“Don’t worry,” he tells me over the intercom. “This is nothing. Like making your lady buck when you spank her ass.”
I suppose now is not the time to tell him that’s not only inappropriate but it’s irrelevant in my case, too. The ground isn’t visible with the cloud cover. I’m about to ask the pilot if it’d be possible to fly higher, over the clouds, even though I’m not a pilot. And inquire if he can do itsilently.
Except this flight is kind of freaking me out. I’m no stranger to bad flights but my intuition is screaming at me that something bad’s about to happen, and it’s never done me wrong yet.
The turbulence grows worse.
With a death grip on my seat’s armrests, I’m literally white-knuckling this flight. “Dude, can we turn around and—” Another jolt hits us and it sounds like the engine makes a weird sound.
I don’t know if it makes me feel better or worse that the pilot’s suddenly all business now as he talks to ground control. There’s another hard jolt, and now the engine definitely doesn’t sound right. It also feels like we’re rapidly losing altitude.
I’m sitting in the row behind the pilot and to his right. I see him flip a couple of switches on the control panel.
Through my headset, I hear his conversation with ground controllers. “Flight alpha seven zero niner echo declaring an emergency. Request permission to—”
A blaring alarm screams in the cockpit, making my balls shrivel in terror. “Terrain! Terrain! Pull up! Pull up!” More alarms. “Terrain! Terrain! Pull up! Pull up!”
The pilot’s fighting with the stick. “Brace for impact!” he screams.
I have barely enough time to realize that I’m about to die, and an uncomfortably long enough time to process that I don’t even have a significant other to miss me when I’m gone, only my family.
Family I can’t even say good-bye to.
That’s when the first impact painfully jars us. I think we hit the treetops, because I hear what sounds like the screech of branches against the bottom of the fuselage. The engines are screaming, the guys are screaming, the pilot’s screaming.
I’m screaming.
The left wing rips off with yet another scream, of metal this time, and we’re still moving, still falling forward out of the sky with that horrible automated warning system blaring in the cockpit.
I close my eyes and hold on. To my left, Brad’s screaming but in a way that sounds pained, not just shitting-bricks terrified.
I wrap my hands around the armrests of my seat and we’restill.
Fucking.
Falling.
We’re slammed from side to side before the cabin cartwheels.
The world goes black.
* * * *
I come to sideways and nearly upside-down, folded over my seatbelt and still strapped in my seat, and with massive pain stabbing through my pelvis and right leg. I hear someone sobbing. After a moment, I realize the sound is coming from my right.
Where there should be a fuselage wall but isn’t.
In the damp, foggy air, I smell smoke and aviation fuel and what is definitely blood. I finally get my hand on the seat belt buckle and, too late, process that there’s about a five-foot drop to the rocky slope below me. I scream in pain as I hit the ground and black out again.
I don’t think I’m out for more than a couple of minutes that time. Breathing through my pain, I finally manage to roll myself onto my back and process how utterly fucked I am. I have no clue where we went down. My cell phone was in my carryon and I have no clue where that ended up, either.
Which is the least of my problems, because I can’t walk. I don’t even need to try to know I can’t. Just that little movement was excruciating. Since everything’s hurting, it’s difficult to tell exactly where else and how badly I’m injured.
My forehead feels wet. When I reach up and touch it, my fingertips come back bloody.
I have a feeling it’s not all my blood, because I don’t feel any lacerations on my forehead. Then again, I could be in shock and not feeling it, or maybe it’s a scalp lac. I look at the watch I wear on my left wrist just to see it’s smashed and useless.
“Hello?” I call out.
