In an Instant(12)

Please, I beg, please help him.

His eyes flutter open, and he moans again, wincing in pain and panic as his vision blinks into focus. He mutters my name, turns, and lets out a horrible cry. I turn to look with him and quickly turn back. My death wasn’t instant or painless as I thought. My eyes and mouth are frozen open in a silent scream from my half-severed head, which hangs grotesquely toward my dad. Blood, so much of it I can’t believe my body was capable of holding it, drips and pools beside him.

He reaches for me and struggles to free himself, causing himself immense pain, and I scream at him to stay put, that I’m fine, that it didn’t hurt. I scream these things. I yell them, I think them, but he cannot hear me. Desperately he continues to try to free himself, his muscles straining and his face contorted in agony, and all I can do is watch and pray, until finally my prayer is answered and he passes out from the pain.

In the back, my mom has freed herself from the pile. She winces as she staggers forward, her hand pressed to her ribs and her body not quite upright. Stumbling across the sideways camper, she glances at Mo and Natalie in their seats, then at Oz dangling above her. Ignoring his screams and Bingo’s yelps, she crawls to the bodies bunched behind the driver’s seat.

Kyle rolls free and sits up, dizzily, holding his left arm. Vance shifts Chloe off him and sits up as well. Blood is everywhere, splattered on the wall of the cabin, soaked into the bench, dripping down Chloe’s face.

Vance flinches and scans himself to see if the blood is coming from him as my mom pushes Chloe’s bangs away from her closed eyes. A two-inch gash along her hairline gushes red. My mom pulls her scarf from her neck and presses it against the cut, and Chloe moans.

“You’re okay,” my mom says.

Uncle Bob has crawled up beside her.

“Take her,” my mom says, and Uncle Bob wraps his arm around Chloe, lays her on the backrest of the dinette bench that is now on the ground, and gently pulls the scarf away to examine the wound.

Behind them, Aunt Karen has made her way to Natalie. She helps Natalie from her seat and leads her to the back of the camper.

My mom pushes past Vance and Kyle into the cab and freezes, her gasp so sharp that, though no louder than a whisper, it resounds like thunder above the wind and the hail and Oz’s screams. Kyle closes his eyes, and his lips move in silent prayer. Vance stares at Chloe, his skin pale. Mo strains to see past my mom, panic and worry etched on her face. Uncle Bob looks up, grabs Vance’s hand, forces it to hold the scarf to Chloe’s wound, then quickly moves to the front to help my mom.

“Oh shit,” he mutters when he gets there.

My mom stumbles back, and Uncle Bob catches her.

My death is horrible to look at, and I think she is going to collapse, her entire body quaking and her breath huffing violently from her open mouth, but then my dad moans, and like a switch, it snaps her back from the brink, and I watch as she squeezes her eyes shut to draw on some internal strength, steeling herself before turning to look at my dad.

His arm is still extended, reaching for me. She crawls over the center console to get to him. “Jack,” she says, smoothing back his hair.

“Finn,” he moans.

“Shhh,” she soothes, and he does, passing out again.

In the back of the camper, Aunt Karen and Natalie cling to each other.

“Mom?” Natalie says, her head craning from her mother’s embrace to look toward the cab.

“Shhh, baby. Don’t look. It’s going to be okay. Just don’t look.” Aunt Karen pulls Natalie’s face against her.

Vance sits beside Chloe, holding my mom’s scarf to her head. Mo is still in her seat, struggling to get her seat belt undone, and Oz still dangles from the ceiling, holding Bingo and yelling for my dad.

Kyle reaches toward Oz to help him.

“No,” Mo yells, stopping him.

Kyle turns to her.

“Leave him,” she says.

Oz kicks and screams, but Mo is right. It’s not cruelty but necessity. Oz can’t be dealt with right now, and he is better off where he is.

Kyle turns from Oz and instead helps Mo try to release the clip of her seat belt.

At the moment, adrenaline is keeping everyone warm, but in a matter of minutes, they are going to become very cold. The windshield of the camper is gone, and wind and snow whip and swirl through the cabin. My dad is frosted with white, and my dead body is half-buried.

My mom has her cell phone out. “Shit,” she says, panic flashing across her face. No reception. Uncle Bob swallows, pulls out his own phone, shakes his head.

“We need to get him to the back,” my mom says, processing the situation quickly and realizing, as I did, that at the moment, the cold is the greatest danger.

My dad cries out as my mom and Uncle Bob, with Vance’s and Kyle’s help, wrench him free and pull him into the back. They lay him on the paneling above the seats. He’s in bad shape, his face cut in a dozen places and his jeans drenched with blood. My mom and Uncle Bob kneel beside him, and Vance returns to Chloe, and Kyle returns to trying to free Mo from her seat belt.

“My purse,” Aunt Karen says. “There are scissors.”

Kyle crawls to Aunt Karen’s giant handbag, which flew to the front with everything else, and rummages through it, pulling out her enormous collection of purse paraphernalia—cosmetics, tissues, antibacterial wipes, two packages of saltines, her cell phone, her address book, a bag of M&M’S, thank-you notes—and finally unearthing a small pair of manicure scissors, and he hustles back to cut Mo loose.