We hear him breathing, but it’s hollow sounding, he’s going, I think. It’s so much blood, and we can’t imagine how we would put him back together, or hold him together, if he lived past this minute anyway. A minute goes by like this, it seems longer, we’re just waiting, not knowing anything. Henrick lets go of the blankets, steps back, staring, with everybody else, we watch him, don’t know what else to do.
Lewenden’s suddenly conscious again, gasping like he knows he’s going and it woke him up. He starts trying to get up, as if he’s going to be able to get up and walk away from it. He looks at Henrick who just looks at him, and he looks at me again, this time for help, he’ll take it now, but I don’t know what to do any more than Henrick does, and I watch him fighting for air it looks like, and he closes his eyes but not blacking out, it’s like he's closing them in effort, and he keeps fighting for breath, and I put my hand on his chest and try to ease him from trying to get up which doesn’t look like it’s going to do him any good, and I look into his face in case he opens his eyes, which he does, he’s working for breath and gulping and looking terrified, and he’s still thinking there’s a way out of this, maybe, but there isn’t. I try to stay in his eyes.
“You’re going to die, OK? It’s OK,” I say.
Lewenden looks at me, in terror, around at everybody else. They all stare.
“Look at me,” I say, gentle as I can. “It’s OK,” I say again, I keep saying ‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ looking in his eyes like I’m promising him something and I mean it, and I do mean it, it’s the best I can do, and I stay with him best I can all the way, I take his hand, and he squeezes it close to breaking and I stay in his eyes with him, and he breathes and fights it until he dies. He stops moving, goes slack, his eyes go. I feel him leaving, I think. The blood tails away after a few seconds. Then it stops, too.
We all look at him. There’s a silence. I look at the guys. They’re all staring at him, spooked. Like hurt boys.
“Is this everybody alive?” I say. They all look at me like I shouldn’t be talking yet, like I don’t have the right. There should be a minute of silence, or some fucking thing.
“
“Eight inside, two more outside, yeah?” I say. It seems important to count.
I look up, see Tlingit and Reznikoff have come in, standing in the opening. There might be others out in the snow somewhere, but it feels like we’re the only ones left. I look around the plane.
“None of these others alive?” I ask.
Henrick finally answers. “I don’t know.”
There are maybe half a dozen dead-looking ones, a few more without question dead. I take Bengt’s flashlight and go look at the ones who might be alive. They feel cold, mostly. I check pulses, anyway, lift eyelids. I find one guy, crumpled up halfway in what was an overhead, a piece of bulkhead’s crunched down on him, and he’s breathing when I get to him, but as soon as I see that he stops, just like that.
The others are still staring at Lewenden, or watching me, not doing anything. They don’t know what to do.
“We should start a fire.” I say. They still all look at me like I don’t have any right to speak. Nobody moves, or answers, but Henrick and Tlingit nod.
“We should look for lighters or something, and anything that’ll burn. Sooner the better.” Simple things. Dead or not dead. Artery or vein. Nobody moves yet though, they stare at me, hurt boys, still.
“
“Any of you smoke? Any of you have lighters?” I ask. Bengt and Reznikoff feel their pockets, sort of numbly, but they don’t have them, if they did. I start going through the pockets of dead guys, the crap everywhere, looking for a lighter. Henrick’s going through pockets of dead too, and the guys look at him like it’s in bad taste. They expect it of me, but not him. He pulls out pens, other stuff. I find one, finally, a little plastic disposable. It lights.
“OK. We need something to burn.” I say. I talk like I’m talking to children, they’re all dazed, more than me. Luttinger and Henrick look at the seat cushions, same as I’m doing.
“Those’ll burn.” I say. I nod toward the trail of wreckage behind us. “I saw a lot of broken wood back there, the crash scattered it,” I say. “Let’s start it with these if they’ll go and then we’ll ferry wood up. OK?”
Henrick nods, Luttinger too. Bengt and Knox and Reznikoff nod, finally, then the others, and the ones who can move start tearing out loose cushions and piling them in the snow by the opening. After a minute they look at Luttinger and I wearing jackets, and Henrick goes and finds one, loose. The others have to pull them off dead guys, but they do it. Nobody touches Lewenden’s though. Too bloody, or we just don’t want to.
We get as many as we can find and pile them on Ojeira and the other injured like sleeping bags, and I get whatever blankets I can and whatever other jackets, a couple, for slings to drag wood back with. Henrick pulls a bent piece of panel out of the way to make more room for Ojeira and the others and he finds a medical kit. He looks sorry to see it, because of Lewenden.
“We could have fucking used this before,” he says.
Not that an ace bandage and a gauze-patch would have saved Lewenden. He knows that.
We’ve gotten a few cushions out, enough. We drag them outside. I try lighting them, and they flare up like torches right away, six feet high. You’d think they’d be more fire-proof, but it’s good they aren’t. Some of the guys cheer, whoop. It’s something. We’re alive. They seem to be waking up, a little.
“Some of us should stay here and keep this going. The rest of us should see what wood we can get out there.”
I turn and head out. Henrick’s right behind me, then Luttinger and Tlingit and Knox and Bengt follow. Reznikoff stays behind with Ojeira and the others.
Outside, away from that minute of fire, it seems colder than before, and darker in the shadows, but there’s still moon on the snow. There are big ceiling clouds moving, and snow coming down a bit heavier, again. We keep walking, past more little chunks of plane, more dead. We stop, look into any piece big enough to have an inside, yell in, in case somebody’s alive. Nobody, but we see more dead and parts of dead, in seats, in the snow. We look
