zero bars. Of course.

  She gave him a bleak look. “It’s gone, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll look for it. It has to be here somewhere.”

  He went through the debris on the floor, crawling around on his hands and knees. He bumped into the body of an older woman of maybe sixty, lying on her side in one aisle, her neck broken, and gave a little gasp, squeezing his eyes shut until his pulse quit hammering in his chest.

  He flung aside magazines and books, barf bags and bits of wire and loose screws, but he didn’t see his phone anywhere. It had to be outside somewhere. He had to look for it, and the others, the people who were missing.

  Finally he stood, uncertainty hardening into decision. “I’m going to go look for Judy,” he said. “She might be hurt.”

  “You can’t leave me here alone!”

  “You won’t be alone. Phil’s here.” She gave him a look that said exactly what she thought of asking Phil Velez for help in this situation. “I know, but someone has to go,” he murmured in a low voice. “Wouldn’t you rather it was me? Someone who knows Judy and cares about her?” Kerry nodded reluctantly, yes. “I’ll look for the phone while I’m at it. Get us home before nightfall.”

  “That sounds good.”

  He glanced at her legs—Kerry was wearing only a skirt and tights and black suede boots made more for fashion than warmth. She was going to be hypothermic very quickly unless they found her coat or some clothes. Her carry-on would have something that would help keep her warm. Jeans, pajama bottoms—it wouldn’t matter. She had to get warm, and the sooner the better.

  She wasn’t the only one. There was a whole plane full of passengers who would die soon if they didn’t get themselves bundled up. A whole plane full of passengers, and not enough help to go around.

  If he could find the sat phone, he could call for help. The search teams could follow the phone’s signal straight to the crash site.

  “Phil,” he said, keeping his voice low, “I want you to do something for me. I need to look for my satellite phone. While I’m gone, can you look for Kerry’s bag? Make sure she finds something to put on her legs?”

  “Why can’t you look for it?” he asked.

  “I’m going back to look for the tail. See if I can help the others. My phone might be out there somewhere.”

  Phil glanced at Kerry, frowned and said, “Maybe I should go look for our people. You should be the one to stay here with her.”

  “You’re hurt; you need to stay. Come on, Phil, I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t really need you right now.”

  Phil would never make it through the kind of snow Daniel was seeing out the back of the fuselage—in places it looked waist-high. Phil’s face still had a greenish cast, and Kerry was pale and shaky. Daniel was worried about leaving either one of them in this state, but someone had to go and find the tail, and the rest of the Petrol people, and if possible the sat phone. Right now there was no one else.

  “Someone needs to keep Kerry awake,” Daniel said. “Phil, help her look for her carry-on. It can’t have gone far.”

  “All right,” Phil said. “I can keep her company for a few minutes. It won’t kill me.”

  Daniel caught just a glimpse of the grim look on Phil’s face. The other man looked as if Daniel had asked him to swim to the bottom of the sea and cap a wellhead with his bare hands. But Daniel needed to find their people and help them, if he could. Keeping everybody alive was the only thing that mattered now.

  The white moon of Kerry’s face, looking very vulnerable and young, floated toward him, and he kissed her, grasping her cold hands. Then he said, “I’ll be back as soon as I can, I promise.”

  “Wait, Daniel,” she said.

  He looked up. Her mouth was set in a grim, determined line. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Find Judy. Please find her. Please help her. She could be really hurt.”

  “I will. I promise you, babe. I’ll do everything I can.”

  “Daniel?”

  “What?”

  Her voice quavered. “If Judy’s dead, don’t tell me, okay? I don’t want to know.”

  7

  Whatever you do, don’t let Kerry fall asleep. If she falls asleep she might not wake back up again.

  Daniel had implored Phil to keep Kerry conscious one last time and then left the broken fuselage, struggling out the opening and into the deep snow outside. Phil thought about going after him into the teeth of the storm, anything except staying here inside the broken plane with Kerry, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for rescue, for help. Something.

  What could he do to help Kerry, to help any of them? Really, what could he do? He felt helpless, almost the way h
e’d felt in those months when Emily’s cancer had eaten away at her, when he’d sat by her bedside night after night and wept. If there was one thing he believed with conviction, it was that small talk was no good in situations like these; he should be doing something. He couldn’t just sit here and hope everything would turn out all right in the end.

  He realized that Kerry was saying something to him. “What?” he asked her.

  She blinked slowly and said, “I asked if you’d seen a coat no one is using.”

  “Oh.” He looked around and spied a coat on the floor, a black trench coat that wouldn’t do much for the cold, but she put it on over the green parka Daniel had given her. Smart, he thought—the trench would add an extra layer and partially cover her legs, too.

  “Have you seen Bob yet?” she asked.

  Phil looked up. Where was Bob? “I haven’t.”

  “Maybe we should go look for him. He could be hurt.” Her voice was slow and thick, as if she were speaking through molasses. Daniel had said she might have a concussion, which is why he’d wanted Phil to keep her awake. Phil didn’t know anything about concussions, but he suspected what she really needed was a doctor, not a human-resources director whose presence she barely tolerated. Still, he’d do what he could for her and anyone else he could find.

  Phil had to admit that he hadn’t so much as thought about the senior VP in the minutes since the crash. Bob Packer was such a force of nature himself, so much larger than life, that he seemed nearly indestructible. It hadn’t even occurred to Phil to think Bob might need the help of mere mortals like him.

  But Kerry was right; they should have seen Bob by now. They should check to see where he was. “I’ll go,” Phil said. “You stay here. Stay here and rest.”