The Grey

by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers

  Lewenden’s suddenly conscious again, gasping like he knows he’s going and it woke him up. He starts trying to get up, as if he’s going to be able to get up and walk away from it. He looks at Henrick who just looks at him, and he looks at me again, this time for help, he’ll take it now, but I don’t know what to do any more than Henrick does, and I watch him fighting for air it looks like, and he closes his eyes but not blacking out, it’s like he's closing them in effort, and he keeps fighting for breath, and I put my hand on his chest and try to ease him from trying to get up which doesn’t look like it’s going to do him any good, and I look into his face in case he opens his eyes, which he does, he’s working for breath and gulping and looking terrified, and he’s still thinking there’s a way out of this, maybe, but there isn’t. I try to stay in his eyes.

  “You’re going to die, OK? It’s OK,” I say.

  Lewenden looks at me, in terror, around at everybody else. They all stare.

  “Look at me,” I say, gentle as I can. “It’s OK,” I say again, I keep saying ‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ looking in his eyes like I’m promising him something and I mean it, and I do mean it, it’s the best I can do, and I stay with him best I can all the way, I take his hand, and he squeezes it close to breaking and I stay in his eyes with him, and he breathes and fights it until he dies. He stops moving, goes slack, his eyes go. I feel him leaving, I think. The blood tails away after a few seconds. Then it stops, too.

  We all look at him. There’s a silence. I look at the guys. They’re all staring at him, spooked. Like hurt boys.

  “Is this everybody alive?” I say. They all look at me like I shouldn’t be talking yet, like I don’t have the right. There should be a minute of silence, or some fucking thing.

  “Is this everybody?” I say again. Nobody answers. I look at them, we have Henrick, Bengt, Knox, Feeny, Cismoski, Luttinger, Ojeira, me.

  “Eight inside, two more outside, yeah?” I say. It seems important to count.

  I look up, see Tlingit and Reznikoff have come in, standing in the opening. There might be others out in the snow somewhere, but it feels like we’re the only ones left. I look around the plane.

  “None of these others alive?” I ask.

  Henrick finally answers. “I don’t know.”

  There are maybe half a dozen dead-looking ones, a few more without question dead. I take Bengt’s flashlight and go look at the ones who might be alive. They feel cold, mostly. I check pulses, anyway, lift eyelids. I find one guy, crumpled up halfway in what was an overhead, a piece of bulkhead’s crunched down on him, and he’s breathing when I get to him, but as soon as I see that he stops, just like that.

  The others are still staring at Lewenden, or watching me, not doing anything. They don’t know what to do.

  “We should start a fire.” I say. They still all look at me like I don’t have any right to speak. Nobody moves, or answers, but Henrick and Tlingit nod.

  “We should look for lighters or something, and anything that’ll burn. Sooner the better.” Simple things. Dead or not dead. Artery or vein. Nobody moves yet though, they stare at me, hurt boys, still.

  “We have to get a fire going,” I yell, finally. “So we don’t die.” They nod, some of them, but don’t move.

  “Any of you smoke? Any of you have lighters?” I ask. Bengt and Reznikoff feel their pockets, sort of numbly, but they don’t have them, if they did. I start going through the pockets of dead guys, the crap everywhere, looking for a lighter. Henrick’s going through pockets of dead too, and the guys look at him like it’s in bad taste. They expect it of me, but not him. He pulls out pens, other stuff. I find one, finally, a little plastic disposable. It lights.

  “OK. We need something to burn.” I say. I talk like I’m talking to children, they’re all dazed, more than me. Luttinger and Henrick look at the seat cushions, same as I’m doing.

  “Those’ll burn.” I say. I nod toward the trail of wreckage behind us. “I saw a lot of broken wood back there, the crash scattered it,” I say. “Let’s start it with these if they’ll go and then we’ll ferry wood up. OK?”

  Henrick nods, Luttinger too. Bengt and Knox and Reznikoff nod, finally, then the others, and the ones who can move start tearing out loose cushions and piling them in the snow by the opening. After a minute they look at Luttinger and I wearing jackets, and Henrick goes and finds one, loose. The others have to pull them off dead guys, but they do it. Nobody touches Lewenden’s though. Too bloody, or we just don’t want to.

  We get as many as we can find and pile them on Ojeira and the other injured like sleeping bags, and I get whatever blankets I can and whatever other jackets, a couple, for slings to drag wood back with. Henrick pulls a bent piece of panel out of the way to make more room for Ojeira and the others and he finds a medical kit. He looks sorry to see it, because of Lewenden.

  “We could have fucking used this before,” he says.

  Not that an ace bandage and a gauze-patch would have saved Lewenden. He knows that.

  We’ve gotten a few cushions out, enough. We drag them outside. I try lighting them, and they flare up like torches right away, six feet high. You’d think they’d be more fire-proof, but it’s good they aren’t. Some of the guys cheer, whoop. It’s something. We’re alive. They seem to be waking up, a little.

  “Some of us should stay here and keep this going. The rest of us should see what wood we can get out there.”

  I turn and head out. Henrick’s right behind me, then Luttinger and Tlingit and Knox and Bengt follow. Reznikoff stays behind with Ojeira and the others.

  Outside, away from that minute of fire, it seems colder than before, and darker in the shadows, but there’s still moon on the snow. There are big ceiling clouds moving, and snow coming down a bit heavier, again. We keep walking, past more little chunks of plane, more dead. We stop, look into any piece big enough to have an inside, yell in, in case somebody’s alive. Nobody, but we see more dead and parts of dead, in seats, in the snow. We look at bigger pieces to see if one’s a better shelter than where we are. One looks better than the others, leaned into the snow so it almost has a door, but it’s a small space inside and I don’t know if we’d have enough room or enough air or be able to tend a fire. It’s the one with the most dead inside, anyway.

  We come up on the cockpit, finally, it looks like a crushed boiled-egg. I duck under a hole, shove my way in. The door-frame’s bent and almost folded in on itself but I can squeeze through it. As I shove in Henrick’s coming through the hole behind me. I wriggle and push the rest of the way in.

  Not a lot of light. No sign of the pilots, no bodies, no pieces of uniform like I found outside. Henrick gets through the door, we look and mostly fumble around in the dark for anything that looks like survival stuff, or signal stuff, some kind of transponder thing or something, but neither of us has any idea what we’re looking for.

  For some reason we expect to find a flare gun or an emergency kit, tents or rations or something. No such things. We try to make sense of any of the piles of twisted wires and ripped metal in there, try to find whatever switches would have anything to do with the radio, but nothing’s powering on anyway no matter how many switches we flip, everything’s fucked. We look at each other.

  “You see any sign of the pilots out there?” Henrick asks. I nod.

  “Half of one.” It strikes Henrick as funny, I didn’t mean it to be.

  “The other half’s probably fucking hiding in shame,” he says. I nod. We fall quiet.

  “Better move,” I say. We crawl back out.

  Outside I see Luttinger and the others waiting for us, they’ve slogged ahead a little, and they’re jumping around. Too cold to stand still. Back at the our piece of plane I see flames going up, higher. It looks like they’re throwing more seat cushions on. It roars up, must be fifteen feet of flame.

  “We better hurry with the wood or that’ll be gone in five minutes.” I say.

  Henrick nods, we huff up to catch the others. Lu
ttinger falls in alongside us, when he get to him, saying nothing, the rest of the guys are already tromping ahead in the cold, strung out on the snow, staring out into the dark to where the broken trees are.

  I keep looking out to either side of us, at every little dark clump we pass, to see if any of them is moving. None of them is. Like before I can’t get all the way out to check every one of them, or I’ll die doing it, the others will too. So I hope they’re dead, and I’m not leaving anybody alive we could have helped. You hope funny things.

  We go and keep going until we start to see pieces of broken branches trailing back from the trail of the crash, dozens of chunks of wood, big and little branches, some big boughs and refrigerator-sized pieces of trunk too big to pick up. We’re still what looks like a few football fields or more from the trees behind us, it’s hard to tell distances, but pieces of tree must have gotten thrown here as we came through. I’m trying to imagine it and I can’t, but here they are.

  Everybody starts gathering wood up, dumping it in the blankets and jackets or just loading up their arms. I lay a blanket out, start loading it. Henrick and some of the others take their jackets off to bundle wood in, which is brave in this cold. It doesn’t take long, we can’t carry much. Henrick heads off, dragging what looks like a big load for him. He isn’t the biggest of us, but off he goes. Tlingit and Luttinger and the others fall in behind him, start heading back for the orange pinprick of the fire in the distance.

  I find myself staring at the snow, getting breath, as they go. I almost see the shape of the pieces of the plane from here, like I could put it together. I look another half a minute, maybe and I see them getting ahead of me and I get going, dragging my load of wood. After a minute or two more I feel like I’ve been walking in snow for a year, added to the haul I did before, added to falling out of a plane, maybe, and now I’ve got a blanket full of wood that weighs more the further I drag it. Far from the fire like this, even with the wind getting up, it’s surprisingly peaceful. Snow is coming in still heavier and more clouds are coming over too I think, we’re on a giant white slab, getting buried by the hour, all new snow. Sounds hopeful.

  I pass a dead guy, a little ways off, and another, I don’t know if I passed them on the way out, my eyes are adjusting more. I look further out to the sides, I see a big flat shadow of cloud moving away across the snow letting more moon down, and I see more and more dark clumps, more dead, a field of dead, even more than I’d seen before.

  I stop walking, again, for a moment, looking at the bodies. Without my footsteps in the snow or the others’ it’s incredibly silent, somehow, even with the wind. The buzzing’s gone from my ears, I realize, the pounding too, or I think it is.

  I think I hear snow moving behind me. I turn, look back, I don’t see anything, just dark dead dots in the snow, but I keep looking back, another second, a little further into the dark. One of the dead is moving, it looks like, now, trying to get up or worse, shaking, he looks bad. I let go of the load of wood and start walking back to him. Then I start running.

  “Hey!” I’m shouting, “I’m coming—I’m coming!“

  I shout and run, as hard as I can, because he’s shivering, convulsing, it looks like, some kind of spasm. He’s dying his last, maybe, but he still looks like he’s trying to get up, it’s hard to see, just this dark clump shaking in the snow, the sight’s frightening, I don’t know why, but for some reason I want to get to him before he dies, if that’s what he’s doing, so I keep lunging and huffing through the snow, yelling to him, and he keeps shuddering, retching or something, fighting to stand, convulsing, I can’t tell.

  “Hey—” I yell again.

  Then he seems to split in two, or I see something jumps off him, half a second, looks up, then jumps back on him. Some fucking thing, an animal.

  “Hey!” I yell as loud as I can, as if this guy, who I realize is dead, probably, cares. But I yell, and run faster.

  “Get the fuck off him!” I yell.

  Its head comes up, looks at me. It’s a wolf, ripping at the guy, and I see, now I’m closer, the guy is dead, if he was alive at all. It was the wolf I saw moving. The wolf just stares at me.

  I charge at it, screaming. I don’t know why I’m charging, but the wolf looks up and stares at me and just watches me come at him. I’m thinking he killed him, he was alive and this fucker killed him, or he was dead and he’s got food on him, or he’s at his guts, I don’t know, but I’m charging, yelling, and expecting him to twitch or flinch and turn tail and jump off but he isn’t fucking moving, he’s just watching me.

  Then I’m hit sideways. I think I’ve been hit by a piece of plane, I’m in a blur, slammed, and I’m in the snow with my eyes open getting snow jammed up my nose and under my lids again and something’s digging and dragging into my fucking back and dragging me, and somewhere in getting tossed upside down I think it’s the wolf, but it can’t be, and I understand it’s another wolf, locked onto the back of my jacket, or my back, I can’t tell, but it’s tunneling into me, the best it can, and I’m face down in snow now and I get half up off the snow, almost standing, but he hangs on, I pick him up with me, or most of him, by his teeth. I hear him growling.

  Then I’m hit again, at the back again but the other side, up under my arm, the other one’s hanging off me now. I’m standing with two of them hanging on to me by their jaws, and they aren’t letting go, and I’m trying to swat with my elbows and grunt and I can’t see them but I think one drops, I think there’s only one now, behind me where I can’t see him or get at him but as I twist I smell fur and his breath and I finally get around enough to see the top of his head and his ears, and I smell more fur, more hot breath, he’s buried in my armpit burrowing his teeth in. Now I see the other is off me. He’s bouncing left and right behind me looking for the next place to latch on while I spin the one on me around, I’m swinging, frantic, trying to shake him.

  I can’t tell if the one still on me’s really got his teeth in me or he’s mostly eating jacket. I feel his teeth crunching in, but I don’t know how far they’re in me, or if they’re in me or just hurting. I’m still swinging and trying to stop him getting leverage to really bite, I’m trying to smash him all the harder now that I can see something and I try to twist further and I pull his ear and I bash and bash with my elbow at his head, as hard as I can, like I’m trying to crack his skull. I’m waiting to hear a cracking sound, as if I’m going to be able to hit as hard as that. I hear jacket ripping and I feel muscle or something tearing under my arm and he seems to come loose, but he bounces up again, gets a new bite on my back. I’m still praying he’s getting more jacket than me and he’s snorting, growling, but he is not flinching except to get a better and better grip and try to get the damn jacket out of his way or get more muscle. It’s hurting enough, stabbing, sharp, I think that he must be in me by now.

  I look up as the other one hits me again, on my leg, and I kick as hard as I can before he can sink in too deep. He gashes me, feels like, but he comes loose. He took a piece or didn’t, I don’t care, if he’s off me. It hurts, but in the cold it all does, he’s got my whole leg for all I know and I’m nothing but spinal cord on my back, for all I know, I’m a meatless stack of bones fighting when I’m already gone into something’s mouth, nothing to save, but still fighting as if there is.

  The one I kicked off jumps up at me, again, and I get my arm up in time, barely, and he locks on my arm in front of me, I get a face-full of his teeth. His breath’s hot. I spin again, the other still on my back, and I get my other arm up and smash him as hard as I can again. He lets loose and tries to get another hold but he misses the bite this time, and drops, and somehow the one who came at my face drops, I think I finally pulled his ear half-off, something came loose, maybe fur. He drops and I spin, and I’ve got the two of them in front of me, and I can see them both for the first time.

  I don’t think of running because I know they’d run me down and in the half-second I thought that, I’m thinking, ‘OK, we�
�ll calm down now, we’ll look at each other and we’ll settle,’ and as I think that they come at me again. I realize I can die now or do otherwise so I charge at one in front and roar and try to seem big and threatening like they tell you to do with other animals, and he leaps right up and goes for my side but he misses. I turn in time and step after him and kick at the side of his head as hard as I can. He backs off a step and I charge again because I can’t run and I can’t stand there, and he almost gets my whole leg in his jaw this time but I snap back and he grazes off, I get my leg out, he doesn’t get a hold, and I kick at his face again, harder, somehow, and he hesitates this time. He doesn’t come in at me, for a second. But the other one jumps right up over my arm and closes his mouth on my face, over my eyes.

  I get my hands up trying to wedge him away but I fall back in the snow with him on me, locked on my face and squeezing, and the other one’s on my chest trying to get up under my neck but I think my arm’s in his way and he jumps off, I can’t see anything with this one’s mouth over me and I’m wondering as I try to leverage him off when his teeth will puncture bone and my skull will crack in two, and I feel the other one land on me again. I’m dead now, I think, I’m pushing and kicking but it feels like digging in water, they’re going to get into me and go through me now and that will be that, I’m pushing their weight and trying to twist away but one’s on my leg and I can’t. A few more seconds, maybe.

  I hear yelling, stomping, coming across the snow, guys charging and boots thumping, heavy thuds coming through the wolf on me to my chest, my knuckles and my head are getting smashed, with lumps of wood. I see Henrick with a piece of wood in his hands, swinging, Luttinger and Tlingit too, the others, but I still have the wolves on me. Then Tlingit swings his log like a bat and knocks one right off me, and Henrick swings his down on the other. It jumps loose, and the wolves hop away, and turn and face us.

  I try to get to my feet but all I do is slip over backwards and hit the snow. I pull up to see where the wolves are. They stare at me and at Henrick and Luttinger and Tlingit and the others, standing here with their logs, ready to swing. They stare at us and breathe, a few breaths, half a dozen, maybe. Then they just turn and trot off, into the dark. I fall back on the snow again. I feel less than safe lying there instead of up watching the wolves go, but I can’t hold myself up, anymore.