Guess there’s only one way to find out.
He reaches up and pulls the ripcord.
Bang. A big jolt. He looks up, sees a drogue release from the pack. It’s the small chute designed to slow him down before the main chute opens. So it is a parachute. ‘Thank-you-thank-you-thank-you!’ He waits for the second, bigger jolt as the drogue pulls the main chute out of the pack.
It doesn’t happen. The damn drogue doesn’t catch air. It just snaps and twists in the breeze. Judd wills it to inflate. ‘Open, you bastard!’
It does not.
Then he sees it.
Above and moving fast.
‘Oh, come on!’
Whump, whump, whump. The Loach punches out of the smog cloud and spins directly towards him, the burning nub of its rotor blades leaving a thick black trail of smoke behind it.
If the main chute deploys now it will tangle on the chopper and that’d be all she wrote.
Whump, whump, whump. The spinning Loach moves so fast he can’t avoid it. The left landing skid snags the fluttering drogue—
‘Ohhhhchriiiist!’ Judd is violently swung around and around and around — like he’s on an amusement park ride, except there’s nothing amusing about it at all.
Corey tumbles through the smog cloud. They were at over seven thousand feet when they bailed and he’s been falling for what feels like an hour.
He drops through the base of the cloud and spies Judd below and to the right. Jeez. His chute is tangled around the Loach’s skid and spins him around like he’s hanging off the world’s most dangerous Hills Hoist. Corey’s horrified to see his friend in such trouble, wishes he could help him, doesn’t know how he can, realises any hope of sharing his parachute is now gone.
Time slows.
The Australian turns his head and takes in downtown Los Angeles. The distant skyscrapers stand tall. If a giant earthquake had been planned today then it has been averted, or hadn’t been big enough to affect those buildings. So, an excellent result — nobody should have to experience one of those things.
He looks down, sees the tar pits quickly approach. He doesn’t want to die. He really doesn’t, but the possibility that there’s something beyond this physical world and he could see his mother again, speak to her one last time, tell her how much she was loved and missed, well, that makes the thought of what happens when he reaches those tar pits almost bearable.
The irony is that it took the threat of the quake for him to actually speak about the death of his mother, even if it was for a fleeting moment. He knew it would be terrible, and it was, but it wasn’t as terrible as he thought it would be and now it feels like a weight has been lifted, if only a little. So he spent almost half his life, fifteen years, not dealing with something that took fifteen seconds to feel better about once he decided to open up. Way to go, Corey, great time-management. Of course, he knows it only happened because he was speaking with the two people he liked most in the world, the kind of friends he’d never had before.
That’s the one thing that really pisses him off about this whole situation. Lola said she’d look after Spike and it now occurs to Corey that the bloody mutt will get to know her much better than he ever did.
Whack, Corey is hit across the back.
Time speeds up.
He turns and sees his parachute tumble end over end as it ricochets away from him. He’s astonished, didn’t think he’d see it again. He looks down. The tar pits come up fast, but there’s still time before touchdown.
The pack is only three metres away and he needs to fly over to it. He’s jumped out of planes twice before so he knows the basics of skydiving. Forward motion is generated by — he can’t remember!
Extend the legs! That’s right! If you straighten them against the airflow and keep your arms back it propels your body forward. He straightens his legs, jams his arms by his side, points himself at the pack — and flies backwards.
Lola looks up at the sky and watches it all unfold, open-mouthed.
The relief she felt at seeing two moving human figures drop through the smog cloud, having not been vaporised in the explosion, quickly disappeared as one of them opened his parachute only to have it snag on the remains of the burning chopper while the other frantically tries to grab something which, she can only presume, is a parachute.
A few moments ago she felt both dread and giddy euphoria. Now it’s just dread.
Corey flies forward.
He has it down now, realises he needs to keep his arms right back if he doesn’t want to go backwards. This time he veers to the left and is as far from the pack as when he started.
How does he steer?
Elbows!
Right elbow down, turn right, left elbow down, turn left.
‘Come on!’ He does it, pushes his arms and legs to the side of his body, drops his right elbow and curves towards the pack.
‘Whoa!’ Judd swings around and around, feels dizzy and sick.
He pushes his left hand across his chest, releases the drogue. Twang. Its suspension lines fly free and instantly slap against the Loach’s underside.
Whump, whump, whump. The chopper spins towards him. Judd tries to get out of its way so he can open his main chute in clear air—
Bang. The Loach slams into him.
Flat on his back, Judd is pinned to the bottom of the chopper’s fuselage by air pressure and centrifugal force. Together, Loach and astronaut spiral to earth in a crazy aeronautic dance.
Time slows.
Judd watches that smoking, oozing expanse of La Brea approach. He’s not scared — yet. If a pilot has time, he has hope. He needs to get away from this chopper and open the damn chute. With all his energy he attempts to overcome the forces at play and roll towards the edge of the fuselage.
He can’t do it, can barely move. The air pressure is too great.
Time speeds up.
He has seconds until impact. If he can’t move his whole body then maybe he can move part of it. With all his strength he pushes his right arm past the edge of the fuselage, jams it into the blasting stream of air—
‘Goddamn!’ His arm is wrenched back at the elbow, feels like it’s going to snap off. He grits his teeth, ignores the pain, holds his arm within the airflow, tries to alter the aerodynamic balance just a little. Buffeted by the wind he pulls it forward. His shoulder screams in protest.
Absolutely nothing happens.
‘Come on!’ He jams his right foot sideways, pushes it into the airflow too. The chopper tips to the right slightly — and releases the air pressure. He pushes off the fuselage and flips away.
Freedom. He looks down. The tar pit is right there. He yanks on the ripcord. The chute zips out of his pack — and doesn’t open. It just licks at the air behind him. After everything that’s happened today his goddamn chute won’t open.
The chopper drops past him towards the tar pit below.
Boom. It lands upside down and detonates in an immense fireball. Judd plummets directly towards the flames.