You ever known one of those people who just always seem to have bad luck? Or maybe now that I’m a Christian I shouldn’t attribute it to luck, but I think you probably get what I’m saying. People who have one bad thing happen to them after another until you want to scream to the universe on their behalf, “Haven’t they been through enough?”
I’ve met quite a few people like that in my day. Kennedy’s one of them, actually. It seems like at least once a semester she’s getting into some kind of terrible trouble or danger. For being the kid of such a safety-paranoid father, she sure has managed to find herself at the wrong place at the wrong time more often than I would care to count.
Well, that’s how I’m guessing we all felt on the plane after Raul and a few other brawny passengers managed to get General and his Hawaiian-shirted partner subdued. You’d think by that point, with the hijackers bound and the plane just minutes away from touching down, we could start to let out our breaths. Thank God (or the universe or luck or whatever) that we were safe.
Except we weren’t.
Because General and Hawaiian Shirt weren’t exactly working alone. And that dude who kept making a nuisance of himself in the back lavatories all through the flight was a Detroit electrician with just enough skill to know how to cause some major damage. This is another case where memories fail, because I’m certain the shouting came first, but others insist it started with the fire alarm going off.
Either way, the back of the cabin was on fire. Smoke began pouring out of the lavatories.
While General had been marching around the cabin with that gun of his, the passengers had remained eerily silent. Now, all that terror we’d been bottling up snapped, and it was complete chaos. I heard later that the paramedics had to treat more people for injuries related to trampling than smoke inhalation.
It was madness. Madness and unceasing terror as everyone raced to the front of the cabin.
I would have joined them. I tried to join them. But someone knocked me down from behind. I have no idea who it was. By this point, the smoke had grown so dense so quickly I could scarcely see anything. I was relying entirely on feel.
And then I stumbled. A woman’s high heel stomped on my hand. I cried out, but there was no way to hear anything over the screams of the passengers and the drone of the fire alarm.
Get up, I told myself. You didn’t survive a near-execution just to get yourself trampled to death when you’re only a few minutes short of landing. Get up.
Except I couldn’t. There were too many people. Too many bodies. I couldn’t stand. Couldn’t breathe. Someone stepped on my back. No more air in my lungs. I couldn’t even cough out the smoke I’d just inhaled.
And that’s when I knew it had happened. My luck had finally run out.
I really was going to die.