by Dani Atkins
His voice was a low whisper, a vow, a promise, an oasis inside a raging maelstrom. ‘We are going to get through this, Hannah. You have to believe that.’
I took the cloth from him and finished the task, blowing my nose for good measure before pocketing it. I hardly imagined he would be wanting it back.
‘We’re not going to make it back to the airport, are we?’
I saw the hesitation in his eyes and recognised the moment when he considered lying, just to tell me what I wanted to hear. But when the clock is ticking away so desperately, and the hour glass is almost drained, it really isn’t the time for lies.
‘I don’t think so. I don’t think we can.’
He leant across me to look out of the window, and I followed his gaze, noticing for the first time how much lower we were flying. I could even make out the sharp outlines of the mountainous peaks below us. Logan straightened up, and there was a look of sad regret on his face. ‘I should have ignored that damn page and bought you coffee. I hate meeting you for the first time this way.’ He paused for a moment and then with perfect timing added, ‘It’s such a horrible story to tell our grandchildren.’
His words had the desired effect. I turned back from the window to look at him in astonishment. ‘Grandchildren? There’s going to be grandchildren?’
He smiled, pleased to see I was willing to play along with his little distraction. ‘But of course. I’ve always wanted a big family. What’s wrong, don’t you like kids?’
An image of Lily came to mind, her face a perfect blend of her mother’s, and my own. The continuity of our family. That felt like something I was never going to contribute to now, given the current situation. I swallowed down the granite-hard lump in my throat. ‘I have a niece who I totally adore.’
He nodded, and I saw him read the look on my face, my doubt that I would ever see her again. ‘Well, she’s going to need some cousins, to play with. So we should probably be focusing on that to begin with.’
I closed my eyes and tried to let my panicked mind find a moment or two of escape in this silly little fantasy. Our children would be tall, naturally they would. They’d all have blond hair and bright green eyes and their father’s unusual accent, which I was still struggling to place. Reality was waiting for me when my lids fluttered open and I saw Logan studying me carefully. I nodded solemnly, as though thanking him for the distraction. ‘Just one teeny point. What if I’m already married?’
He shook his head gently and glanced down at my left hand. ‘I’d already checked that out, Miss Truman, long before we boarded this flight.’
I felt an embarrassed blush burn my cheeks. Was this how I was going to exit this world, teasingly flirting with a handsome stranger? Shouldn’t I be doing something more profound like pondering on the meaning of life, or writing a letter of goodbye to Kate . . . or William? How do you even begin to say everything that’s racing through your mind at a time like this? Perhaps this anonymous banter was the perfect way to go.
‘I’m really glad you came looking for me. It was terrifying, being the only one back here.’ My voice cracked as I struggled to get the words out. ‘No one should have to die alone.’
His green eyes flared, with a defiant denial. ‘No one is going to die here, Hannah. You have to keep believing that. We’re going to survive this,’ he said on a promise I felt sure he would never be able to keep.
He raised his hand and smoothed the hair back from my face. I’ll always remember that. Equally impossible to forget is the way the expression in his eyes suddenly changed from compassion to the closest thing to fear I had seen in them so far. Within the green depths I saw a perfect miniature reflection of what had frightened him. My eyes widened in horror at the twin mirrored images of the enormous fire ball that had totally engulfed the engine below the wing of the plane.
Everything seemed to happen very quickly after that. There were panicked screams of ‘Fire!’ from many different voices which were almost drowned out by the screeching roar as the plane’s one remaining engine fought desperately to keep us airborne. The plane began to judder and shake with even greater intensity. How could its flimsy skin and nuts and bolts possibly withstand this pressure?
My eyes darted from the window and back to Logan. ‘Is this it?’ I cried. He nodded his reply, and reached for the two small airline pillows he had deposited on the seat beside him. He placed one on my lap and the other on his own. My heart was pounding so fast, pushing adrenaline through every vein, it was in danger of giving out even sooner than our damaged plane was. It would have been, I think, a better way to go.
In a cacophony of bangs the passenger oxygen masks suddenly cascaded down from the compartments above our heads, bouncing crazily on their tubes like a sea of bright yellow and deadly Chinese lanterns. This was really happening. We really were going down.
The plane was filled with noise and panic, but Logan’s voice never wavered or shook. ‘Lay your head on the pillow, Hannah,’ he instructed calmly. I did as he directed, so in the final seconds when the pilots lost their valiant attempts to keep us flying level, and we plummeted once more into a dive, I was already in the correct position.
‘Brace! Brace! Brace!’ came the pilot’s voice over the intercom, a terrifying command which was instantly taken up and repeated again and again by his cabin crew.
‘Brace, head down! Brace, head down!’
My face was on the pillow, turned towards Logan’s, as though we were lying side by side together in bed. His eyes held mine. ‘It will soon be over,’ he soothed. ‘Close your eyes, Hannah.’ I did as I was told. I wrapped my arms beneath my knees, in the way we’d been shown, only vaguely aware that Logan wasn’t entirely sticking to the rules, because one of his hands remained at rest on the back of my neck, for added protection.
The dive was steep and faster than the first one, and petrified into immobility, it took me several moments to realise that we were once again – incredibly – coming out of it and beginning to level out. I turned my face on the soft cotton fabric of the pillow and opened my eyes the merest slit. It was true, we were levelling out, but it was too late, much, much too late. The last thing I remember seeing were the jagged snow-covered crags of the mountain, not some distance below us, as they’d been just seconds before, but right there next to us, right outside my window. We were literally flying among the mountains.
Suddenly there was a horrible rending sound as the tail of the plane grazed against a rocky promontory. In my ignorance I didn’t initially realise just how serious that was. But Logan did, I knew that by the single muttered expletive and the increased pressure of his hand on me. Through terrified eyes I saw the jagged crack the rock had left in the plane’s fuselage just two rows ahead of us. And then the crack ran, as though it were in a race, across the aluminium, slicing through the body of the rear end of the plane as effortlessly as a can opener on a tin. I could suddenly see the night sky through the widening fissure, and could hear nothing above the fierce roar of the wind as it sliced like a sabre through the gap. Everything not belted or fastened down took to the air, as though a tornado had just entered the compartment. The rear of the plane began to shake violently, as the crack spread from left to right across the ceiling and down each side of the plane.
‘Hold on, Hannah. I think—’
And then it happened. The jagged crack completed its deadly path and the tail detached from the body of the plane, with Logan and I still strapped within it.
Day Two
I was thrown back against my seat, as though I’d been shot out of a cannon, as an unimaginable wall of cold air blasted against me, pinioning me down. I could feel nothing except the freezing wind flaying me, as though it was literally trying to peel the skin from my body. Logan’s protective hand was gone, and the pressure of air pounding against me was so intense, I couldn’t even turn to see if he was still beside me.
I wasn’t aware of being in the air, until the moment when suddenly I wasn’t. I realised later that if
we’d come down on land, even snow-covered smooth and rock-free land, we would have died from the impact. I’m sure of that. But that wasn’t where our small detached fragment of the plane came to ground. There was no warning, no opportunity to take one last gulp of air. One minute we were falling backward through the dark night skies and then suddenly there was water over, around and above us. We hit the surface at speed and then bounced two or three times along the dark and freezing cold waters of a lake. Each bounce produced a huge wall of water, which surrounded and engulfed us as we skimmed across the surface, like an enormous skilfully tossed pebble.
And then the plane, or what was left of it, simply disintegrated around us. Bolts fastening the seats were sheared off, as the wreckage buckled, broke and scattered in a thousand pieces across the lake, and the fabric of the aircraft finally gave in to the elements which had been so determined to destroy it: fire, wind and now lastly . . . water.
Although my seat had broken free of the floor it had been welded to, I remained securely fastened within it. The moment it ripped from its base, it tipped forward and plunged me face down into the water, where it rapidly began to sink down towards the ink-black floor of the lake. My mouth was open, and the icy water forced itself relentlessly down my throat and into my lungs. I don’t know how long I plummeted downwards, my arms flailing in front of me like out-of-control windmill sails. They’d probably have been totally useless anyway at preventing me from smashing into rocks, boulders or fallen trees hidden beneath the water, but their movement was driven by instinct, not good sense.
With hindsight, getting free from the imprisoning seat should probably have been my first priority, but that coherent thought was lost as I struggled with the immediate problem of trying really hard not to drown.
My seat came to a sudden and jarring halt, embedding itself into a thick layer of stew-like sludge that covered the bed of the lake. The thick cloying mud cushioned some of the impact as my seat crashed face down into the squelching filth. The relief of coming to a standstill was quickly replaced by panic as the gritty mud and silt swirled up into my nose and mouth. The headrest of my aircraft seat was imbedded at an angle into the sediment, leaving my face just centimetres away from imminent suffocation. It felt as though death was literally chasing after me, seemingly looking for ever-increasingly horrible ways to capture me. My right arm was effectively useless, for it was trapped in the mud beneath my seat, leaving me just one hand to undo the buckle on my seatbelt. It took me several moments even to find the small silver clasp, which currently was all that was standing between my life or death. I plucked uselessly at the belt, but panic and the freezing cold water had robbed me of all coordination and although I had the clasp in my frozen fingers, I couldn’t perform the simple task of lifting it to release me. Air escaped in a gurgling torrent from my lips, floating above my head like cartoon speech bubbles, each one screaming ‘Help!’
In desperation I kicked and scrabbled my feet in the sludge for purchase, each movement an effort as the mud sucked hungrily onto my trainers like quicksand. With every passing second I could feel myself growing increasingly lightheaded, and when bright spots of light pin-wheeled before my eyes, I knew the air in my lungs was almost at the end. Then suddenly the silt around me was churned up like a tornado as my seat abruptly flipped over. The filth swirling around me was so thick that at first I didn’t even see Logan’s face frantically searching mine to see if I had survived. My hands flew to the buckle of my belt, but his were there before me, springing free the catch and releasing me. His arms reached out and gripped hold of me as together we kicked upwards, our heads simultaneously emerging from the lake with identical gasps for air.
Confused and disorientated, I struggled to stay afloat in the icy cold lake as I coughed up mouthful after mouthful of disgusting water. Logan had one strong arm around my waist, keeping me upright in case my ability to tread water suddenly deserted me. Which, to be fair, was a definite possibility. Eventually, when the heaving paroxysms had passed, I turned to my rescuer, my voice a hysterical cry which I scarcely recognised as my own.
‘We crashed! We crashed! The plane crashed!’ As if I needed to confirm this, I struggled in his hold, splashing uncontrollably as I floundered about trying to look in every direction at once. There was debris all around us, bobbing on the surface, but no sign at all of the tail section of the plane. Anything that wasn’t floating around us like pieces of matchwood had sunk to the bottom of the sludgy lake.
‘Where’s the plane? Where’s the rest of the plane?’ I cried desperately, fighting against his restraining arm. In response he tightened his hold and turned me, quite forcibly towards him. Although I know my kicking legs connected with his beneath the water, he never let go, and held my writhing body securely in the strong circle of his arms.
‘Hannah, listen, listen to me.’
‘We crashed! Logan, we crashed! Where’s the plane? Where’s everyone else?’
Wisely he chose to ignore those questions and brought one hand up and gripped the back of my neck, forcing my face so close to his, that I could feel each expelled breath leaving his mouth in a cloud of vapour. It was the first time I fully realised just how cold the water was.
‘Hannah, we need to swim to the shore. Can you do that? Can you swim?’
‘But the plane, it crashed—’
‘I know,’ he interrupted, trying to rein in my panic before it put both of us in even greater peril. ‘But right now we have to get to the shore and out of this freezing water. Can you manage to swim, can you do that for me?’
I suppose he would have had to tow me in if I hadn’t finally managed to curb some of my rising hysteria and nod back at him, with a face frozen more with fear than it was with cold.
‘I can swim. I’m a good swimmer.’
‘Good,’ he replied, releasing the hand from behind my neck and bringing it back to my waist. ‘It looks about twenty metres or so. Just head straight towards it as fast as you can.’
I threw a worried glance at the shoreline, which was fortunately illuminated in the darkness by laser-white moonlight. Although it was cold, unbearably cold, at least the storm that had followed us like a malevolent ghost through the sky hadn’t crashed down to earth with us. The air was currently free of snow.
‘I’m going to let go of you now,’ warned Logan, just seconds before he withdrew his hands and passed the responsibility of staying afloat back to me. I hadn’t lied. I am a good swimmer. I’d been a lifeguard at our local pool from the time I was sixteen until I left for university. But even so, I don’t think I’d found any test or time trial as difficult to achieve as that short swim to reach the shore. I’d been trained how to swim in clothes, trained how to rescue someone in trouble, resuscitate them too if I had to. But there are some things that no qualifications can teach you. And crashing from the skies into the middle of the water in subzero temperatures was a challenge no amount of instruction could prepare me for.
I struck out towards the shoreline, swimming clumsily in clothes and shoes. The muscles in my body took over, working on memory they knew how to cleave through the water, knew when my arm had to slice downward and when my legs should kick. Yet even as I turned my face and breathed between strokes, I was unable to prevent the shocked mantra which I tagged like a chant onto every gulp for air: ‘We crashed. We crashed. We crashed.’
I didn’t realise I had reached the shore until my knees grazed against the large pebbled rim surrounding the water’s edge. Too weak to get to my feet, I crawled up the small incline and out of the lake on all fours, collapsing onto the cold ground as soon as my body was clear of the water. I heard a splashing sound behind me but was too weak to raise my head. I felt Logan’s hand grasp my ankle and then move jerkily up my prone body until it reached my shoulder, where it stopped and gripped.
‘Get up, Hannah,’ he said, shaking me for good measure when I didn’t raise my head from the stones. I heard the crunch of gravel and grit and then a scrabbling noise.
I forced one reluctant eye open and saw a large booted foot planted just beside my face. ‘Come on, Hannah, you have to get up. Now.’
I groaned, my lips grazing the ground, but couldn’t summon up the strength to move. It was as though my basic survival instinct had been washed away by the water in an unholy baptism. ‘You are not going to lie down there and die,’ Logan muttered, his voice sounding surprisingly angry. I remember feeling a little disgruntled at his tone, and then before I had a chance to realise his intentions, he dropped down beside me, stuck his hands firmly into my armpits and hauled me like a sodden bag of potatoes to my feet.
I swayed like a swooning heroine, my legs totally unprepared for the task of keeping me upright, which seemed crazy when they’d had twenty-seven years of practice carrying me around. I gave a small surprised grunt as he pulled me against him, allowing the strength and breadth of him to shore me up. I could feel the cold coming off his body in a throb of waves. It was like standing by the open doorway of an industrial freezer. Did I feel just as cold to him? Perhaps so, because his hands moved quickly onto my arms and began rubbing briskly up and down. His actions were rough enough to penetrate – almost painfully – through the frozen paralysis of my limbs. They burnt where he rubbed, struggling to bring them back to life.
‘Come on,’ he urged, putting one arm around me and leading me further up the shore. ‘Let’s get out of the water.’ I glanced down and saw that we were still standing up to our ankles in it. My feet were so cold and numb that I hadn’t even realised. Logan half dragged me up the incline away from the lake and towards a small flat clearing, which was ringed by snow-speckled trees and undergrowth.
I was hanging on to him for support, and I was grateful for that when I turned around and surveyed the place where we had fallen from the sky. The narrow beach and the surrounding rough terrain were strewn with many things. There were trees felled by storms or old age, there were rocks which were an intrinsic part of the lakeside topography. They all belonged here. There were also things that clearly did not. I turned my head slowly from left to right as I surveyed the array of wreckage scattered like modern art upon the frozen ground. The pieces showed up starkly in the moonlight, some no bigger than a matchbox, some a metre or two wide. Many shards of the grotesquely twisted shrapnel must have been covered in aviation fuel, for they were burning like miniature beacons on the earth. They lit up the ground like haphazardly placed landing lights, for a plane I was pretty certain had never landed.