THERE’S NO TIME to think before it hits.
When the plane comes rushing out of the storm, trailing streamers of cloud and smoke, in my mind I see it as a bird of prey. A huge, screeching eagle maybe. Sleek and green and featherless. But then I see the turbine engines, one under each wing. Vicious, spinning fans sucking in stray leaves and bits of debris kicked up by the wind. It’s coming in slightly lower than where the four of us are standing. Our clearing. Our escape through so many summers and weekends.
At the last second, the plane’s nose tips up, angling in our direction. I catch a glimpse of the cockpit window, dark except for the vague shape of somebody in the pilot’s seat. Or maybe I’m just imagining that.
Maybe I want to pretend that someone could have even a tiny bit of control over what’s happening here, that they could pull up with inches to spare and go screaming right over us, the fuselage scraping along the treetops. Like something out of Top Gun.
But Windale isn’t the kind of place where miracles happen.
We have zero time to react. I can see Charlie in front of me, frozen in place, still sitting in the grass as if he’s been there all day. I flick my eyes toward Sonya, who dropped the cooler, letting it tip and spill all the trash she worked so hard to pick up, the detritus of our last lunch together. Her dark hair sweeps around her head, showing off the line of her jaw, the dimple in her left cheek, the curve of her neck down to her shoulder. Her eyes are wide and full of terror. She’s as beautiful as ever. I wish I had time to go to her, to tell her how I feel. I wish I had time to reach all three of them, pull them out of harm’s way just before the plane hits. But I can’t even pull myself out of the way.
“Guys, what do we do?” Charlie screams. I can barely hear him over the mechanical scream of the plane’s engines, only feet away. I reach out to Charlie, but the plane is behind him, low and heavy, and it hits me that I’ve seen this plane before, only a couple of hours earlier. I watched this plane disappear into the TerraCorp compound from Mr. Webber’s farm.
“Charlie! Get your ass up and run!” I shout. I scream so hard it feels like my lungs are going to come flying out through my throat. He listens, though, stumbling to his feet, running toward me with the hulk of the machine chasing behind him.
The plane’s downward momentum is too much. Even as its nose is lifting up, matching the slope of the hillside, the rest of it is still racing toward the ground. It’s so close I can smell jet fuel and metal. I can see slivers of light shifting across its smooth surface.
And then it punches into the side of Dagger Hill and shatters.
Hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of pieces are ripping off and flipping away from the point of impact, maybe twenty yards from where my friends and I stand. The ground under my feet lurches, as if the whole hill shifts from the force of the crash. I watch the plane come apart like one of my old Lego sets, snapping into individual components that spin outward in every direction. One of them whizzes right past my head. Another, much bigger piece hits Charlie in his legs and sends him sprawling. I watch him go down. The angle in one of his knees is all wrong.
But then there’s a turbine engine, tumbling through the air like a tossed beer can, still whirring and groaning. It comes down only a few feet to my left, just outside of the clearing. It eats up tree branches and leaves and loose grass before it locks up. The machinery inside starts to whine and clang. The back end of it begins to shoot out plumes of acrid smoke.
“RUN! GET OUT OF HERE!” I scream, turning to Sonya and Kim. I flail my arm at them. But Kimberly’s watching the engine that’s about to explode behind me. And Sonya is staring at Charlie, who’s doing his own screaming from his spot on the ground.
“Oh god! Oh my god, my leg! My fucking leg!”
I can feel the sound of it burrowing into my head, ready to haunt me forever if I make it out of this alive.
Down below where Charlie is, the barely intact fuselage of the plane is still skidding upward, turning as it goes. It’s swallowing trees like a wood chipper, its own integrity collapsing with every small impact. The woods are tearing it apart even as it’s tearing the woods apart. Only a handful of yards are keeping it from rolling right over top of us.
It takes me forever to close the distance between Charlie and me. I go to him, kneeling down next to where he’s twisting and wailing. His arms and torso jerk back and forth. His legs don’t move at all. The one is buckled in a way that makes my stomach clench.
“Charlie,” I say. “Charlie, we have to go. I’m going to get you up, okay?”
“Me too.”
Sonya is beside us, glancing at me sidelong. There’s a cut along her cheek.
“You get one arm, I’ll get the other,” she says.
There’s no time to argue.
“No,” Charlie pants. “Please. It hurts so bad, you guys. I … I can’t.” His glasses are askew, and the eyes behind them are wide, panic-filled saucers.
“Yes, you can,” I say. “We’re not leaving you, Charlie. So let’s get you on your goddamn feet.”
“Guys?”
Kim’s voice this time, from somewhere far away. She sounds small and confused. For the first time, there might be a touch of fear in her. But I don’t respond. There’s no time for that, either.
As I hook an arm under Charlie, I glance back at the engine, which is choking on the forest beneath it. The pained sound coming from inside is ramping up.
On Charlie’s other side, Sonya is preparing to lift. We each grab one of Charlie’s arms and drape it over our shoulders. Even that tiny movement is enough to make him cry out.
“Please just leave me,” he begs. “Don’t move me any more. Please. Please.”
We ignore him. I look at Sonya and she looks at me.
“One, two, three,” I count. “Go!”
Together we haul Charlie up off the ground, his broken leg dangling under him. He screams like I’ve never heard him scream before. Raw, anguished, desperate. I look at his face and see it folded into sobs, tears spilling across his cheeks. I don’t know if I can put him through any more pain. But I can’t just leave him here to die, either.
My pulse is hammering in my ears. My arms and legs are shaking, nerves rattling with terror. Everything around me is a blur of toxic smoke and blackened trees and splintered metal. Hunks of the plane are scattered everywhere, and little fires are starting to crop up in places. Metal screeches; thunder rumbles across the sky. Charlie whimpers in my ear.
Then the engine explodes.