giving us lift and slowing our descent. It’ll be a controlled crash.”
Thirty years on, and he was still going to die in a helicopter crash. Linda, his mom, and his sister flashed through his mind, but it was Mac he fixed on, Mac laughing and smoking and drumming out a rhythm on a helmet with his hands. God, he thought, just kill me quick. Don’t hang me up and make me linger.
“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-mache. 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.”
