The two pilots cried out and shielded their eyes, holding onto their chairs as they fought to stay seated. Mere seconds later, the light had gone again, and Quinton opened his eyes. The lights outside were still falling, but something inside the cabin had been altered. Something unexplainable.
Quinton looked down at his instruments with horror as he realised that they were no longer there. All that remained was a blackened husk of metal where dials and equipment used to be. The smell of ash lingered in the air, and Quinton felt dizzy as he realised something else.
His dizziness turned to panic.
The engines had stopped. They were going down.
Outside, the bright lights continued falling like stars, Angels from heaven. The plane fell faster.
WINTER BEFORE LAST
The drive had been a long one. Bristol was a long way from Stoke and the Boxing Day journey had been slow and cautious, the roads slippery with ice and slushed snow. Harry hated winter, hated the cold. In the summer, people came together – BBQs, festivals, zoos, and theme parks – but in the winter people stayed away from each other, wrapped up warm and ignored the outside world. Winter was the season of isolation and loneliness. Yet, out of all the dreary winters of Harry’s life, this one had been the best. Sure it was damp, icy, and grey; sure he had spent the last week with his wife’s condescending parents; and sure he was itching to get back to work, but this winter was great for one reason: Toby.
Of course he had spent several Christmases with his son already, but those had been interspersed with work and commitments. This year his furniture business was successful enough that he had been able to leave the running of it to his cousin and take a massive ten days off to spend with Toby and his wife, Julie. It had been total bliss to watch his son open his presents on Christmas morning, ripping open the packaging on his new bike and then moving on to the wrapped-up Nintendo DS beneath Julie’s parent’s tree. He’d never seen his son so happy, and he had never been so happy himself. What Julie had gone on to tell him that night had only made the day even more special.
He still couldn’t believe she was pregnant.
“You paying attention?” asked Julie, sitting on the passenger seat beside him.
Harry turned to her and smiled. “Yeah, sorry. I’m just so happy. Life is pretty good, huh?”
Julie smirked and shook her head at him. “I think you had a better Christmas than little man.”
Harry glanced back at his sleeping son on the back seat and agreed. In fact, he may have had a better Christmas than anyone.
“Anyway,” said Julie, “you should have come off at junction 16. You just missed it.”
Harry shook his head, annoyed with himself. “Bugger it. Okay, I’ll come off at the next one.”
Julie mumbled something under her breath and Harry just about heard her.
“Did you just call me a fish head?”
Julie shrugged. “Dunno what you’re talking about.”
Harry huffed. “Oh, really? Well it sounded like you called me a fish head.”
“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.”
“Well, that’s rich, coming from a dog head.”
Julie hit Harry in the arm, causing him to swerve slightly. “Cheeky sod.”
“Whoa! Watch it, woman, you’ll have me in a ditch.”
Julie laughed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to endanger your perfect driving record.”
“Always pays to be safe. Baby on-board.”
Julie looked back at her son and smiled. She was so beautiful as a mother. There was something about her now, that Harry loved, which had not been there before Toby’s birth. It was something unexplainable to anyone without a child of their own.
Harry was just about to say, I love you, when something caught his attention from the corner of his eye. The sight was followed by a lot of chaotic noise.
“Shit!” Harry saw the vehicle on the opposite side of the motorway swerve. It careened across several lanes and came crashing up against the central reservation several yards ahead. His stomach fluttered and he thanked God for the near-escape, but then the speeding vehicle cartwheeled into the air, flipping the balustrade upon impact and hurtling, end over end, down the other side of the motorway; the lane that Harry was occupying. Harry would have liked more time to react, but before he even thought to swerve out of the vehicle’s path, his entire being seemed to shudder as his consciousness was battered from his body.
Harry opened his eyes and then closed them again. A light had burned his eyes and he had to flutter his eyelids until the dull aching went away. He found himself staring at a blank white ceiling with a small, tinted window looking out at star-filled sky. It was a vehicle; the back of a van perhaps. When a paramedic appeared in his field of view, Harry realised he was lay in the back of an ambulance.
The woman’s name badge read: Penelope. “Hey there,” she said. “Everything is okay. You’ve just been in an accident.”
Harry shot up on the stretcher. “My son… my wife?”
The paramedic tried to ease him back down but he resisted. “There are people trying to help them right now.”
“Help them? What do you mean?”
The woman looked him in the eye for a moment but could not hold the gaze. Something seemed to trouble her. Harry didn’t feel like getting information about his family second hand from someone else. He pushed the woman aside forcefully and stumbled off of the bed. His legs felt like jelly as he hit the tarmac outside the ambulance. His breathing was painful too, but none of that mattered. He needed to find his family.
There were flashing lights all around him and fluorescent white jackets flitting to and fro. The motorway had been closed off, probably by sideways police cars at the entrance to each junction. Harry staggered forward. There was a huge fire truck up ahead and it blocked his view any further down the road. People seemed to be congregating in that area and he headed towards them, as fast as his confused feet would take him.
“Excuse me, sir?” A police officer walked up to Harry with a palm raised. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Harry swiped at the hand in his face and snarled. “Where is my family?”
The officer stepped towards Harry, but backed off when he saw that there was no chance of his authority holding any weight. The man tried a different tact. “They’re being rescued now.”
“Rescued from what?”
The police officer sighed. “My name is Officer Tonks. Why don’t you come and sit down with me and we’ll have a chat about what is going on.”
Harry looked at the man and saw genuine compassion, but that didn’t change the fact that Harry didn’t want a conversation with anyone but his wife. He turned away from the officer and hurried towards the fire truck. The man did not give chase.
Once Harry reached the bright red vehicle, he saw the wreckage beyond. His brand new Mercedes was a ball of twisted steel and a mangled truck seemed to be entwined with it. Before he knew it, Harry was vomiting all over the floor. Maybe he had a concussion, but he was pretty sure it was purely because of what he was seeing.
Despite his injuries, Harry ran forward, dodging past anybody that tried to stand in his way. Over at the pile of compacted vehicles, two firemen worked at the steel with heavy cutters. When they saw Harry coming at them, wild-eyed, they stepped aside with concern.
It was then that Harry saw what was left of his family. He could make out Julie’s crushed face, squashed beneath the Mercedes window strut. One of her eyes seemed to bulge from her socket. Harry fell to his knees and tried to reach out to her, but he could not. As he tried to crawl his way into the car, he saw the mess that had been his son. Toby’s body no longer resembled human form. If it were not for bloody scraps of clothing and puckered flesh and protruding bones, Harry would not have even known it was his son.