Diffusion

by Stan C. Smith

  Quentin pulled his eyes away from this bizarre sight and yelled, “Russ, help me!”

  Russ grabbed the pilot’s armpit, and together they hoisted the man back into his seat. Outside the cockpit window, the ground was getting closer. They were losing altitude.

  “Russ, go back to your seat. Everyone buckle in!” Quentin watched to make sure they responded and then turned back to the now motionless pilot. He gripped the man’s head. “Hey, wake up!” The pilot’s eyes stared vacuously. Quentin grasped the man’s neck for a pulse, but felt only thick, clammy tissue.

  “Quentin, we have to do something!” Lindsey cried.

  The fear in her voice slapped him in the face. He looked desperately around the cabin. The two girls huddled together, Miranda’s head buried in her hands. Bobby stared out the window at the dead engine, as if willing it to life. In the rear, the Indonesian couple still clung to each other. Quentin pushed his way toward the couple.

  “We’re going to crash! Can you fly this plane?”

  The woman remained motionless, her face buried in the man’s shoulder, and again Quentin glimpsed dark fingers against her white shirt. The man shouted something in Indonesian, his face creased with terror. He couldn’t have been older than twenty.

  Quentin turned away from them. “Goddammit!” He made his way back to the cockpit. The forest was much closer, the treetops now a blur of motion. He grabbed the control wheel opposite the pilot and yanked on it, but nothing happened. He leaned over the pilot, grabbed the main wheel, and turned it. The plane responded, banking to the left. Quentin had never flown a plane, but he’d seen pilots in movies pull the wheel up for lift. He pulled hard and the plane’s nose pitched upward. He looked out. The trees were not rising as fast, but the plane was still losing altitude. He released the control wheel, and the plane began dropping faster, so he grabbed it and pulled again. It would not stay in place without his hands on it.

  Seconds later, the forest canopy was just below them. Quentin saw individual leaves as trees rushed by. The brown surface of a river appeared and then was gone. They were going to crash. He would die. His students and son would die. His wife. Quentin looked back at Lindsey and their eyes met. He released the control wheel and staggered back to her.

  “Hurry!” she cried.

  He fumbled with the buckle and snapped it into place. Lindsey had been reaching over the seat in front of her, comforting the girls, but now she put her arms around Quentin.

  He pressed her head into his shoulder and braced himself for the impact.

  The tree kangaroo, known locally as the mbolop, made its way up the trunk of a towering klinki pine. The top of the forest often revealed the greatest diversity of living things, and each tree variety seemed to hold its own combination of life thriving at its highest reaches. And so climbing was a good use of its time. The creature gathered information as if it were sustenance, feeding on it in order to live. And still there was so much to be consumed and stored.

  Claws pierced the klinki pine’s bark, allowing brawny hind legs to propel the creature upward. The tree’s limbs became thinner near the top, and the disturbance made them tremble. A raucous group of cockatoos, known to the tree kangaroo as kékékh, scolded the creature, their shrieks amplifying as it climbed nearer to them, until finally they blasted out of the canopy, a clamorous white cloud.

  As the kangaroo watched them fly upward, a prickly wave passed through its body. It stopped climbing. It discerned immediately what was happening, what the man Samuel had done—a heedless action with unpredictable consequences. But such experimentation was not unprecedented in this place. It was to be expected.

  Just as the wave of sensation passed, the flock of cockatoos fell silent. And then they rained down upon the tree they had just vacated. Ruined bodies splattered against the limbs, forcing the mbolop to shut its eyes against the spray of fluids and fragments.

  Eyes still closed, the tree kangaroo processed these events. Suppositions and observed facts shifted about on a cognitive puzzle board until they fit together like interlocking pieces. The puzzle was then undone and reassembled, searching for the clearest overall picture.

  But the creature’s thoughts were again disrupted, this time by a distant sound, a mechanical growl steadily drawing nearer. The mbolop scrambled higher until it could see over the other trees. It spotted the source, a machine hurtling closer and closer, just above the forest canopy. Muscles twitching, the creature prepared to flee. With a deafening roar, the machine passed directly over, close enough that the kangaroo had to tighten its grip to avoid being blown out of the tree by the air wake.

  The mbolop turned around in time to see the machine crash into the treetops.

  Quentin had lived a mild life. He had lost a fight when he was a teenager, but adrenaline had prevented him from feeling the pain. He had been in minor car accidents, with no injuries. And he had fallen from a ladder once, cracking his wrist. Never had he experienced anything like the crushing violence of the plane hurtling into the canopy. In a deafening uproar of twisting metal and bursting seams, he was wrenched from Lindsey’s embrace. His seatbelt clamped down on his hips, forcing his head to slam the seatback in front of him. Abruptly, the plane skimmed off the tree canopy, and for a moment, there was only the wind rushing through new openings in the cabin. Eleven people were on the plane, but there were no screams, no words—only the whisper of air.

  Chaos returned as the fuselage plowed into the canopy a second time. Quentin was thrown to the side this time and then jostled ruthlessly as if the plane were rolling. The fuselage shrieked as sheared tree branches tore into the metal. It then slowed and seemed to stop.

  Quentin blinked, but his vision was blurred. He grasped for anything solid and found the seatback in front of him, but it jiggled as if it had been torn loose. He recalled that he should not be alone. Others had been with him. Lindsey! He reached for her and found her arm, her shoulder, and then her hair. Suddenly there was a loud crack and the entire plane rolled to the side. This was followed by an even greater crack, as if an entire tree had been snapped in half. The plane fell. It crashed onto another tree branch and turned on end. For a moment it plunged tail-first like an elevator with a severed cable. The rear of the fuselage impacted an immovable force, throwing Quentin back into his seat and bringing the loosened seat in front of him into his lap. The plane then toppled over, and with one last jarring crash it came to rest. The fuselage groaned and then fell silent.

  Quentin’s senses began to function again. Shapes emerged from the haze. Spasms of pain, starting as mere tingles, intensified from his hips, his neck, and then from everywhere. His ears were the last to surrender. At first, there was only pulsing static, like breaking waves. Then there were voices. The voices intensified, turning nightmarish. They sounded guttural, like animals that were dying. His students and family were shrieking, gasping for air. He tried closing his eyes, but it didn’t stop.

  The pain in his hip became unbearable. He looked down and realized he was hanging from his seat. The plane was on its side. Lindsey was above him, her legs pressing against his. She was alive, conscious, pushing against Quentin’s thigh and the seatback in front of her. The cabin was dim now, but Quentin saw blood dripping from her face.

  “Lindsey!”

  She didn’t answer. Half her face was concealed by disheveled brown hair. The eye Quentin could see flicked his direction, but blinked confusedly. The students’ distressed cries seemed to swell. He had to do something.

  “Lindsey, my hip—I have to get out.” He pulled on his seatbelt latch and the mechanism popped. He dropped against the left side of the plane, hitting his head on the rim of a window. He pressed his hand where sunlight should have shone through Plexiglas. Instead there was moist soil.

  Quentin tried to clear his head, but the girls’ cries were persistent and frighteningly intense, making it hard to focus.

  “We crashed. Mr. Darnell, we crashed!” Bobby had been seated
on the left side of the plane, so he was now against the ground in the seat next to Quentin.

  “I know, Bobby. Are you hurt?”

  “My head hurts.”

  Quentin popped Bobby’s seatbelt open, allowing him to sit up. Quentin then looked around him. Where a wall once isolated the baggage space at the rear of the cabin, there was now a huge opening. He saw slivers of sunlight against murky foliage. The Indonesian man, slouched in his seat, was silhouetted against the trees. The woman and her seat were gone.

  Addison hung limp next to Carlos, who was whimpering and clutching his own bloody hand. Quentin wanted to focus on his son, to make sure Addison was alive. But the girls’ cries couldn’t be ignored. He turned to them. He saw no movement in the front row beyond the girls, but Russ’s head hung loosely from his seat. The opening to the cockpit was now skewed to an odd angle, and through it he saw only twisted wreckage and more forest.

  Quentin put his hands to his head. He wanted to fade away into oblivion. But Lindsey rasped above him, pulling him back. He rose from his knees and pressed his shoulder to her chest. “Put your arms around my neck.” Her nails dug into his back. He popped the lever on her seatbelt, and her full weight settled onto his shoulder. He collapsed and they both fell.

  “Are you okay? Is anything broken?”

  She blinked. “I don’t know. My head.” Blood flowed from a gash above her eye, and Quentin wiped it with his shirt.

  “Quentin, the kids.”

  “I know. You see to the girls. I need to get to Addison.”

  Lindsey staggered to her feet. Quentin turned to Carlos, who was sobbing and holding his hand. Quentin freed him from his seat and set him to the side so he could reach his son. He turned Addison so he could see his face. His face was even more pale than usual, and a red impact wound covered half his forehead. Quentin gripped his throat and felt a weak pulse. He lowered him to the floor, but was struck by Addison’s inertness. There was not a tight muscle in his body.

  “Oh God no!” Lindsey was now at the front of the plane. Quentin moved to her side.

  Miranda cried over and over, “My leg! Please! My leg!”

  But Lindsey’s attention was fixed on Russ and Roberto. The gap between their seats and the wall of the cockpit was gone. The wall had crushed Roberto’s legs. His head hung to the side at an impossible angle.

  Lindsey grabbed Quentin’s arm. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  There was no doubt of that. Quentin glanced back at Carlos, who was still cradling his hand but watching intently. Mercifully, he couldn’t see his older brother from where he sat. Quentin turned his attention to Russ. The cabin doorway had impacted Russ’s head, gashing his temple, exposing several inches of white skull. Quentin felt for a pulse, but found none. Roberto and Russ, both just graduated from high school, their futures full of promise, were dead.

  Quentin turned to the girls, his movements becoming mechanical, automatic. He extracted Ashley from her seat, which was now barely attached to the fuselage, and lowered her to the floor. She finally quieted down. Aside from a sizeable cut on her shoulder, she seemed more frightened than seriously hurt. Reaching for Miranda, Quentin felt distant from his own body. The cockpit wall had forced Roberto’s seat back, trapping Miranda’s right leg. A jagged edge of femur protruded from her thigh, creating a disturbing bulge in her jeans. Lindsey tried to calm her as Quentin released her seatbelt and allowed her weight to settle on him. He started to lower her, but her ruined leg was caught. Her screams had been continuous, but to Quentin they now seemed secluded, unrelated to the task at hand. He twisted and tugged until the leg was free. When he finally put her on the floor, he realized her screaming had stopped.

  Four

  In the minutes or hours that followed, Quentin had no concept of the passing of time. He and Lindsey worked frantically to treat wounds that required skills far beyond theirs. Addison, Miranda, and Carlos needed a hospital with skilled doctors. Quentin, Lindsey, Bobby, and Ashley had minor cuts, which would heal if they could avoid infection. But Quentin was unable to find a first aid kit. The plane didn’t have one, or it had been ejected in the crash.

  Roberto and Russ were beyond help.

  Quentin’s mind reeled. Even if they were lucky enough to be rescued without further casualties, nothing would be the same again. He and Lindsey would have to face the parents of students they had promised to care for, but who now were dead, crippled, or emotionally scarred. And if Addison were to die… Quentin forced this thought aside in order to function.

  All that remained of the plane was a cylinder of fuselage. Most of the cockpit was destroyed. Even if the pilot had lived until the moment they crashed, he was certainly dead now. His crumpled body lay amidst remnants of the cockpit and baggage from the forward compartment. If Quentin had remained at the plane’s controls, he would be part of that debris.

  The young Indonesian man seemed mostly unharmed, but he did not offer to help. His girlfriend or wife was gone, her seat ripped from its anchors and ejected. She’d been literally torn from his arms. He wandered aimlessly around the wreck, apparently looking for her. The plane’s tail could not have been more than a few hundred meters away, but the forest was dense and no other wreckage was visible.

  Miranda’s skin was pale and clammy and she was in shock, alternating between unconsciousness and semi-lucid babbling. While she was unconscious, they forced her femur into alignment and tied her straightened legs against one of the plane’s seatbacks with a pair of trousers. Ashley bravely helped with these tasks. Ashley had a nasty gash on her shoulder, but they had tied a shirt around her upper arm and she was coping. Addison remained unconscious, and there was nothing they could do for him other than check for a pulse every few minutes.

  They set Bobby to work removing the seat cushions and any of the seat frames he could work loose. He seemed to welcome the chance to do something, and he tossed the seats one by one into a growing pile outside the cabin.

  Carlos sat at the rear of the fuselage, quietly nursing his damaged hand and staring into the forest. He hadn’t said a word, but he’d let Quentin inspect his injuries. Three fingers were crushed, the bones pulverized. Quentin simply wrapped the hand as tight as he dared with a Morning Star t-shirt. When he told him that his brother had died, Carlos shook his head and pulled away, unwilling to listen.

  When they had finally met the most pressing needs, Quentin considered the problem of the dead bodies. In the sauna-like cabin, their presence would soon become intolerable. He had to move them. He instructed the others to turn their heads and he carried out the task on his own. He was glad they weren’t watching, because Roberto’s legs were mostly severed at the knees, and they dangled and flopped bizarrely as Quentin carried the body out of the plane.

  Finally he stood some distance from the fuselage, the bodies of the boys and pilot at his feet, mostly hidden from the others by the base of a strangler fig tree. Quentin wiped the sweat from his face and swatted at the cloud of flies around him. The heat was oppressive, and they had no water. He looked up at the forest canopy and took note of what was arguably the largest obstacle to their rescue. The canopy appeared undisturbed. There was no gaping hole through which searchers might spot the wreckage. Would the search planes see them? Had the pilot even been capable of radioing that they were in trouble? Their flight hadn’t been a scheduled run. With the chaos in Wamena, dozens of unscheduled flights were leaving the highlands. Their plane may not even be missed yet.

  In frustration, Quentin kicked a mangled fragment of the cockpit. The wreckage flipped over and then it caught his eye. The metal appeared to have melted and mushroomed outward. Something about this brought back a scene from the crash Quentin had forgotten. As the pilot was dying, his feet had looked like this—like they had exploded. He stared at the metal for a moment but could make no sense of it.

  Quentin searched the debris and failed to find any portion of the instrument panel that might be the radio. The only commu
nication devices they had were their smartphones and one of the walkie-talkies. The other walkie-talkie was in Lindsey’s pack in the lost tail of the plane. The smartphones required cellular network access, and the nearest cellular towers were in Wamena and the capitol city of Jayapura. They were probably a hundred miles from either location. Quentin tried his anyway but couldn’t pick up a signal. The walkie-talkie had a range of only a few miles. Perhaps they could use it if a search plane flew over. He tried it briefly to make sure it worked and quickly turned it off to conserve the batteries.

  They hadn’t heard any planes since the crash, which was puzzling considering a steady stream of emergency flights to Sentani would likely continue for some time. He moved farther away from the fuselage and paused, listening. At first all he heard were the incessant flies. Honeyeaters called in the distance, followed by reciprocating calls from other directions. A faint rustling in the leaves above drew his gaze in time to see something move in the canopy. He made out a dark animal, mostly hidden, probably a possum. Then another animal moved, a few meters away but in the same tree. He waited, but there was no further movement.

  Other than these natural sounds the area was silent. The crippled Twin Otter must have drifted miles from the Wamena-to-Sentani flight path. Probably to the west, since it was the left engine that had failed. The numb shock in Quentin’s mind began to give way to comprehension of the hopelessness of their situation.

  He scanned the forest in every direction. It was all the same—murky, emerald-tinted, and textured with buttress roots, twisting vines, and vertical trunks that disappeared into a sea of foliage. He couldn’t see more than thirty meters in any direction. The streaks of sunlight penetrating the canopy were now at a lower angle as the day faded away. What would the night here be like? Would Addison be alive in the morning? Overcome, Quentin sank to the ground, just out of view of the Twin Otter. His body shook once, startling him. It had been so long since he’d last cried. But he felt a tidal wave coming. There was no fighting it, but he did make a feeble effort to not be heard by the others.