by Joe Shine
At that moment the wings finally gave in and allowed the ground to rip them off. After that there was nothing standing between us and some super-fun rolling.
We began to roll. Of course we did. I’ll admit it, we got lucky. If we’d started rolling earlier while we’d been going a lot faster, we’d have all died. Planes aren’t built to handle that and we’d have been torn apart along with it. Luckily, we were going slow enough that the hull held, and after only three sluggish rolls the plane groaned and finally came to a stop on its side.
Hey, coulda been upside down. Yeah, it’s not much of a bright side, but it’s a start.
The dust was thick, but I knew it would clear soon. I was worried about fire.
“Everyone okay?” I called out while I unbuckled my seat belt and dropped to the floor. Well, technically the side of the plane.
“Yeah,” a chorus of voices called out all at once. I only really heard Ryo’s. It was the only one I cared about. I blindly made my way to the back of the plane. Hearing is not seeing, so I had to see he was really all right. I had to know he was really okay. Until then I couldn’t focus on anything or anyone else. The dust was starting to clear, but I could still only see a few feet in front of me as I moved.
“I’m stuck!” Karim called out.
“I gotcha,” Seamus told him and then added, “Ryo, help me out, would ya?”
I could see figures ahead of me working to help someone down. The moment I saw Ryo with my own eyes, I felt better. The knot in my stomach untied itself, the block in my brain crumbled, and I was me again.
Knowing a fire could burst to life at any second, turning us all into brisket, I looked for an easy way out. All the windows were busted out and there were some holes in the skin of the plane, but none of them were big enough to escape from. I tried the main exit, but it was dented and jammed tight and wouldn’t budge. It left only one way out.
“Everyone, through the cockpit windows,” I instructed. They were busted out and were the only openings big enough for us to fit through.
I made sure I was the last one left inside before climbing out myself. There was a crazy contrast between the dusty, cramped interior of the plane and the bright blue skies, open fields, and clean air that I now found myself in.
Once we were a safe distance from the plane we all took deep, clean breaths and did our best to shake, pat, and brush the dust off.
Somehow, everyone was okay. I was beginning to wonder if there was a limit to how many times you can call it luck and have to start calling it something different. Super luck? Or maybe it wasn’t luck at all and it was because we all had our seat belts on, and science is awesome, and I remembered my training. Anyway, aside from some bruises, twisted knees and ankles, and a ton of small cuts, everyone was good to go. Ryo had a nice gash over his left eye, but he didn’t seem to care.
“What the hell happened up there?” Seamus asked the pilot.
The pilot raised his palms and shook his head in disbelief. “I have no idea. We were fine and then”—he snapped—“everything died. Some . . . electrical glitch, I guess. I . . . I didn’t know what to do.”
No one seemed to argue, but why would they? Glitches happen.
“How did you manage to land?” the pilot asked me.
I knew this question was coming and was still trying to figure out how I’d explain this away. I went with a classic and something I was really, really good at: when in doubt, play dumb.
“You mean crash? Pretty easily, actually,” I joked.
He shook his head. “I couldn’t have done that.”
No kidding.
“Um . . . I don’t know. Flight simulators? Too many action movies? All I did was pull up on the stick thing as hard as I could,” I lied with a shrug to top it all off. “Just luck, I guess.”
“Well, whatever it was, you saved all of our lives,” he said. His voice shook with emotion. “Thank you.”
“Seriously, all I did was yank up on a stick. But thanks.”
The other guys all thanked me, too, but Ryo walked over and hugged me. When the others saw him do that, they all came over and hugged me along with him. I hated every second of it, but when I saw the pilot looking on like he wanted to join in, I couldn’t help but motion with my head for him to join in, too.
He practically sprinted over to join the all-dude band hug. Well, satellites, I hope you’re catching this. A boy band group hug in the middle of . . . where the heck were we again?
“Anybody know where we are?” I asked.
And no sooner had I asked it than all of us took out our phones to look because that’s what you do now. Don’t know the answer to the question? Look at your phone! Even I did it out of habit, even though I knew it wouldn’t work, thanks to the EMP.
“Mine’s dead,” Ryo said first.
“Me too,” Karim added.
“Same for me,” Seamus chimed in.
“Me too,” admitted Amit.
This many teens in one place without a working cell phone might be a world record. And since no one was pointing out how strange it was that none of our phones worked, I wasn’t about to be the one to bring it up.
“Yeah, dead,” the pilot said, tossing the dead brick of a phone to the ground before adding, “The crash must have jumbled their insides. I think we’re in Wyoming.”
Ah, Wyoming. No offense, she’s a gorgeous state but also one of those states most people know absolutely nothing about. It looks sorta like Thor’s hammer and it gets really cold in the winter. That’s about all most people can say. Oh yeah? Wyoming’s capital, go. Exactly. You don’t know. No one does. It’s Cheyenne, by the way.
“Now what?” Seamus asked. It was the million-dollar question: Now what? Of course he meant where to go or what to do, but the question was a lot more complex for me. Now what?
Where had that missile come from? Had FATE fired it because of what I’d done to Floppy? Or was it someone else? Had to be someone else, right? FATE doesn’t kill FIPs. So it had to be someone else. Was the missile supposed to hit us, but Ryo somehow survived and because of that he changed the world? That did make some sort of weird sense. He lives and champions something awesome because of it.
But then . . . How badly had I screwed things up by what I’d done? Oh no, had Floppy just been trying to save my life? But really, who fired the missile and who gains anything from shooting down a boy band? There were too many questions and no chance of answers. I didn’t know who or why, so there was no point wasting the energy on it. I’d find out when I found out. I needed to focus on the here and now, and the here was somewhere in Wyoming and the now was avoiding the massive storm front heading right at us.
Everyone looked at the pilot, because that’s what kids do: we look to adults for help when we’re in trouble. We want nothing to do with you every other moment of our life, but when the you-know-what hits the fan, they’re our go-to. The pilot understood and looked around, but I could tell he had no clue what to do either. He’d spent about as much time hiking as Amit had. Off to our left I could just make out a small line of smoke going up into the air. It was too small to be a forest fire of some kind or natural fire. No, it was man-made and coming from a cabin, house, or campsite. Either way, it meant people.
I pointed at it and said, “Fire.”
Everyone looked and the pilot, taking charge, said, “We’ll go that way. Should be people there.”
No kidding, I thought again.
BOOM!
We all ducked and screwed up our faces at the sudden explosion. The leaky gas had finally hooked up with a spark and, well, the plane was toast. We were far enough away from it, so we were all okay except for some ringing ears. Normally, I’d have been worried about starting a forest fire, but with the wall of threatening clouds heading this way, I knew Mother Nature would be doing us a solid on this one and putting out the blaze. I als
o knew that a fire was the least of our concerns. There were about a thousand rounds of bullets hidden in my bags and some explosives, so when the fire got to them, they’d start going off. We needed to get moving before that happened.
The tendril of smoke was farther away than it looked. For the next few hours we walked in pretty much silence. At one point, I tried to get them to whistle “Heigh Ho” with me, but only Seamus knew it. Meanwhile the storm got closer. The guys were all worried about how their parents were doing, probably knowing by now that the plane carrying their children had disappeared but not knowing that their children had survived. I didn’t have that worry. Six months after joining the band, my “family” tragically “died” from carbon monoxide poisoning, leaving me all alone. It was an “awwww” story that not only helped sell records but allowed me to promote carbon monoxide awareness. It also helped explain why I never went home or had anyone visiting me.
The grassy plain gave way to the woods, and the woods eventually gave way, revealing a postcard-quality ranch in the middle of a valley.
Everyone sighed in relief.
Cows grazed and a group of horses ran wild in a green field. A small farmhouse sat next to a large stock pond. A huge red barn and riding arena finished off the property. I bet every one of us at that moment saw this ranch and dreamed of retiring on it. It was beautiful. It was simple. It was perfect.
The storm was right upon us now and would be releasing the hounds, so to speak, any minute now. The trees had protected us from the wind, but now that we were clear of them, the gusts were strong. Sporadic raindrops were beginning to hit us, and there was constant thunder now, too. This thing was a whopper. Holy hell, that last clap was close. The animals instinctively were heading for cover under trees or going back to the barn.
We reached the fence surrounding the field at the very moment a farm truck came tearing through the grass toward us. The driver swung the truck around and slid sideways to a stop in front of us.
A kindly looking old man in a flannel shirt waved at us and yelled, “Get in! This thing’s about to blow!”
We didn’t need to be invited twice and scrambled over each other to get into the bed of the truck. Sitting on the wheel in the back of an old beater? Felt like home to me. Halfway to the house the skies opened up. Lightning flashed, thunder boomed, and the wind, somehow, got even stronger.
The old man screeched to a halt inside the red barn. It was raining so hard that water was leaking through the roof.
“Out of the truck!” he cried, then ran over to a trapdoor and opened it. “Down here fast!”
One by one, on shaky legs, we followed him down a set of rough wooden stairs that led to a tight, concrete tunnel. Hmm. Could this dude be a cannibal or something and here we were willingly following him into his slaughterhouse? What? It could be true! Maybe cannibals were common in Wyoming, I don’t know. Eventually the old man pushed through a closed door that opened up into a proper-looking basement. Jars of eyeballs, fingers, and brains lined the walls. Just kidding. But the jars of assorted vegetables and fruits sort of did look like body parts.
Another set of stairs led back up again. No sooner had the old man clomped up the first step than the door at the top swung open. A gray-haired woman, also in a flannel shirt, appeared. She was holding a double barrel shotgun. The old man stopped dead in his tracks and we all backed in behind him. I instinctively reached for the knife I kept in my pocket but stopped when the man snickered.
“Jesus, Charlotte, it’s just me.”
“Just you, Frank?” she said in that tone that only a wife uses with her husband. She peered over him at the rest of us.
“Well,” he said shyly, “you know.”
“Got tired of picking up stray dogs and moved on to people, I see.”
“What was I supposed to do? Leave them outside in this?”
Charlotte’s hard face softened and she sighed. “No, of course not. Come on in, boys. You look frozen and half-starved.”
Frank led us up and into the house. When he kicked his boots off next to the cellar door, we all followed suit. I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of our name brand, wildly expensive shoes all piled up next to Frank’s beaten-to-hell brown boots and the double barrel shotgun that Charlotte had left leaning up against the wall behind the door.
The cellar door opened up into a kitchen that had a small dining nook. A pot was boiling on the stove. On cue, Charlotte opened up the deep freezer and pulled out two giant frozen bags of brown glop.
“Hope you like stew,” she said.
The others responded with sures and yeahs, while Karim whispered to Ryo, “What’s ‘stew’?”
“Anything is appreciated, ma’am,” I said as my southern manners came back with gusto.
She smiled at me and nodded in appreciation before turning to Frank, who was pouring himself a cup of coffee from a pot, and clearing her throat.
“Oh, right,” Frank remembered, and put the steaming cup down. “So,” he started and his eyes found our pilot, “what, uh, brings y’all out here?”
A fair question and I’d wondered what had taken so long. Then again, these people were so polite and accommodating it didn’t really surprise me they’d waited until now to press us for information.
“Plane crash,” I told them.
Frank gasped and Charlotte said, “You don’t say.”
They both looked at the pilot, who nodded and said, “Yeah, thing just died on us. No clue what happened.”
“And then it blew up after we got out,” Karim added a bit too excitedly. “Barely made it.”
“Is everyone okay?” Charlotte asked.
“Yeah, we were the only ones on it,” Seamus answered.
“Well, thank goodness for that.” She sighed.
“Southwest of here?” Frank asked.
I nodded since I knew the others had no clue. Charlotte slapped him on the arm.
“Told you I heard something.”
Frank shrugged and muttered, “Sorry.”
“So this wasn’t one of those big commercial jets, was it?” Charlotte asked.
We shook our heads.
“Small private charter,” the pilot answered.
“You boys on a school trip or something?” she asked.
We shook our heads.
“Church mission trip?” Frank asked, trying a guess of his own.
The half of us who knew what he was talking about shook our heads.
“Family reunion?” Really, Charlotte? Really?
We looked at each other. Did she see a family resemblance in this group of misfits? Even Seamus snorted, he found it so ridiculous.
“We’re International,” I offered. Hoping that hearing the name would trigger something. It didn’t. They shared a look but were still lost. “We’re sort of famous.”
“Really?” Charlotte said in disbelief. Now it made sense why they were treating us like they had no clue who we were. They honestly didn’t.
“We’re a band,” Seamus told them.
“Like a rock ’n’ roll band?” This had gotten Frank excited.
“Sorta. We’re a boy band. We sing and dance.”
“So like New Kids on the Block?” Frank wondered.
Tip of the hat to the Godfathers of boy bands. But no, sir. The members of that band are old enough to be our dads. Maybe even our grandpas. I’d like to say we’re a bit more evolved. If this were the military, they would be the Continental Army and we would be Navy SEALs. Not that I said any of this. I was laughing too hard. We all were.
“We’re like them,” Ryo finally said. He’s so dang polite.
“Our daughter was a huge New Kids fan,” Charlotte mused. “Big crush on that Joey boy.”
“Well, if you’re famous, there’s gotta be something on the news about y’all,” Frank said, flipping the TV o
n.
“You have cable?” Karim asked excitedly. He was the TV nut of the group. Eyes usually glued to a screen of some kind.
“Nah, not out here. Over-the-air stuff.”
“Oh, like satellite? Cool.” Karim was not following.
“No, free TV. We use an antenna,” Frank said, equally as confused.
Karim mouthed antenna to me. I laughed.
Frank flipped through a couple of static-filled channels until he found the local news. A somber-looking weatherman was talking about the storm.
On and on he rambled about the wind and the rain and hail. Then I saw it. We all did. A news ticker was sliding its way across the bottom of the screen. Plane carrying band “International” missing over Wyoming. All passengers presumed dead.
We all got a decent laugh about that, but it quickly turned serious.
“My parents,” Seamus blurted out. “I have to talk to them.”
The others echoed their own worries about reaching out to their folks.
“And I have to talk to the NTSB,” the pilot said grimly. He looked at Frank. “Do you have a phone we can use?”
“Not a landline. But here,” Frank said, taking one out of his jeans and tossing it. “I guarantee it won’t be working though. Never does in storms like this.”
The pilot confirmed it was dead. “No signal. Is there a town or a working phone nearby? We need to get the word out that these kids are okay.”
Frank shrugged. “Down the road a ways, but no way we’ll be able to get there in this. It’s a rough ride in the best of weather. We’ll have to wait until morning.”
“Five minutes until stew’s ready,” Charlotte announced. “Frank, go grab some of Caleb’s old clothes. These boys must be freezing.”
When Frank disappeared, Charlotte offered us warm coffee.
“Glass of water would be a godsend,” Seamus said for us all. Parched didn’t really begin to explain how thirsty we all were.
Charlotte pointed to the cabinet and said, “Cups up there. Help yourself. It’s well water, so might taste a bit off to you, but I promise it’s safe. Fire’s going in the living room, right through there,” she said, pointing at the only other way out of the kitchen except for the basement and what looked like a back door.