“Yeah, let’s not be the idiots standing on the roof waiting to get hit by one, right?”
We go back down one floor and then go out into the hallway and search for any doors that might have been left open. We hit the jackpot halfway down and walk into a two-bedroom suite. Whoever was staying in it left a huge mess with clothing thrown everywhere. Don’t care, not here for the aesthetic.
“Reid, grab everything from the minibar and set it on the counter. I’ll be right back.”
I head into the bathroom and search for any type of painkiller. Bingo! I dig through the toiletry bag sitting on the counter and strike gold with a travel-sized bottle of Tylenol. I turn to leave but something nags at my muddled mind. C'mon brain! When my eyes land on the small waste bin, I reach down and pull the plastic bag liner from it. At the bottom of the bin is a whole roll of plastic bags. I grab that and a few clean towels and go back to join Reid in the other room.
“Here, take a bunch of these bags and triple them up. Make like six sets of them. We’ll put a dry change of clothes and a towel in a few and some of this food in the others. Our phones and wallets can go in a bag, too. I’m going to search for some shoes for us while you do that. We’re going to need them when we get to dry land.”
I snag one of the water bottles and a Red Bull from the pile of things he’s emptied from the minibar and start searching through the clothes and half-empty suitcases in the room. I suck back both drinks and the painkillers in record time and start to feel halfway functional. Reid does the same and then we get to work. I find a pair of men’s Nike slides. Not ideal, but better than bare feet if I can’t find anything else. There’s a clock ticking in the back of my head right now telling me to hurry up and get the fuck out, get to dry land before something worse happens, and it makes my search more frantic than it should be.
Finding nothing else to help us in the room, we grab the bags and move further down the hall searching for more open rooms. Three rooms later we find someone’s gym bag with a pair of running shoes that are only slightly too big but will work for one of us. I call the search done at that point, my anxiety at an all-time high. I keep having visions of a massive wave rolling in from deeper in the ocean and toppling the building we’re in. We tie all the plastic bags as tight as we can so the stuff we'vegathered will stay as dry as possible and stuff them inside our packs.
"Ok, Reid," I say in a calm voice – trying to pretend I have a clue about what to do. "We need to go now. We'll head back down to the tenth floor where the water level is and look for a way out."
He doesn't say anything, just nods to say he heard me and we head down the stairwell.
Reid clasps my arm as we stand on the last step before the water and we share a look packed with uncertainty and a little fear.
“We stay as close together as possible. Look for any debris we can use as a float of some kind, and if we need a break, look for broken windows that we can get back into a building through, alright? We can do this, Reid. We’re both strong swimmers. We can do this.”
He swallows hard but gives me a nod. “How do we get out of this building?”
I curse myself for forgetting a step as the clock ticks, ticks, ticks away in my head.
“Right, back up to the next floor. We’ll need to break a window and jump out.”
We climb back up and go into a room facing the direction we need to swim and use a chair from the room to shatter one of the windows. I use towels to sweep away most of the glass and lay a few clean ones down so we don’t cut the shit out of our bare feet. Both of us lean out the window and look down, scanning in the direction we are going to try for. It’s not that far down to the water but my stomach still does a slow flip with nerves. Reid’s white knuckling the window frame, his face deathly pale, so I try and distract him.
“See over there?” I point. “That’s the direction we’re going to go. We get around that building and then keep going east. That’swhere we’ll find the shore. We got this, man. Just think of the badass points we’ll get with Luna and the others when we tell them about this.” I turn and grab the back of his neck and pack my gaze with as much confidence as I can fake. “We can do this, Reid. I’ll be right there with you. I promise.”
His thick lashes flutter closed for a beat and when he opens them again, his warm amber eyes look determined. Scared, but determined. I'll take it. Before either of us can second guess ourselves, he jumps.
Chapter 38 - Gage
Pain is the first thing I become aware of. Pain, and then the bitter smell of burnt electrical. I groan as I force my eyes open and try to see past the banging in my head. Everything’s a blur, so I take stock of my body while I wait for my sight to clear. Arms and legs are sore and stiff but functioning. Check. My ribs ache like a motherfucker when I try to take a deep breath but I think they’re just bruised. It would hurt more if they were broken, wouldn’t it? My head is ringing like a damn bell so I lift a hand and run it over my skull, finding one hell of a bump that’s painful to the touch. No wetness though, so I’m not bleeding. Check. I scrub at my eyes as memories of yelling and horrible scraping noises on the outside of the plane come rushing back and it all clicks together. Fuck, the plane crashed.
Soft sunshine is coming through the window next to me. Ok, probably means that I was unconscious overnight so it's tomorrow now. Check. I fight with the jammed seat belt to get it unlatched until it finally pops open. When I try to stand, everything tilts to the side making my head spin painfully. I graba hold of a seatback to steady myself and after a minute I realize that in addition to my head spins, the plane is canted to one side, making it even harder to move out of the row my seat is in. I use the forward seats to pull me up the short aisle and find one of the suit guys still strapped in. I reach over and put my fingers to his neck and breathe out a sigh of relief when I find a faint pulse. The problem is, part of the plane has buckled and is pressing tightly against his middle and legs.
I leave the guy there for the moment and move up to the cockpit. The plane rocks under my feet so I slow down and shuffle - slide forward. The cockpit windshield is smashed out and filled with tree branches. I spot dress pants covered legs mixed in with the branches just outside the window on the nose of the plane and swallow down the nausea that floods my throat. There’s no way that guy is still alive. I look down and to the side. Fuck, Chuck is really, really dead. His head is tipped down, resting on the two thick branches that have impaled his chest.
Easing away, I try not to rock the plane any further and go to the door to try and get it open. The frame has buckled, but after a solid kick that has the plane tipping even further to the right and my head thumping in pain, the door pops open a few inches. I have to put my shoulder into it to get it open past the branches and thick brush that is wedged against it but I finally get it open enough to see out of. With the plane tipped the way it is, there’s only a few feet to the ground, thank God.
OK, Gage, think. Ignore the pain for now. You don’t know where you are. You don’t know if Chuck got a Mayday out. The plane might tip over more. There might be a fuel leak. You need to get away from the plane. Supplies! I need to pull supplies out of the plane and then try to get the other guy out. My mind is going a million miles a second as I try to process what to do past the raging headache and body pains I have. I take a second to stop and smell the air. Other than the faint smell of friedelectronics, I don’t smell or see any smoke. Check. I need to grab what I can before something else happens.
I pull back from the door and go to the storage closet at the back of the plane and start pulling things out so I can toss them out of the plane. Once I’ve scavenged everything I think might be useful, I leave the plane after doing another check on the injured guy to make sure he’s still breathing.
I drag all the gear away from the crash site to a small clearing and search through it until I find a first aid kit. I dry swallow a couple pain pills and spread out a silver emergency blanket on the ground and then go back to the plane to try and free the other survivor. It takes all of the little bit of strength I have to pull, push, and finally kick the panel free and get enough space to pull him out. I'm grateful he’s still unconscious in case what I’m doing is hurting him more.
I run my hands over his arms and legs. I can’t find anything broken but he has a two-inch gash on the side of his head. It’s when I push against his stomach to try and unlatch his seatbelt that he finally shows signs of coming to. He moans a painful sound at the contact, so I pull his dress shirt open and wince. His stomach area and parts of his chest are mottled with ugly red and purple-bluish bruises. I make a desperate prayer that it’s just surface bruising and not a sign of internal bleeding.
I kneel in front of him for a minute, resting and trying to decide what to do. Am I going to kill the guy by trying to get him out? I don’t know the right answer, but I do know that it could take anywhere from hours to days before a rescue team finds us - if they are even looking, and I just don’t know if the plane will remain safe. If it shifts more the door could get covered. What if something starts on fire? If it was me, I’d want to be laid out flat so I just go with that. I get him out of the seat and drag him out of the plane to the clearing. I get him settled on the emergencyblanket and then clean and bandage his head wound as best I can with the first aid kit supplies.
Once that’s done, I fish around in the supplies until I find the case of bottled water that was in the closet and suck back two of them. The pounding in my head starts to ease off, letting me think a little clearer. That’s when I remember that someone was screaming about the moon right before we crashed. I tilt my head back to look up and that’s when I see it. The moon. Big as anything and fully visible even though it’s full daylight out. It also shouldn’t be that big or cracked right down one side of it.
I blink over and over again to try and make sense of it but all that happens is that my stomach rolls and I have to skitter away on hands and knees to one side of the clearing as all the water I just drank heaves out of me as I puke over and over again until there’s nothing left in my stomach.
I make it back to the supplies and slump down. I sit and slowly sip at another bottle of water while I try to figure this out. Something has happened to the moon to push it closer to Earth and… break it? The moon is broken, I’ve been in a plane crash. What does this mean for the world? Is a broken moon survivable? What’s happening right now out in the world because of it? What will it mean for a rescue? Is anyone even going to come looking or will they have their hands full with other things?
