in the face again, the lights out except here and there, a head flies by and the plane splits, it looks like, or cracks, a dark gap, jagged line across the fuselage where it shouldn’t be, and arms and legs and blood and the head shoot by again, or another head, a bowling ball, this time I see his face. I’m trying to think of his name as he flies away from me and I’m thrown back the other way, away, thinking, because thinking is slower than everything else right now, that I should get to him and help him, and as I’m flying backwards I have to fight this pretty hard by telling myself there’s not much I can do to help a head.
The side of us hits something, we seem to bounce. Lights come back on, explode, glass pops, whatever the windows are made of. Everything goes darker than it was, we’re cracking open, sliding, I feel cold shooting in. We’re still slamming and sliding but I think I’m cold or bleeding, and I feel pressure, pulling on my belly and feet and the side of my head as we’re still sliding and bouncing and slamming down something at a horrible speed and I may be getting ripped apart but I see when I can look down, I think, my head has not come off, or my arms or legs. A flood of snow is slamming in. Everything changes to snow and cold ripping air, we’re still going but then we spin and crack open wider, spinning, there’s a body on me, or part of one, sweater in my mouth and drool or blood or worse, I can’t push it off because we’re spinning then it flies off me anyway, then more bang-sliding, more snow shooting into my mouth, my nose, my eyes, through the lids no matter how tight I’m squeezing shut. We’ve filled with snow. Everything stops. So do I.
I’m buried. I can’t breathe, nothing. Not a fucking molecule, or I can’t work my lungs, suck all I want, and something feels broken, whatever is there, ribs, and then I feel the snow in my mouth and nose, packed, I snort and spit and cough my best but there is not much air still, it’s snow, mostly, but it seems I’m partly breathing something, I think, but brain’s not to be trusted, eyes either, nothing else either, I still feel like I’m still spinning, maybe still falling, I’ve stopped but I’m still flying through the air, it’s spinning past me, maybe. Maybe I’m falling. Maybe I’m headless, or legless.
I dig and push to get one hand pushed against my chest up under my chin and wriggle and shove my fingers up around my mouth to make a space so I’m not drowning, a little space around my mouth to breathe, an inch, two, and try to dig snow out of my mouth, blow it out of my nose. I’m still buried but I have these two inches, and I keep clawing it but I can’t move much of my arm. I shove and push like crazy, then hunch and wriggle back, after more air, and I get more of my arm free and I dig out and pull my hand back and shove and suddenly I can twist and get my other arm out and I start pulling and clambering, in total dark. I’m trying to see and there’s nothing.
I push up and I hit a seat perched over me like a roof and I’m afraid I might be trapped under that and I shove with my legs as hard as I can until the seat and all the junk on top flips aside, and then air hits me, freezing cold, and I am breathing, buckets, sucking it in. It hurts at the top of every breath, something’s cracked, or thumped, in my chest or ribs or back or somewhere, all of it. There’s a patch of light below, though debris piled around me, looks like snow, and I flop and fall towards it, then there’s more light, or sort of light, pale, and more cold air, and I tumble down a slope of something and hit some hard stuff but none of it badly and come to a stop again, sitting in the snow, but I barely know what’s down and what’s sideways, I’m still spinning, blood’s washing through my ears, booming. I breathe, hold on to the snow.
2
I can’t see where I am at first, but I know I’m outside the plane. Everything’s outside the plane. The plane is pieces of shell, scattered. I slowly understand cold, dark, moon, snow, pieces of plane, loose seats, bags, bodies, snow falling, dark lines of trees, far away, maybe mountains in the dark past those, maybe, maybe we hit them and bounced this far. Everything’s buzzing, spinning in my ears still, loud, buzzing silence. I think I stand up a second, hard to tell, but I fall back down, not meaning to, the ground smacks up at me, buzzing. The wind isn’t blowing, which spooks me, because it’s always blowing, in my head, anyway. If it isn’t blowing now, I’m dead, and this is the aftermath.
I hold on, sit another minute to stop drunk-spinning, looking at pieces, stretching back, a black dotted trail of pieces of metal and I guess oil or somehow burn marks on the snow, if that’s possible, it’s hard to see, and more little dark clumps of bags or bodies or pieces of bodies or seats or people’s clothes, all across this white clearing, a ring of trees around us like the shore of a sea we’re on, with dead in the middle. I shake my head, work my jaw, thinking the buzzing changing to whining changing to ringing might pop out and stop if I do, but it doesn’t, it just clunks like a car-door off its hinge. It’s done that after fights, I got it popped out once, sometimes it pops out again. Behind the trail of stuff, far back I can see trees, flattened and ripped, I think, where I guess we came through.
I look the other way. I see a guy ahead now, pretty far. He stands up and flops right over again, like I did. Further off, past him, I see somebody else moving, but he’s just crawling along, and he stops, goes flat against the snow, but then I see him trying to get up again. I see more pieces of broken shell, what’s left of the plane, spread over what looks like a mile. It can’t be a mile.
I consider standing up again. Blood’s still washing through my ears, over the buzzing, in what sounds like a more and more determined way. My chest hurts more the more I breathe, but I still want to get more air in. I try to get up and I wobble but I take a step, ass-high in snow, I have to pull my leg up high, but I move. I think I’d know if anything was broken, and I don’t think anything is, much, and I think if I’m breathing at all I didn’t break ribs. I just got a talking-to.
I half-slide the rest of the way down the drift I’m in, land face-first, get up again, and I’m on my feet, and suddenly feeling the cold twice as much. I head for the guy who can’t stay up. The other guy moves, again, lying on the snow, feeling around looking lost, dizzy, like me. But he’s further away.
I walk and walk and start to see they’re further away than they looked. I keep on, across the snow. I pass more seats, more dead, each in their own craters, pocked into the snow, some half-sitting, some freezing, stiffening already, or looking like it, others flattened across the harder snow, worse on ice, some just pieces. And bags, clothes, toothbrushes, razors, loose shoes, pieces of metal everywhere, more dead, as far as I can see, the better my eyes work the further out I see them.
As I’m making my way the wind picks up. It’s not a blast but it’s more than it was, and it feels like there could be more behind it, before long. It starts picking up snow, getting a little louder. I stop a couple of times and check the bodies I can get to, but nobody I check is alive, the guys ahead of me are the only things moving. I keep making for them. I can’t check them all.
I get up near the first guy, finally. He’s up again and trying to walk, in his boxers, and socks, half-bloody from something. He looks all broken, but it might just be the way he’s standing, or trying to stand. He’s hopping, or bobbing, one arm and one leg sticking out crooked, trying to hoist his boxers up better, then he slips and flops back, lands on his hand, screams in pain, or pissed off, or both. When I get up close to him he’s crying.
“I lost my fucking pants,” he says. It’s Ojeira. He’s a tool-pusher. I look around, no blankets, nothing, some bent seats a way off. I pull my sweater off, lay it on him.
