by Bill Rancic
Down below he could see the trail the nose section had made as it careened down the hillside, the broken tree trunks, the pieces of the wings, the dead engine, and the nose itself, surrounded by a few black dots moving slowly—the rest of the living passengers gathering up what supplies they could find.
He hoped Kerry was all right. She and Phil would look out for each other at least. If only she hadn’t lost consciousness in the crash, if she hadn’t hit her head. If he’d taken the seat in the bulkhead instead of her . . .
There was no point in what-ifs now. He’d do what he could for all of them, starting with the people in the tail.
Daniel turned back to face the narrow, desolate valley on the opposite side of the hill, searching through the gloom, looking for a piece of the fuselage. Instead he saw mostly debris.
Then he saw it: the tail section lay maybe fifty feet below the crest of the hill, held from sliding farther down the opposite slope by several large fir trees. Unlike the nose section, it was a twisted heap, a mass of crushed aluminum that bore such little resemblance to the jetliner it came from that Daniel’s hopes sank. It looked like nothing so much as an old piece of notebook paper that someone had crumpled up and thrown away.
No one moved around the tail section, no people sat huddled for warmth or companionship like they did around the nose. No footsteps showed that anyone had come out. It looked like a tomb.
He didn’t want to go down the slope toward them, but he couldn’t go back without looking, without knowing if Petrol people were inside. Right now, in this moment, it was still possible to think of them whole and alive, maybe trapped, maybe hurt, but still alive. He wouldn’t know for certain until he looked inside. Schrödinger’s cat wasn’t dead until you knew it was dead, and in order to know, you had to look. He’d appointed himself this task, and he must see it through now.
He looked around for a path that would take him safely down to the wreckage, maybe a hundred yards below the spot where he stood. A rope would have been ideal in this situation, if he’d had one, or maybe a sled. A sled could get him down there in seconds, let him rest his aching muscles, not to mention it might be helpful, if he did find people alive, to have something he could use to haul them back. He thought longingly of the sleds and dogs the hunters in Barrow had used, not to mention the snowmobiles that had whizzed up and down the streets of town. It had seemed strange, even exotic, their first day in town, that people traveled the streets of Barrow by snowmobile; later he’d seen the practicality of it. Now he’d have given anything he owned for a snowmobile. Come to think of it, he’d give anything to be back in Barrow, which was positively a beacon of civilization compared to the place he found himself in now.
What could he use for a sled? The piece of wing was too big and heavy—he’d never be able to lift it by himself—but he was thinking one of the plane’s seats might do the trick.
He scrambled back down the slope to the place where there was an empty seat in one of the rows that had fallen out of the broken fuselage. He didn’t want to think about why it was empty; at the moment, he was simply glad it was there. He took hold of the seat back with one hand, braced the seat bottom with his foot, and tore for all he was worth. A few violent tugs and the seat back came free.
At the crest of the hill, Daniel set the seat back down on the top of the snow and set himself on top of that, feet-first, like a kid on his first snow day—except that this was for necessity, not thrills. A few pushes and he was sliding across the surface of the snow toward the tail section of the plane, the twisted hulk of metal in which his friends and co-workers lay waiting, alive or dead.
Fifty feet or so from the tail, Daniel put his feet out to stop his descent, digging in hard with his heels and grabbing hold of a low branch to pull himself to a stop. He stood up, his hands shaking, and set the seat back against the trunk of a white birch, taking in the scene in front of him.
The tail had hit more than the crest of the hill when it had broken off; it must have crashed into half the trees on the slope, which had punched in its sides like a loaf of bread dough. It was a misshapen lump of a thing now, barely recognizable except for a blue circle of paint still partially visible in the midst of the wreckage. One of the rear exit doors had popped off and gave a dim view inside of darkness and metal. No bodies, at least. The front of the tail section, where the cabin had broken in half, was turned away from Daniel, facing downhill. All the windows dark. No movement.
“Hello?” he called out, hating the sound of his own voice. It was too loud in that still place, in all that silence.
Daniel took a breath and put his head inside the open rear door. The dark clapped itself over his eyes like a mask; he could see the vague outlines of the rear galley, but nothing else, until his eyes adjusted to the dark. He had to be sure there were no survivors, that there was no one else left to help, before he could think of returning to the nose and to Kerry. He’d told her he’d look for her friend; now he was afraid to find her.
“Hello?” he said again, barely above a whisper, then cleared his throat and said, “Is anyone hurt in here? Does anyone need help?”
Silence. Somewhere a blast of wind cleared an overhead branch of snow; Daniel heard it fall with a soft whump. Small clicks and groans and settling noises came from the wreck, but no voices. The air had a tang of metal and smoke Daniel could taste in the back of his throat.
“Is there anyone alive?” he called again, not expecting or even hoping for an answer this time. “Does anyone need help?”
Then the sound of a voice breathy with pain. “Yes,” it said. “Please, help me.”
The voice was a woman’s, and suddenly Daniel had visions of Judy trapped beneath seats and suitcases and other bodies, unable to move. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Kecia. I’m one of the flight attendants.”
“Is there anyone else in there with you, Kecia?”
“There’s another woman here. She’s trapped under the seats. She says her legs might be broken.” Kecia’s voice hitched, as if she were wincing. “There was a man calling for help a few minutes ago, but he stopped. I think he might be dead.”
Two passengers alive, maybe more. It was better than he’d been hoping for just seconds ago.
“Hold on,” Daniel said. “I’m coming in.”
He pulled himself up into the open doorway that led to the rear galley, where the smell hit him even more strongly: the black smell of smoke, the metallic tang of blood. He resisted the urge to cover his nose while his eyes adjusted to the dark inside the tail section. He’d need both his hands for this.
Slowly the shapes inside the plane turned into things he recognized. The ceiling and far wall of the rear galley had collapsed, leaving the small space strewn with cans of soda and boxes of food still wrapped in cellophane that had fallen from their cupboards. A black suitcase with a popped zipper had rolled backward into the galley and exploded its contents in the middle of the floor, including a tube of toothpaste and several pairs of black boxer briefs that now lay atop what turned out to be the body of a male flight attendant, already cold. Daniel snatched his hand back from the man and stuffed it in his pocket. Steady, now. There would be more bodies inside, surely, and at least two people he might be able to help, as long as he didn’t fall apart.
“Where are you?” he asked the darkness inside.
“Here,” said Kecia, her voice close now. “Just a few rows up.”
He moved forward into what remained of the cabin, the darkness easing a little as his eyes adjusted further. He had to duck down low—the ceiling had collapsed in places, the plastic bins hanging open and leaving the aisle crammed with bags, clothes, even a laptop that Daniel had to pull out of the way before he could move up the aisle toward the sound of the woman’s ragged breathing, her voice saying “Here” over and over. As he moved forward he could hear another woman’s voice, muffled, crying, “
I can’t—I can’t breathe.” Somewhere else, the soft sound of someone coughing wetly.
“Are you there?” asked the first voice. The flight attendant, Kecia.
Daniel answered, “I can’t move very quickly, but I’m coming.”
He passed the lavatories and moved into the main cabin, or what was left of it. The seats here had bunched together in the crash the same way they had in the nose section, but in the opposite direction—toward the back. They were smashed together so tightly Daniel could hardly see that there had been rows, once upon a time. He thought with envy of all the equipment and people he’d always had at his disposal at Petrol, the power tools and vehicles and first responders. This situation called for all of that and more.
“You’re in the back row?” he called out.
“Fourth from the back,” said the woman’s voice. “I sat down in an empty seat when we started to descend.”
“That was smart,” Daniel said, tossing someone’s smashed iPad behind him so he could keep moving. He wanted to keep the woman talking, keep her conscious. “See, you were lucky.”
“Unh,” said Kecia, gasping. “If you say so.”
“Are you in pain?”
She gave a noise that was half gasp, half grunt. “Yes. A lot of pain. My arms are smashed between the seats.” She took a shaky breath. “I can’t move them. I’m completely stuck in here.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Daniel said. Keep talking. Just keep talking. Inching toward her little by little. He passed a pair of feet and reached out to touch them, but they were cold. He snatched his hands away again.
“Are there others with you? The pilots? Amber and Dave?”
“The pilots’ names are Amber and Dave?”
She gave a near-laugh. “No, those are the other flight attendants. The pilot’s name was Alan, I think. I don’t remember the co-pilot.”
“I think the pilots are dead,” Daniel said, not wanting to tell her also about the dead flight attendant in the rear galley just then—Dave, probably. “The front of the nose section was smashed up pretty badly. We landed on the other side of the hill. I had to climb a long way to get here.”
“Nose section?” Kecia asked. “The plane broke apart?”
“You don’t remember that part?”
“Honestly, my eyes were shut the whole time.”
He’d reached her now; he was kneeling on the floor right beside her, where she sat in what was left of the row of seats. She must have put her arms up to shield her face when the seats started flying at her: one arm was bent back at the elbow, a horrible angle that nearly made Daniel sick to see. The weight of the chairs and the bodies in them had crushed it. Still, if she hadn’t put her arms up, it was likely the seats would have gone into her face instead. She’d saved her own life.
“I remember rolling, and then the seats smashing into each other.” She winced. “I didn’t know why it was so cold, or where everyone else was. I guess it makes sense now. Are people in bad shape in the nose section?”
“Most of us are all right,” he said, truthfully enough, and then turned to the problem at hand—how to get Kecia out from beneath the seats. “I don’t know if I can get these seats off you by myself. I might be able to move them enough for you to slip out. Do you think you could, if I can get the seat up a little bit?”
“I don’t know. I can try. It hurts a lot.”
“I know. But you can’t stay wedged in there.”
“I’ll do my best.”
He put all his weight against the nearest seat and pushed. The thing moved only an inch or so, though he was using every bit of strength he had, and the flight attendant wailed as she pulled herself out from beneath the tower of seats and bodies. She slid to the floor and landed on her knees next to Daniel in the aisle of the plane, clutching her wounded arm limply to her chest with her good hand.
When she could speak, she looked up and said, “Thank you. I was starting to think I was going to die in here.”
He looked at her arm, which was purple nearly to the wrist, swollen almost beyond recognition, and said, “Can you get back to the galley and wait for me there? I’m going to see who else I can find. I’ll come help you as soon as I can.”
“I think so. I’ll try.”
Daniel said, “I should warn you, there’s someone dead in the rear galley. A man, one of the crew.”
“That must be Dave,” the woman said, her chin trembling as if she was trying not to cry.
“Maybe you can help me,” he said. “I came here looking for some of my friends, some people I work with. A woman named Judy, who would have been sitting with two men. We all work together.”
Kecia said, “I don’t know about anyone named Judy, but there was another woman somewhere up above me, in one of the forward rows, I think. She sounded like she was hurt pretty badly.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He army-crawled forward into the wreckage, calling out, “Judy! Judy Akers, are you in here?”
Silence, then a muffled sob came from beneath the mess of seats and luggage. “Daniel? Is that you?”
“I can’t see you.” He pulled at the cushions, listening for the sounds of the woman’s breathing. “Judy?” He followed the sounds of weeping forward, pushing aside cushions, seat bottoms, loose shoes, dead limbs.
“Here,” said a voice he recognized clearly now. It was weak, breathy. “I’m here. There’s something on top of me.”
He felt a sense of triumph. “Thank God. Kerry will be so relieved. Are you hurt?”
“She’s . . . okay?
“She hit her head. I think she might have a concussion, but Phil is keeping an eye on her.”
“Phil, too. That’s good.”
Coughing, and the wet sound again. Like her lungs were full of water. No, not water—blood.
He was able to stand up, barely, in the tight space; Judy’s voice was coming from somewhere near the middle of a great pile of seats that seemed to be mostly empty. He started moving debris to get to her. “Let’s get you out of here,” he said. “I’ll take you to Kerry. She’ll be so glad to see you. We’re going to set up the nose section as a shelter, keep everyone warm until help comes. I’ve got a little sled all set up outside to carry anyone who can’t walk. Just a little ways up the hill and we can slide down, just like a snow day. Won’t that be nice?”
He knew he sounded ridiculous, but he felt like he needed to fill the silence while he worked pulling pieces of debris out of the aisle, while he ignored the sight of a dead woman in the seat to his right and the horror of a pale gray foot sticking out from underneath the pile. He had to keep Judy going, and himself, if he was going to help anyone in these circumstances.
“Daniel?” Judy said. “I’m hurt. Badly, I think. I can’t move.”
He stopped yanking on the piece of metal in his hands. “What do you mean? Are you stuck?”
“No,” she hissed, as if even that much speech cost her. “I mean, yes. I—I can’t feel my legs.”
“From cold?”
“My face is cold, and my hands. Everything else is—gone. Like they’re not there.”
Oh shit.
He could see her now, pale in the dim light, and reached out to touch her face. The mouth moved. “It’s me,” she said.
He pulled away the body in the chair between herself and him, and then he could see what had happened: Judy had been impaled by a piece of metal, all the way through her torso and out her back. It must have severed her spine, leaving her alive above the wound, already dead below. There was very little blood, meaning the force and pressure of the seats surrounding her were the only things keeping her alive at the moment. If he tried to pull her free, it was likely she would bleed out in a matter of seconds.
He’d seen it before, once, during an accident on the El back
in Chicago. A man had dropped his phone on the tracks and jumped down to grab it, but when the train came, he’d been unable to make it back to the platform in time. He’d been caught between the train and the platform, leaving him alive from the waist up, but only as long as no one tried to move him. Daniel had stayed with the man the whole time, tried to keep him talking, tried to keep him conscious until his family arrived, but he hadn’t quite made it; the man’s face had slowly turned an alarming shade of green the longer he talked, and less than an hour after it happened, he slipped away.
That day had been hard enough for Daniel, even though the man had been a stranger, someone he’d never laid eyes on before. This was a woman he knew well, a co-worker, a friend. His own fiancée’s closest friend. Daniel would be the last person she saw, the last person she spoke to, and he was conscious now of the weight of that responsibility.
If Judy’s dead, Kerry had said, don’t tell me.
Judy was not dead yet, but she would be soon, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
He swallowed and looked up into her face. “Hey, Judy,” he said, horrified at the hearty sound of his own voice. “Funny running into you here.”
“Huh,” she said, and coughed again, that same wet sound. “You always could make me laugh at the worst times.”
He was trying to look optimistic, yet he knew he was failing, knew he should be trying to comfort her more, say something profound, but he wasn’t good at offering comfort. He wasn’t a priest or a hero.
“This doesn’t look too serious, all things considered,” he said, glancing at her wounds quickly and then up again. “We’ll have you patched up and home in no time, just you wait and see.”
Judy gave him a wry smile. “You’ve always been a shitty liar, Daniel,” she said. “I’m so glad Kerry has you.”
9
“Kerry, wake up,” Phil was saying. “Don’t go to sleep now. It’s not safe. There’s a nurse here and she said you need to open your eyes.”