“What was that?” Wheeler asked.
Jerry pushed himself up and gazed over the top of the basket. “Weather advisory. They want us to go back.”
According to the altimeter, we’d been floating along for the past ten minutes at right around three thousand feet. What I hadn’t noticed was that we were moving laterally toward the approaching storm.
“Take us back,” Wheeler barked. “Now!”
I guessed we were a few miles from the Pershing grounds.
Jerry pushed himself to his feet. “What are you gonna do to me when we get down there?”
“I’m gonna drive you to the Tarrin Police Department and you’re gonna tell them everything you told me.” I gazed down toward the ground. “Or you can jump.”
He gazed down.
He appeared to genuinely be considering his options.
“No!” yelled Wheeler. “He isn’t jumping. If he jumps, we have no way of getting down.”
I felt pretty confident I could get us down safely, I mean, it was pretty self-explanatory.
Fire, up.
No fire, down.
Jerry eased down on the throttle and we began to descend.
I joined Wheeler against the far wall, keeping my back to the basket so I could keep an eye on Jerry.
A few minutes passed in silence.
“Can you hurry up?” Wheeler said. “That storm is getting a lot closer.”
She was right. It would be on us in the next few minutes. I gazed down at the ground and saw we had moved farther from the Pershing grounds. Jerry was heading us toward the storm.
“Hey,” I yelled. “You’re taking us in the wrong—”
Jerry picked up the extra propane tank. I shielded Wheeler, thinking he was going to throw it at us. He didn’t. He tipped it over the edge and let it fall.
“What are you doing?” I screeched.
He ignored me, then began fiddling with the burner. It roared to life, sending the balloon soaring.
We caught a gust of wind, the balloon leaning hard to the right, and headed directly toward the thick gray clouds.
I pushed him out of the way and attempted to turn the burner off, only the throttle was gone.
“Where is it?” I said, grabbing him by the shirt.
He opened his hand. The large throttle was held tightly in his palm. I reached for it, but before I could grab it, he tossed it over the side.
I punched him in the gut.
There was a loud oof and he sank to his knees.
“What’s going on?” cried Wheeler, holding tightly to the corner of the basket.
“He just threw the throttle overboard.”
“Oh my God.”
I turned my attention back to the burner. I tried to get the flames to stop, but I couldn’t. We continued to rise. Continued directly into the storm.
There was a lightning strike, then a boom unlike I’d ever heard. It was like an M-80 exploded inside my ear canal.
“If we survive this,” I screamed over the pelting rain, “I’m going to potato peel your entire body before I hand you over to the police.”
Over the last ten minutes we’d risen to nearly six thousand feet. The storm had overtaken us and the wind and rain turned us into its own giant washing machine.
“Thomas!” Wheeler screamed. “I’m scared.”
Yeah, me too!
I yelled, “It’s gonna be okay.”
A moment after I said these words there was a soft choking, the flames dying out. At first I thought maybe the rain put out the flame, but it hadn’t.
We were out of propane.
The flame flickered one last time, then went out completely.
The balloon halted its ascent, hung limply for a long moment, then slowly began to descend.
“We’re going down,” Wheeler yelled, a big smile on her face.
I glanced down at Jerry.
Going down was a good thing, right?
But then, why would he have dumped the extra propane tank?
A minute later, I realized why.
Our rate of descent was increasing. Without the hot air to slow us down near the ground, we were going to impact hard. And the parachute whipping in the wind certainly wasn’t helping.
I checked the altimeter. “Four thousand feet,” I said.
I began counting in my head.
When we hit three thousand feet, I stopped.
“You any good at math?” I asked Wheeler.
She nodded through the rain.
“How fast is a thousand feet in forty-six seconds?”
Ten seconds later, she said, “Right around fifteen miles per hour.”
“Shit.”
“Is that how fast we’re going?”
I nodded.
“We need to slow this thing down.”
“I don’t know how.”
“We need to get rid of all the dead weight.”
“The sandbags!” I shouted.
There were eight in total, each weighing thirty pounds. Wheeler and I started picking them up and heaving them over the side.
The wind whipped us violently, and I rammed my side into the top edge of the basket. Blinding pain shot through my torso.
“You okay?” Wheeler asked.
“My ribs.”
I gritted my teeth but forced myself to my feet. I checked the altimeter. Seventeen hundred feet.
I counted until we hit twelve hundred.
“Five hundred feet in sixteen seconds.”
“That’s over twenty miles per hour!” Wheeler shouted. “Why are we going faster?”
I didn’t know. Maybe the wind.
I looked down at Jerry. He probably weighed 150 pounds.
“Stand up,” I said.
He gazed up at me. Shook his head.
“Stand the fuck up!”
He wouldn’t so I heaved him up myself.
I turned and looked at Wheeler.
She fixed me with a panicked stare.
I turned Jerry around and pushed him up against the basket wall.
“No!” he screamed, whipping his arms back and forth. “Think about Patrick and Tyler! They need their father!”
His words gave me a half second’s pause, but that was long enough for a gust of wind to send the balloon nearly sideways. I was tossed to the other side of the basket and I smashed into Wheeler, who went down in a heap.
I wasn’t sure how many seconds passed since I last checked the altimeter. I pushed myself up and glanced over the side. Trees and houses were much bigger than the last time I gazed down. I guessed we had fifteen seconds at best. Ten at worst.
I started to count.
One.
Directly below us was a field. Better than a rock quarry, but we were still gonna
