Departure(9)

I reach first for a teenager, his eyes puffy, black and blue, his face swollen and caked with dark blood. I extend my shaking hand, recoiling when I touch cold, hard flesh. I stand there for a moment, shock overtaking me, my breath flowing out in white streams.

“They’re dead, Harper!” Mike yells as he wades up the incline past me, another body over his shoulder. “The water’s too cold. Move up three rows.”

At the plane’s opening, the light seems dazzling now. Nick is yelling and pointing. Bodies go over the edge one by one, splashing. It’s working. I have to focus. They’re counting on me. Focus.

Warmth. Warmth equals life. I press my hand to the nearest passenger’s throat quickly. Cold.

Then the next aisle. I can’t skip them. I can’t. Four rows up, where the water’s just below my knees, my fingers wrap around a throat that’s warm, far warmer than the others. I press, feeling a faint pulse, and take a second to look at a white-faced boy wearing a Manchester United shirt. I shake his shoulders, yell at him, and finally force myself to slap him. Nothing. I unbuckle him, pull his arm to me, and lift him out. The incline and added weight is murder on my already racked frame, but I press forward, fighting for every step. Finally I reach the queue and lower him to a woman and an older man. They slip a yellow life vest around his neck and pull the cord, inflating it.

I saved that kid’s life. He’s going to live.

The people are going out fast now, one every few seconds. Nick looks back at me and nods. I turn and rush back down the aisle, stopping only to duck into an empty seat as Mike passes.

When I step back into the aisle, I feel something new: running water, pulling at my sneakers and splashing on my ankles. The passenger deck has dropped to the lake’s surface. How long do we have?

I race to the next aisle, but they’re dead. The cold flesh, the necks, go by in a flash now. I move rhythmically, automatically, reaching, touching, moving on. A few seconds later I pull the handle on the seat belt of an Indian girl wearing a Disney World T-shirt. Next, a blond boy in a black sweater, whose hand I have to peel from the hand of a woman beside him, perhaps his mother. I carry three more kids out, my arms and legs burning with every step. I’m spent. I wonder how much longer I can go on. I have to.

Mike grabs my forearm. “That’s all the kids. Adults now. You spot them, I’ll carry them. Okay?”

One, two, three people go up the aisle over Mike’s shoulder.

Every time I glance at the back of the plane, the faces jutting just above the water line are different—a new row of passengers being swallowed by the surging pool. We’re sinking, fast.

Mike wades toward me. “It’s going under. Unbuckle anybody alive and put a life vest on them. It’s their only shot.”

I rush from row to row, feeling, reaching, unbuckling. I have to go under to reach the life vests beneath the seats, and the water at the first seat is more of a shock than it was when I waded in the first time. At the fourth seat, I feel the plane under me shudder and roll. The sound of ripping metal vibrates through the cabin, and frigid water rushes over me. The wings. Something’s happening. Focus. I stretch, trying to unbuckle someone’s seat belt, but I can’t reach it. I duck under, and yes, I’ve got it. When I push up, my head doesn’t break the surface.

Panic. I reach up, around, desperately trying to feel for the surface, but it’s not there.

Through the dark water, I see a faint light: the opening. I work my arms and kick, trying to swim up to the light, but my foot catches on something. I’m stuck. I reach back, grabbing, but my fingers are lifeless, useless, as though I had slept on them. I try to yank my foot free, but it won’t come. I turn back to the opening, waving my numb arms, hoping someone will see me. A body with a yellow life vest drifts past me, blotting me out. I watch it float up toward the dim light of the opening, which grows smaller and fainter by the second.





6





Here at the end, when it’s almost over, I begin to understand what might have happened to this section of the plane. After it broke away from the nose, it spun a hundred-and-eighty degrees as it hurtled toward the ground. The treetops around the lake slowed it down before it hit the water. It crashed tail-first, and that probably saved a lot of lives: the impact threw people back into their seats instead of forward where the seatbacks would have snapped their necks. The tail probably reached the bottom of the lake seconds after impact, and it’s been resting there since, the two engines hanging down from the wings acting like the middle of a seesaw, propping the torn end up out of the water. That’s my best guess. But the engines—or maybe the wings, folded down, or the landing gear, or whatever was propping up the center—have broken free now, and so has all hell. The water in the fuselage, heavy as concrete, is finally pulling the center down. She’ll be on the bottom in seconds.

“Everybody out! Now!” I yell.

The last of the survivors who helped us pass the bodies out climb up the aisle and into the waiting line that stretches to the bank, where bodies lie in uneven rows. All the way to the fire, it’s a blur of yellow inflatables around bloodied, swollen faces, some bobbing in the water, others standing waist-deep, all working with their last ounce of strength. The horde hardly looks human, but they’ve been saints tonight.

The guy in the green Celtics T-shirt—Mike, I think he’s called—brushes past me, shivering, his head down. I grab his arm, searching the chaos around us. “Where’s Harper?”