“Here we go,” Clare said.
The floor under his feet tilted farther and farther. Waxman, still strapped tightly to his makeshift frame, slid toward the seats, ramming into Russ’s feet. His backpack rolled and bounced against Russ’s legs. The safety webbing flapped and the bungee cords clattered wildly against the window. They were balanced on the chopper’s nose when the sound cut off just like that. The sudden silence was like the sound of the grave. Then he could hear his heart beating. He could hear the rotors overhead whistling and whirring. He could hear Clare praying. They were going down so fast, his body strained against the belt strapping him in.
He heard Clare saying, “Hold on hold onholdon…”
Then they hit.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Metal screamed. There was an impossibly loud noise as the rotors chopped into wood and dirt and stone and broke off. One knife-edged blade sliced through the tail boom, the machine eviscerating itself in its death throes. Another blade shattered into shrapnel, peppering the fuselage with a hailstorm of metallic fire. One heaved away into the dirt, still trying to do its job, and lifted and turned the body of the helicopter so that it rolled downhill once, twice, landing gear snapping off like fragile bird bones, pieces of steel sheeting peeling off like an orange rind.
A last shudder and creak. Clare, dangling from her harness, opened her eyes to find she was surprisingly still alive. Her first thought was Thank you, God. Her second was that more people die from explosion than impact when helicopters go down.
“Russ?”
There was a groan behind her. She let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “We need to get out and away from the ship. Can you move?”
There was another groan.
“Russ!”
“Yeah,” he said. “I think I’m going to need some help.”
She braced her feet on the twisted pieces of metal, glass, and plastic that had been the front of the cockpit and unclipped her safety belt. She sagged, lost her balance, and fell heavily against the passenger-side door, which was buckled and stained with green and brown from the forest floor. She twisted around and looked over the partial bulkhead.
“Holy God in heaven,” she said. The force of the impact had driven the tail boom into the cabin as they’d somersaulted downhill. The cargo area had imploded around the boom, the metal bunched like wet papier-mâché. The sawed-off end had come to rest less than a hand’s width away from where Russ was hanging in his seat; it looked like a steel-mouthed shark waiting to slice into his chest.
“Okay,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t betray her terror. “Stay put.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, then coughed.
“Can you see Waxman?”
“Yeah. He’s on the floor underneath me. Well, now it’s the floor. It used to be a big window.”
“How’s he look?”
“Not great.”
She pressed up against the door on the pilot’s side and pushed hard. It popped open like a hatch and just kept going, banging and clanging its way off the nose. She looked at the edge as she levered herself carefully through. The hinges had come clean off. She perched on the door frame and took her bearings. They had come to rest on a forested slope, wedged against several thick maples. The ship was resting on its right side, its nose angled forward. They had scraped a raw gash in the hillside when they’d landed, and the remains of what looked like several young pines were ground into the freshly exposed dirt.
She shivered in the muggy air. She felt cold, light-headed, and so overwhelmed that she just wanted to lie down and wait for someone to take this disaster off her hands. But there wasn’t anyone else. She pressed one spread-fingered hand over her eyes and breathed deeply. “God,” she said, “hold me up. I can’t do this on my own.”
“Are you praying up there?” Russ’s voice came up through the open doorway.
She got her feet under her and leaned over toward the cabin door. Its handle was battered and bent out of line. “Yes, I am,” she said.
“Lemme tell you: Admitting you can’t do something isn’t very reassuring.”
She gripped the handle and twisted. “Didn’t say that,” she said, yanking and tugging. “Said I can’t do it by myself. Ooof!” Something inside the handle mechanism gave way and the door shot back several feet before jamming.
“Good girl.”
She braced herself on hands and knees and examined the situation. The sheared-off tail section looked even worse from this angle. “Can you hold on to the edge of the door?”
He turned his head awkwardly. “I think so.” He reached toward her and she took his hand, placing it near the upper edge of the frame, where he could stabilize himself.
“Great. This is what I want you to do. You’re going to push against the roof with your other hand and against the floor with your feet. I’m going to unbuckle your seat belt. At that point, I’ll pull this arm”—she touched the hand squeezing the door frame—“and you right yourself.”
“I can’t stand up. I’ll be stepping on Waxman.”
“See the seat below you? Put your feet on its side. Once you’re upright, we’ll see if we can slide you around this thing and pull you out. Ready?”
“Wait a minute!” She paused. He didn’t say anything. Finally, he pushed his glasses to the bridge of his nose with his free hand and said, “Let’s do it.”
She watched as he stretched out as best he could and lodged himself between the ceiling and floor. She snaked her hand around the corner of his seat and found the buckle of the seat belt by touch. With a click, she freed him.
His knuckles went white. He lifted one leg and let it dangle down toward the second passenger seat. She couldn’t see if his foot had connected with it yet, but she could see his arms and his other leg trembling with the effort of keeping himself from falling onto the ragged steel edge of the broken tail.
“Got it,” he said.
“Careful.”
“Oh yeah.”
She moved so that she was straddling the frame of the cabin door, one sneakered foot on either side. She squatted deeply so that she could hold him with the strength of her thighs. “Give me your hand. I’ll keep you upright.”
He laughed hoarsely.
“Shut up and give me your hand,” she said, irrationally cheered that he could still see a double entendre in what she said. He let go of the door frame and she caught him around the wrist, pulling slowly and steadily upward. She heard a smack as his other foot landed on the seat, and then his head and shoulders moved, coming upright, rotating in line.
“I feel,” he said, almost whispering, “like a chicken on a rotisserie.” Then his other arm was free, thrusting through the doorway, his hand feeling for something to hold on to.
“Are you all set?” she said.
“Yeah. I’m on my feet. You can let me go.”
She released his wrist. The top of his head was level with the doorway, and the raw end of the tail section was now in front of his stomach. He thrust both arms out and banged his hands against the fuselage. Then he curled them over the edge behind his head. “If this thing wasn’t in my way, I could probably get myself up with a backward flip,” he said. “I have pretty good upper-body strength.”
“If that thing wasn’t in your way, you could get out a lot easier than that,” she said. “As it is, you aren’t going to be able to lever yourself up. I want you to lock your hands around my neck; then I’ll pull you up.”
“What, deadlifting? Forget it, darlin’. I must outweigh you by sixty or seventy pounds.”
“I’ll get you up, Russ.” A thread of fear that he might be right made her voice sharp. “Trust me.”